As I mentioned in another thread, the answers to how to combine the expansions are scattered all over the forums. I'm hoping we can bring it all into one thread and get a solid playable combination that doesnt make the game last 5 hours and doesnt involve a lot of adjustments to resources at the start of the game. It'll be good for new players to see it all in one place, it'll be good for veteran players to see how other groups are doing this, it'll be good to have some sort of standard set for anyone who wants to play at GenCon or any setting outside of their normal group, and it'll be good for me to read at work when I get bored ;-)

So, here's my thoughts:
Investigative Committees from Pegasus must be included. I doubt anyone will argue that.
All characters from both expansions should be used. This also means Treachery cards will be used, since you can't use Ellen without them. That sounds good anyway, Treachery cards are good for the game.
Keep all the new Crisis, Skill, Destination and Quorum cards. Obviously take out the Attack Crisis cards if using the Cylon Fleet.
Keep the Cylon locations from Pegasus.
Pegasus itself should be included although we might get some arguments that Exodus shouldnt be used with the Pegasus board b/c it will tilt things in favor of the Humans. I can understand that argument, and we can fight about that when someone else posts that it doesn't belong. Also, we want the Airlock, and I like the Engine Room even if others don't; access to the Engine Room may also balance out Cylons using the Bridge over and over to stunt the jump track progress.
Sympathizer card from Pegasus is far better than the core set card.
Keep the Scar Destination because its fun and thematic; give it a jump icon if necessary.
Keep the Allies, they make the game interesting, end with Ionian Nebula.
Keep the plastic Basestars (sorry, had to mention that)
Keep the Cylon Fleet, it helps balance out having Pegasus available.

Cylon Leaders: has anyone been using them with Exodus components, and if so has it worked? More than anything else they could unbalance the game, and a ruthless leader who sits on the Basestar Bridge might be really bad (we haven't tried it, using the Cylon Leaders kind of takes away from the paranoia and fun for my group, we just use the Sympathizer card from Pegasus with "selected" agendas cause we house-ruled some of them out)

We don't use the Conflicted Loyalty cards right now, mostly because we havent played that many games with Exodus, but I assume they dont interfere with the expansions functioning together.

Is there anything that everyone feels should absolutely not be included when combining the expansions? Other than that thematic New Caprica coaster that FFG included with Pegasus?

Skowza, this is a really good list. And it's pretty much how I always do it. Personally, I do use the conflicted loyalties and I don't use Scar, but I definitely get the argument for using him and if I had played fewer games or had newbies in the room I probably wouldn't be as excited about conflicted loyalties.

So I'll follow along and listen to what others think, but I really like your list and I'll be interested to see if the consensus opinion is similar to your own. I expect that it will be.

Great idea! A shame if the rumors I hear about time-limited editting are true, because it would be nice to keep the OP up-to-date with people's suggestions.

We might also want to divide that list into a "bare bones essentials:" Basically, anything that has risen to the status of becoming "soft errata" on the base game, or that can be added to the base game without changing it too much. Some of the things I would consider "base game essentials" from the expansions are:

• Pegasus - Investigative Committee
• Pegasus - Cylon locations overlay (we cover the old Cylon locations with our Crisis deck, and hand the Cylon overlay to the first revealed Cylon)
• Exodus - 2x "You Are a Cylon" Loyalty Cards (they don't require Treachery)
• Pegasus - "Scar" Crisis Card + "Mining Asteroid" Destination Card (substituting them for "Jammed Assault" and "Deep Space")
• Exodus - Admiral Title Card (might get some disagreement here, but it's only a minor change from the original, and has the benefit of being accurate)
• Pegasus - Cylon Sympathizer (with Sympathetic Agendas and Infiltration), to replace the Sympathizer Card
• Pegasus - Plasic basestars (CRUCIAL) replace cardboard ones (needs to be said before some poor group runs four basestars in the base game)
• Exodus - Ally tokens (Great as "memory aids:" Gaius and Boomer put theirs on the Crisis Deck to remember to use their special abilities; Apollo's goes over by the Skill Card discards so someone will remind him to discard randomly; Tigh always keeps one of his Skill Cards facedown under his, to be discarded if his (literal) "hand" is ever empty, etc.)
• Pegasus/Exodus - Extra character base (for the Current Player Token -- it's easier to see when it's standing up, and fits neatly into a character base to be moved around the space areas; if you don't know why anyone would use this, then you either haven't jumped the fleet in the middle of an executive order, or you have perfect memory.)

