Hi everyone!

Had our first game of Battlestar Galatica tonight, 4 players, playing 1 'You are a Cylon' and 1 Sympathiser Card.

Cylons took it, with a sneaky 'Im the Sympathiser, get me out of the Brig' followed by revealing they were a Cylon.

Just a few quick rules questions that we were unsure about.

Can you choose to add no skill cards to a skill check? Or do you have to add at least 1 skill card?

Is the amount of cards you are adding meant to stay hidden, or can you reveal it?

We had a few phases where we didnt seem to spawn any Cylon ships, and went 3/4 of the way through a jump without any attacks, is this normal? We assumed unless the card wrote 'Spawn X ships' we ignored it? If there was no Cylon Battle ship to launch from.

I'll add any more if we think them up, but we were all very impressed, and hope the Cylons become even more sneaky, as we figure out other ways for them to win!

Glad to hear you had a good time. Let me try to address your questions:

1) Zero is a valid number of cards to add to any skill check. It is very common for at least one player to put zero cards into a check.

2) The number of cards added by each player is common knowledge. It is illegal to conceal the number or mislead other players about it.

3) Yes, it is very common to go through "feast or famine" with the maps, and the game can seem too easy during some stretches and impossible during others. You're right that until a map comes out, the cylon ship icons are irrelevant.

Hope this helps!

Thanks!

We played another game last night (4) again and humans got completely crushed.

One more quick question, if we pull a 'Setup Cylon Ships' crisis card, and there is already Cylon Ships on the board, do we reset to the new board positions, or add them to the current ones?

Omgponies,

Your early experiences aren't uncommon. Hang in there and keep learning; I promise the win ratio balances out once all players are proficient.

As for the rules question, you add new ships until running out of components, but you never reposition ships that are already on the board. If component restrictions are reached (usually this is because there is already a basestar and the new map tries to place two more), the current player chooses which new basestar is placed and which isn't.

Hope this helps!

Cheers

We have another game tomorrow night.

Was just checking on the ships, as unfortunately for us, we saw 2 Cylon Ship 'crisis' cards, as well as the Super Cylon ship crisis card, and us 2 poor humans couldnt possibly jump fast enough

Omgponies said:

One strategy Humans can use in a 4-player game is to knock a resource into the red before the Sleeper phase; this ensures that the Sympathizer won't join the Cylons.