Dan said:

The number or crisis cards cycled through highly depends on which characters are in the game. Rosyln, Boomer, and Starbuck all have abillties that allow them to cycle through the deck, and if your players like to launch scouts...

if it is a Pegasus expansion then the crisis card should be immune from player abilities. It can say so on the card. It is critical there is a chance to have Pegasus in an expansion about Pegasus. As for finding out who is a Cylon by destroying civilian ships, it seems balanced by destroying civilian ships! A Cylon could plot more to throw an innocent Admiral in the brig, so the title would hopefully devolve upon a Cylon. More paranoia isn't bad for the game! What do you think

Dan said:

I don't think the Cain crisis card should be a normal Crisis card. Call it a "Special Crisis card". That way, player abilities on putting Crisis cards at the bottom, ignoring a draw of a Crisis card, choosing the result of a Crisis card etc. can't be used

I also like the idea of Cain being a "location" with extra security, so no way for Sickbay. But normal brigging must work. OK, let's change to 3.0, I am eager and so are players!

My thoughts about dividing the cards into fourths, or fifths, to put the Cain card in the second fourth, or fifth, is because putting the PEgasus card in the second of three piles can make it very hard, if not impossible, to actually draw PEgasus.

Need to clarify the drawing of Civilain ships for teh extra resources when Pegasus appears

Should draw from reserves, then draw from destroyed ships. We are just adding to the resource wheels, not actual ships

However,I think if all ships, or too many ships, are on the board, then too bad for the himans, component limitations apply. Otherwise we see where ships are.

With the distance of 11+ a jump, the fact that Pegasus is worth 1 distance, and an average jump of 2, it means Pegasus is "worth" one extra jump cycle. You do get a lot of resources, enough to endure the extra pounding the Cylons will give through a jump cycle. You also get Pegasus, the least she can do is be a punching bag so she gets damage and not Galactica, and at best she is a very good "Battle" battlestar.

I don't want a longer game, and I want to play with PEgasus. How about

1. dropping the one distance on the Pegasus card or adding one distance to the jump needed. That can be done i the rules, not on the card

2. Dividing the deck in fourths, or fifths, and putting the Special crisis card in the second pile. I worry if divided into 3, you can not get to Pegasus. That is 23-46 cards, a lot actually

3. Reduce the bonus from civilian ships, maybe even draw 2 ships plus the automatic 1 food and fuel.

I am just trying to see, big picture, what is Pegasus "worth" She is "worth" one more jump cycle. Is she overpowered, considering everything, for one jump cycle. i don't know if the solution is to add to jump distance considerably, or just reduce what resources she brings.

Tactics for Cylons change to hitting Galactica earlier, and take Pegasus out ASAP

What do you think about my points?

Whoah! So much feedback! Thanks, thanks and thanks again! Looking forward to the first session reports.

I'll take a big sheet of paper and start writing down all the feedback and see, how to streamline the expansion. Hopefully, 0.3v will be out tonight.

Dan said:

Correction. The Jump track is set back to the start when Pegasus is found. She is worth possibly an extra jump cycle because of that. Good job to the designer, mea culpa from me

Revealing as a CYLON should also get the Cain location Special Crisis discarded. Basically anything that changes the Admiral

CaptNeo said:

I'll keep an eye out for v 0.3 today. I plan on getting people together to play it tomorrow. I'm gonna toss it in as a surprise card. hehe. Should I worry about the Pegasus locations changing today? I made a nice print out last night of it, so I'll probably not do another one and just mod this one until you hit 1.0.

So here it is, v0.3. What's new? What's changed?

• A New Destination Card to replace "Kobol" after the discovery of the Pegasus
• Streamlined some of the unclear stuff e.g. what to do with "Briefing Room removed" civilian ships and such
• Put Pegasus in the second quarter of the Crisis deck
• Stripped the Pegasus Destination Card of its 1 Desitance
• Completely reworked the "Admiral Cain" crisis to reflect our discussion

All in all nothing revolutionary and only moderate changes.

There are some comments/suggestions, I'd like to address that I thought about, but did not include

1. A Special Status for the Admiral Cain Crisis Card: I dont think this would be fair to the Cylons. The Cylons should be able to prevent the two ships from joining forces. Then you will still have a regular and balanced game. If a group really wants to have the Pegasus in game guarantied, the players may choose to simply make Pegasus appear at a previously agreed point in the game (e.g. after the sleeper phase, the first cylon reveals himself, the fisr resource turns red...)
2. Make the expansion "time neutral": Hmmm would be nice, on the other hand most expansions result in a longer playing time.