Other than that, we leave things pretty much the same. I'm really tempted to add the Cylon Fleet Board to keep space combat lively, but I think that would push balance too far and encourage first-turn reveals, which is not fun.

You're not going to get a consensus. I'm not blind to the flaws of Pegasus, but I like Exodus even less.

To address some of your points:

-Both expansions introduce some hilariously broken characters. Cain and Tory primarily, but I wouldn't oppose the argument that Ellen, Gaeta and Cally are all more powerful than the base game characters too. Cally's OPG completely neuters soft-revealing. (unless she's a cylon too.)

-If you use Exodus crisis cards with regular Cylon Attacks, those are going to appear a lot less, even if you take out all CAG crises.

-Treachery and the Cylon Fleet go really badly together. Broadcast Location becomes a simple way for the humans to call in a single basestar, and prevent any fleet build-up.

-The Ionian Nebula end battle doesn't place civilians, so it pretty much requires the CFB.

As you might guess, I'm not a huge fan of the CFB, or Exodus in general. To return to your original question - the main clash when mixing the expansions are how the humans can abuse Broadcast Location to neutralize any Fleet build-up. Destination or crisis cards from the base game or expansions that place basestars can be used in a similar fashion, and become beneficial rather than detrimental to the humans. Cylon Leaders don't seem to get much better or worse with Exodus. Their main problems are still the unbalanced agenda cards.

If you don't mind the imbalanced characters, there's no reason not to mix and match. I'd say Cally even gets a little more palatable when there's a regular way to execute people, via the Pegasus airlock.

Hannibal Rex,

I admire your willingness to go on record with so many of your positions on the expansion components. I’m about to disagree with you on a couple of your points, but in so doing I’ll prove your primary claim about the community not reaching consensus. So I guess I’m saying you’re right.

First on the characters: I agree that Cain is hilariously broken, as you say, and on her face, Tory also appears to be. However, after my group played her regularly for some time, we’ve seen her popularity wane of late, and I do not consider her the most powerful political leader. I will say that her power is more balanced if you’re playing with the Cylon Fleet board , which I know you reject. Barring that, she may be closer to the top of the curve, but I’d take exception with “hilariously broken.” She’s not nearly as strong as Helena Cain, for instance.

As for the other characters, I agree with you that Ellen Tigh’s very strong, but Cally and Gaeta are pretty weak.

(And let me say that my opinions on this have advanced over the course of the last few months. I initiated and participated in a threat a couple months back about the power level of characters in Exodus and some of my thoughts were different then, but twenty games with Exodus have evolved my thinking a little.)

At any rate, my evaluation of the Pegasus characters is consistent with yours: two of the four shift the power curve displeasingly to the right, but I do not believe that *any* of the Exodus characters do so if you’re using Cylon Fleet board, and I’d say only Tory does so absent of the Cylon Fleet module.

As for combining Exodus crises with base game crises, you’re right that it’ll lead to a lower occurrence of maps, which is a problem, but it’s worth pointing out that this is another problem that goes away with the Cylon Fleet board.

As for Treachery with the Cylon Fleet board, I’ve heard a lot about that Broadcast Location combo, and my playgroup is certainly aware of it, but I rarely see it in action and I don’t consider it that strong. First it requires that you get the fleet to draw Treachery, which usually happens to all characters at once. Then you make a check reckless and throw Broadcast Location in. But the sleeper cylon’s just laughing inside at all this work you’re doing to give them a great reveal. They slide in their At Your Command or Special Destiny or whatever, activate everything, grab some extra Treachery and reveal (or blame the deck, I guess). Maybe it’s a little easier if Tigh’s the designated Broadcast Location player, but then this is just an extension of complaint #1, above. (And you better hope she’s not a cylon.) There’s always a chance that my group has some blind spot to the hidden power of this combo, but we’re unimpressed by it, and don’t find any significant negative interaction between the Treachery deck and Cylon Fleet board.

