Well I imagine the expansion in many ways.

1) It will be the Pegasus (on a smaller board). You will have some extra firepower to attack Cylon ships (which will be more plentiful). The makers can copy some of Galactica's locations and put them on the other battleship or make some new ones.

2) Colonial Civil Fleet ship(s) with extra (new) locations

- black market (you can trade resources like 2:1)

- Cloud Nine (helps to raise moral)

- Mining/rafinery ship (you will need to secure mining operations/fuel production both in space against teh Cylon and inside the ship against strikes/sabotuers and such)

3) After reaching the 8th jump distance (which ended teh game) you will get a new smaller board to attach to BSG - New Caprica. Now the players will have to devide (since they know that after a while the Cylon will come and occupy the planet) - there could be a new "cloak" deck. Perhaps a new Crisis deck (taht would make you to use 2 decks atthe same time). Galactica would jump away and so the players would get seperated and play one of the two - a traditional BSG "run from Cylons" game and as the "resistance on New Caprica" - perhaps even each player could control 2 chracters!

Now. Galactica will have to wait and repair (and maybe gather some "rescue plan points" - that after reaching some value (like the jump destination) they would allow to retorun to New Caprica - perhaps the Crisis cards would give that or ther might be a special rule for he "Command" to generate those "rescue plan points" - like 2 each activation. STILL REMEMBER - Galactica needs to be repaired and fix her Vipers.

The other board (New Caprica) would be played similar to normal BSG. If the game would allow them to get a newcharacter then all might be human... or 1 (at random) a cylon (would complicate the game for someone who isn't a Cylon on Galactica to play one on New Caprica ) The Resistance would use action cards, locations and new "Resistance cards" to keep the colonists safe and fight the tosters. They would face a diffrent Crisis deck and except keeping their "resource" triggers high would also have to lower the "Cylon defence strenght" so that Galactica might come for the rescue.

In all those cases there would be a new board (don't we love that? ), new skill cards (like 1 for each deck), new Crisis Cards (or even a new deck), more chacaters (give me Doc Cottle!), more ships, and a lot more of FUN!

(FFG yes you can invite me to help ya do he expansion )

No comment at all? Tell me what you think....

My own ideas for an expansion:

a conversion about BS:Pegasus.

- Replace the Crisis deck and characters, reuse everything else.

- You would not have Colonial One and the president title / Quorum deck.

- Introduce a mechanic that when you find civilians strips you race to get them to dock and strip from of resources before the cylons destroy them. The new crisis deck includes more fleet encounters.

- You start with less resources, but there are more opportunities to gain them via the above mechanic.

You guys realize that this game is called Battlestar Galactica right? Not Battlestar Pegasus? You also realize Pegasus/Cain were in like only 3-4 eps before Cain gets killed?

I mean, I like those episodes too, but I'm not really interested in a whole new board so that I can play with a whole bunch of characters, etc that we only saw for 3 eps. I'd rather a ton more awesome stuff for the people we care about, aka the Galactica folks and board. I'm all for some kind of Pegasus cardboard token (like the basestars) that gets placed somehow and can be activated to do stuff to provide support for the Galactica, but otherwise no.

Sorry, I don't mean to sound cruel.

Mattr0polis said:

After playing a few more times, I see your point. Starbuck is amazing. I used her, ended up being a Cylon, but I revealed on my 3rd or 4th turn... can't remember. But I used her ability to my advantage. Got EO'd out of sickbay to hanger bay... so on my next turn, I went to FTL control, pulled it at -3, then revealed reducing morale by 1. However, Roslin I still stay away from. Her 2 crisis card ability is very good, but late in the game, when you need all the combat you can get out of the group, she becomes a very bad character IMHO.

Also, I totally agree with your last statement. If they can develop a decent expansion, I'm all for it. I just hate the Pegasus idea cause really... the Pegasus wasn't around for all that long and besides support during attacks (via Crisis Card, etc), what is the point? It would have the same locations that Galactica has, which would bode well for Zarek, but in the end would just take up space on the game table. And adding characters... I really think adding Dee, Doc Cottle, Gaeta, Cally would be okay. I just don't want to see characters added just for the sake of being added. A lot of these forums I see everyone trying to add (Gina) Number Six or Cain, which in my opinion would take away from the game mythology, as these characters came in later in the series. Any character being added should be a character that started with Galactica.

