ackmondual
United States
Virginia
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pre-game
Turn flow goes clockwise order in the order as presented
p1: me - Sir Gareth (purple) - Draw 1 White card every time you succesfully complete a Move during you Heroic Action phase.
p2: Sir Gawain (green) - draw 3 cards at Camelot instead of just 2
p3: Sir Geraint (white) - During the Progression of Evil you may discard 2 White cards in lieu of doing an Evil Action.
p4: Sir Galahad (yellow) - play 1 special white card for free
p5: ?? (black) - either Palamedes (+1 life point when you’re on a victorious quest) or Lamorak (Any time you are about to lose 1 Life point, you may choose to discard 2 White cards instead).
p6: Sir Owain (blue) - When fighting a Siege Engine, roll the 8-sided die before playing your cards
So we had everyone except for Merlin (being used as a playable character, not the figure that follows you along), Arthur (red), and Bedivere/Caradoc (orange)
P2 was new to the game. The game owner spent 15 minutes explaining the basics. The rest we could just fill him in as we went along.
One person requested that we NOT play with a traitor. He was a Pandemic fan, but this game was played at that venue a several times before, and the traitor has always won. In some cases, by a longshot. We’ve agreed that loyalty cards won’t be handed out until after 2 rounds of play. It turns out that rule about NOT looking at your loyalty cards until 6 swords or 6 siege engines were out was only official for 3p games, and a variant to be used if the loyal knights were having a difficult time winning the game.
Game hilights
EARLY GAME
--We got slammed by a lot of Despairs and Excaliburs early on. What did NOT come up often early on were Picts and Saxons. Normally, you’d expect some of the quests to go to hell eventually, but the Grail Excalibur quests got there quicker than usual from the relative lack of even spread across the bad quests.
--I stayed in Camelot for a couple of turns drawing white cards. White cards = options, which was always a good thing. It would turn out that I my place among the group would be stemming damage from losing the Excalibur quest
PLUS TRAITOR, EARLY ON
--After 2 rounds, loyalty cards were dealt out. I was the traitor. There’s always a bit slight uneasiness when I become the hidden traitor in any game. One can no longer rely on others anymore. However, I have played SOC the base game many times. Several with the Sir Bedivere add-on, and at least several more with MC expansion, so I didn’t feel completely out of my league. It was mostly psychological.
--Excalibur quest was constantly 1 to 3 away from being lost. I traveled there, but the Travel deck forced me to discard a pair of fight cards, else, we would gain a black sword. Is it worth building up the trust of the loyal knights so I could use it against them later on? “No”. A black sword is too good of a thing for me to pass up. Rather than saying “nope, I won’t do it”, I remembered the rule in the base game that when you heal by discarding 3 identical cards, fight cards done this way MUST be identical in value. Furthermore, these still has to be discarded face down, so it was player’s honor that they were following that rule. I could do the opposite here. I asked if they had to be identical pair of fight cards, even though I had two 1s, and challenged the ruling that they had to to appear frustrated. No cigar. That went well 
--Then AT Excalibur, it was in danger of being lost by one. I figured I could build up some trust, so I did the “right thing” and discarded a card. I figured I could just discard crap and hold on to the good cards, including a 4 and 5 fight card, Merlin cards, and Truce and just not use them.
PLUS TRAITOR, LATER ON
Sword/seige situation...
--We got our 1st white sword from winning the Black Knight quest. 2nd from the Saxon/Picts. 3rd from completing the Black Knight, and 4th from Lancelot’s Armor quest.
--We got the 1st black sword from me pretending I wasn’t able to play 2 identical fight cards to keep us from gaining a black sword, a 2nd and 3rd black sword from losing the Pict/Saxon quests (once each), 4th from the Black Knight. 5th will be from when they successfully accuse me.
--10 seige engines.
For my very last few turns of the game I spent 2 turns playing dumb and innocent and contributed to the Excalibur quest. Problem was, at this point, they had a foundation of 5-5, 4-4-4, and 3 fight cards on the Dragon Quest, while there were only 2 black cards on there (one of them face up was 11). At this rate, they had a good chance of finishing the Dragon quest. Since Heroism was on it, it would give them 3 white swords for 7 white vs 5 black for game end and the win. I can’t wait around for a miracle, so for my 3rd turn (towards the end), I showed my true colors. I added a 11th siege engine, and played a special white card that move Merlin away from the Dragon Quest. When it came back to my turn again, Excalibur has since then been moved towards and away the good direction that it was still one away from failing. I taunted, took my chances, and was able to draw Excalibur off the top. Game over, as 7 black swords is enough to end the game. You don’t even need to play till 12+ in that case. interestingly enough, someone pointed out that with Excalibur, there was a 2-way arrow between the last spot and the 2nd to last spot for the Excalibur figure, but the last spot still means the quest is lost, so it wouldn't be coming back anyways. I figured it's the same reason you have 12 siege engines and 4 picts and saxons even though the last one causes the quests to fail and either reset or end the game.
Post game
--Game took about 2.5 hours.
--We went through the entire travel deck and had to shuffle it. I noticed afterwards that Captured never came out. I’m guessing the game owner deliberately left it out due to the fact it can be an un-fun and exceptionally nasty card.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but for me, I need some prescription lenses for those. It’s reaching 30/20-ish. I knew that odds that drawing the Fate card was rare, but I still held on to that hope anyways. It was pointed out that I could have just continued to play innocent and dumb, as even with a score of 7 white to 5 black sword count, as an unrevealed traitor, the score would’ve been 5 to 7 instead, so I would’ve won anyways.
Thinking back to all the times I did traitorous things without being caught...
--pretended I didn’t have a pair of fight cards to keep us from gaining a black sword b/c of that travel card
--Never volunteered to play my Merlins collectively to cancel special black card
--Never volunteered to use my 4 and 5 strength fight cards for the quests
--Pretty much had a hand full of cards while only using them one at a time into Excalibur.
The things that did out me were adding the 11th siege engine, and using a special white card to move Merlin away from the Dragon quest.
Yeah, there isn’t a total lack of things to do as a traitor, but I’m still be more up front about pushing Battlestar Galactica on them. At least for them to try it once or twice. In the end, I still don’t mind playing SOC (it's gonna have to be with the MC exp though), but I simply enjoy Battlestar Galactica more.
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ackmondual wrote: For my very last few turns of the game I spent 2 turns playing dumb and innocent and contributed to the Excalibur quest. Problem was, at this point, they had a foundation of 5-5, 4-4-4, and 3 fight cards on the Dragon Quest, while there were only 2 black cards on there (one of them face up was 11). At this rate, they had a good chance of finishing the Dragon quest. Since Heroism was on it, it would give them 3 white swords for 7 white vs 5 black for game end and the win.
There isn't really a problem with this, is it? When the traitor isn't revealed at the end of the game, 2 white swords would turn black at the end, so you would still win the game.
The only way to loose the game at this point for you is to get discovered or die, and the other players can finish enough quests to win the game, Just play along as good as possible, save the day somewhere, and enjoy the look on everybody's face when you reveal you were the traitor.
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Brian Mc Cabe
United States
Arizona
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Nice report. I haven't played in a long time, but always enjoy this game.
In your synopis, you said that one of the ways in which you performed traitorous actions without getting caugt was by only playing one white card per turn on Excalibur. That's all you could play. Even if you spend a life to take a second action, you can't repeat an action you've already performed.
Brian
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