The Ionian Nebula not placing civies is yet a third argument for the Cylon Fleet board. I guess it’s not too hard to house rule in the civies (have you tried it without and just let the raiders fire on Galactica? Seems to me like it could be okay, but I haven’t tried it so I won’t say for sure.)

Anyway, when I look all this over, you’ve pretty well convinced me that the Cylon Fleet board is one component that ought to always be included, which I doubt was your intention, but it is consistent with Skowza’s and my analysis of the different components. Besides clarifying how integral the CFB is, your other points that resonate most with me are about Helena Cain, Ellen Tigh, Cylon Leader agendas, and maybe Treachery (all Pegasus components, it’s worth mentioning).

Holy Outlaw said:

Honestly, from the moment we started using it, the CFB seemed more balanced than the attack cards. Although not knowing when an attack could come added a level of tension, our group felt like it was too random sometimes. We played multiple games in which we were never attacked or only attacked once with just a few jumps left; the number of times this happened seemed inordinately high for a couple of months. In contrast, very few times did we play a game full of attacks, though once we had 5 attack cards stacked up (hooray for Launch Scout). Everything about the CFB is better imo, especially the fact that it makes the pilots important compared to the "don't need em, just kill everything with Pegasus" strategy.
I agree that Cain is broken; not so with all of the others.

Holy Outlaw,

I visit the BGG boards more frequently than here, so apologies I took some time for my answer. A well-formulated, detailed reply is always appreciated. Here's another thing for the record: I haven't bought Exodus, as I was rather disappointed by its contents. I've read numerous Play-by-Forum games, which reinforced my opinions for the most part. But it's only fair to point out that I don't have any first hand experience with it.

We seem to be in agreement about Cain; her OPG lets you skip 5 or more crisis cards, for a cost of only a few resources. It's also a balance problem that she has a more flexible card draw than either Adama or Tigh, while being above them in the line of succession.

Ellen is a lot of fun, but she has two issues; first, Treachery cards are not as detrimental to humans as they're made out to be, so her drawback doesn't really have any teeth in the first place. Adding to that, Politically Adroit is really, really powerful. Even leaving aside the two additional cards she gets, Ellen can hand out XOs to Boomer, or other characters who only draw 1 leadership. Even if she handed out her card to an unrevealed cylon, he can hardly do any mischief with an XO. Ellen effectively has a 6.5 card draw.

Dee looks balanced to me. The only worry I have about her is that her special might make raider activations completely toothless, in some (many?) situations. I haven't enough play experience with her to come to a conclusion on this.

Kat is underpowered, if anything.

As for the Exodus people:

Anders is somewhat lackluster, like Kat. His skill draw is nice, for a pilot, but his OPT is nothing to write home about.

Gaeta has arguably the most flexible skill draw of any character, and certainly of any military leader. The problem I have with him is his OPT - it's really problematic to be an unrevealed cylon Gaeta, as every FTL activation ends up being a loyalty check. And with Strategic Plannings around, a human Gaeta can pretty much always risk jumping on -3.

Cally has another very flexible skill draw, but it's held in check by her drawback. The really big problem is that she completely shuts down any soft-reveal opportunities for cylons, unless you manage to execute or brig her first. (And brigging isn't reliable.) Her OPG makes all unrevealed cylon play revolve around her.

Tory... I don't buy the CFB argument. Yeah, you have to use more actions than you used to on vipers, and XOs to the CAG. But she's simply a card monster, and she makes XOing the president ridiculously strong. (Especially if she's got the title herself.)

As for the Cylon Fleet Board: I've made no secret of it that I don't like it. But what I really don't like is that it's claimed in the Exodus rulebook that all components of the expansion are modular, and can be added in or left out as you wish, when that's blatantly untrue. The absence of Cylon Attack crises for playing without the CFB shows this. Your Tory argument, and the Ionian Nebula are further indication that Exodus was only playtested with the CFB. Certainly, if you prefer to play with it, that's not necessarily a drawback.