I do have an idea for a new Crisis Card though: "A New Admiral Arrives" - Skill Check 12 (Yellow, Green, Purple)
Pass - No Effect
Fail - Keep this card in play, counts as Admiral Cain. Admiral Title cannot be held by any player until one player Activates Admiral's quarters to send Admiral Cain to the Brig. Once Cain is in the brig, remove this card from the game. If a Crisis Card requires the Admiral to choose, the current player instead chooses. If the fleet jumps, the card on top of the destination deck is the new location.

Instead of making Admiral Cain a playable character, she can be a neutral character. Maybe adding neutral characters would be a decent new game mechanic. What does everyone think?

Agreed. There are a few other characters that I think should eventually be made (aka other mains like: Gaeta, Dee, Anders, Kat, Cally, etc), but beyond that, it starts to delute the game a bit. A lot of the revealed Cylon characters, Pegasus crew, civilians, etc I think should just not be made into character cards. I'm not saying that some people wouldn't find them fun to play (and there are the fan made sets to do so if you really want to), but for the most part they take away from the game. What if all these minor characters get made and then your group of players choose similar to the following team: Dr. Cottle, Cally, Doral, Hardball, D'Anna, Crashdown? To me that just seems a ton less fun than say: Adama, Roslyn, Gaius, Apollo, Starbuck. You just lose the feel of the game, as well as have weird Presidents and Admirals which also takes away from the feel.

And I also agree with your second part in that there are still other ways to include those characters in the game instead of character cards. One guy on BGG already made some new 'You Are a Cylon' cards with the other revealed Cylons we have seen on the show, and yeah, there's a ton of Crisis card possibilities for stuff like Pegasus.

WARNING, WARNING, SOME SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES HERE........

Have to say I'd much rather see a new game on the same basic mechanisms and theme than an expansion to the current game. The game is well balanced and one probem with expansions is you risk throwing that balance out.

My top preference would be a game based on the Razor timeline - so Pegasus based, aiming to find/meet Galactica with a different take on characters and crisis cards. I'd rather than that an expansion. Finding 10 characters for that might be more difficult but not impossible. I could also see an Escape from Caprica game in there as well. New ideas, same concept....survival with resources.

Secondary to that if it had to be an expansion that I would be looking for new card sets or charactersets not an extra board/play area - now there I would not want extra cards to choose from, Id want say a new set of 10 characters or cards that form a new replacement deck...however the instant anyone invests time in a whole new character set and crisis card set to balance them then I think you are looking at the major core of a new game and so back to the first request

I've played enough of this game to see there is a very delicate balance, and it's hard to imagine a very substantive expansion that dosn't alter that balance. Sure, maybe there could be a few different crises, some more characters, and some more Quorum options, but other than that all I can think up would be another resource dial (don't ask me what it would represent), and honestly, four is enough.

That's the problem with building the perfect game; there's just not much to improve upon, especially when we're talking 30-odd dollars.

Personally I think you could expand the game much like Runebound. You have a reasonable spread of skill cards, but could certainly add new crisis and destinations, let alone a couple of characters. Nothing fancy. Just a new deck thrown into the system. either add it to the original or use it as another separate deck altogether.

Such an expansion should be quite cheap and not too intrusive to the original system. Don't forget the core of the game is working out who is or isn't Cylon. Haven't we found that has been the major joy of our experiences with this game?

CTuxford said:

I know I'm generally against expanding the current game. However, I've been coming around on this, and I agree that you really don't need anything fancy. Although I'm against "mixing" anything into the current crisis cards.

So let's say we expand the game to start where the first one leaves off. Start at Kobol and the new destination is Earth. Introduce a brand new crisis deck. Keep the current skill cards, cause they work well already. Introduce a couple new characters and update current character sheets (e.g. Helo's weakness should be updated, Boomer is replaced by Athena, etc etc). Introduce neutral (NPC) characters (see my earlier post using the example of Admiral Cain as a neutral character), and possibly other NPC attack ships (Pegasus).

So basically the components FF would need to give us are new character sheets/tokens, a new deck of crisis cards, rulebook, and a few other misc components. You wouldn't have to mix anything together, just play whichever game you want to play.

Let me reiterate that a Pegasus game board (as many others have suggested) would be a terrible idea because the locations to use would essentially be the same as the Galactica ones. All it would do is make Tom Zarek's weakness easier to overcome. Plus, it would be an added cost to the expansion for the Pegasus game board.

As long as the core mechanic of the Loyalty cards is held in tact, an expansion like this could work well i believe.