Allen Michaels
United States
Brooklyn
New York
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Admittedly, I've only played a handful of times. I really like the game, but I see how certain things become relatively scripted on the base game on what to do. I like the idea of the expansions, but the reviews I've read sound mixed for the money spend:
Pegasus : Pegasus ship is powerful, new characters and cards are generally good (Cain is 'broken') But: Cylon leaders are a bit wonky and not that fund to play, New Caprica is a waste. Executions remove the uncertainty of who is a Cylon. Pegasus damage sponge. Pilots have less to do. Treachery deck, while cool, can be mitigated.
Exodus: CFB board is good (or bad, because you remove the surprise attack part of the game). Conflicted loyalties are good (or bad), Ionian Nebula - pretty complex, and could end with a player simply "wasting 3 hours of his/her day".
The community has gone ahead and house-ruled a bunch things in both expansions to help out. It seems like I don't want to spend $30 on something that I'll use half of...and still need to use house rules.
THAT SAID:
What can be done to the base game, that adds a bit of newness or polishes things up? I can imagine some mix of using Pegasus's IC rules, and the newer Cylon locations...along with some other small tweaks (having MarkVIIs, still having a psuedo-CAG, 10-card quorum, "complex" destiny, etc).
Man...this post is not coming together. Basically, I really like the game, but the expansions seem like a let down. What is my next step?
Thanks..
-Allen
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Shayne Gray
United States
Akron
Ohio
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Well, I like to play with all the characters from both expansions, Pegasus's IC rules, Pegasus ship, newer Cylon locations, presuit board from Exodus, the CAG, treachery, all new cards and crisis.
But still go to Kobol
Sometime mix in personal goals as well.
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Kenny Renaud
United States
Florida
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Play with the fan made character cards. I play with an assortment of house rules for both expansions, but it's the variety of characters that keeps it fresh and new each time.
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Darren Nakamura
United States
Tempe
Arizona
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I've got both expansions, but I've only played Pegasus once and I haven't played Exodus yet at all. That said, my suggestions...
 Definitely use the Pegasus rules for handing off Loyalty cards, if not the entire Pegasus Cylon Location overlay.
 Use Pegasus Investigative Committees or complex Destiny (or both) if your group is getting too good at deducing who Cylons are by card counting.
 I don't think that adding Viper Mk. VIIs would make much of a difference. It would give the Human team a slight edge, but I don't think it's necessary at all.
 I'm generally in favor of limiting the Quorum hand. It gives the Cylon President more options, because he can discard useful cards so that he doesn't use them or pass them on to the next President should he decide to reveal.
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Darren Nakamura
United States
Tempe
Arizona
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kenneth_paltrow wrote: Play with the fan made character cards. I play with an assortment of house rules for both expansions, but it's the variety of characters that keeps it fresh and new each time.
One of the problems with fanmade character cards is that several of them are designed to be played with the expansions. You need to make sure if you're playing with the base game that no discrepancies come up (Treachery draws, reference to executions, et cetera).
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Carl Bussema
United States
Lansing
Michigan
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We normally play:
All characters minus leaders
Pegasus board & Cylon overlay & treachery
Cylon Fleet module
All crises & super crises (Attack crises removed, per Cylon Fleet rules)
Final Five loyalty cards (NO Personal Goals)
Kobol destination
It's easy to add Allies/Trauma/Ionian Nebula if we want to, and if I ever get a chance to review some of the fan-made crossroads cards/rules, I might look at those. I don't think you can look at being eliminated from the game as wasting 3 hours any more than you can look at losing on the final 50/50 die roll to jump safely to Kobol because you only have 1 population, 1 morale, no cards, are convinced the next crisis is going to kill you, but you do have that one strategic planning and are willing to risk everything on pulling the FTL early... and then rolling a 3.
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Piper
Canada
Vancouver
"Beautiful" British Columbia
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I have played a fair amount of the base game and each of the expansions. You don't need any house rules if you don't like them. It is important to remember that while BSG is fairly balanced, it is not particularly fair. Depending on both luck and good choices, you can get completely screwed or saved from the brink. I think some people use house rules to deal with that, but personally I think that crazy drama is what makes BSG fun.
