According to the rules and FAQ, when playing the core game or Pegasus, if Boomer is a cylon and reveals before the sleeper stage, she still takes TWO loyalty cards at the half and (can/does pass) them off to one person. However, according to the FAQ, when playing Exodus, if Boomer is a cylon and reveals before the sleeper stage, then she takes just ONE loyalty card to hand off. In Exodus, you always have one card left over; thus, it would seem that if Boomer takes just one of the two cards she was originally expecting to take, it leaves now two cards behind in the remaining "loyalty deck." This seems odd to me and a very bad thing for the cylons to have that much chance for one of their cards to go unselected (executions notwithstanding).

From the FAQ:

Q: How many loyalty cards does Boomer get in the sleeper-agent phase if she is a revealed Cylon at that time?
A: (Corey, FFG, to Orphius ): Boomer would still receive 2 cards during the Sleeper phase. (This makes Boomer the only character whose drawback still partly functions after revealing. Corey's decision was on the base game, but it also holds for Pegasus. Note that an earlier ruling of Corey said that she would receive only one, but he changed his mind. Also note that if the Exodus expansion is used, the Exodus rulebook specifies that she draws only one. In the Exodus rules, however, the loyalty deck never empties.)

I don't get that last part about Exodus. Thoughts?

With the expansions yes the loyalty deck would see 2 cards remainign however cylons have the option of tryign to execute humans to try and turn one into a cylon by forcing them to draw from the remaining loyalty deck. ALso if boomer is an unrevealed start of game cylon she has the option to hold off and make sure the additional loyalty cards come into play (getting her another 2 and increasing the chance of the cylon being out there and/or her getting the 2nd cylon card and being able to select a powerful player.

All situational depending how the game has started to play out

That seems crazy to me. The upshot is that if you're Boomer and you're the Cylon from the start, then you should stay hidden and sit on your hands - which doesn't even guarantee you won't get discovered - and then end up in the brig at the sleeper stage *just* so you can give away your two cards and not leave two cards in the loyalty deck? End up in the brig, helpless, trying to convince people to let you out by *still* laying low and not being cylon-bad, as the time to kill the humans dwindes away to nothing, and no one trusts you anyway because you got dealt two cards? And if you're in the brig and decide to just come out, you don't even get your reveal power? Seems severely weak on all fronts.

Doctor, it hurts when I do this…. Well, don't do that!

The answer is - don't play Boomer!

Unrevealed, and even in the brig, she has the scout ability which is hard to detect. You can do lots of damage just with that. Then just put weak cards in the vote… maybe screw them near the sleeper jump.

You can consider your reveal ability… Boomer ends up brigged anyway… so maybe its worth revealing early and getting the ability off, even if it costs a card.

In Exodus, you ALWAYS have a dangling card. So, you have two. You have doubled the small chance that cylon card stays out. In a 3 players game, it doesn't matter (only one cylon!), in a 5 player game, its 20% chance the card is in there… (right?) instead of 10%… but no one knows! 6 players with Baltar its some crazy number even then smartest computer can't gues… (1 in 13 vs 2 in 13? 15%?) Games HAVE BEEN LOST by humans who are sure the cylon card is out and someone is an evil cylon when the "lone" card was the other cylon… so… meh.

Just ending up in the brig is sucky.

Well, I'd prefer someting other than "don't choose Boomer." (Heck, we already have "don't choose Anders.")

If the rules aren't very good, you change the rules. That's why people house rule things. Seems better than throwing out a character, altogether. Of course, if you have disagreements over whether the rules are or aren't good/bad, well, then you argue that first. I suppose our group might end up house ruling this. I'm not sure how the group feels. I only know how *I* feel.

Also, our group almost exclusively blind draws our characters nowadays. All the pilots in one group, the politicians in another, etc. We draw from a pile, then no one can draw frm that pile until the other major piles are chosen, etc. as with the rules. This keeps us playing characters we might not choose. Also, people take too **** long to choose on their own. Plus, people get sore when someone takes their favorite character. Anyway, Boomer gets picked as much as anyone else and, generally we all liked her. I liked her. But this FAQ ruling seemed to make her much less of a good pick.

Also, we get a not-inconsiderable number of games where the last loyalty card IS the cylon card. It's almost an auto-fail for the cylon. We've strongly considered going bad to the pre-Exodus card structure.

I was browsing the rules trying to find "another reading" but I don't see it.

Boomer is considered a powerful character, and so she has some big downsides. As far as having to pick random and getting sucky-side-effect charactesr, we could throw Roslyn into the mix!

If some numbers comfort you, in a 5 plays game with Sharon and no Baltar, the odds of Sharon being a Cylon in the first half AND a Cylon card being in one of the last TWO cards, assuming she is revealed by sleeper and no executions occur, I figured to be about 1.5%….. twice in 300 games. Pulling random pilots, cut that in half, or more?

So, it should not come up much, BUT.. if you are worried that it will, and that when it does you will want to reveal pre-sleeper… you could house rule that she still gets the card and hands it off… and there is a good chance it will never come up! haha. Unless you are playing ALOT of BSG.

Also, now that you make me think about it, it does seem a bit odd of a special rule… if Sharon DOESNT stay hidden and use her cool scout ability and other means to sabotage the humans (a big help to the cylon team), then she run the risk of being the lone cylon and having a harder time? So, maybe yes, bad rule.

