I've tried playing with two different groups of people and now they all want to play next weekend. The game says 3-6 players and I know that loyalty cards could be an issue (not having enough) but I think I can find ways around that (printing out scraps of paper or whatnot).

My questions are: Has anyone tried playing with more players? How does it impact gameplay? What number of players would you cap your game at if you WOULD or HAVE gone over 6 players?

My fear is that with 7-10 players, the skill card decks will have to get shuffled every turn, every skill check will be a battle because there will be at least 3 cylons, we'll go through the crisis deck much faster, players won't get to have turns nearly as often and having 4-5 cylons will probably make the game incredibly difficult for humans (in a 10 player game).

On the other hand, there's something exciting about having all 10 characters in play. Theoretically, a 10-player game could just be like a 5-player game but you split the number of turns you have with someone else. Also, as potentially frustrating as it could be, I think it makes the subterfuge element so much more exciting when you can't determine the cylons' identities based on the cards thrown down on skill checks (if you have 4 pilots, how can you hope to guess who threw down the red card as sabotage?).

But ultimately, I anticipate a 10-player game as being a total mess. Does 8 sound reasonable? or is that also too many?

As for cylons, I figured it could work like this:

7 players: 3 definite cylons

8 players: 3 definite cylons + 1 sympathizer

9 players: 4 definite cylons

10 players: 4 definite cylons + 1 sympathizer

If playing with more than 6 is a bad idea, let me know!

Yes I think playing with more than 6 is a bad idea.

The simple answer is to get a second copy of the game and run 2 5 player games.

If you cant or wont get a second copy my suggestion is to play the hands as teams alternating which player is in control of the the hand on a specific turn with the non active players being required to be silent and switching players after the players turn.

Also the non-active players cant look at the hands till they become active.

This might be a good way to play.

There are only enough You are Not a Cylon Cards for 6 players. I think you can play 8 if you don't allow Boomer or Baltar, but you'd have to count it out. Convince someone to get another copy and run two games. Or run two games in a row, it's not that long.

I appreciate the replies so far, but I don't think I'm going to buy another copy of the game. I'd much rather incorporate all my friends into one large game, but not if it's going to turn into as big a mess as I anticipate it will.

If anyone has tried it, can you post here and let me know how it went?

In my group we played a seven person game. It wasn't difficult to create new allegiance cards. The only problem was balance. We played well the first half so the sympathizer was revealed and two cylons were quick to reveal themselves as well. Then one of the cylons send one of his allegiance cards to another player, making them a cylon. So ultimately it was four cylons against three humans. It did not work too well. Humans were annihilated.

If you want to play with more than the recomended amount of players I would suggest keeping it to an even number of players or making sure that the sympathizer doesn't turn to a cylon. I think t hat a four cylon and four human came would be very difficult but possible for the humans. So I guess what I am trying to say is that if you are playing with more than the recommended amount of players, play with an even number.

I still think you would want to play characters as teams. Alternating when the character has the current player token. When you pass it you switch partners.

You could have those who are not the current player for each character sit as the Quorum and the current player can ask them for advice but they cant see any of the cards in hand.

To me this would be the best way to get everyone involved.

You could also do things like have the presidents quorum hand be controlled by a single person and if the card travels to different characters that 1 person goes to play along with that charcter. This person makes all decisions that say president chooses.

You could also have , if you play teams, the person switch whenever a crisis card is passed or something like that.

I think changing the numbers of players human and cylon breaks down the game.

You shouldn't be using the Sympathizer card in a 7 player, it's for games with an even number of players (4 and 6 in the base game). There are 16 Loyalty cards: 11 Human, 4 Cylon, 1 Sympathizer, that's enough for up to 8 players (with no Boomer or Baltar).

For 7 players: 11 Human, 3 Cylon (you could use one of Boomer or Baltar and add in Sympathizer as Human, or both with also 1 Cylon card as Human)

For 8 players: 11 Human, 3 Cylon, 1 Cylon card must be picked to count as Human, 1 Sympathizer (added in during Sleeper Agent phase).

I think sharing characters or anything like that is going to ruin the experience. The game isn't about, it's my turn and I decide what I want, it's very cooperative. Also, it'll have weird effects on judging whether characters are Cylons or not, as you'll have multiple people playing them. Mostly likely it'll make it easy to tell and not fun.

timonkey said:

I think that's how I'd do it (7 players 3 cylons, no sympathizer, 8 players 3 cylons 1 sympathizer). Thanks for the idea of making one of the you are a cylon cards human, I didn't think of that.

As for the idea of sharing the presidency with a non-player, that COULD work if the 'Quorum' player didn't know the loyalty of the president (so as not to reveal the president's loyalty when the title card changes hands), but I don't think it would make for a very entertaining experience for that person. Giving up the power to make choices (as president) to someone else also makes a 'cylon' president much weaker and detracts from the game since I assume the Quorum is composed of humans who want the best for the fleet.

I think I'll try 8 players and see how it goes. My biggest fear is that people won't get to play very often and 3-4 cylons in an 8 player game will be much more dangerous than 2-3 in a 6 player game.

If 4 cylons happen to be seated right next to each other, they could each activate a cylon location one after another and centurions could board galactica before the humans even have a chance to respond. Hmm...

New question! Considering that last sentence, what do you guys think of this? With 4 cylons, impose a restriction that no more than two revealed cylon players may occupy the same cylon location during any player's turn?

The idea would be to prevent them from doing something like activating heavy raiders four times in a row and having centurions wipe out the ship before the humans can even react.

Having the President being a separate player is going to break the game. Essentially, the President is always human, and you have no recourse if they play like a Cylon, or just badly.