So, specifically speaking, Exodus is a much better expansion than Pegasus. We use everything from Exodus in our group. Ionian Nebula is really something you only want to add after playing BSG a lot, since it is complicated, but it is a blast. In short, it adds a bunch of new stuff to think about, and it does it in a very thematic way. Getting eliminated stinks, but isn't any worse than losing normally, since the game is usually over shortly afterwards anyway.
However, Pegasus has great things in it too, even if you don't use everything. Cylon leaders are hard to play, but they are an interesting challenge. Being able to have 7 players is nice, as are the Pegasus locations, and the new characters are great. Cain is not overpowered if you play with Exodus, due to the CFB and the fact that executions are much worse for humans. But the real charm of Pegasus is the treachery deck and the new action cards. They are great. Also, the Cylon board overlay is a nice improvement. I am not a fan of New Caprica. It can be a nice change, but in general it is too capricious : ) Also, some characters have a lot of trouble functioning there well. Despite this, I would definitely suggest buying it once you need to add something to your game. You won't regret the money spent at that point.
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ackmondual
United States
Virginia
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So far, my few various groups have played everything with either NO houserules, or very few. Only ones we've done are:
1) Cain's OPG being unthematic (hooboy is that a whole can of worms), so use the 2nd Destination card from the top
2) NOT using Exodus style loyalty card system when we don't have PGs nor FFs, to ensure there won't be an undealt cylon card.
al_fredo wrote: Admittedly, I've only played a handful of times. I really like the game, but I see how certain things become relatively scripted on the base game on what to do. I like the idea of the expansions, but the reviews I've read sound mixed for the money spend:
Pegasus : Pegasus ship is powerful, new characters and cards are generally good (Cain is 'broken') But: Cylon leaders are a bit wonky and not that fund to play, New Caprica is a waste. Executions remove the uncertainty of who is a Cylon. Pegasus damage sponge. Pilots have less to do. Treachery deck, while cool, can be mitigated. Executions can still be expensive via skill check, such as when game throws curveballs when a crisis lets you look at someone's loyalty card (yes, others have to take your word for it, but if you've established yourself as human, then the person you've accussed is effectively outed and THAT uncertainty is removed), and while they don't happen often, randomly getting thrown into the Brig can be annoying.
I woudln't want to play with CL all the time, but it's nice to have a game that isn't just "team A vs. team B". I like how the CL is a 3rd team that everyone needs to deal with. The complaints about Agendas being unbalanced aren't completely unwarranted, but this is a game with card draws and die rolls. THose extremes means people win by sheer dumb luck, or still lose despite doing everything right
al_fredo wrote: Exodus: CFB board is good (or bad, because you remove the surprise attack part of the game). Conflicted loyalties are good (or bad), Ionian Nebula - pretty complex, and could end with a player simply "wasting 3 hours of his/her day".
CFB is correct, but to also add that using Basestar Bridge and managing to reduce the jump track can be a killer. OTOH, without BB, cylon options are limited enough that unless you can stay revealed to better go after Food or Morale, ironically enough, you're better off revealing earlier anyways.
The fact that you can't win if you're eliminated does provide for solid incentive to play selfishly at points in the game, even though you are on a team. That's something I enjoy. And I agree with InfoCynic... I've had games where we barely won with only 1 cylon in a 5p game, but if both cylon cards were dealt out, we would've lost VERY badly. Humans may have won that one, but the cylon gets mad props too.
al_fredo wrote: The community has gone ahead and house-ruled a bunch things in both expansions to help out. It seems like I don't want to spend $30 on something that I'll use half of...and still need to use house rules. The thing is, I don't think you're getting the whole picture... you're bound to hear alot more from people who houserule stuff like crazy than those who play the game as is, so it may be giving a false perspective that the majority of people play the game with houserules.
al_fredo wrote: THAT SAID:
What can be done to the base game, that adds a bit of newness or polishes things up? I can imagine some mix of using Pegasus's IC rules, and the newer Cylon locations...along with some other small tweaks (having MarkVIIs, still having a psuedo-CAG, 10-card quorum, "complex" destiny, etc).