I suppose you're aware of the arguments against the CFB; I won't repeat them here. I can certainly understand why some, if not most prefer it to the attack crises. But in my opinion, BSG is a poor space combat game, and trying to turn it into one takes away from its real strength - the traitor mechanic, and the paranoia it engenders. The CFB gives some options to the cylon players once they've revealed, but at that point, the really interesting part of the game is already over. Nothing about the CFB mechanic allows for hidden sabotage the way skill checks or scouting does. Cylon attacks make the crisis deck more dangerous, which makes scouting more important, which keeps the paranoia going.

Your counter-argument about Treachery isn't convincing me. Yeah, you won't always have the opportunity to abuse Broadcast Location for the humans' benefit. But when you do, a hidden cylon can't really benefit, at least not to the extent that BL helps the humans. The order of activation for Reckless abilities is always up to the current player. As you'll only want to use this when there are not cylon ships on the board yet, BYC will only launch heavies and raiders, hardly a great threat. (Assuming it's resolved after BL. Otherwise it'd advance the Pursuit Track twice, I think.) Drawing more Treachery similarily is of little concern. Sure the cylons will get cards out of it, but so will the humans. Spare Treachery can always be used for ship travel, any other discards, Airlock checks, or simply saved for At Any Cost. Treachery is as much a resource for humans as it is for cylons.

I think I've derailed this thread enough; I won't go further into the problems I have with the other Exodus components. The only thing I really like are the new skill cards. More variety in the skill decks is always welcome. The 0-strength cards allow for some creative undetectable cylon sabotage. But even there, I have some reservations. About Political Prowess, mainly, especially when it can be used in conjunction with Pegasus' Airlock. Which brings this post back on topic, I suppose.

Oops, back off the rails. I think a big problem with the expansions is the collision of the social game and "rational gameplay."

HELENA CAIN: If everyone played rationally and cooperatively, Cain would be more than unbalanced, she'd be flat-out broken. But Cain is crippled in the social game, worse even than the double-Loyalty drawers: She's either a very scary cylon, very scary TO cylons, or both. She's invariably the biggest enemy target AND the biggest target for Loyalty Card scrutiny, an "unwritten weakness" that should be accounted for when considering her place in the game. I've played many games with Cain where I was executed as the first action of a cylon soft-reveal. (Also, I'm toying with two different house rules for her OPG -- one that requires her to be the Admiral, the other that requires her to be in Pegasus CIC or Command.)

ELLEN TIGH: I agree that FFG overestimated the impact of Treachery when designing Pegasus, and Ellen is but one example. Compare Ellen's weakness to Boomer's unwritten inability to draw Leadership, which comes on top of her actual crippling weakness. I think your math is wrong on 6.5 though: She draws 4.5 if we include Treachery as 0.5, and can trade up with Politically Adroit to 5.5 (or 6, if she hands off Treachery, I suppose). I don't think handing XO's to Boomer or others is overpowered, particularly since Boomer can't be in a viper at the time; you're also sacrificing ideal location placement for being XO'd yourself if you're following people around. On Treachery in general, I recommend checking out the Razor Cut rules for constructing a Crisis Deck with Pegasus and their tweaks on Treachery -- with the exception of the Razor Cut Agendas, the whole thing has been tested rather heavily and, while I haven't tried it out myself, it looks like it's meant to give Treachery some teeth (e.g: skill checks with negative strength are automatically Reckless, is one change I can think of off the top of my head).

DEE: We never use Communications, or Dee for that matter. I am literally the least qualified person in these forums to comment on her

KAT: Agreed. Pilots need a little bit extra in order to compete with the default power level of the leader characters. In the base game, they gave pilots versatile skill sets, but that seems to have fallen out of favor in the expansions. (The next expansion better give us Hot Dog, and he better have a Politics multiskill given his winning personality!) In Razor Cut, they upped the bonus on her top ability to +3 -- I suspect the only reason FFG didn't was because they were anticipating 6-strength Skill Cards in Exodus. Finally, her OPG should destroy 1 basestar OR all non-basestar ships in her space area, period.

