Reading the FAQ and not really for any major reason, I've had the thought of revealing myself as a Cylon on the first turn of the game if it comes up.

Has anyone done this before and is it a good idea?

We had one game where the 2 Cylons revealed right at the start. I found it much much easier to deal with them, since no resource was critical and while they could activate the Cylon fleet, at least we did not get skill checks AND cylon fleet activity on their turns. It was pretty obvious what they were going to do on their turns, so easy to plan for it.

I also find that they should at least try to go out with a bang before revealing (ie. on the turn before theirs, throw as much as they can in a skill check negatively). It is also worth sticking around as a hidden Cylon if you are the admiral or president (try to get some Arrest Orders )

I also think revealing early sucks, and makes the game much less interesting both for the Cylon players and the Human players.

Yeah, the biggest loss by revealing early is the humans being able to all trust each other, which is huge.

Maybe in a larger game this would work, for example like a 6 player game, as 1 Cylon could reveal early, and the other could stay hidden to keep the treachery/discord/non-trust stuff going.

The other problem is the cylon players lose the opportunity to win the game just by revealing themselves, or using their character's Once Per Game ability. The best cylon cards are -1 Morale and Damage Galactica, as they can allow for auto-wins. First turn reveals rarely make sense, other than to try something different.

In any game we've played where the cylons have had a turn 1 reveal the cylons have won.

Keep in mind though, that for the cylons to want to have a turn one reveal the situation has to be particularly bad for the humans...usually this involves multiple fleet cards being drawn and the cylon player being the lone pilot, or something like that.

Normally its a bad idea as uncerntainty is the key to cylon victory, however sometimes there are opportunities too sweet to pass up

For a one definite cylon game (3-4 player) revealing early is a bit of a game killer, but revealing early works quite well in a two cylon game (5 or 6 player). As a cylon admiral I got exec ordered by the player before me so I fired both nukes to limited effect and then on my turn went toaster.

The shock of this caused all manner of problems for the other players, as I was able to do all the usual things while essentially riding shotgun for my cylon compadre still on board Galactica. I could be blamed for a lot of problems, or be justification for overkill on skill checks - all the excesses.

To be fair, it worked even for me because I had no idea who the other cylon was until the end of the game. They were still unrevealed until their last turn - they only revealed to avoid drawing a crisis card - and Galactica got a grand distance of 1.

Just to add that reveal was my first turn, and the 4th playerturn in a 6 player game....

In my experience, revealing early almost guarantees cylon victory. Think of it this way: a smart cylon will still help (even to a small degree) on skill checks to avoid getting caught. So let's say your repair-person and pilot are the two cylons, all of a sudden the humans lose blue and red skill cards from your skill check 'pool'. Now, instead of two people helping a little bit and still drawing crisis cards with jump tokens on them, you have people contributing negative skill cards, other players are compensating for the loss of both their help AND their negative cards and you have two less people to fix problems.

Some will argue that this 'help' was never there to begin with and I disagree. It wasn't help that could be relied upon the whole game, but it certainly made a difference to getting to 4 or 5 distance.

Sure the humans can trust each other, but I think that's small consolation compared to the loss of two players worth of skill cards and abilities (not to mention the possibility of a sympathizer in a 4 or 6 player game).

On the other hand though, it definitely makes the game less interesting and not as much fun for everyone involved, so I wouldn't do it as a cylon purely for that reason. I ENJOY dividing everyone's loyalty and creating dissent. That's why I play this game, I don't care as much about winning the best way possible...but if I did, as a cylon I'd probably reveal on the first turn.

I believe that doing a turn 1 reveal without thinking of the circumstances is generally a bad strategy for a cylon. It can work very well against humans who have never played before, but there is nothing better (for the humans) than a group of humans who know what they are doing and can fully trust each other.

Having one revealed cylon and one unrevealed cylon is a nice position to be in, but it really is better to wait until you can use your reveal to amplify the danger of a dangerous situation.

I don't understand what you mean by "help". Throwing bad cards into skill checks should almost *never* be done for the purpose of hurting the skill check. Paranoia is the humans' worst enemy. Make the human scum turn on each other, its what they do best (from the cylon strategy guide). Cylons best attack is not to sabotage things themselves, but to get *humans* to do their dirty work for them. From the strategy guide: don't be the only saboteur, encourage incompetence in everyone.

What is ~50 points worth of skill (distributed over the unrevealed game, about 4 whole skill checks worth of all the skill checks you come across in the game) compared to the extra skill checks (brig, election) lost turns (brig), inefficency, and especially paranoia, that you can generate by being unrevealed?

That said, much of the trouble that two unrevealed cylons can cause can be done almost as well with just one unrevealed cylon, so if there is another unrevealed cylon around, one of you will probably want to reveal.