Man...this post is not coming together. Basically, I really like the game, but the expansions seem like a let down. What is my next step?
Thanks..
-Allen
If just the base game:
--If thing sare getting too dull on the battlefront, then when you hit 8 or more distance for the first time to Kobol objective, then just setup the Battle Of The Ionian Nebula to make things more exciting and provide that one last obstacle. Of course, ignore Crossroads phase, and the boxing/trial phase
--Pegasus style ICs are nice
--Pegasus style handoff of loyalty cards are also nice.
--the Qcards can become OP with just the base game and without Pegasus and Exodus adding 9 and 3 more respectively, so I agree with a 10 Qcard hand limit, and may even consider lowering that to 8 if things get too crazy abusive there for the humans and Authorization Of Brute Force.
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Joseph Cochran
United States
Costa Mesa
California
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ackmondual wrote: al_fredo wrote: The community has gone ahead and house-ruled a bunch things in both expansions to help out. It seems like I don't want to spend $30 on something that I'll use half of...and still need to use house rules. The thing is, I don't think you're getting the whole picture... you're bound to hear alot more from people who houserule stuff like crazy than those who play the game as is, so it may be giving a false perspective that the majority of people play the game with houserules.
This. Our group plays frequently (I personally played 37 times in 2011, but it does occasionally get played without me) and use all expansions and no house rules. We don't use New Caprica very often and we sometimes go to Kobol, but other than that we use everything all the time and love the heck out of it!
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Robert Stewart
United Kingdom
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The Cylon Fleet Board is very worth having - too often, the game throws either two or three attacks in quick succession (which isn't that scary since the basestars run into component limits - it's the special rules that may bite hard) which you can then jump away from, or you go entire jump cycles with no Cylon ships, so nothing to do except draw cards and crises. The Cylon Fleet Board deals with that by guaranteeing that you have at most 4 crises in a row with no Cylon ships (unless you manage an auto-attack-and-jump) meaning there's always some clear and present danger to act against.
Cylon Leaders are imperfect, but better than having a Sympathiser in a 4 or 6 player game.
Conflicted Loyalties and Trauma are both cool ideas, but a bit less thrilling in practice.
The new Exodus skill cards are well worth adding in, the Pegasus ones a little less so (they demand that you play with Treachery).
Overall, if you get just one expansion, I'd go with Exodus, definitely include the new characters, skill cards, destinations, Quorum and crises and the Cylon Fleet Board and CAG, consider Conflicted Loyalties carefully, and introduce the Ionian Nebula objective after you've taken Exodus to Kobol a couple of times.
With Pegasus, I'd throw in everything except New Caprica, and grumble about the lack of the CFB...
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Steye
Netherlands
Nijmegen
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al_fredo wrote: Pegasus : Pegasus ship is powerful, new characters and cards are generally good (Cain is 'broken') But: Cylon leaders are a bit wonky and not that fund to play, New Caprica is a waste. Executions remove the uncertainty of who is a Cylon. Pegasus damage sponge. Pilots have less to do. Treachery deck, while cool, can be mitigated.
Pegasus is powerfull indeed. Using just the basegame, it is perhaps a bit overpowered. There is at least one forum topic discussing this. Basic solution: add the Pegasus gameboard when you're halfway through the game.
Cylon Leaders it all depends on your agenda..
- Friendly agenda: you have to prove your good intentions. So the first couple of turns are a bit boring. You could "Infiltrate" right away to 'help the humans', but they will try to brig you as soon as you set foot on deck. If they trust you, you are just a Human player that cannot hold the Admiral or President title. Only during the endgame, there is some fun: perhaps you'll have to betray your human friends, to achieve your Agenda's goals.
- Hostile agenda: you have 2 options here: 1. Start frakkin' up the humans right away using the Cylon locations. It's the same as a normal Cylon who reveals on the first turn. Your options are a bit limited, so I'd go for the next option. 2: Convince the humans you have a friendly agenda. Win their trust. Infiltrate. And slowly destroy them from within.
New Caprica It's fun to play every now and then. Only use it if you have more than enough time. A whole different endgame, that's it.
