My gaming group has played probably 10 base games. Of these games the humans have won *once*. 3 of these games, including the human victory, were close - the rest have been cylon whitewashes.

Now the close ones we could argue could go either way. The cylons won them (and the human victory was our second game, our cylon made a bad mistake staying in the brig, AND while in there was drawing crisis cards… so really that game probably should even count because we didn't know the rules. That brings human victories to a fat zero.) but ok, a close game is the ultimate goal.

The whitewashes - well, we could chalk some of them up to "that's the way it can roll sometimes" - I mean, we have lost straight after the sleeper phase to briggings mostly. A sympathiser and the right sort of cylon = 2 in the brig. VERY hard to get them out, and human then lose. Some times that stuff happens… but 7 out of 10 games? Why does this not seem to happen to other games I read about here on the forums? When I read expansion rules they seem to buff cylons more than humans….

Anyway, I have since learned that's probably not true. On a board-member's advice I picked up Exodus. I did this mostly to give the revealed cylons a bit more to do. I was told it was so "pilots wouldn't hate the game"… but again, this is something that seems different in our group. No-one hates pilots… why would people hate pilots? If anything Exodus has made piloting boring, but I'll explain that in a second.

So we picked up Exodus and have played 3 games with the Cylon Fleet Board (CFB.) What I have read here is that this:

1. Makes the cylons more powerful
2. Gives the pilots a lot more to do
3. Improves the gameplay in general

We have found the. exact. opposite.

1. Since adding the board the humans have won all 3 games. The upshoot to this is that the games now seem perfectly balanced. I mean the humans have won these games, but they have literally been down to 1 resource in multiple pools, no resource above 4.

We changed a number of human tactics in these games as well in an effort to stem the flood of cylon victories. For example in these three games we basically never took a turn on our turn. We literally XO'd every single turn, barring a small handful. We also used IC on every single skill check barring (without exaggeration) maybe 2 a game.

Furthermore Exodus has given the humans many subtle buffs. Nukes are buffed (and with strategic planning have been stupidly powerful so far.) Character abilities such as Gaetor's have made jumping at -3 a no-brainer. The CAG card is straight up human buff. The viper VIIs are straight up human buff.

Perhaps this is because the CFB is supposed to be very powerful and would swing things towards the cylons… but we have found it to be just incredibly weak. What we find is this:

As soon as a basestar hits the main board, the CFB pursuit track just STOPS. It can now ONLY move if a cylon activates it, and then it only has a 5/8 chance of moving forward. Because of the 3/8 chance of moving the human track backwards, it's risky activating this location when the humans are at the beginning of the jump track. Of course, if you don't, the humans will almost certainly be close to the -3 spot of the jump track by the time you can activate it… and if they are and the fleet jumps in, they'll simply activate the FTL location and jump away sending the fleet back to the start of the pursuit track. This wouldn't be THAT big of a deal, if it weren't for the aforementioned basestar issue.

One lone basestar is PREFERRED by the humans. They CHOSE the "cylon ambush" destination so they could get a measily basestar out and stop the CFB from being a factor. By just controlling the couple raiders with the powerful CAG ability and escorting the civilian ships away at a rate of 2 a turn (via CAG and XOs) there is just no real threat by a lone basestar. The odd launch of raiders or what have you does not present any threat. Another time the humans chose a "add base star to the board" option on a crisis card. They cheered when it came up, because it wasn't just a "free" option, it *prevented the otherwise powerful fleet from jumping in.* Another time a super crisis was played (Fleet Mobilisation.) Awesome card, right? Everything activates. A loaded CFB board, let's bring the lot across! At last all these ships that have been languishing on the CFB will have their reckoning! Wait, what? Basestar activates. Jumps across by itself. Launches 2 raiders and one heavy, then another 3 raiders. Doesn't. Even. Shoot. Galactica. Yes, 5 raiders is a bigger threat than the humans have realistically faced all game, but it's hardly going to do anything when there is only 1 civvie hidden at the back of Galactica and the pilot is running around in a VII !!!