I agree with your points, but disagree with your math. I could be wrong but I believe given 5 players, no executions, no Baltar, etc., there are 12 loyalty cards (2*5 players + 1 Boomer + 1 extra).

Boomer has 1 cylon card, so there are 11 cards remaining. The odds of a cylon card getting left behind go up from 9.1% (1/11) to 18.2% (2/11).

At the start of the game, the odds of Boomer getting a cylon card is 16.7% (2/12). Combine this with the odds of a cylon card getting left behind and we get 3.03%, or 3 times in 100 games.

Note: With your 1.5%, I believe you meant 3 times in 200 games, not 2 times in 300 games.

Anacreon said:

I'm a little confused by the post - was Corey's answer just the italicized part above or did it include the parentheized part too? Since this isnt in the official FAQ then I'm guessing its just listed in the unofficial BGG FAQ and I assume just the italicized part was his answer and the rest of the text was added by whoever posted it, so the last two sentences in parentheses were an attempt to clarify his answer that ultimately didnt really help. - i.e. ignore everything in that post except the italicized part, and since Corey stated that she gets 2 cards, based on Exodus pages 7 & 8:

Boomer is executed before the Sleeper Phase; there are currently 2 extra loyalty cards in the deck since you added an extra one when someone chose Boomer, so either
1. She is Human, reveals her Loyalty card, chooses a new character, adds another Loyalty card to the deck and then immediately draws a 2nd Loyalty card; there are still 2 extra Loyalty cards in the deck, and she draws an extra card at Sleeper, giving her 4 cards total and and leaving 1 extra card in Loyalty deck.
2. She is Cylon, reveals her Loyalty card, goes to Resurrection, then when Sleeper hits, per Corey's ruling she draws an extra card at Sleeper, giving her 3 cards total and and leaving 1 extra card in Loyalty deck.

Either way there is only 1 extra Loyalty card in the deck not 2 extra cards, right? Hopefully my post makes sense, I realize its not particularly well written.

Yes, this is the unofficial FAQ on BGG using Corey's words in italics as the "official" response and the non-italics is unofficial addition meant to expand or clarify - but again, I agree, it really doesn't help but just makes it harder to understand. Namely, the statement "Also note that if the Exodus expansion is used, the Exodus rulebook specifies that she draws only one." As I said above, this last part is what throws me. I haven't found that statement in the Exodus rules, myself, and was taking it for granted the writer as correct and that this statement was *somewhere* and that, if so, would therefore overrule any FAQ clarification (although for Exodus only, I guess - although I still wouldn't understand why).

In other words… regardless of whether the reveal is by Execution or Boomer's choice, if revealed before the half, she should *still* get two cards at the sleeper stage. And this should happen, in my opinion, in all variants (core, Pegasus, and Exodus).

Skowza said:

The ruling in question came out Pre-Exodous (Pegasus, I believe), thus the parenthetical comments… that in Exodus, the Sharon Rule was spelled out after this Corey Comment had been made.

So, an extra card is put in due to Sharon being Chosen, but page 9 (Exodus) states:

In addition, all of the abilities listed on a revealed Cylon
player’s character sheet are ignored. This rule means that if
Sharon “Boomer” Valerii has been revealed as a Cylon before
the Sleeper phase, her player is given only one Loyalty Card
during the Sleeper phase, rather than the two Loyalty Cards
she would have received if she had not revealed her character
to be a Cylon. The unused Loyalty Card remains in the Loyalty
deck and may be dealt out as a result of an execution.

Thanks, Mephisto, for the precise language in the Exodus rulebook. That answers that piece for me. I still think it's a bad rule, for all the reasons I've stated above. Consider that the situation would suggest Boomer would be a cylon trying to get people executed in order to force a new loyalty card draw, she's unlikely to be either President or Admiral, the two people with the greatest power to execute someone unilaterally.

Re: dwightsboardgame and my bad math…

Yep… I was wrong-ish.

It's all statistics, and it gets complicated, so I went to Excel and layed it all out.

Fyi, its not 1/12+1/11… its 1/12 plus 11/12*1/11, which is also 1/12+1/12. I hate statistics!

Pre-game, 5 character, 1 Sharon, No Baltar, no executions etc, The odds of the last card being a "Cylon" card are 1/12*2, or 16.6667%.

The odds Sharon gets a Cylon card in the first round are the same, 16.6667%

The odds Sharon gets a Cylon card in the first round and a you are not a cylon cards is in one of the last 2 spots, is 1/12 * 2/11 = 3.0303%

The odds that if Sharon already HAS a cylon card in the first round, that the remaining card is in the last 2 spots, is 2/11 = 18.1818%

So, maybe they:

Didn't realize this was possibly a penalty,

Meant for it to be a penalty for not waiting until pre-sleeper (and being in brig) since she as a strong special ability,

Are just trying to re-enforce that once you are a cylong your human stuff doesn't matter,

Forgot about Corey's early ruling and the reasons for it.

Again, it seems like such a rarity for it to happen in real life. You have to have a Sharon, she has to reveal first half, there need to be no executions, etc. I would not sweat it, and go by the basic rules… 2 card in the kitty, more drama. If you are Sharon, consider the risks, and realize you may have to get some people executed, or get the group REALLY paranoid. Unless my reveal power was cool and good time to use, I would just reveal from the brig!