Executions do show loyalty, but it comes at a price: a human death means morale minus one. There's a plusside for the humans: if you've brigged an unrevealed Cylon, he will probably try to get out. With only one Cylon in the game, it's not that big a problem. With two (unrevealed) Cylons, you can't take the chance of letting the brigged Cylon go. And this will cost you a lot of skill cards. Execution will cost you cards only once.
One houserule I'd like to mension: If a human player is executed, we usually build a new loyalty deck or add cards to the existing deck - depending on the distance we traveled and/or the resources. This way there is always a small chance the executed human comes back as a Cylon.
Treachery Only nice if there is a revealed Cylon or Cylon Leader. Fun to play with Cylon Ellen or Leoben. I must admit: I've never been in a game where treachery cards were the number one reason for the end of the human race.
al_fredo wrote: Exodus: CFB board is good (or bad, because you remove the surprise attack part of the game). Conflicted loyalties are good (or bad), Ionian Nebula - pretty complex, and could end with a player simply "wasting 3 hours of his/her day".
CFB Nice!!! It is predictable, untill there is a revealed Cylon (or CL). Simple houserule: keep the Cylon attack cards in the Crisis deck untill a Cylon reveals. Then give him the option: Go on as normal OR remove all Cylon attack cards from the crisis deck and use the CFB from then on.
Conflicted Loyalties / Ionian Nebula I've only played this variant 3 times. I'm still making up my mind on this one 
I have to reach some kind of conclusion. In my town there is a game shop with room to play boardgames every wednesday. After playing a game, it's much easier to decide whether or not to buy it. Find such a store, go online to find someone who has it in your town. I bought both expansions to add an 'infinite diversity in infinite combinations' to the game.. and I do not regret it!
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ackmondual
United States
Virginia
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Hmm, I forgot to comment on NC.....
Again, I woudln't want to play with this all the time, but do enjoy it every now and then. There are less choices on NC, but since you play through 7 distance in space first, it's really a superset of Kobol in many ways, and I like how some characters like Apollo and Starbuck are rather awful on NC.... makes you 'think outside the box'.
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Jared Ferenczy
United States
Dist of Columbia
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Be short and sweet, the base game is probably the most balanced form of the game. I advise not getting either expansion until you get tired of the base game. If you are looking for something to spice up the base game, there are a couple of house rules you can use:
1)Make ICs not reveal destiny.
2)Find some way to adapt complex destiny with the odd number of skill decks. The idea is that you have more than two cards from each skill deck and refill it before the deck entirely empties. The idea is that you make destiny harder to count and improve a cylon's ability to spike checks. The problem is that the math is in favor of having the treachery deck there.
3)Setting up a battle of Kobol at distance 8. Really useful for the cylons since attack cards can be spotty, especially with Boomer and/or Roslin on team human.
As for which expansion I would recommend you get first when you decide you need a bit more variety, I tend to lean towards Pegasus. While New Caprica is spotty, it does add a certain variety to the game that can give it new life in the same way the Ionian Nebula does. However, the cylon fleet board invalidates a lot of the cards and powers from Pegasus, making Pegasus seem like a joke in comparison. There are a lot of cards in Pegasus that has as a punishment the placement of a basestar and civilians. Pre-Exodus, this was actually a punishment. Post-CFB, and that is a god-send for the humans. Also, not everyone hates the cylon leaders. I for one enjoy messing with the heads of the other players and politicking to get what I want done. It is a different way to play the game and I can see why not everyone enjoys it, but they are not universally reviled, though the agendas provided need some work. Additionally, I just don't like Exodus a whole lot. The CFB is good, but invalidates a lot of old cards, so it is not as much of a positive as people make it seem, conflicted loyalties work better in theory than in practice and the Ionian Nebula has glaring flaws that make me likely to avoid it.
Once you have everything, what should you house rule?
Cain and Tory both need a nerf. Anders needs his power to be a movement or an action. Something needs to be done to reconcile placing ships as a punishment with the cylon fleet board. And if you ever get card sleeves for skill cards, you may want to look into giving treachery some sharper teeth.