One request though: Could someone send me the exact text from the English Kobol Destination Card? Again I had to do a German-English back translation which for natural speakers will be entertaining at best.

Just as a warning: I'll probably not be able to continue updates every other day or so (various reasons). Also it will take some time till my new group is ready to take on the expansion (first vanilla game tomorrow), so it will take some time till I will have the opportuity to test the expansion myself vs. "real" people.

So if I have not missed something terrible, I'll gather feedback for the rest of the week and then do the bugfixing for the next release.

Thanks a lot again for your friendly support and constructive criticism.

Something big

a)The 3.0 Pegasus card says draw 4 civilian ships, the rules say 3 ships. The card should reflect the rules, no?

-If there are not enough civilian ships in reserves for the resources Pegasus gives, does that mean you can take some from destroyed ships

to look at, or are the humans out of luck? More encouragement to the Cylons to destroy human ships? What is your intention, both can be argued.

Something small:

Spelling: New Caprica- "Excecute" should read "Execute"

Looks really good. Thanks for the work. I think now it is a case of numbers, how many civilian ships, how far a distance etc. The rules are nice, and it looks good

Thanks a lot, that of course was a very irritating mistake, hotfixed it, v0.31 online.

Regarding the Civilian Ships: If there aint any left, the humans whine, the cylons smile.

Excellent update. So if I understand correctly, Kobol stays in play until admiral cains crisis is pulled. at that point Kobol is replaced with New Caprica and at that point the game moves to an 11 point game?

I hope that that is so. That means when I test it on some friends in the next couple days I can keep it a secret until they stumble across it.

I understand that when playing with the Pegasus expansion, it becomes an 11 destination game from the beginning. Good question

Just read the rules. yes it substitutes, you start wth Kobol, then sub with New Caprica if Pegasus revealed

Yeah, that's what I was able to assertain from the rules as well. I'm just the unsure type who double checks everything. :-p

It'll be nice to see everyones reactions tomorrow.

I haven't gotten as many games under my belt as a lot of these other forum peeps, but it seems to me that if an expansions is going to be used, it should b in the game almost guaranteed. I only skimmed some of these posts, but the one that stuck out was a Scout, or Boomer etc shuffling the neccesary crisis card to the bottom.

Most expansions (Like those for a Game of Thrones) use altered rules to take into account the changes to the game. Howeve, it's not left up to chance, or a cylon wanting to bury the card on whether or not the expansion ruleset is used. Has any thought been given to mayb increasing the distance the human have to jump, but making the Pegasus a "discovery" somewhere along the line? Maybe, for example, distance 4 now leads to the Pegasus (and the Cain crisis card, I really like that idea), distance 6 is the new sleeper phase, and the humans win at distance 12?

Like I said, maybe someone already broached this point, but just a thought.

VerdatPagan said:

Yes, that seems to be the next larger issue. Over the weekend I hope we found a nice way to solve the strange "Admiral goes to Prison, but not real Prison" paradox and I'm really glad about how the current "Admiral Cain" Crisis looks right now. It seems to me, that the timing of that criis is the next big thing to get right. Maybe I have underestimated that until now. But obviously the "put it somewhere" rule is not very satisfying.

So let's wait and hear what Armorken has to report after his session. Good Luck and Have Fun!

In the mean time I'm open to suggestions for resolving the timing issue. Even if that broke my heart, an elegant soloution might make a Crisis Card "Admiral Cain" obsolete. Right now the main trouble is, that e.g. a Roslin Cylon can practically eliminate Pegasus from the game. My original idea was to do something like the "Stage 3" card from Power Grid. But obviously in Power Grid the Power Plant deck never gets manipulated directly by the players, but the game's "bureaucracy" mechanic. So maybe it is not the wisest of choices to make the pivitoal component of the expansion a Crisis Card.

Fresh ideas welcomed.

How about two versions, if you can do it? One with the Cain Crisis card being drawn from the deck, as now Then it's partly a choice to have Pegasus. The other way would be to say at the start we play to 11(or 12 whatever) distance to New Caprica, and on the New CApirca card, put 4 distance for the Sleeper phase, 6 for Pegasus, 11 or 12 to win. When the distance is travelled, the Cain crisis comes out, Pegasus found etc. that lets people who want a guarantee have it, and people who want to choose have it.

it means Pegasus can't be ignored, game balance issues. But it isn't alwys that the Cylon is against Pegasus. If the humans are at 8 distance no big problems, the Cylon wants to increase the distance. Even more so if he has destroyed a lot of civlilian ships

The only change I see is to make a change to the New Caprica card, and say in advance we're going to NEw Capirca, take out Kobol from teh start. This gives teo ways to play, and minor changes to do it. Opinions?