Restricting where Cylons can be is going to be hard, because then can't switch positions (they have to move first, then activate, and there aren't that many useful locations for Cylons). Also, don't worry about it because 1) the odds of all the Cylons bunching up is fairly low, and 2) the Sympathizer can't use the Cylon Fleet location, so you can't get 4 Centurion activations in a row anyway.

I wasnt suggesting that the president stay the same loyalty only that as the president card travels that one person run the quorum cards and make presidential decisions based on whichever character they were playing (loyalty included) at the time.

Hi there,

We played a 7 player game. Only 1 of Baltar or Boomer allowed, 3 cylons, no sympathizer card.

Humans got beat after reaching distance 6. 2 revealed Cylons, 1 hiding (the Admiral, turned Cylon in Sleeper phase, and chose two 1s for distances).

I think it was OK, but the revealed Cylons definitely complained about not having anything to do. They got to draw their crisis card and then wait for 6 more turns. Only drawing 2 cards meant they rarely got to contribute.
Also, with more players, you were out of cards you could contribute to crisis quickly, which meant most of the time it was two humans trying to tackle the yellow/green crisis, and the other two doing nothing for those turns (and then vice-versa on red/blue crisis). This lead to more impatience and down time for players.

All in all, too much down time, with little gained. It was also harder to keep everyone focused and the game dragged, as people would go to the restroom or get food every so often, but we couldn't go on without them as they were needed for confirmation of cards contributed and such. Whereas with 4 or 5 you take a specific 15 minute break or something.

timonkey said:

Well the idea would be to force revealed cylon players to use different locations and not team up to attempt a single strategy. Even if they aren't all seated next to each other, 3-4 cylons activating heavy raiders one after another is still devastating since they're only destroyed on a 7-8. So even if there's a human turn here or there, there's no guarantee they can be stopped.

I think that by limiting the number of players allowed on a cylon location to two, you could have two guys activating cylon units, one guy attempting to hurt galactica and ****** repair cards and a fourth playing crisis cards, which is still pretty devastating, but it gives the humans more of a chance.

DarthHansen said:

That IS a problem with more players; more downtime. At the same time though, yes the cylon players may not be able to interfere with as many crises as they might like, but as you said, neither can the humans. I think something like that evens itself out so the players must all be more selective of which crises they want to try to solve or thwart. Both sides will have to be prepared to hold back and not throw everything down right away.

I think I'm going to try a 7-8 player game and just see how it goes even though I anticipate frustrating skill checks.

iceberg84 said:

What I meant was they can't switch. Say you have Cylon A, B and C and sympathizer S. If A and B are on Cylon Fleet, and C and S are on Caprica, then C can't ever use Cylon Fleet unless you get A or B to first move to Human Fleet or the Resurrection Ship. There are usually at best 2 viable options for Cylons, so you have to waste a Cylon turn to move them around.

Second, what happens when there are no Cylon ships on the board? You won't let everyone pile up on Caprica to draw Crisis cards? That seems ridiculous. (and here, if cylons want to switch between Caprica and Human fleet, they have to completely waste someone's turn sitting on Resurrections Ship or Cylon Fleet.)

This worry about Centurions requires that all the Cylons are revealed, you have a Heavy Raider in place (or possibly some Crisis card), all the revealed Cylons are right next to each other, and the humans completely ignore it. Because 3 activations doesn't give a Cylon win here (S can't activate them), so then you have a bunch of human turns to take care of it. Using Executive Orders should make short work of a Centurion with Strategic planning. If four human turns can't waste a centurion then there's an issue.

timonkey said:

Maybe that rule wouldn't work then, but I still think that in a game with a lot of players (even 6), if 3 or more cylons work together on the same strategy every turn, the humans won't be able to resist at all. It really makes me appreciate trying to 'lose a little bit' in the begining to make sure the sympathizer stays on the human side.

The humans can resist. It's very HARD, but that's what makes the game fun.

I would think that as the game gets more than 6 players it is going to be harder to pass skill checks. Each player only draw 5 cards a turn, unless they use a location ability or Consolidate power. Now, if there are 7 or 8 players, that is two more possible crisis checks, and a 9 or 10 player is going to be even more so. Players could run out of cards before their next turn arrives. Forget about the cylons destroying the fleet; we're doing it to ourselves by having too many voices wanting to be heard!

Introduce your friends to this game, and once they become hooked (which they should, unless they are in fact toasters themselves) one of them will want ot buy it. Then you can have no problem when you have 8 or 10 people who want to play. Last night we had 8 people show up to play, and we had two copies between us (our store copy and a player's copy) so we did 2 4-player games. That is going to be far more satisfying than trying to manipulate the game for 8 players. We were considering a 7 player game for a few minutes, just because none of us wanted to play a 3 player game, but I think there is still a good reason for the 6 player cap, and wouldn't want to try for a 10 player game, that is for sure.

You still draw 5 skill cards per crisis, no matter how many players, so you should still have enough. However, you may be more susceptible to overspending on a crisis depleting most players.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at. The more crises, the greater the chance I will use up all my skill cards before it gets back around to me. In an 8 player game, that is 8 chances after I draw my cards. It can get bad enough in a six player game, let alone 8 or more.

Yeah, in the end chance reduced the number of players this weekend to 6 so I won't try it. I also think 8 is simply too many for the reasons discussed above. I may try 7 at a later date, but I'll stick to what the game recommends for now.

Yeah, I definitely think if there is more than 6, the players should just be broken into two groups to play separately.

Along those lines though, I wonder if there could be some possible way to have two games going on simultaneously, count the second game board as the Pegasus, and somehow tie the two games together in a way that won't affect the total game time.

timonkey said:

I assume you mean 3 skill cards and not 5, right?

snakespittle said:

Huh? Why?

3 cards? Cylon! Get away from me you destroyer of humanity!