Thankfully that's just a tip and not a rule. To be forced to play like the way you are arguing for would make the game stupid and pointless. Just shuffle up the loyalty, cards deal em face up and whoever gets the cylon cards wins cause everybody is gonna playing the same way; trying to sabotage themselves. It is TOTALLY playing as a cylon before you get the cylon card.

If you wanna play like that, that's up to you. I prefer to play it straight and if I win as a cylon I won for real, not cause everybody else was playing to be a cylon and I got lucky enough to get the card.

I find it hard to believe they would include such a ridiculous tip in their rule book. Hopefully that knucklehead is off the staff.

napoleon

That's such a ridiculous straw man. All Quit's saying is that you should play so as to increase your individual chances of winning. You're the one who says that the "sportsmanlike" way to play is to do your absolute best for a team that you might not actually be a member of. The one who's really sabotaging her team is sleeper agent Cain who jumps the fleet as early as she can; "oh why wait to find out what team I'm on?...I'll just use up all my abilities now to help the humans as much as possibly can; after all, I'm not a cylon yet ." That is throwing the game.

But even if you think that the rulebook is wrong, that some maverick writer somehow tricked the designers by sneaking in advice that was contrary to the spirit of the game (as understood by them, you, and nobody else I've ever heard of) without anyone noticing, why did the designers go on to further develop this very tension between individual and team interests in the Ionian Nebula endgame? Hell, why did they even include the sleeper agent phase at all? On your way of telling things, the only purpose of the sleeper agent phase is to arbitrarily ruin a cylon's chances half the time.

It is not based on an individual winning.. You win or loose with the team. If you don't play for your team you are sabotaging it.

I don't know too much about the Ionian nebula part. The sleeper agent is for adding some tension, not to give an excuse to throw the game to the side you want to win. Playing like that leads to near cylon run aways because EVERYBODY is going to be playing this selfish silly way. We could play right now like that....just random 1-7....3 and 5 is are the cylons...if you get a 3 or 5 you win. otherwise you are human and have been sabotaged to loose.

However, sub...I love your description... "maverick writer somehow tricked the designers by sneaking in advice that was contrary to the spirit of the game". I think maybe that is Exactly what happened with that kind of tip being thrown in. Incentivizing intentionally loosing ( which is what you did if you end up human at the sleeper phase) is absurd.

Like I said,..if you are good to play that way okay. Just shuffle up and deal.

napoleon

Playing like that leads to near cylon run aways because EVERYBODY is going to be playing this selfish silly way.

Well, there's a very easy way to test whether what you're saying has any truth at all to it. Someone should play our way and then report back as to whether the cylons dominated.

...Fortunately I took the liberty of playing a few dozen games with a group that uses that approach. The humans have always done just fine.

So, now that we've put that concern to rest, I still don't understand why "winning or losing with your team" implies that sleeper agent cylons should spend the first four distance trying to make the other team win . Seems to me that if you want to win with your team, then you should help your actual team, not the team that you spent the first half of the game mistakenly assuming you'd be on.

Napoleon, no one is saying to intentionally fail skill checks, for the admiral to short jump the fleet, or anything else that would actually hurt the humans. What most people mean by "Don't play pure human" is to reserve your OPG, to keep your title, and to conserve and if possible buff your hand. None of these plays are sub optimal or anti-human. If anything they help humanity since once you have the full complement of active cylons running around is when you'll probably need the big guns anyway.

Strengthening your powerbase during the first half of the game is important. Either it will let you sabotage if you become a cylon, or counter the cylons once they are active and becoming more aggressive as the timer ticks down.

Strengthening your powerbase during the first half of the game is important. Either it will let you sabotage if you become a cylon, or counter the cylons once they are active and becoming more aggressive as the timer ticks down.

also the more tricks you have up your sleeve the fewer tricks

1-Are in other humans hands who may turn cylon

2-are secret from the other players and may cause cylons to mis-target their attacks (eg they may try and hammer morale if it is looking a *little* low whilst you still have a hand full of speeches, and major victories and actually have few worries in that area)

Wow...ok....we got a full game here...lets shuffle up and deal...

