I was going to include this on my other topic covering my first games, but I thought it warranted a thread of its own.

One of the main things I wanted to do in our games was to follow the advice i've read on here and Board Game Geek which is to spend about 10 seconds looking at your loyalty cards so it isn't obvious from the off who's a cylon and who isn't. This worked a treat however, all of us (human players included) felt an uncontrollable urge to smirk or laugh (either because we were a cylon, or because we weren't a cylon and were really desperate to not smirk so people wouldn't falsely accuse us- this of course has the reverse effect and makes you really want to laugh!). There we game to the consensus that after you look at your cards we each spend about 15 seconds laughing for no reason to get it out of our systems. This probably sounds really wierd (and probably looked even wierder in real life) but it did actually help settle out pre-game emotions and allow us to start properly with no one being any wiser as to who was a human and who wasn't.

Do any other groups do something like this or we just that odd?

Cheers,

El

We just allow players to leave the room before looking at their card, but whatever works...

Skowza said:

That was my original idea, but we had started cracking up as soon as the cards were dealt. I think this game would be even better with beer.

El Mariachi said:

It kind of is. I know a couple of times I've gotten my group together for marathon sessions of three games in an evening, and I always love the different dynamic of each. The first game tends to draw everyone's best play and it's always very serious. The challenge in the second game is to throw out baggage so you're not still trying to win the last war (forgetting how the player to your right betrayed you, for example, when they're begging for an XO that they probably deserve). And the third game is usually just pure silly fun, with surprising character selection and unorthodox play. Trying to predict players' behavior based on tendency usually fails by this time, and occasionally players (especially cylons) get away with huge moves or wild play in that last one, especially if we've been enjoying libations. Good times.

Our group has a rule that's basically opposite in tone but the same idea. We all take our cards and put them right in front of our faces and stare at them for 5 or 10 seconds, no matter what they are. No one says anything, and no one is allowed to look over at anyone else (early on, someone looked around and saw another player's eye movements indicative of reading, and this gave it away who the cylon was). No one laughs, but we've played enough that that's not where the laughs are going to be.

When we have a new player, we sometimes extend the time or allow the new player to leave the room to read the card and tell them to come back in a *fixed* amount of time, so we can't read anything into whether they were gone, say, 10 seconds or 45 seconds.

Anacreon said:

My group currently uses a 30-seconds-staring-time for the cards. However, noone really cares about eye movement as this can be deceiving, just like laughter. There is definitely laughter in my group when we do this, and also sometimes people pretend to concentrate to read the card text intensely even as non-cylons just to confuse other players.

Incidentally, one thing I really appreciate about Exodus is the inclusion of YANAC loyalty cards that entail a lot of reading. My group no longer considers it suspicious for a player to read his loyalty card for a long time, or even to re-check it during game, which used to be a dead giveaway. And even if someone laughs or checks something on the table after reading their card, we still have to think twice before decreeing it suspicious.

Not to mention, the Final Five cards give players cover to ask others not to look at their loyalty, or to justify odd behavior in game. I find that the "Conflicted Loyalties" option increases intrigue in a lot of little ways, and it's one of the things I really like about Exodus.

Holy Outlaw said:

I noticed that myself when flicking through my Exodus stuff the other day- I'm really looking forward to playing it! First though, I need to get some more base, and base + pegasus games done first. Oh well, more gaming can't be a bad thing.

One thing I found very helpful was to create a player "Reference Sheet." In addition to listing the most common skill cards for each color; victory conditions; and turn order (I tend to play with first-timers a lot), it lists each Cylon Loyalty Card by headline (i.e. the bolded text beneath the photo), followed by the sabotage ability (" Action: If you are not in the Brig ..."). So players don't need to read their Cylon Loyalty Cards at all — they just need to glance at the headline, and can refresh their memory of the details whenever they like by glancing down at their reference card.

With this, we've never needed anything more than "everybody stare at their Loyalty Card for ten seconds."

I'm not sure when this started, but we all tend to hum the theme from Jeopardy when we read our cards. Once over, there are numerous jokes about 'I wanted to be the hot blond Cylon this game,' or 'I'm *always* a Cylon'.