Hey all,

Can you be both the Admiral and the President at the same time?

Thanks,
J-Dog

Yes of course, you can. There are meny ways.

You can be elected as a president while remaining admiral. Or you can become admiral when all other players are in Brig.

Saul Tigh can use his Once per game abiliti to make this happen.

Or simply some Crisis Card force you to do that.

But beware because a president and an admiral in one person could be very dangerous if that player is a Cylon too

When you gain both the Presidency and Admiralship, you become The Pradmiral. You can also call Helo Pradmiral, because #1. He's admireable. #2. He's rad. and #3. He pistol whipped that fool on the dookie ship.

Speaking of this in regards to Helo:

In a game recently played, Helo was the only military leader, so by default was the Admiral. There also was a card or action or something that took place that gave him the Presidency. All of this transpired in the first round of play.

My question is, considering Helo isn't even on Galactica yet, can he assume these titles? It seems weird that he's Stranded and yet has all this unusable power.

What say you all?

Strange it might be, but there is nothing against it in the rules, so it's perfectly possible and legit.

ScoopSnookems said:

I'm pretty sure this is ok by the rules. As far as it making sense in the story...meh. As long as Helo isn't going last, then you aren't really missing that much power. It might be better story wise that helo is not even involved in the game (crisis checks, etc.) until his second turn.

I was in fact an absentee Admiral and President as Helo. Later I was awarded the Vice-Presidency, during a short period that the Presidency was voted away from me.

Of course, I was also a Cylon that game... (Wouldn't a Cylon smilie be cool?)

Sure a player can be both Admiral and President, but I feel like it is more practical to spread the power (for humans). Certain crisis cards require the admiral and president to discard skill cards, both have abilities that need to be played as actions, and other reasons make splitting the admiracy and the presidency. What if you need to fire a nuke and use a quorum card in the same turn? Then concentrating the power isn't helpful.

Of course the other obvious reason why you don't want one person as admiral and president is the the possiblity that person is a Cylon.

In fact, last game I played as Tigh I had Admiral and was then granted Presidency through a Crisis card. The humans didn't win that game.

We almost always have someone who becomes Admiral and President. Both ranks move all around the board as much as it does in the show.

We tend to refer to anyone who has both as "God-King," it does tend to be a military coup which forces the God-Kingship more often than anything else. The Admiralcy's gone around the board so much that I was God-King Baltar once.

Acebob said:

Actually it is quite practical to have a pradmiral IF you can be sure that he is not a cylon, you will be counting on him not having any skill cards. It also requires an extra skill check to do. It is also better to fire a nuke and use a quorum card, as only one EO, rather than two, is required.

As long as the other players liberally use EO on the Pradmiral, then it should be ok. But then there should also be some responsibility of the Pradmiral to do un-pradmiral things, like draw skill cards, or fire on ships, the Pradmiral's EO turns should be spent doing higher functions. Also, the Pradmiral should make it clear when he needs an EO or when he's ok with just the normal one action.