ANDERS: Totally disagree with you about his OPT. If he manages to hold onto enough cards, he can burn through a whole skill deck off a single XO, searching out the 6's or even loyalty-testing someone who claims they lack an XO.

GAETA: He seems to split people down the middle. Some think he rocks, others think he's terrible. With the CFB, Population becomes a more commonly threatened resource, though, making FTL more risky. Also, just like Cain, he's a huge target: Any character who accelerates the game by jumping early needs to be neutralized. This isn't a game balance problem, it's a red flag to unrevealed cylons that this is someone you need to pay attention to.

CALLY: Cally's OPG is not overpowered for the same reason Gaeta's OPT isn't: She becomes a huge target for any unrevealed Cylon, and (bonus!) her OPG doesn't have to be house-ruled so she can't shoot from the Brig. And she makes the game make sense. First, she doesn't entirely cripple soft-revealing -- the requirement of being the same location means she cripples extended soft-revealing, which basically involves a known Cylon wandering around Galactica overtly advancing genocide while dozens of heavily-armed security personnel stand idly by, until enough players draw enough cards to brig/execute them. Cally puts a cap (literally? HAH!) on these shenanegans, by limiting soft-reveals at the point those security personnel should have limited it anyways.

TORY: She's hard to judge without playing her more. Her OPG seems terrible, possibly among the worst. She is a card monster IF people are using Quorum Cards, but the reliability (and usefulness) of that deck has decreased as it's been diluted by expansions, so it could perhaps use a Tory pick-me-up. The interesting thing is that her weakness means she can't use her extra cards to choose the second "title discards 2/cp discards 3" option, something she'd almost always rather do given her Skill Card abundance. I dunno; I see Tory discarding down to 10 a lot, though they're probably ten really good cards (Tory? It's Leoben. I have a Cryptic Message for you...)

Broadcast Location + CFB: Ouch, this does seem like a problem in need of patching. Maybe change it to "Place a basestar on the CFB and advance the pursuit marker by one" or something. But yes, this strikes me as a problem that will only be resolved with a modification to the card itself.

... And Treachery In General: Treachery is a great idea, it just needs to be given REAL teeth, particularly when it comes to Sabotage and the threat of discard (would help balance Ellen's weakness vs. Boomer's unwritten no-Leadership). Maybe "Sabotage" could be retooled as another skill check ability: It damages Galactica/Pegasus a number of times based on the number of Treachery cards in the discard pile, before "resetting the Treachery clock" by shuffling the Treachery discards back into the Treachery deck.

Political Prowess: Disagree with your assessment of this card -- it's the solitary 6. It's supposed to be rockin'. And Politics should have the biggest direct impact on other players, along with Leadership.

I don't see why the weaknesses (e.g. Boomer's and Ellen's) need to be equally incapacitating. Whereas, say, Bill Adama's weakness is practically nonexistent, Laura Roslin needs an incredibly severe one to balance out her powerful OPT. Given that Boomer's OPT is almost as powerful, it's only fair that this be made up for in other areas.

CAIN, GAETA, CALLY: The social game argument doesn't convince me. This is exactly what I don't like: a character having so much impact that the game starts revolving about him/her. That's fine as long as it concerns title holders because of their title. When an innate OPG or OPT ability is the reason for that, something has gone wrong with the game balance. There's nothing particularily scary about Cain as a cylon, apart from her being the Admiral. Blind Jump is a lot less effective for cylons than humans. The worst that can happen is Cain blowing up two civvies when the jump track is already at -1.

I've seen a very interesting variant for her proposed just recently: Cain skips the Prepare for Jump phase on her turn if there's a basestar on the board. Not quite perfect yet, but certainly on the right track. Even with a balanced OPG, Cain would need a more noticeable drawback, to make up for her advantages over Adama and Tigh.

