I just started to play this game, in fact I've only had one game and already I've hit a wall, the people I'm playing with have figured out that revealed cylons are way better that hidden ones. So now two of my players are just going to reveal themselves ASAP and I'm not sure how to stop that, reveal cylons seem to get to do more stuff and I can't talking them into seeing how cool it can be to destroy the humans from the inside.

Honestly I feel a bit cheated, I got this game thinking it would be a cool subterfuge game to play with some friends and now its just a stock standard get to the end game.

Does anyone have any rules that make things harder for a first revealed cylon or makes them less effective.

The only thing I can think of is to make it so cylons can only more or take an action, not both or make it so jump icons still work on the reveal cylons crisis' however these guys are the kind who like to stick to the rules and try to avoid home rules so I have no idea what to do.

Can anyone help?

Dammit I had this great reply typed up and the forum ate it. Short version: first-turn revealed cylons are definitely not better. It's hard to be sure why it's been a successful strategy with your group so far, but one common phenomenon among new players is the tendency to under-use Executive Orders and Investigative Committees. Executive Order in particular is the most important card in the game, and should be used generously. If you have one in hand, the main reason you might not want to play it on someone is if they might be a cylon and they're in a really good position to backstab you. Therefore, once all the cylons are out, the humans should be playing XOs whenever possible, i.e.: almost every turn. Suddenly you've got about twice as many quorum cards, twice as many press room activations, twice as many shots at incoming raiders, etc. You might worry that this is going to eat up your skill cards, but that's where Investigative Committee comes in. IC is a deceptive card; it looks like it's there to help keep an eye on the cylons, but its real function is to figure out exactly how many skill points you need to pass a check. And, as with XO, it's way more effective once you know exactly whom you can trust.

Together, these are far and away the two best cards in the base game. Hopefully, putting them to good use will make things hard enough on early-revealed Cylons that you won't need to resort to house rules.

Yes, what he said… once they are revealed, you have lots of freedom. Even open talk for team strategy.

Here is a plan, wait until YOU are a Cylon… then say "let's brig so-and-so now so they can't use their reveal power if they are a Cylon, worst case is they are in the brig a turn or two, no crisis, and can XO people!" this works really good against the Military leader, takes their title, they have green cards, etc. Haha. Then you can even deal some Cylon dirt and blame it on the brigged guy.

How often is this even happening? All cylon cards out pre-sleeper?

I do think revealed Cylon can be a strong play, but as I have said before, depends on your role. Pilots have a hard time "covering" not helping… you have to XO or attack something, both of which help the humans. Also, if you reveal and there IS a second Cylon, you can help hide them dealing dirt as "you" will take the blame. But an under voting Admiral picking crappy jumps is not a bad thing… hehe…

Maybe after a few games were other people use other strategys successfully, they may have a change of heart. If you use the strategy of subochre you might end up with a higher human win percentage, and then they would need to change the tactics.

One of the problems with a balanced game is you need about 10 tries to know if something "works." Sometimes you use a strategy that is crap but in that game, by luck of cards or what have you, you dominate. Doesn't mean the next 4 times you get crushed!

I agree that being revealed usually isn't in the best interest for the Cylon. In addition, do you have any expansions? The revised Caprica no longer ignores jump prep so the Caprica location is noticeably weaker for revealed Cylons. If you're playing base game only, I'd strongly consider that as something you can house rule.

dwightsboardgame said:

Yea, Caprica gets substantially weaker, but they'll probably just load up on SC cards instead. First turn reveal can be pretty powerful but not nearly as much fun.

Our group has also realised that early reveal (1st turn is a bit extreme, but logic will lead you to that place) is probably stronger than staying hidden. I think a mistake that would be common (but not in our group) is leaving the reveal until too late.

However a few things to consider: some characters and titles makes staying unrevealed strong. Being the admiral and choosing destinations can be powerful - an experienced group won't let you get away with many bad jumps… just one distance 1 jump can spell the end for the humans though, so it's still worth it.

A president with a brig card in her hand, played at the right time, can end the human's game.

Laura Roslin or Boomer can secretly hurt the humans more than a revealed cylon without ever giving themselves away by manipulating the crisis deck.

Etc.

So in my opinion - don't *wait* to reveal, but do try and get the timing right. I think it is much stronger to reveal at the first opportunity that presents itself, but one should lie low until then. I generally "play as a human" until I see an opportunity to reveal, or spike a key skill check. The rule of thumb I use is: "If I get caught doing this, was it worth it?" If you're even more keen you can try and spike skill checks by making sure you can blame others, etc, but this is a fairly weak (albeit fun!) strategy.

Lastly, I find I can hurt the humans quite a bit by simply holding off on playing good cards. I once sat on a 6-point skill card (introduced with exodus.) There is only one per skill deck and the skill text was powerful… and I just held it in my hand denying the humans. (After revealing I could even keep it.) I kept claiming that I had not ICs. I did actually only draw one, so it was a believable lie, but the humans were relying on those ICs and I could have played one… in this way I'm not really helping the humans while I wait for that good reveal opportunity.

