The sun'll come up…

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_npm_sec.asp?eidm=191&esem=1

Discuss!

Was so excited I mispoke, I meant "the sun'll come out"… but it won't be quite tomorrow.

Looks like the release is in "the third quarter of 2013." So, sometime by fall.

Dude, my heart near jumped outta my chest! I seriously don't think I've been so excited over a game. :-) Happy news, happy, happy news.

I'm so overjoyed that FFG is finally releasing the final expansion that follows the series! I can't wait to get my hands on this!!!

I am dancing the dance of joy.

So Twelve character cards, they showed us four new humans ( Hot dog, Hoshi, Romo, and Cottle) what looks to be an updated Lee, Helo, Zarek, and Baltar as well as d'anna, Simon and Doral, and Athena. I think I’d have liked a Natalie in there as well but you can’t have everything I guess. The rebel basestar and the poop sloop will be interesting and I like the idea of missions. Anything to add more options and make it harder to agree on optimal play is great in my book. There also seems to be a new cylon location overlay.

Lords of Kobal I can’t wait.

I'm pumped, can't wait for this to come!!! I'm impressed by the variety that's in this expansion. Buying the moment I can.

Just looking at what you can see on the Daybreak site, I'm really excited to put these new pieces into the game! Here are some first blush impressions:

Having the humans have to travel 10 to get to Earth - Oh wow, even longer games! I assume that there are going to be more new ways for the humans to regain resources to survive this additional distance - as opposed to simply starting with higher resources, I would hope. This may be what the Missions are about.

Assault Raptors - don't know the mechanics, but I assume they will fire multiple shots. A very nice addition and will stop all the jokes our group have had about the uselessness of the raptor pieces (not scouting, just the pieces).

New centurion pieces… eh, ok. I was fine with the cardboard.

Can't say much about the new Cylon overlay, Demetrius or Rebel basestar boards until I see them. The game description says there are two overlays, but I only see one. There's also some new board that looks like maybe its the star cluster from "The Passage" that the fleet has to navigate to make it to the Algae planet and the Temple of the Five. A mission perhaps?

It looks like the Cylon Rebel basestar board *only* comes into the game if a certain crisis card is drawn that puts it in play. If you have all the expansions, then you have a fat crisis deck, and you can imagine how often that might happen.

I'll wait to see how the Miracle tokens, Mutineer option, and Mutiny cards are rolled out before offering any thoughts.

The new skill cards look to add some fresh air into a skill deck growing a bit stale from our many plays, especially as the Green 6 and Red 6 cards get relatively little love from our players (compared to the coveted/hoarded Yellow 6 and valuable Purple 6). Same goes for the Yellow 0 and Red 0 (compared to the Green 0 and Blue 0 - with the Purple 0 being kind of love-hated). The new Yellow 4 (draw two Quorum cards) looks potentially quite overpowered for a mere skill card of 4, but maybe I overestimate. I like the new Blue 5 that can move the fleet up the jump track but maybe damage Galactica. The other new skill cards are interesting, but those stuck out. The new Treachery 4 Reckless Skill Check that sends the current player to the Sickbay seems a bit weak (esp. if the current player is a Cylon), but then all the Treachery cards have tended to seem a bit weak once humans figure out how to avoid the worst of the consequences.

First impressions of characters:

So far, cannot see the specifics on new Helo, new Zarek, Athena, Doral or Simon.

Hotdog seems like a fine but not overly exciting character. In general, people do not get *too* excited over getting more red cards, cylons perhaps excepted. It makes him a better pilot, I guess, although he only gets his extra cards when pop is lost. Kind of a perverse incentive! His really redeeming or novel quality is that his powers take up no actions or movements and can happen anytime.

Cottle seems a solid character but again not that exciting. His ability is getting more cards and then giving cards - probably repair cards - to other people. And he can maybe save a key civ ship in a pinch, if all works out the right way. He is perhaps the quintessential definition of a support character.

Romo seems fun and potentially very powerful, with a novel skill card draw - 3 yellow and 2 purple. No green! His "bad" is potentially annoying for the character, but seems manageable under most circumstances.