Finally.... It looks like I'll be playtesting tonight. I'm soooooo stoked.

I'm gonna write a report as we play and post it here by end of night.

Wish me luck!

Report

We played, were at distance of 11, 5 population so a safe jump, but were broken on Morale. We had a really good time, used "unidentified ship" Crisis card to be what we use for Cain

Thoughts from my players

We might need more fuel or morale with the arrival of Pegasus. I don't know about fuel yet, but players should know that you have to manage fuel more than in the normal game. You can, in the normal game, go to 8 distance with 3 cards at highest fuel cost and still have one fuel left over, fine if you don't lose a fuel. But you can't go "hardest and fastest" with 11 distance and 9 fuel with Pegasus. Look for extra fuel from most of the "1" distance, or manage with the lower fuel "3s" and "2s". Easiest and fastest Pegasus 11 distance leaves 3 fuel left over. The game changes significantly with Pegasus, as a good expansion should. Think more about fuel management. I am not certain an extra fuel is necessary yet, it of course would be nice for the humans

Must say having that extra Battlestar very good for battles. Galactica was never damaged because Pegasus was a punching bag, rules require Pegasus to be fired upon over Galactica when beside or in a Basestar area. Pegasus took hits, but not destroyed, damage repaired. Good fighting 2 Basestars with two BAttlestars!

What I think would be an improvement, as this is a work in progess, is to drop one of the 3 civilian ships and in exchange get a morale. Thematically, it works that morale would go up when the humans get another Battlestar. Mechanically, the problem with the resources gained from 3 civilian ships is that they are overwhelmingly population. 12 ships, of which 2 are blank, 1 has a morale (and a pop), 1 has a fuel (and a pop), and the others are 1, possibly 2 pop each. Dropping a ship and getting a guaranteed "rare from ships" resource would make sense thematically and mechanically. I will playtest more before I conclusively say an extra fuel is needed at the price of giving up a ship. But at least a morale. Opinions?

Question: "Heavy Assault" says Galactica is attacked, but there was no way to reference other Battlestars in the original rules. The expansion rules say Pegasus must be attacked if beside or in same space as a Basestar. We said PEgasus had to be attacked. i am comfortable with that. opinons?

Sounds like it went fine. From a thematic meets gameplay standpoint, the Humans should probably get the morale boost you described. In addition, maybe giving them a single fuel as well (Pegasus had to have some stocked away also) would fit, but it's a matter of playtesting it.

I can't remember the name of the season premier when they got everyone off of New Caprica, but it showed just how much ass a Battlestar can kick. Pegasus took 3 down with ehr if I recall correctly. So to answer your question abou thematics, I think it's fine Pegasus got attcked in reference to that crisis card.

Glad you guys had fun with the expansion. I think we should then go and make it that one morale instead of one civ ship. I'll see what I can do over the weekend.

Just got back from my playtest. Dan, you had it easy.

4 players. Ben (pres) - Roslin, tommy - Starbuck, andy (adm) - tigh and myself as tyrol.

Problems here. Ben always is the cylon. No matter how hard we will it, every game since the day we got it, he's been the cylon. He laid waste to us, dropping us into the red on everything but morale before our first jump. We also had 5 (no lie) centurions on the boarding party track. I had to remind him that we were trying to playtest this and would prefer to not have to restart before we even got to the card. Ben plays for wins and acted it out, but silently backed down. We finally got cain out (we also used Unidentified Ship) during the downtime after our first jump. Everything played out fine and the bonus resources helped.

Civi ships pulled - 1 blank, 1 pop, and 2 pop. i think I like the idea of gaining 1 morale and one less civi ship. Most of the civi ships give pop so I think its not to bad a deal.

Sadly though, we were really dead before pegasus even came out, but we ran with it for a while. Ben ran us down to 1 food and in the red for all our other supplies. We did get a few rounds out. Probably 4 full rounds with pegasus on the board. We only made it to 2 on the jump counter. :-(

Cylon location - Human Fleet - Action: Look at any player's hand and steal 1 Skill Card (place it in your hand). Then roll a die, and if a 5 or higher, damage Galactica. With Pegasus on board, can this be an either/or for Pegasus? Myself and the rest of the group agree.

The group overall felt it was a nice random encounter that was well rounded and brought something new to the table. Ben and Andy felt that Pegasus could get too strong if gotten too early in the game, but it all depends on how the game is played to that point and how sneaky the Cylon player is.

Anyone have any differential game questions?