Now this wasn't a one off. I even "simulated" a game to quickly churn through a session to see how often we could expect the pursuit track to succeed. Conclusion: Once per game. It was just FAR too common to have a basestar activate and jump across by itself. Once across, it cock-blocks all CFB activations. This perhaps would not be so bad if the buffs the humans received didn't make dealing with a lone basestar so trivial!

So then….

2. Pilots are now SO BORED. With attacks generally less problematic - the CFB seems to, at BEST, be about as dangerous as the cylon attack crises but now with the VIIs and CAG and escort ability (this one in particular) the humans simply pack away the civvie ships lickity-spit - leaving one as bait - and dispatch the raiders when they get a bit close (not killing them early of course - that'd just activate the CFB!) Who needs to shoot raiders when you can just use one action to escort a civvie away? Why use maximum firepower when that only lets you kill FOUR measly raiders when you can use a single action to make as many raiders as you want useless. Surrounded by 18 raiders? No problem. Escort. Raiders must now move slightly next turn. (Or perhaps shoot the viper, not a big deal. Especially since it'll likely take 5 or 6 shots to connect.)

3. See above, basically. It has actually made the game more balanced, but gimping the cylons and buffing the hell out of the humans… but boy is it frustrating to play as a cylon now! We have basically come to the conclusion to not both with activating the CFB. I mean, yes, if the humans happen to be at position 2 on the jump track, the CFB is loaded up, and it is the cylon's turn… well then you might as well move the tracks (either up or down.) But otherwise, you're MUCH better off activating Caprica. Since you never see the dangerous fleet attacks like in the base game (just dribbly-drabbly lone basestars which help the humans more than hinder them) then activating the fleet is MUCH weaker than it used to be. By activating Caprica the cylons have a really good chance of throwing a crisis at the humans that doesn't move the jump track - this means they are just staring at wasted resources for no gain. Any other cylon options are, nearly always, just going to be a wasted turn for the cylons. The most frustrating part is you have this whole fleet ready to go. Could even be 1 place from jumping… and find you just CAN'T get them to jump in! Even if they did, they'd only be contending with one civvie to protect anyway…

So the rant's TL;DR:

Why does everyone else seem to find the Cylon's only winning 50-60% of their games? How do these games play out? Do you do the extreme tactics of XOing and ICing every single time, or do you find humans can win sometimes even without that?

Why does everyone seem to think the CFB improves gameplay? Do you not find lone basestars appearing (via a number of possibilities) that then completely halts the CFB's pursuit track? Don't you find it frustrating that it's in humanities best interest to draw out a basestar?

PS: We don't have pegasus. Don't really like the sound of Pegasus and some of the rules therein… but perhaps there is something from that expansion that I'm missing that would help? Perhaps we're doing something wrong with the CFB? Perhaps our 3 CFB games were anomolies and usually pan out differently?

You had quite a lot to say, and it's a great topic… before we get to far…

Are you doing it wrong?

When I read something like "Basestar activates. Jumps across by itself." I am confused.

When a basestar activates, and there are none on the board, you place a basestar on the CYLON FLEET board from reserves if available, and advance the marker. When the marker hits the end, all the ships come out at once.

True, a lone - preferably gimped! - basestar stop the CF board from building up or advancing, but (generally) every fourth crisis, bam, the cylons show up.

In my experience, if we don't stay on top of the cylons, we get a massive deployment in the last rounds and the revealed cylons have lots of options.

Also, better hope Gaeta isn't ever a Cylon… "yea! Lets Jump at -3… miss it? … not rerolling…humans scum! " haha.

But, really, are you playing Cylon Fleet properly? (maybe I am just reading it wrong).

Also willing to address the other issues… just don't want to waste time if a simple rule-miss happened!

Going back to talk of the base game….

My group has played it many times and with 4,5, and 6 players. Out of 20 games the humans barely won one time. A good 50 percent of the time humans don't get to jump after the reveal phase and once or twice didn't make it to the reveal phase at all. In the 4 player game (the one the humans actually won) they intentionally put a resource in the red so when the sympathizer came out it was 3 against 1. There were 2 resources at 1 at the end. Other 4 player games when it ends up 2 v 2 humans get crushed.

5 player games humans make the 8 jump half the time and are crushed half the time, but never won. Depends on how early the cylon cards are dealt out really.