Hoshi seems pretty badass to me. His ability to double activate some locations and OPG to activate 3 locations is pretty powerful. His downside of losing another card to play a skill card action is probably a good offset but seems manageable. He could make a very powerful human but he would shine as an unrevealed cylon on a rampage, moving civvies into danger at rapid pace, activating vipers to go far off away from protection duty, all twice as fast as another player can recall them back. He could try to brig someone, execute someone, and steal the Presidency all in a single OPG turn!

Now, D'Anna… I don't really get this one. Her OPG is potentially awesome, to draw two SC cards! But as a Cylon Leader, her normal power is to look at a random loyalty card (the power for which hopefully has not been lost by that one Crisis card that banishes this ability for the rest of the game) and then immediately go back to the Resurrection Ship. Why? She saw the face of God and died, I guess? I suppose if already wanted to go back, it's something extra. As a power goes, it's like you have a low-grade Baltar that you can do over and over; and like Baltar's OPG, it becomes less and less meaningful over time as the cylons become obvious. If you mix in the Final Five loyalties, it could even kill her - sending her back to the Res Ship, but without her cards. This all seems odd enough, but the *really* odd thing is that for her to move out of the Res Ship once returned, she has to discard a SC card! So, either she has to burn up one of her SC cards she got as her OPG or she has to draw more SC cards just to let her leave - assuming the new Cylon location overlay has the same thing in the Res Ship allowing an SC draw. So, if D'Anna is an all-out hostile cylon, her real upside is she gets some SC cards and can maybe sow dissension by looking at loyalty cards; if she's more sympathetic to humans, she has to spend a lot of time and effort to make her singular power useful to the humans, who may not even believe her. So, I'm not sure about her.

New Baltar is hard to judge without knowing what the new Miracle tokens are about, but he definitely gets a nice makeover here and, as before, gets to play a potentially awesome and novel role in the game.

New Lee looks like a really big departure from his pilot character and a pretty all-around powerful character. His ability to give an XO and still activate a location seems pretty amazing. It could give humans three actions a turn or, as just one thought, give him the ability to move to Admiral's Quarters, give an XO to someone to do something to prove they are human and then brig them if they fail to please.

The biggest part of this all is that it's new new new, and offers so much more to freshen up the game and, I hope, extend the life an already amazingly replayable game. I'm relieved and grateful that FFG were indeed working on this expansion all along while we begged desperately for more. The frakking sneaks!

Wow. This is exciting stuff. I guess the lesson is to never lose hope. How appropriate.

Anacreon said:

If I got it right the Miracle Tokens are basicly "once per game" ability tokens, used as markers if you have used your OPG-ability or not. And there would be new game effects for losing your token without using your OPG-ability, or regaining your token after you used your OPG-ablity. That makes the new Baltar very interesting character, as he give back and take away those Miracle Tokens.

Garoth said:

I interpreted the miracle tokens the same way. Baltar's ability seems kind of lame. It seems like he's be better off comboing with Cain. Have someone scount the destination deck. Then have her use her overpowered Blind Jump. Give her a miracle token and repeat.

Anacreon said:

I think that second overlay board is for Colonial one.

Also the Cylon Rebel Basestar comes into play as a result of the new mission cards. These are skill checks but they are a new deck that is used in the new end game scenario I believe. You can see the card fan of this on the new article with the rebel basestar card as one of them. So a fat crisis deck will not affect this, and make it quite likely to turn up I imagine.

dwightsboardgame said:

Hmm. Assuming both are and remain humans, that could definitely suck the fun out of a game.

Makes me happy our group blind chooses our characters and that we house ruled the blind jump to pull from the middle of the destination deck.

Kamakaze said:

Ah, yes, I see now the Rebel basestar is a Mission card, not a crisis card. That's good. However, I do not see an overlay for Colonial One in the picture of all the playing pieces and parts. I assume you're correct, though, as it certainly makes sense.

There looks to be an overlay about the size of Colonial 1 that is an explosion…

wgerrard said:

Are you talking about the Demetrius?

dwightsboardgame said:

I think he means the board in the photo of all the pieces that is just below the rebel basestar; it's rectangular, slim, colored yellow and orange like fireballs are on it. He thinks it's Colonial One blowing up. I was proposing it was the star cluster from the episode "The Passage" where they have to fly the fleet blind to the Algae Planet. Personally, I still don't see the other overlay for Colonial One in the picture.

