With my group, I'd say humans win one game for every two the cylons win. My own record is probably a bit worse than that (at least as a cylon), although most of the people I play with claim I'm "probably the best/most dangerous player" due to my knowledge of game mechanics and ability to lie shamelessly.

A little bit of thread necromancy, but we just started tracking wins. In the last 7 days the games have broken 9 to 1 in favor of the cylons. The one human victory was a very close game with our continued playtesting of our Futurama varient characters. Everybody is still having fun and wants to keep playing though, so it isn't that important who wins. I am getting a little depressed having been a Cylon for 5 out the last 5 games I've played. At least tonight I wasn't the Cylon that damages Galactica for a change.

for us it's 50-50. Scout as much as you can, and use the no sympathiser official variant. it's at the site on fantasy flight for the BSG game

We are also at about 50:50 human to cylon wins. Thats playing with 6 players with no variant rules. At first the cylcons did slightly better than the humans but its evened out in more recent games, the cylons are having to learn to be more crafty and less obvious.

We got our first human win yesterday. It was a 6 player game and the humans got lucky because the sympathiser went to an already revealed cylon. The other toaster had to reveal himself soon after the sleeper agent phase to avoid being sent to the brig. It became a bit scary then, with the board starting to fill up with cylon ships and the jump preparation not increasing. But in general, the humans lucked out on critical tests and got the jump preparation increases right when they needed it. Our overal score: Toasters: 8 - Humans: 1

We've played three games so far, the score is 2:1 in favour of the Cylons.

Game 1: Five players, humans won.

Game 2: Six players, Cylons won.

Game 3: Six players, Cylons won.

Iron_Lord said:

I hate to shoot down your first human victory (I must be a Cylon!), but you played the sympathiser wrong. A revealed Cylon would instantly hand the sympathiser card to anyone he wants to as soon as he drew it. Choosing a Cylon teammate would have definitely improved the toaster's chances.

I forgot to mention, that morale was low (the first red number) at that point and the imprisoned sympathiser was instantly released by the president using a quorum card. The freed human thanked the president at once by giving him an executive order, so the president could use two other quorum cards, bringing up the morale into "save territory". It was a chance, the humans had to take, bringing down morale, so the sympathiser on their side, but it worked out. And the president was not the second cylon, thank the Lords of Kobol for that!

Iron_Lord said:

This still doesn't explain why you thought it was lucky that the sympathizer card went to a revealed Cylon. That is definitely UNLUCKY. Now instead of a random human being sent to the brig, the revealed Cylon gets to choose someone. Sounds like it was only going to be a temporary speed bump anyway since the President was ready to spring whoever got sent.

Now I see your point, and generally, you are right. The longer I think of it, I was more describing the feeling of the winning human team, than stating a fact. I wrote the post about an hour after the game, when the other gamers had left. In the post game´discussion, everybody - including the two toasters - were happy (finally we had a proof that the humans can actually win, even if the odds are clearly against them) and it had been a good fight. The toasters had done what they could and this time (for the first time!), it hadn't been enough. Everybody agreed, that the the humans had had "luck" with the draw of the sympathiser.

The revealed cylon got the card and gave it immediatly to the person to the left of the president. I have to add, it was the least expierienced player - I would have chosen someone, whose turn would have been before the president because of the "speed bump effect". But on the other hand, that could only have been a more suspicious player - that one was seen as the possible other cylon. I think, the luck in it was, that the whole affair only was a small and easily disposed off annoyance compared to the major disasters of past games.

In future games with four or six players, we will use the variant without the sympathiser. In my point of view, a 3 against 3 game is just too much for the human side. And to deliberatly let your resources dwindle into the red zone just doesn't feel right.

Our group played four more games Saturday night, four more cylon victories.

Weird, we're at 2 human victories, 1 cylon victory in our group. With it being one easy human victory, one close one, and one easy cylon victory (our first game and we misplayed some rules) and both our Adrmiral and President started off as cylons.

Then again we don't seem to suffer from any bizzare infighting or anything like that. No human has ever been brigged. Hopefully our Cylons get a little better at sowing some discord.

2 humans at four players, one was with sympathiser from start.

1 cylon at five players, nice game.

Think the human victories are due to us not being very agressiv about dealing with cylons, and our cylons are being very discreet.

Lucky for my group this is game we don't mind losing over and over again. It's just that fun.

Humans 0 Cylons 6

One of those times however was a five person game that we accidentally snuck an extra cylon card in the deck. Coupled with the fact that one guy wasn't even trying I was the only one defending Glactica by the end of the game. Ourtagously hilarious.

I count almost all of my BSG sessions and...

in 6 platers game - Humans 3:5 Cylons

5 players - Humans 2:2 Cylons

4 players - Humans 2:2 Cylons

3 players - Humans 0:4 Cylons

For my BSG gaming group, we've played three games so far (we play them on fridays in honour of the show), and so far all the victories have been for the Cylons. This even occurred in one game despite one of the cylons leaving just before she became one during the sleeper agent phase. But the humans have been steadily getting better. Perhaps this friday they'll/we'll win.