6 players is always a crushing defeat for humans.

My theories on why this happens, in order to win the game the humans need that 3-1 ratio for action/vote cards to be competitive.

Also, some characters are just terrible and can't help the humans at all.

It isn't always damage to Galactica or resources just whichever types of crisis cards that are coming up that the cylon players take advantage of

I know there are only 10 cards in the base deck that put cylons on the board out of 70 but I swear they seem to cluster together every stinking game. lol

So there are a few things I would like to address in some later posts, number of cards received, character abilities etc.

Mephisto666 said:

You're right to ask the question - because I wasn't 100% clear (I had ranted quite a bit already ) But we are doing it right (I believe.) The lone basestar only jumps once both are on the CFB. It's just that this seems to happen, in my experience, WAY before the pursuit track can move up. Afterall, we typically have one from the start of the game that we jump away from. That means we only need 2 more basestar activations (either shoot or launch) and the lone gimpy basestar will be coming to help the humans.

I'm surprised you have found that about every fourth crisis the cylons show up… in my experience it seems far more likely for a lone basestar to show up than the pursuit track successfully moves to the end.

ONE thing I did find we were doing wrong since I did the post - we did NOT move the pursuit track in the same crisis that a basestar jumped in. This may be all that was causing issues. One missed pursuit track move is, like, 25% more pursuit moves needed.

One final point on this: We did find numerous times (probably 3 or 4 times) that the very crisis that causes the cylon fleet to jump also caused the human fleet to jump. Worst-case scenario for the cylons. Both pursuit tracks back to the start! (And second worst is the humans being at -3 or -1 when the fleet jumps, because (barring cylon treachery) the FTL room *will* be activated.)

Cooley said:

I'm so glad you posted this! This sounds so much like our games! The way our games were going, we were starting to ask "Can the humans win… at ALL?" We nearly always play with 6. We have NEVER had the sympathiser become a cylon. Surely that's better for the humans? Yet, we still get smashed. I shudder to think what would happen if we ever happen to have a resource in the blue by the sleeper phase.

At least the 5-player games sound a little more even. We've only done this once, but I don't recall how close it was.

In your opinion, who are the terrible characters? I have some theories, but I'd like to hear other opinions.

And I fully agree with the cylon attack cards! When I pulled them out to play with the CFB I was SHOCKED there was only 10. 10!?? We nearly ALWAYS ended up with multiple attacks per jump! Well, so it seemed. I'm sure there was a couple "no attack" jumps which were blessedly quiet affairs (for humans.) And a number of single-attacks, which were generally bearable (until the cylons inevitably play Massive Attack)… but it sure seemed like they came way more often that the statistics indicate they should!

More on this though: That is a 1/7 chance of an attack every draw. In the "quick simulation" I ran, I estimated 30-40 crisis in a game which comes out to about 5 attacks. I think it might be slightly higher than that, but not by a lot. I'm not just convinced the CFB produces that sort of attack rate… it's a bit different, since there are small attack cards, and big attack cards, and the CFB can send over lone basestars or the whole CFB (but can't combine multiple small attacks into one bigger one) but I just don't think the CFB is nearly as threatening as cylon attack cards.

So, yes, you are doing it wrong.

If you run out of Basestars, you just don't place one on the Cylon Fleet board or anywhere else, you JUST move the pursuit track.

Also, you place civilian ships when during the pursuit marker move (as indicated on track). Civilian ships DO NOT clear when you jump (you're doing that?)

So, if there are not cylons on the board, say just after a jump, each crisis card will advance the track (they all have SOME ship action) and usually increase the ships on the board. In 4 turns (if I recall correctly) with not interference the ships will "blam" back on the board.

It takes 5 steps to auto-jump with no interference. 2/3 cards have jumps, so lets say 7 turns or so to autojump.

So, you should have the Cylons coming in pretty regular.

And I think you were doing this right, but the pursuit marker DOES NOT reset when you jump, only when it gets to end of the track.

That all being said, if you stop bringing out that "single basestar" you should find a change in gameplay. Smart Cylons will be using the baseship to put pressure on you… usually the one that rolls for track, and then placing ships or civs.