Soft-revealing is one of the most fun things you can do as a cylon; taking the Admiralcy by throwing you superior into the brig, messing up the humans by playing Quorum cards, etc. One of the most problematic things for the humans is two unrevealed cylons who keep XOing each other. Normally, the humans have to build up some card strength to brig them, or take back titles, etc. With Cally, all that becomes moot. I don't see the distinction you make between 'regular' and 'extended' soft-revealing. As soon as you perform an open act of sabotage without also revealing in the same turn, Cally can be XO'd to execute you. (Unless you're a pilot.) The only thing you can try to do is brig/execute Cally first (and brigging is iffy even if it succeeds.). Her OPG makes her the perfect meatshield for the title holders who would normally be targeted first with such an action.

ELLEN TIGH: I've said 6.5, because whichever card she hands out isn't lost to the humans, like ,say, playing a Consolidate Power would be. Even if the player Ellen gives her card happens to be an unrevealed cylon, he can hardly avoid playing it for the humans' benefit, without arousing Ellen's suspicion. The only thing negative about drawing Treachery is that the other players may be more likely to suspect her if Treachery shows up in a hidden skill check. But that only holds until a crisis or some other effect forces all players to draw Treachery. From then on, everyone will be suspect when a Treachery spike happens. And she has plenty of beneficial use for her treachery - traveling between ships to use Politically Adroit, for one.

Politically Adroit has two positive effects; first, it's basically a free Press Room activation for Ellen. In actuality, it's even more flexible than that. Second, she can hand out specific cards to the players wo can make the most use of them. XOs for Boomer is just the most obvious example. For that, giving up location coverage is more than worth it. And as a political leader, she can always hold back a CP for a CP/scout combo, regardless of where she is.

I'm not too hot on Razor Cut, but that one particular rule about negative skill checks becoming Reckless seems to have found widespread acceptance among the players who're willing to use variant rules. Deservedly so.

ANDERS: I like his OPT in theory, and I appreciate the thought behind it. But, especially given Anders' drawback, building up the card strength for it to become worthwhile can take quite a few turns, and Anders won't be contributing much to skill checks until then. At 3 cards it's borderline, compared to simply playing a CP (which Apollo can easily do on one of his bonus actions). It only gets strong when you've held on to 4 or more crappy cards. Helo has a similar skill set to Anders, and a much more frequently used OPT.

TORY: I don't see how ther can even be a discussion about Tory. If we agree that Ellen is a more powerful than average character, Tory is the same times ten. Also, her weakness only affects Current Player Chooses crises, not those requiring choices from the President or Admiral. If Tory is human, you no longer need to worry about skill checks.

Political Prowess: Yeah, strength 6 cards are supposed to be powerful. But PP is basically a free floating extra OPG for whomever draws it first. Scouting for Fuel still risks a raptor. State of Emergency costs food, and also gives actions to the other team. PP hasn't got a single drawback, and there's nothing you can do against it.

CAIN: Actually, the worst case scenario for the humans is being placated by the presence of Blind Jump, winding up in a big airfight and XOing a cylon Cain to Blind Jump them out. That is nearly always fatal.

For my money, I’d propose simply adding “on her turn” to Blind Jump. This change is simple in concept but dramatic in impact; I believe it brings her completely in line.

CALLY: I admit she’s pretty strong as a cylon, for the same reason she’s so awful as a human. She only draws 1 of every color but has to throw 2 in checks, which gives a cylon Cally cover to say, “Sorry guys, can’t help.” The reason why it’s so believable is because *human Cally can’t help, either.* And as for executing people by fiat, it’s definitely strong for a cylon, but a human ought to build consensus or not do it. As a human, she’s a really, really weak Chief. And a character who’s only good on one team is an also-ran, by my way of thinking.

ELLEN TIGH: I get the 6.5 math, and I agree she’s strong. She’s another one of those characters who’s stronger as a cylon, though.

ANDERS: I really do consider him awful. If I wanted to list all the characters in the game in ascending order based on their practicality and power, he’d be very near the bottom.

