How much use does everyone get out of the allies? We were wondering in our latest game if we could just abuse them for the potential bonuses, figuring that any potentially antagonistic traumas are the cost of doing business, occasionally some of them will fuel more trauma tokens for more ally abuse, and the benefits outweigh the losses. We tend to play 5 and 6 player games, and in a 6 player game most everyone but the pilots can move to an ally location each turn before XOing or playing other cards; for some reason they never end up in areas that we actually want to use (no one ever in the Hanger Deck despite the fact that I think 5 allies appear there). In our game last night we had 6 allies in a row with great potential, we somehow lucked into getting all of the "+1 to resources" allies out back to back.
How often does everyone else use them? Do you ignore them if they are in out of the way places? We realize it could make a mess at Crossroads...

You know, I'm not sure my group's got the ally thing down to a science yet. Generally it's only the players who have 3 antagonistic who'll really go out of their way to encounter allies (to burn off some of their tokens in fear of Crossroads elimination). Others sort of catch as catch can. If Benevolent tokens show up on the allies my group actually sees it as mildly suspicious. We read the ally closely to see whether the difference between effects warrants a player putting one of their "precious" blue tokens on it.

And the 2 Tragedy tokens has my group pretty gun shy about drawing trauma tokens. Even with our avoidance of trauma, we've pulled those tokens a number of times and we have a healthy respect for them. So it sounds like our groups have approached the allies somewhat differently thus far.

Unfortunately I haven't tried out the allies yet. I love the idea and want to see what they do. I guess I'm just not too thrilled about the whole elimination during the Crossroads phase. Yes, it's near the end and eliminated players won't miss all that much. Still, being kicked square out of the game doesn't seem like a fun way to end a game night.

I would assume people compare an ally's bonus against its malus and then calculate acceptable losses. And if the need outweighs the fear then people will go for it. Depending on how out of the way the allies are players may not head for them during the stressful times when hoards of Cylons invade the space around Galactica or there's a boarding party heading for the Command Center. At least I wouldn't expect them to.

Our group hasn't really had a chance to use the allies very much either. It seems like everybody is so constantly putting out fires and doing damage control that rarely do we have an opportunity to move to em and "use" them. It's also very weird that, for us anyways, the same allies keep coming out every game. I know that it is just coincidence,.....or is it? But yeah, as of yet we hardly ever get to use the allies.

Napoleon

Played again last night, 6 players, and we went to town on the allies. It seems like a lot of the time the antagonistic response on an ally card isn't as terrible as the possible benefit. Between all the players we drew an average amount of benevolent and antagonistic tokens at the beginning of the game, but the brig and sickbay helped us a bit since we picked up more benevolent tokens each time (dumb luck). Lampkin even showed up in the brig and let someone get out for free and that player picked up another benevolent token in the process; we used the antagonistic ones on allies who we didn't need and triggered them when they would do the least damage so we could draw new ones, and as a whole they are a great mechanic for the humans. But we never made it Crossroads, we ran the humans out of fuel.

Skowza said:

What a stupid statement. The point is clear I suppose, but it reads like I'm retarded, of course the antagonstic response is worse than the benefit.
"The potential benefit is worth risking the possible antagonistic response." would be better... luckily I have nothing to do at work but sit around rereading my own posts, as sad as that is.

Skowza said:

You're the only person who ever does that ...

I swear.