(If you use leaders, Caval can be a killer as he can dump the basestar to make raiders, which means Basestar symbols will add a basestar and track movement to the board).

Cooley said:

There have been some good posts here and on BGG about "how to play". If you aren't "doing it wrong" on something rules-wise, then you are not taking advantage of human strengths. Are you afraid to XO people? Big mistake. Are you learning to vote so you are efficient (not spending 18 points on a 10 point check). Are you using investigative commitee? Is Baltar checking people? Are you brigging people (too much/too little), are you remembering the OPG, or saving them to long, are you picking complementary characters?

I think 2-3 out of 10 games winning for humans can be normal for first 10, but you should be learning. I just heard a complaint at a Con from a new group where "cylons never win" and it turned out they had several rule-oopsies going on!

Maybe play a game with some other people at local store or a convention, see you if you doing anything wrong, see what you can pick up from strategies.

And don't be afraid to XO - if it outs a cylon, then they are at least out!

Mephisto666 said:

Exodus rules, page 14: "If all ships of the appropriate type are already on either the main game board or the Cylon Fleet game board, the current
player finds the highest-numbered Cylon space area on the Cylon Fleet game board that contains at least one of that type of ship. He then moves all the ships in that Cylon space area to the corresponding space area on the main game board."

So, if you run out of basestars, pick the basestar AND all others ships in the highest-numbered Cylon space area on the Cylon Fleet game board and put all of them in teh mais board game.

dakuth said:

Houl….. You don't remove the "attack crise cards" of the crises deck??? Check out:

Exodu Rules, pg 12:

"Cylon Fleet Option Setup:

Before setting up the core game, remove all Cylon attack cards from the Crisis and Super Crisis decks. Return the Cylon attack cards to the box. When adding the Crisis and Super Crisis Cards from Exodus to the decks provided in the core game, be sure to include the “CAG Chooses” cards."

Oh, man… Read the rules of exodus… when track persuit is in the end, ALL ships in the Cylon Fleet Board move to the main board!!! - And when a only basestar is in the main board, "every turn" one ship is activate!!! and a heavy raider is always a threat!!!

AMLopes said:

I stand corrected, you are rights, you move all ships with the basestar… and advance the pursuit track.

However, the rule you quoted is for placing basestars from game effects - but the section right before it is how to resolve the symbols, and in fact, what you said is the exact example given! haha.

I think it is about 25% of cards that would have a basestar related symbol.

dakuth said:

Theres some threads on this and some discussion on BGG too, but the general consensus is:

Just plain amazing
Cain
Apollo

Top-tier
Adama
Tyrol
Gaeta
Tory

Middle-tier
Baltar
Ellen (personally I think shes top-tier but others disagree)
Helo
Starbuck
Roslin

Bottom-tier
Kat
Saul
Zarek
Cally
Dee

Even-more-bottom-tier (really really bad)
Anders
Boomer

dakuth said:

You may be understating the significance of this oversight.

I have a couple of other potential explanations:

1) Your human team sounds to have had a lot of success in bringing in gimped basestars early and often in jump tracks, while your cylons sound to have had tremendous trouble thwarting them. I agree that the strategy is very powerful, but my humans find it a challenge to force basestars down where and when they are wanted (particularly when we, like you, do not use Broadcast Location) meanwhile the cylons seem to find enough ways to interfere that implementing this strategy is far from a sure thing.

2) If the human fleet experiences success in all the tactics you describe, from placing two basestars in different (and relatively unoccupied) quadrants of the cylon fleet board to evading and escorting rather than fighting, the cylon fleet board will fill up all game long, and the thing that made it so easy early (basestars and ships spread out in different quadrants of the cylon fleet board) is what will make it tricky to nuke or shoot them all down when they arrive en masse. In other words, I'm surprised to hear you never experienced a very smooth early- and midgame turning into a bloodbath at endgame.

3) With the cylon fleet board in play, Caprica is simply bad. Your cylons should be using Basestar Bridge 95% of the time, generally to (A) mess with the jump track and (B) place 1 basestar and 3 raiders. If there are enough raiders down, replace (B) with the instant damage on Galactica.

