BSG is a 3-6 player game.

That means that you can have from 3-6 crisis between skill card collections.

It seems to me if everyone always gets 5 cards then humans are set up to fail in 5-6 player games.

Is there a rules variant where the current player chooses and extra card from one type of their skill set in a 5-6 player game?

Or did I just make that variant up

My original thought was that skill cards drawn should either be equal to the number of players in the game or..

equal to the number of players in the game plus 1. This would allow more than 6 players while giving people

the opportunity to effect all the votes until it gets back to them.

I would like to play test the 2 options (skill cards = players, and skill cards = players +1)

I have never seen the humans win a 5 player game while getting 5 cards each, so I would like to hear from others about their thoughts on these variants.

5 players / 5 cards, 5 players / 6 cards and get some human win percentages.

I think this is a common co-op game mechanic. Basically every player draws something bad so the game auto-scales with players. For every extra player you get extra skill cards (that is another person with a fist-full of cards) and abilities, but you have to fight 1 more crisis before replenishing your hand.

BSG takes it to the next level by adding in treachery and revealed cylons and so forth, but that is also why cylons don't draw crisis cards. Unrevealed cylons essentially have to help the humans for the most part off-setting (to a degree) the extra crisis cards. When they become revealed and no longer contribute at all, they also stop drawing crisis cards.

So… in theory, auto-balancing. The extra skill cards could be a house-rule because you (like me) find it very hard to get the humans to win, but the base game's suggestion is to increase the starting resources to buff the humans.

Cylons become worse when they are revealed, they can draw 2 crisis and pick one, and you don't even get to move the jump track

I could run the numbers at some point, as I think I have the rough data…

Cylons don't get Crisis phase (maybe an action) and brigged people skip it. in a 5 player game, you will at some point likely have 3 players and 2 cylons… in a sense you have a "crisis phase" penalty for an unrevealed cylon!

More important - not every crisis card is a vote. Some are "choose" cards, some are Cylon Fleet cards (better than a check? meh.)

If you have lots of crisis causing a card shortage, players can use spaces and some skill cards to gain more cards.

You get average 15 points, each crisis is an average 9, and 2 random cards average… -2 ish. The times you don't have a crisis vote maybe offset by the times you use Skill Cards as actions/response.

I think Crisis are very passable if you manage your cards and votes.