I'm playing a game tonight and was hoping someone could offer their opinion in time.

We like the surprise factor of the Cylon Attack cards, but like the more agreesive Cylon Fleet option. Would it not work to include both using the following rules:

1) Cylon Attack Cards take precedence, so whatever ships are on the Fleet board fill up requirements on the attack cards.

2) If Cylon Attack cards do not appear in a while the fleet acts as normal

3) Once a Cylon reveals himself Cylon Attack cards are ignored and the Cylon(s) may play the fleet behind a screen to keep the element of surprise (this would obvously require player trust)

Any thoughts?

No reply yet… hmmm….

My real thought is "Why?"…. are you Cylon's that weak? haha.

Maybe if a cylon attack card comes up, you deploy ships as listed only FROM the Cylon fleet board… so if there is no ship in "zone 3" it does not delpoy? Is that what you mean?

Not really sure what "problem" it's designed to fix, or is it just a variant for the sake of variant?

If I had a problem of the humans winning too much, I would consider reintegrating 33 and Scar, with 33 seeded in the top (to be determined)% of the cards to make things a little bit harder and because I liked those cards.

I'd probably seed 33 so it occurs around the first jump based on the average frequency of prepare for jump, +/- 50%. I'd seed Scar twice as far in.

But as you point out, right now it's not necessary.

We do actually use Scar with the CF. The chances of drawing the card are pretty slim, but we really like the thematic element. House-ruled it to something like he is placed on the board but not counted as a Raider but you activate both Scar and the CF at the same time when the icon shows up. We nerfed him a bit though, cant quite remember the rule right now.

Hi

I think mixing up the two styles of play would be a mistake.

The fleet cards represent the first two seasons when the colonials were on tender hooks waiting for the Cylons to show up, weeks of quiet then BAM! cylons every where, jump the fleet quick - desparate anxiety ensues while the Nukes are rev'd up. The core game delivers this brilliantly.

The exodus expansion gives the season 3 and 4 feeling where the Cylons were one step behind or in front of the colonials and often worked together. The Cylon Fleet Board option does this perfectly also.

I feel that if you combine these two radically different themes of BSG you'll utimately achieve the opposite of what the games is designed to deliver. You'll lessen the impact of both options and weaken the game experience. By keeping them separate you'll always have two different games within one game.

This is definately one of those games where the expansions are not fully integated into the base game but should be used to add options to your evenings game

what you could do to increase the chance of a cylon batttle, (currently 1 in 10 chance, higher if 33 comes up) is this: randomly remove 10 to 20 non- cylon fleet crisis cards from the deck then shuffle.