All that being said, I will agree with you on one point: once we adjusted to Exodus, I think my group saw a slight uptick in human wins (i.e., from just under 50% to just over) so you may be onto something when you suggest there might have been an early overstatement of the difficulty of Exodus owing to groups not yet adjusting their tactics to it.

If it makes you feel better, our group still can't handle Exodus very well, and we have well over 100 Base/Pegaus games under our belt. We can't really figure out why, the Cylons just constantly screw us over with the jump track manipulation and then overwhelm us. None of the suggestions we've received seem to help, you can only get so many SPs to bump the die roll up and although statistically the roll should move the Cylon track up more often than moving the Human track down, almost every roll in many games has pushed the track down.
We've actually never tried using the Personal Agendas that came with Exodus, we're afraid it will hurt the Human team even more. One of the few games the Humans won was sheer dumb luck, a Cylon (me) got boxed after bad Ionian cards all combo'ed together…
I am forced to believe that the game is relatively balanced just based on the fact that everyone says it is and our experience (balance-wise) with Base/Pegasus was always similar to what other experienced players reported, but we're on the verge of house-ruling the Basestar Bridge so that if you choose to mess with the jump tracks you don't get a 2nd choice of actions.

Oh, also, it seems like the SC from the Base game that activates all ships (I think its Fleet Mobilization) is absolutely broken since it moves the Cylon jump track so many times.

Mephisto666 said:

Covered by AMLopes, but no, I don't think so.

Houl….. You don't remove the "attack crise cards" of the crises deck??? Check out:

We do. The card is a super crisis called "Fleet Mobilisation" which has every ship activate. You just prior covered the rules for how that works out. (Lone gimpy basestar)

You may be understating the significance of this oversight.

I have a couple of other potential explanations:

1) Your human team sounds to have had a lot of success in bringing in gimped basestars early and often in jump tracks, while your cylons sound to have had tremendous trouble thwarting them. I agree that the strategy is very powerful, but my humans find it a challenge to force basestars down where and when they are wanted (particularly when we, like you, do not use Broadcast Location) meanwhile the cylons seem to find enough ways to interfere that implementing this strategy is far from a sure thing.

2) If the human fleet experiences success in all the tactics you describe, from placing two basestars in different (and relatively unoccupied) quadrants of the cylon fleet board to evading and escorting rather than fighting, the cylon fleet board will fill up all game long, and the thing that made it so easy early (basestars and ships spread out in different quadrants of the cylon fleet board) is what will make it tricky to nuke or shoot them all down when they arrive en masse. In other words, I'm surprised to hear you never experienced a very smooth early- and midgame turning into a bloodbath at endgame.

3) With the cylon fleet board in play, Caprica is simply bad. Your cylons should be using Basestar Bridge 95% of the time, generally to (A) mess with the jump track and (B) place 1 basestar and 3 raiders. If there are enough raiders down, replace (B) with the instant damage on Galactica.

All that being said, I will agree with you on one point: once we adjusted to Exodus, I think my group saw a slight uptick in human wins (i.e., from just under 50% to just over) so you may be onto something when you suggest there might have been an early overstatement of the difficulty of Exodus owing to groups not yet adjusting their tactics to it.

1) Yes. It wasn't a huge sample-size, so perhaps they were just lucky. Played a game this weekend and it went very differently (I was cylon, and had been thinking / discussing CFB quite a bit. We got some big attacks to happen. And basically no gimpy-basestar scenarios.)

2) This has also happened, but again perhaps the humans just got lucky? In one of the games I'm complaining about, we had things generally spread out, but when a decent attack looked like coming the humans immediately nuked used strategic planning to wipe out the most threatening space (basestar + 4 or so raiders and heavy) They did this twice. Again - some luck there - but the new nuke rules (combined with strategic planning) give a 3/8 chance of wiping the whole area out and that is powerful… compared to the base game that's an incredible buff.

3) hmm. ok. I hadn't really rated placing the basestar and raiders - although in this most recent game we really had no problems with numbers of raiders. We also had some excellent opportunities to use the pursuit track. So although I was still open to Caprica, it was never appropriate. I'm not that impressed with the civilian issue still though. I think they can be packed away way too quickly. Still - even with that - we did kill the humans via population. We got 4 civvie ships in one activation at one stage. I've never seen a raider even shoot at Galactica before, but because of "free" activations we must have had 30 attacks on Galactica by raiders in this most recent game. (In the base game I rather suspect that civilians would have been destroyed and the humans lost a lot earlier.)