So in summary: early reveals; yes. First turn; no.

Actually - one member in our group thinks that staying unrevealed is stronger - even past the point of when he has been outed. (Called "soft reveal.") His reasoning is that the reveal powers are weak and he can play more negative cards into skill checks and/or use his character abilities to hurt the humans. I tend to disagree - you will most likely only get one overt action before you are brigged and from the brig there is very little you can do (although this player has been known to sit in there to use a OPG to harm the humans) so you need to pick which *ONE* action you're going to drop before going to the resurrection ship. I tend to go with the reveal power - I've not had a great opportunity to use a character ability yet - especially when you consider that it wastes a very valuable revealed-cylon turn whereas revealing lets you harm the humans AND puts you over at the resurrection ship ready for next turn all in one go.

So there you go - a different point of view for you.

The single most important reason why it is important for the Cylons to keep at least one of themselves hidden is Executive Order.

When there are no more covert Cylons, Executive Order enables the humans to become a well-oiled, risk-free Action Engine. If an early double-reveal is actually benefiting the Cylon team, it is almost certainly because the humans aren't punishing them sufficiently with Executive Order.

If both Cylons reveal early, the remaining humans should do the following on their turns:

1) Move somewhere useful, positioning yourself to receive an XO from someone else (e.g. a location you can double-activate for a benefit: Press Room, Command, Pegasus CIC, Main Batteries, etc.)

2) Play an XO on whichever human is best positioned to use it.

If you don't have an XO, then your biggest priority should be drawing them. Don't play them into skill checks unless you have a spare in your hand, because even drawing 2 Leadership isn't enough to reasonably guarantee an XO (especially with the expansions diluting the skill decks). If you're Boomer, or someone who draws only one Leadership per turn, your best location is likely Press Room, and you should be saying "activate Press Room, play Consolidate Power for two Leadership" a lot.

Nothing in the Revealed Cylons' arsenal compares to doubling the number of actions humanity gets to take, which is the price they pay when they tip their hands so early.

If you're going to go with that strategy you might as well Airlock your less useful characers and replace them with better ones too. Obviously you don't want to go hog-wild and kill Morale, but some characters are going to be far less valueable if both Cylons reveal early. Helo might be a good choice if he isnt being used since he doubles as a pilot while having a useful ability, and Ellen could be a huge boon in spreading the XOs around.

Skowza said:

With the extra time needed to take one, I'm not sure they're necessarily worth it. I find them to be a little lackluster unless there is a second revealed Cylon who can hit them with another right away.

If both Cylons reveal on the first turn and then each spend their 2nd turn getting an extra SC then they have potentially game winning plays at the end. If it happens in a 6 or 7 player game and the 3rd Cylon gets a SC too it gets really brutal, potentially wiping the Human players hands completely or simply overwhelming them.

A strategy of both revealing first turn requires a leap of faith that both Cylon cards are handed out pre-Sleeper. I'm still not convinced that it's that good of a strategy.

dwightsboardgame said:

This is well put. The damage that two sleeper cylons can do in a short period of time during early sleeper phase can be tremendous, just as it's hard to overstate the value of the second cylon providing the first cover during witch hunts and brig attempts.

Eunomiac said:

I strongly disagree - and the reason for that is that I strongly AGREE with the rest of your post.

In my experience the humans should be doing all that at *all times.* The one, maybe two times, this backfires in the game (when you XO a cylon who then uses it against you) is far outweighed by running like a well-oiled machine for the entire game.

To be sure - you're allowed to be a bit choosy as to who you XO (if you have suspicions, and as a rule of thumb you should avoid XOing the person directly to your left) - but in my groups experience if we don't XO on basically every. Single. Turn. Humans will lose. Humans will lose even using this strategy most of the time. I'm consistently amazed by groups that don't resort to these sorts of extreme measures (such as your implication that the humans are holding on to XOing due to paranoia sown in the group) and yet don't seem to have the 9/10 Cylon win ratio.

I put some of high Cylon win percentage to the early Cylon reveals. The games that have been closest / humans have won have been the games in which the Cylons revealed late.

I recently played with both expansions. At the start of the game I was Roslin with a Not A Cylon loyalty card. I chose a crisis card which Tory Foster didn't like. Within a couple of rounds Foster (who was a human) convinced the group that I was a Cylon, so when there but a little bit of a lull, Cally shot me.

So they lost 1 morale, and then I came back as Zarek and I drew a Cylon loyalty card and that's when the fun started.

My point is that if one Cylon had revealed the first turn, then it would had been much less likely that they would have tried to execute me because they would have had bigger, or at least more obvious, problems to deal with.

I also agree with being careful of who you XO. Since there were no revealed Cylons, they still didn't trust me (although this time they were right). This means that I couldn't do the powerful double president's office activation.

All of this because of uncertainty and lack of trust. Early reveal and it all goes away.