And it was a HUGE success with my gaming group. Two are casual fans of the series and one was a die hard fan. I, myself, was not a fan of the show but still enjoyed it immensely. The humans suffered a humiliating loss as our beloved leader Admiral Adama turned out to be a cyclon and led us to complete ruin.

The only niggle I have as far as the game is concerned is this. We lost becaus moral reached 0. Out of all the resources, that one seemed to be the biggest drain with very little to rectify the situation. I know there are a few Quorum cards that can help (the two times we tried were failures), but would like to know from experienced players if this is common.

Thanks in advance.

OT: After owning the core set for a year, I too finally got to play it this weekend. I was the guest of Holy Outlaw and his gracious wife (Mrs. Holy Outlaw?). Imagine my surprise when I discovered they were using the core and the two expanisions. The group eased this newbie through the night and it was great. However I have no idea of the answer to your question. But I know it takes time to get a feel for the best stratigies, but that and the mystery of the secret cylon(s), make the game what it is.

Morale takes frequent hits, but also has the most ways to boost it. A strong president will help a lot. It's also likely that you got unlucky and saw a disproportionate amount of crisis cards that targetted it. More experience will help with that. Some advice:

• XO (Executive Order) is your friend. If you have one, use it. There are times when you won't want to (such as when you're the pilot and need to Maximum Firepower) but for the most part, it's a good bet. There's always a risk that you'll give a cylon a stronger reveal than he would have had, but it's better to know who they are now instead of having them hang around and wait for the perfect moment while sabotaging their choice of votes.
• Don't be afraid to fail checks. If food is strong and you get a vote on food, losing the food is better than risking that the next crisis hits your already low morale and you can't pass it because you spent all of your votes on saving food you didn't need. Discuss this before the game though, as saying "we should fail this check on purpose" is a good way to turn a table of new players against you even if you're human.
• Keep an eye on the colors in a check. For example, if the destiny deck hasn't cycled and you see the third negative blue card show up, you know that someone with blue is a cylon.
• Don't waste anything on a non-critical situation. For example, an extra morale is nice, but if you're at 6 there's no reason to drop your die roll adder on it. Save it in case a critical nuke or crisis roll appears.

Thanks, and I think you might be right about hitting an above average number of morale cards in that game, because every thing else was still pretty managable. when we did get down to the final point of moral and every skill check seemed to effect it, we were in a complete panic. Still it was a ton of fun and I expect to get many more good playthroughs before I go get an expansion. Also was much easier to pick up than Arkham Horror. Great game but so much minutia that it is a bit intimidating. This one though, we had pretty down pat quickly and will soon learn good stratigies for it. Once you see what one piloted Viper can do with the right cards is impressive and will make us rethink how we play and what characters are chosen. That more than anything makes me want to get the expansions is just more character choices. Just wish I could find some more people to play.

Glad to hear you liked it so much! You might be able to find other players by just going to your local game shop - theres bound to be one or two BSG nerds who havent played the game yet.

Morale is probably your biggest concern in most games... if I had to rank the resources in terms of which are lost the most frequently I would put Morale at the top, probably followed by Pop, then Fuel, then Food; we've almost never run out of Food. Fuel is relatively easy to get back but you'll often need to make a short jump to a 1-distance planet to do so, so make sure if you stop to get more Fuel that your other resources can take a hit or two. Population is hard to get back, but Pop loss is most often directly related to how many Civies you lose.
Some resource control strategies:
If you are using Pegasus, there is a yellow skill check card, Preventative Policy, that allows you to name a resource and then reduce the loss of that resource by 1 this turn if you did lose it. We almost always name Morale, unless we are about to jump. There's also a strategy that involves intentionally sacrificing Civies to Raiders after naming "Population" with this card. You can also try to cycle the yellow cards quickly by using Ellen Tigh and any squares on the board or cards in hand that allow you to draw more Politics cards so you can draw the Preventative Policy again ASAP.
Helo can XO the President to play Quorum cards that increase resources; if the die roll doesnt work, Helo can reroll.
As James McMurray said, failing checks is OK! Save your cards for checks you really want to pass - you'll all feel pretty bad if you use up your cards passing a skill check so you don't lose a Fuel, only to find that you can't pass one on the next turn when the loss is 1 Fuel and 1 Morale. You still add cards from Destiny even if no player puts any into the check, so you can also get a good idea of whats left in Destiny when you intentionally fail.

And never, ever, EVER, XO the player to your left if there are Cylons in hiding!

Ah, The Old Man. That really was a fun game (and maybe the longest I've ever played). Thanks for the good time.

To the OP: James McMurray has really offered an excellent beginner's tutorial here, and the additional input from Skowza is also pretty helpful. Morale is generally the most fluid resource. In the most recent game I played (referenced by The Old Man, above), we ended with Morale at 2, but it was increased over the course of the game by at least that much. Certain crises and quorum cards (Inspirational Speech being the most obvious) increase Morale, sometimes through the trading of other resources and that is often very important, because very many crises hurt Morale. And since so many crises hurt Morale, if the fleet isn't managing its resources well (say you're overpassing Crises, for example), you'll feel it in Morale first. Generally speaking, you lose Fuel to jumping, Population to civies, Morale to failed skill checks, and Food to choices on Event cards.

So I'd suggest that it's less important how many Morale skill checks you faced (they are the most common, after all) than how many checks you overpassed and by what amount, compared to how many you failed. The trick is to find some way of bottling up that wasted value in skill cards and sprinkling a little of it over the other checks.

Finally, you're right about character selection mattering. It really does, and I found participating in this discussion on the topic to be instructive to me:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=24&efcid=1&efidt=445266

Hope this helps!