This latest game worked out well, to be honest. The CFB was a real factor. The game came down to the humans trying to do their final jump. They were activating the FTL location and if they failed the roll they'd lose. They had to activate it though, because I was next and would activate the cylon fleet and they'd lose. They had Helo and rerolled… but missed both. So you don't get a game much closer than that. (Proviso - we played with 2 newbies, Final Five, and Personal Goals, so also used the base rules alternative starting resources. That is, 2 more of everything to offset these disadvantages for humans.)

The CFB working better I attribute to the rule correction and also the cylons were able to use the "gimpy basestar" to OUR advantage. We forced the track up to the final position, knowing that crisis cards could not move it any more because of the gimpy basestar. Then, when the humans jumped, any crisis card will make the fleet jump in (due to our rule correction, which previously would have only brought one lone group across.) Hmm. Now I type it out.. that rule mistake WAS really bad. With that mistake it is VERY hard for the CFB to jump in of their own accord.

Glad for the discussion, thanks guys!

Skowza said:

Like I said for our Fleet Mobilization - it was completely broken because it didn't move the track at all. (Although it should have moved it once.)

Two basestars already out on the CFB means (and for simplicity I will assume there are no other ships in their space.)

1. Basestars activate.

2. No more basestars to place, so the basestar sitting in the highest position jump across by itself.

3. The pursuit track moves one position.

4. Assuming that doesn't cause the whole CFB to jump in, then what happens is:

5. Raiders activate. Lone basestar on the mainboard launches 2 raiders

6. Heavies activate. Lone basestar lauches 1 heavy

7. Basestar launch activate. Basestar launches 3 more raiders

That's it. The only time Fleet Mobilisation will move the track significantly is if there isn't much of the CFB to start with. Worst-case scenario is one basestar (and change) already on the CFB. Then you'll get a fair bit of added cylons to the CFB, and the track will move so far they'll almost certainly jump in. But it is a super-crisis afterall. No worse than "Massive Attack" from the base game was, in my opinion.

I agree with Skowza that Fleet Mobilizaiton can be game-breaking with the cylon fleet board. I've also seen times when it's like Dakuth's scenario and there's one basestar down or something so nothing much happens.

I'd offer one more anecdote about my experience with Exodus that might have something to do with the different results players are experiencing and that's that two cylons from loyalty seem to win more frequently post-Exodus than pre- while loyalty-sleeper and sleeper-sleeper seems to be a heavy lift for the cylons than it was before. I haven't tried too hard to go under the hood on this and figure out why, but it's been the case in my home games.

dakuth said:

Outlaw or someone else whos been around for a while can correct me if I'm wrong, but we discussed this at one point on the forums and it was decided that each icon on FM moves the Cylon jump track forward, so it goes up four times… worst case scenario in that case is that FM gets played anytime ever.

Skowza said:

I just read through that whole thread… and wow. The main takeaway for me is I'm flabbergasted by the claims of players playing humans in a less-than-optimal way (really badly even, with false briggings, not XOing every single turn, able to get away with clearly bad moves and not get brigged immediately…) and yet have a nearly 50% win rate.

Without giving the humans the +2 to all resources there is no *way* the humans would stand a chance in our play group if they didn't do every single turn right*. We often joke for the cylons to win all they have to do is reveal on turn one, then walk away from the table. How these people get the humans to win at all surprises me, let alone with extremely bad play!

* - Admittedly there are plenty of times where their are equally good (or bad) options in a turn. There are also clearly WORSE options that many people are espousing in that thread they claim they could get away with!

As to the character selection, though, I see there is still a fair bit of debate and I think by the end I was basically convinced there wasn't enough "in it" for us to worry about picking "the best" characters. Admittedly I even struggle to see much synergy between the characters, so maybe I just can't see the big picture. Typically I just make sure we have plenty of politics and plenty of leadership so we have ICs and XOs to call on.