TORY: I admit that the first time I read the card, I thought she was completely broken, but I don’t anymore. The first question to ask when evaluating her power is, “How many quorum cards does your group play each rotation around the table?” If the answer is 1, then her card draw is 7, slightly higher than Ellen Tigh (more color flexibility, admittedly, but during her action step instead of before, so less timely). While we’re comparing Tory to Ellen Tigh, it’s worth mentioning that her OPG is far worse.

Further, there’s a significant opportunity cost on her ability, as it incentivizes suboptimal quorum play. I’d argue that the most advantageous way to use the quorum deck is to take advantage of any early lulls to try to build up a quorum hand of say 7 or 8 cards. Then, as situations arise, these cards provide options to the fleet. But with Tory, I’ve found that there’s pressure on the president to play the cards faster, which hurts flexibility.

In other words, I classify Tory as suffering from the same identity crisis that afflicts Kat: both girls have an OPT that kind of jumps off the card it seems so strong, but each carries a significant opportunity cost (Kat’s is XO, Tory’s is optimum quorum play).

Hannibal and Eunomiac, thank you very much for the responses (and you too Holy Outlaw, but I've come to expect detailed responses from you ).
I think everyone agrees that Cain is pretty OP, and I'm glad to hear everyone thinks Ellen is OP too since she is my favorite character and no one else in my group seems to appreciate her. I do think she became a bit more balanced with the introduction of the CFB; with Pegasus expansion only, there was little need to have pilots in their Vipers and she could pass off the XOs to anyone, but now its more likely she'll only be able to give them to players that could draw them anyway.
I still think Anders is extremely weak, especially as games get bigger and there are fewer turns per player. If his OPT allowed him to draw cards of any skill type, or his OPG was not limited to his own turn then he might be worth playing, but the way things stand, every other pilot is a better pick.
Kat falls squarely into the middle of the road character group with Zarek - abilities that are situationally useful coupled with a weakness that doesn't mean much.
The real problem I have with Cain is not that she lets you skip 5+ Crisis cards or that her draw is more flexible than the other M leaders, its that her weakness isn't a weakness in any way since she can get an XO pretty easily, and her OPG is a dead giveaway as to her loyalty and isn't even something that the player has control of. Almost every other character gets to use their OPG when they choose and other characters aren't under much pressure to use it at any specific time (except for maybe Starbuck, Helo, and Boomer who often can't make a convincing argument for not using their OPG if it is appropriate). Cain refusing to Blind Jump when it is obvious to everyone that it is in the human's best interest makes it very clear she is a Cylon; her OPG is also pretty useless as a Cylon compared to most other characters; about the only thing she can do is jump before the humans can get a resource into the red and make the Sympathizer a Cylon. I'd personally rather play Adama most of the time; although it's annoying to be a Cylon and see the 1-STR cards count positive, his OPG is still awesome for a human or Cylon player and he really has no weakness at all if you are using Pegasus.
Cally is pretty balanced imo; her OPG is obviously scary for Cylons, and if she gets to see someone's loyalty card somehow she will quickly end the "He's a Cylon!" "No, she's the Cylon" stalemate that can crop up when it isn't clear who to believe. I agree with Eunomiac's thoughts on her and she prevents known but unrevealed Cylons from running around the ship, which is not thematic anyway. At least her weakness is disruptive and everyone can keep an eye on her OPT ability. And I like the fact that she's kind of a toolbox character with her 4 color draw. The only thing I really don't like about her is that if she is a Cylon, there are really only two targets for her OPG: Cain to prevent the humans from using Blind Jump, and Lee, to prevent them from abusing the CAG title.
Gaeta... his OPT allows for repeatedly jumping with FTL without worrying about possible Pop loss. I think this partially balances a group of revealed Cylons that love using the Bridge to mess with the jump tracks. I think he is a bit broken if you aren't using the CFB. Same for Tory, without the CFB the humans can go nuts on her ability and fill her hand with cards. I think there's even something to be said for executing someone immediately within the first 2-3 turns to ensure that the player is human, then have them come back as Tory and maybe even give her the President title. Using the CFB makes sure the humans can't just sit around XOing the Pres.