It's been suggested that Colonial One might be the thing behind the Demetrius here , unexploded side up. (The only other thing I can think it would be is the flip side of the Cylon location overlay, though it doesn't quite look like either of them to me.)

I think the 4-location overlay on the news page does indeed appear to be different from the 4-location overlay on the Daybreak page . I don't know what's on the flipside of either, but the "explosion board" on the Daybreak page appears much larger than either of the overlays shown. The Demetrius board appears to be wider than either the overlays or the "explosion board," which I still suspect is The Passage.

I havent even had a chance to read the article yet, way to go FFG!

You know, the more I think about it, while I really like Hot Dog mechanically I kind of think his first ability would have worked much better on Racetrack if they renamed it "Vengance". Pure thematics and far to late to change it but just a thought.

Anacreon said:

There are two overlays included in the game. (as stated in the component list)

One is the Cylon Location overlay (which we assume is similar to the pegasus one) and is clearly pictured (with the resurrection ship blown up instead of the normal resurrection ship location)

The other is colonial one. You can see it is colonial one in the banner on the Daybreak page (they have added an extra location). So the other side must be the exploded side just because they might aswell. And dont take scale into account in any of the pictures, they resize cards and things all the time to make it look interesting.

The daybreak banner especially is completely out of scale, either we have giant skill cards or the crisis cards have been shrunk down in size.

So the conclusion is that the the Colonial one overlay shown in the banner is the same as the explosion one in the other picture =)

I'm ecstatic that this expansion is being released

I've not even started playing with the Exodus expantion yet but am glad that the game will see a completion.

Still thrilled about it, kinda curious how so many mechanics will interact together since this expansion seems to be designed to work with the others, unlike Exodus which was s/b a standalone expansion and not used in combination with Pegasus. Either way I look forward to arguing (um… er, discussing) loads of new rules complications with everyone! More news soon FFG! What do the new Raptors do? I wants it now, precious!

I am so very happy to this news, so nice to see them finish up the series, and I love that we are getting the mutiny and civil war. As well as the assault raptors, and rebel basestar. It's like they were reading my frakking mind here

I'm glad they appear to be finishing off the Cylon Leaders, would love to play Simon, and would like to see that sad sack Doral. I guess we're going to get a Sharon as well, as it seemed to state we get four leaders. That would make all seven leaders if true, so nothing to complain about here.

I honestly could have done without the new coke character updates, and would have preferred more options. Hoshi and Romo were no brainers here, but Billy and Kelly could have worked as well. I personally would have preferred Racetrack to Hot Dog, what can I say, I love my raptor wranglers. And please, no comments about some characters deserve to be on more, because of the number of appearances made. Billy and Racetrack had more appearances than Ellen or Zarak or Kat. While Romo only appeared in six episodes, and that's even behind Kelly and Simon. Plus, Racetrack and Kelly both work so well with the whole Mutiny aspect, as they were actual mutineers. Maybe something along the lines of Boomer's extra draw at Sleeper, but only when playing with Mutiny. And, I know I'm going to catch Hell here, but I would have also preferred Seelix over Doc. I'm not going to argue over which was better on the show, because I love me some Cottle, and have loved the actor since he was playing Dutch on Soap in the 1970's. But, the idea of Doc as a character just doesn't work for me. I mean, the guy spent almost the entire show in the sick bay, and to me works better as the ally than a player. Heck, I was actually hoping they would make Mathias a support, but that's mostly so this old Jarhead could play a Marine in BSG. Anyway, the long and short, is more new characters would have allowed us a chance to add Hot Dog and Racetrack. As well as Kelly and Billy to keep the balance of Pilots to Politicians and Officers equal.

Who knows, this is FFG after all, so there's always hope for a simple booster type expansion to add only characters later on, as a cheaper way of keeping their product alive. Maybe I'll get my Racetrack and Billy and Seelix down the road, as well as a new version of someone who didn't get updated in here.

Anyway, over all I am extremely pleased and excited about this news, and look forward to adding this in to the mix. And, I like the new plastic Centurions, but I'm simple that way.

I would love there to be a campaign option to go through all 4 destinations in a story-evolution kind of way. Nothing in the initial announcement suggested that as likely, though, which is unfortunate… I don't know if FFG actually read these forums but it would be something I would really like.