Wow...ok....we got a full game here...lets shuffle up and deal...

Great idea, but let's hope both YAAC cards are in the sleeper deck.

Bah...don't need it. We are just all playing as cylons so don't need a sleeper phase. We can streamline it and get

more games in,..woohoo.

Funny enough, I asked this sort of question almost a year ago:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/73548-do-you-hold-back-until-after-sleeper-phase/

There's a reason why I only play vanilla BSG game, well there's two, but one main one. You guys have touched on it, but I don't think anyone has outright said it.

It's all about the metagame of your group and how well your group handles Cylons.

My group, much to my dismay, doesn't play that often so we haven't worked out all our bluffing tricks and tells (I only have 4 games under my belt, to be honest). I opt to not include any other expansion yet because right now humans have a 50% win percentage and adding even one part of an expansion would tip the game too far in either direction. My group is also having fun. I actually have to tone down how I play because I've poured through these boards and BBG's boards and I'm way too optimized for my group; the rest of my group can't keep up and I end up trouncing the opposition. Once we work out our kinks and whatnot, I'll consider adding 1-2 parts of the expansions to bring in something new.

From what I infer from your posts, Napoleon's group has to play humans to the hilt because his group's Cylons would win every time otherwise. Quit's group has to keep things held back a little or else the humans will have too far a lead after the sleeper phase. Doesn't mean one group is better than the other - both group probably have roughly equal win/loss ratios - just that you're tailoring the game to your group's style of play.

The other reason why I hold back on the expansions is some of my players haven't finished watching the series.

Bah...don't need it. We are just all playing as cylons so don't need a sleeper phase. We can streamline it and get

more games in,..woohoo.

Except it's not playing as cylons. It's ensuring that you can be the biggest asset to your team, whichever team that is, possible once who's who is settled. If it was a sure fire cylon win then why would anyone ever do it?

Running stats doesn't tell ya, "how it goes down in the streets", so to speak

Human players have no reason to lie. If they keep saying they can't help in votes or can help alittle but, would have to give up

the xo to help there is a problem. Purple cards themselves stink. The primary card is launch scout. Usually there is something else that has to get done, (especially with the mutiny cards, or agenda loyalty cards now) that the launch scout is only played if you have really nothing else to do.

Launch scout? Allows you to go through fewer jump cycles overall, and there is opportunity to play them sometimes in almost every game. Certainly more useful than CPs from yellow.

Strategic Planning? Allows you to use FTL with less risk, or choose a roll choice on codex, or plan shots on cylon/human ships.

Trust Insticts? Crisis/SC with 4+ positive colors, or if destiny is more likely to be positive than not (that is, if you actually keep track of it). About as situational as Red Tape.

The list goes on. Sorry, but if you can't see any worthwile use for tatics cards, you're doing something wrong.

The baltar taking tokens is actually less of a threat because the idea would be Baltar doesnt build up tons he just grabs one and runs it over to Cain. At that point there isnt much else he can do. The second he grabs a token and doesnt give it to Flush he gets a trip to jail. He would probably just run over and steel Flush's token, that would be about the best he could do as a reveal barring circumstances.

If you do everything as you just described, this is what happens:

Baltar grabs a miracle token, (if you XO him again to give it to Cain he grabs another token), you try to brig him (you waste an action, you waste skillcards AND you allow Baltar to use his reveal action from the brig). Might easily be much worse if you try to XO the president to shuffle through quorum deck since you might not get it even within 5 turns.

For the very start of the game, that's a pretty good reveal overall.

Played a base game last Friday. As much as I suggested we needed to scout, there was always something more important to take care of. We did have Boomer and Roslin in our group, however, and I feel that lessened our need to scout. Still, I thought it was funny after the fact. :-)

To answer to the original question (because I believe I never did that):

Madam flush and Cultar working together to blind jump 3 times is very broken.

I recently had a game with 2 blind jumps from Cain (without Cultar, just because she gained a second miracle token some other way) and even that was broken.