The problem is Authorization of Brutal Force. No other quorum card can be abused.

The card has a mere 25% chance, and that can be reduced to 0% with a strategic planning. The threat of population loss is not a signifigant deterant.

This card should either be removed from the game upon use to avoid abuse, or it should have it's chance to reduce population increased to limit it to truely dire circumstances. Anything else, allows this very cheesy scenerio to occur.

This situation doesn't occur often, so many of you probably have never seen it. However, if you haven't seen it then you probably don't understand how cheesy it is.

If the humans have had so easy a go of it that the President has nothing better to do with their time than draw the entire frakking Quorum deck , then the cylons were going to lose that game anyway.

Frankly, we've never had a game where there wasn't something more pressing. Draw some Quorum cards so you've got some options? Sure. Having an easy game and building a big hand? Awesome.

But, assuming your Pres is not Laura, and assuming you get EO'd for all of them, that's still 4-5 turns dedicated to drawing the deck out at the absolute best, with those EO's not getting used for anything else.

Plus another turn drawing (or a turn using EO) and probably a Strategic Planning card every time you pull this trick... go to town. As a cylon, I encourage the use of this. I recommend supplementing this strategy with throwing suspected cylons in the brig at every opportunity.

If you try this when I'm a human and we're not already really, really winning... I'll shoot you in the head and toss you out the nearest airlock. Cylon.

James

Blankshield said:

4-5 turns? So like one jump cycle? You've never had a jump cycle without cylon ships appear?

Gaius Frakkin Baltar said:

I'm really not sure why this is being discussed at all; nobody's convincing anyone, but hey, it's a slow morning...

That's 4-5 turns of people using EO on the president. So it's only 4-5 turns in a row if everyone has EO. It's also 5 turns where:

• no one is scouting the crisis deck
• no one is scouting the destination deck
• no one draws extra cards to buff their hand size or versatility
• no one launches in a viper
• no one looks at loyalty cards

etc, etc, etc.

If you do this 'drawing the whole deck' thing, you've either gotten really lucky, or you're relying on luck. In my experience, relying on luck is a really good way to lose as the humans.

James

Blankshield said:

1. The turns don't need to be consecutive.

2. Everyone but Boomer draws leaderhip cards, so EOs are ussually pretty plentiful.

3. Not everyone draws tactics cards, and scouting the destination deck loses it's value once a good location has been found.

4. Drawing cards loses it's utility when people near-max their hand sizes.

5. Launching in a viper gives you an action you can EO on.

6. Aside from Baltar's once-per-game ability, the only action that allows you to see loyalty cards is a quorum card.

EOing the President to draw Quorum cards is often a favorable action during down times, if you know the President is on your side.

It's actually not that hard to mill the quorum deck, if the human players want to do it. Our gaming group used to throw lots of EOs to the President when there was down time, and as a result the President's Quorum hand would often max out.

However, I have since realized this was poor play in the early game.

The problem is in that the Office of the President gets exponentially more powerful the larger the quorum hand is, and it's probably more powerful in the hands of a cylon than a human. If you aren't 100% certain the President is human, and won't become a cylon, then you don't want to let the quorum hand get too large.

In light of this, I still think the 'Authorization to use Brutal Force' card should either be removed from game upon use like Food Rationing or Inspirational Speech or it should be modified to increase it's chance to lower population.