I should stop here… but I have a question: I'm not sure I fully understand the love for Tory. I like her and have played her 2 out of 4 exodus games… but it sounds to me like her "awesomeness" comes from 2 things: Her ability to gain cards when Quorums are played, and a good skill selection. I agree with the skill selection (it's why I picked her) but I've found her OPT pretty lack-luster. I don't play many games where Quorum cards really get played. We find them pretty underwhelming (and in fact dangerous more-often-than-not.) When I picked Tory we said "Let's play a Quorum-heavy game." And… it just didn't happen. We parked in the President's office and XO'd her regularly, but there are not many worthwhile Quorum cards, in my opinion. I wish there were. It disappoints me it's so weak. So following on from that opinion - her OPG is decent in that it could make Quorum's actually useful, but since I don't rate them that highly….

As an example: One game I played Anders. Humans won because we used his OPG to guarantee the jump to victory. It was a close thing and we couldn't have risked jumping early if not for that. Anders' OPG was game-winning and obviously so. Tory's might line the President up with one of the 5 decent cards in the deck. Not so whelming.

Skowza said:

Ah. I Googled it at the time and BGG had a community-FAQ that said each icon was activated one-at-a-time left-to-right. (Some quote from one of the game designers I believe.) I haven't seen anything 100% solid. I might search for your discussion

Yes, I agree with Skowza; the pursuit track usually advances all the way and the fleet board dumps to the main board for Fleet Mobilization. It's often game-breaking. What I'm referencing above is that if there's, say, one basestar on the board, it'll just fire, launch raiders, launch heavies, raiders move, etc. without advancing the pursuit track. That's not too bad. But it goes without saying that cylons get to choose when they play their super crises so the card is unlikely to be used when the main board has modest cylon presence. When it has heavy presence or no presence early in the jump track is when the card is most devastating.

Holy Outlaw said:

It's true.

My annoyance is simply that the time you'd THINK would be great for Fleet Mobilisation - that is, when the CFB is loaded up to the gills - would not be a good time to play that super crisis. All that will happen is a single pursuit track movement.

Of course, if it is one step from bringing the whole fleet in anyway - that is a big arrival and a lot of activations

This is assuming you're playing the "left-to-right" rule where I got it from:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Battlestar_Galactica_FAQ

"Q: When multiple activation symbols or instructions appear on a card (such as the Fleet Mobilization Super Crisis), how do you resolve them?
A: (Tim, FFG, citation needed): Resolve each one separately in left-to-right order. If playing with the Cylon Fleet option from Exodus, note that each activation may advance the pursuit track, possibly resulting in ships appearing on the board between activations (which could then be moved/activated by subsequent icons)."

YMMV. It's not 100% official.

dakuth said:

Consider:
1. In groups that play the Humans sub-optimally and still achieve a 50% or more win rate, the Cylon players probably play poorly too. It seems unlikely that dumb luck puts the poor players on the Human team and the good players on the Cylon team; although the game itself is stacked against the Humans, failing to take advantage of opportunities as a Cylon means the Humans could squeak by.
2. Those groups might very well be adding to the starting resources to give the Humans an advantage. One of the major complaints that seems to come up is "everyone always wants to be a Cylon!" and if thats the case, some groups may increase the starting resources to ensure more Cylon losses so that players enjoy being Human. They aslo may increase the starting resources because:
3. Those groups might be non-gamers who play because they are fans of the show. My group is a bunch of hardcore gamers with thousands of hours of gaming experience with hundreds of different games, we're obviously going to make different decisions than a group that enjoys the game thematically and doesnt play other strategic board games.
4. Some choices may seem like common sense until you sit down and really think about them. For example, when I first heard the "never use the Quorum deck under any circumstances" argument, my first thought was "wth are you thinking?" but when I read through it I was converted almost right away.

dakuth said:

Thats less-than-optimal play right there imho

Skowza said:

Well, yes, so you say. But not exactly on par with wasting turns with activating the administration, admiral's quarters, or using Galactica's guns on a raider! *My point* was that Anders might be getting a bad wrap, because he sure played a major role in our win in that game whereas my games with Tory - the real star player - she didn't have that great of an impact. (Actually her endless ICs from the press room and her normal draw kinda did… but still. Anders is OK. Leave him alone!)