Ultimately I do think the expansions can be combined somehow to make a playable balanced game, but I do think it will be more difficult than I originally thought and may involve tweaks like the idea Eunomiac suggested about just putting the Basestar on the CFB instead of in a space area when Broadcast Location goes off. We all agree that the expansion characters are more powerful than the base set ones, but some of the base characters were way OP compared to others anyway. Adama and Apollo compared to Boomer and Zarek? No brainer. I'd also like to think that if a third expansion does come out sooner or later, there is some way to use multiple expansions and not just have three completely seperate game systems...

Politically Adroit has two positive effects; first, it's basically a free Press Room activation for Ellen. In actuality, it's even more flexible than that. Second, she can hand out specific cards to the players wo can make the most use of them. XOs for Boomer is just the most obvious example. For that, giving up location coverage is more than worth it. And as a political leader, she can always hold back a CP for a CP/scout combo, regardless of where she is.

"Giving up location coverage" is putting it mildly. She's flat-out unable to reach certain characters (those in space) and has to give up cards for others (on other ships). And of course, she can't make effective use of her presidency.

She's certainly strong in the early game, but I'd imagine that in the late game when there's only three humans to cover all necessary locations and she's at least somewhat likely to have the presidency (if she didn't start with it, being a political character), there will be few situations when she'll be able to adroit someone without giving up an effective turn.

Cifer, that's a really valid concern about a human Ellen Tigh. She gets noticeably weaker at Sleeper, just when the fleet needs her most. And if I might continue my vendetta against Tory Foster for just a moment longer, It's worth mentioning she suffers the same problem. Once there are only 3 humans, how many quorum cards can the fleet really afford to play on each rotation around the table? My experience is there are usually too many other things to do.

Cifer said:

I don't think she's meant to be used as President but if she ends up with the title sometime after the Sleeper I think it just makes her even more versatile. She gets a handful of Quorum cards that she can use when necessary and in the meantime she can continue playing the supporting role that she is built for; if she gets XOed based on her location she can use the Quorum hand as her 2nd action. Don't even bother going for more Quorum cards unless you have a bunch of downtime or if the hand was very small to begin with.

Holy Outlaw said:

There are actually a lot of cards and abilities that become more useless as the game progresses... Zarek, Dee, Tory, Quorum cards, several locations... but I really don't think Ellen is comparable.

Yeah I'm not saying it's a huge problem, but it is one that is likely to force at least one suboptimal movement or failure to use OPT per game. With the CFB, the pilot's usually in space areas, so if there are three humans, Ellen has only one option of where to go if she wants to trigger her ability, and if the other character is in a hazard location, she's entirely out of luck. Again, I don't want to overstate it. For my money, I'm arguing for Ellen Tigh and Tory Foster being roughly equivalent as the top tier yellows, probably on par with Apollo (maybe a hair under), and a good step down from the top green (Cain). I suspect I've got Tory ranked a little lower than most players would like and maybe Ellen a little higher, but I stand by it.

Hello all,

Well it would seem I am in the minority here, but I actually use just about everything in my games. All the characters, all the skills, Peg, CFB, allies, the new loyalty card, even all of the crisis cards including the attack cards (to offset this somewhat we do not have any of the vipers removed from the game, and only have the 4 fancy ones start off damaged). The only thing we don't use is NC, which is kinda hard to combine in....though we are pondering that one.

Now I know this all seems ludicrus but the previous point about this being a social game simply cannot be denied. As a group we have had many discussions about all the various issues that have come up so far, and in pretty much every case the issue that is overpowered (say cain or cally) is countered by the threat of that same person as a cylon, or some other new element such as the CFB. I will admit that trechery does lack a bit in its potentcy, but we find that all of our games are very close one way or the other and as such it hasnt really been an issue.

Another point is that since this is a social game, often played with people who have watched the series, you have certain feelings for and against certain characters reguardless of the abilities. Very rarely does cain actually ever get chosen if adama is available for example. Also, having a character with a powerful ability i think is fine. sure it may twist things around them a bit, but in the end it promotes paranoia and fear, and the more of that there is the better.