One game to add to the mix. The first www.boardgamegeek.com Play By Forum game. Cylons won as the humans jumped to their 8th distance and ran out of fuel. cylons played it close to the vest and never revealed though the actions of one outed him in the last moments.

www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/41003

Of the 12-15 games that I've played, the humans have won roughly half the time (perhaps a bit more). The issue is that the cylons usually need some help from the deck to get the colonials into a lethal situation - if the humans get lucky on the crisis draws, then they can slide through without the cylons being able to stop them (particularly if deck manipulating characters turn out loyal). Though we've also had a disproportionate amount of games with zero starting cylons.

Humans 1, Cylons 1. Both games were decided during the Crisis card before the last jump to Kobol.

Our first game had 1 Cylon revealed right away with another player in the brig for the whole game only to find out that it was someone else, he revealed himself and almost stole the game. Sympathiser card was in the deck but was not drawn.

The second game, 3 cards plus The President Gaius' ability came up before the first jump leading to both cylons being found out after loyalty cards were investigated. Before the hidden cylon phase, the humans tanked their moral to avoid another cylon coming into play then gave themselves +4 moral with Inspirational speaches once the sympathiser had been sent to the brig. The Cylons spent the entire game drawing and picking crisis cards and eventually wittled the humans down drawing out their last 2 food on a crisis card which Cylons won by 1 point. 31 points for, 19 points against, totalling 12 against a 13 difficulty card.

Cylons 8 - Humans 2

* 4 Players:

Cylons 1 - Humans 0 (with the unoffical minexpansion "Valley of Darkness")

The expansion is fun to play and appears to help the balancing abit.

* 5 Players:

Cylons 6 - Humans 1

* 6 Players:

Cylons 1 - Humans 1

Altough I absolutly love the game due to atmosphere and most of it's mechanics it has severe balancing problems. With decent cylon players it is just too hard for the human side. Playing time used to be an issue too, but got a little better...

BadPritt :-)

Psiclone said:

The humans must have gotten rocked on the destiny deck here. 19 points against for four cards, two of which are random, is astronomically bad luck. Is there anything I'm missing here?

Well, I have another game to report. Last night the humans got curbstomped in a 5 player game. We had two Cylons from the start, and got wrecked on the crises (the destiny draws didn't help). Didn't make it past distance 5.

I think the single largest determining factor is whether or not there are 0, 1, or 2 Cylons in the opening deal. If there are 0 opening Cylons, the humans have a very good chance of winning. If there are 2... we've never had the humans win under those circumstances, I don't believe. We're probably going to make a house rule to fix the opening deal to include exactly 1 Cylon card, just to avoid flat walkovers in either direction.

We had another game tonight.

My group stands: Cylons 8, Humans 2.

Tonight's was a 5 player game with 2 Cylons from the beginning.......humans did well for a while, but when it went bad, it went really bad! Actually saw the humans fend off 8 Cylon raiding parties before the Cylon fleet swarmed the humans...a population loss on a desperation early jump from the humans.

Five 3 player games: Cylons: 4 Humans: 1

But one cylon victory was caused by our drunken human Admiral Tigh:

On a real important check he throw in his best cards...

...unfortunately the wrong colours!!!

In his panic he claimed the president title from the cylon player, wich was Laura Roslin, but could not persuade Starbuck, that he was not a cylon.

So he marches directly in the brig. Starbuck became the admiral title.

A few turns later he managed to get out of the brig after supporting another important check, but it was too late.

The skinjob aktivated the FTL-Control too early and mankind get rid of their last three human recources.

What can we learn from this: Don't drink and command a battlestar!

After three games my group is at cylons: 2 humans: 1

The first game was three players; none of us had played before, me as Baltar and the other players as Starbuck and Chief. Starbuck refused to jump in a viper at first and we wound up taking some heavy civilian loses before our first jump. In the end we starved to death at distance six. After the game we found out we made a mistake and there were no cylons at all!

Second game was four players, me as Helo, Starbuck’s player from last game as Starbuck again, Chief’s player as Roslin, and the newbie as Chief. We played better this time and lost relatively few ships, some good luck on basestar attacks kept the ship together and with we made it to the sleeper phase just barely in the red in a few categories. Chief was the sympathizer and from an earlier crisis card that allowed Roslin to check his other loyalty we knew he wasn’t the toaster. A few suspect calls by Madame president and certain eagerness to jump early at the slightest signs of trouble had Chief and I convinced she was our traitor despite her insistence that it was Starbuck. Using her presidential powers she imprisoned our best pilot and spent the rest of the game keeping her locked up. In the end Starbuck busted out with one turn to go and we made out final autojump with one population to spare. In the end it turns out Starbuck was our cylon from the start and Roslin saved all of humanity despite neither of the other humans trusting her.

Our third game was Starbuck again, me reprising the role of Baltar and a new player taking Saul Tigh. Almost immediately Starbuck made a gamble that revealed her Cylonness to us and revealed shortly after. What followed wasn’t pretty but suffice to say it ended with us being vented into space.