Also, I never really got what the problem was with Pegasus execution mechanic. I get that it permanently clears a player, but that is usually at a steep cost. The one time a team of humans I played with executed most of its members to ID the cylons, they wound up losing on morale, so it wasn't an advised strategy, whereas most games post-Exodus we wind up dreading that the last loyalty card is stuck in the deck and our game was just ruined by random luck.
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Robert Stewart
United Kingdom
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j0frenzy wrote: Also, I never really got what the problem was with Pegasus execution mechanic. I get that it permanently clears a player, but that is usually at a steep cost. The one time a team of humans I played with executed most of its members to ID the cylons, they wound up losing on morale, so it wasn't an advised strategy, whereas most games post-Exodus we wind up dreading that the last loyalty card is stuck in the deck and our game was just ruined by random luck.
Particularly with New Caprica as your objective, an unrevealed Cylon Admiral can make the game unwinnable for the humans - with Galactica's return, the Admiral can use an action to sap a couple of morale and half-a-dozen population. Using the Airlock (or some other means) to execute the Admiral post-Sleeper, yes, probably costs a point of morale, but also provides a trusted player to hold titles, and, if they are a Cylon, keeps them from having the Galactica self-destruct codes...
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Greg Wilson
United Kingdom
Bristol
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Our group uses expansion elements all the time, although we almost always play to Kobol. The only house rules we use are:
We use the Cylon overlay, new passing-off rules and new IC cards regardless of which elements we're using.
We sometimes include Treachery but not the Pegasus itself, for balance reasons.
We hate the Sympathiser, don't much like the Sympathetic Cylon, and are lukewarm on Cylon Leaders. For a four- or six-player game we either use No Sympathiser rules or make selective use of expansion elements to adjust the balance.
I am, however, considering houserules for the Ionian Nebula, since we like the idea of the NPCs but don't want to bring player elimination into the game.
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I sympathize a lot with your predicament.
I'm one of the people who don't like Exodus at all. The problem is, if you appreciate the base game's balance, and only want more variety, there's almost nothing you can use from Exodus.
I find the components from Pegasus can be added much more organically. You have the new ICs, the new Cylon Locations, the rules change to passing off loyalty, (and the plastic basestars,) all of which address the most noticable balance flaws in the base game.
The main criticisms are true, however: New Caprica is a mess. The Pegasus board makes things a lot easier for the humans, even if all they do is use it as a damage sponge. Between reckless interrupts and treachery, I'd say the interrupts tend to help the humans more than treachery will harm them, over the full course of a game.
I love the Cylon Leaders, but the agendas need to be house-ruled, or half the time you play with them you'll have a rather one-sided game.
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Carl Bussema
United States
Lansing
Michigan
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When playing *only* with Pegasus or *without* the Cylon Fleet from Exodus, a very simple "damage sponge" fix is simply to roll twice for Basestar attacks - once vs Galactica, once vs Pegasus (be sure it's clear as you're rolling the die). This creates a good amount of tension again and increases the value of repairs / support characters who draw them. I've still never seen the game end on damage, but I never saw that in the base game either. I've definitely seen ugly situations where there's two centurions on board and the armory is damaged because the humans couldn't keep up with the damage.
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ackmondual
United States
Virginia
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InfoCynic wrote: When playing *only* with Pegasus or *without* the Cylon Fleet from Exodus, a very simple "damage sponge" fix is simply to roll twice for Basestar attacks - once vs Galactica, once vs Pegasus (be sure it's clear as you're rolling the die). This creates a good amount of tension again and increases the value of repairs / support characters who draw them. I've still never seen the game end on damage, but I never saw that in the base game either. I've definitely seen ugly situations where there's two centurions on board and the armory is damaged because the humans couldn't keep up with the damage. Die modifiers work on both?
I've been in a PBF where we won by damage. If the repair/pollies are no longer available, then they'll have to hit up research lab, and sometimes, it may take 2 go's to get a repair. Meanwhile, 2 cylons and a symp cylon can do up to 5 damage per round of turns, + any crisis cards that call for basestars firing. I hear using the old Human Fleet to take away Repairs can work wonders
With CFB, leaving too many raiders was the precursor to both Pegasus and Galactica getting destroyed.
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Piper
Canada
Vancouver
"Beautiful" British Columbia
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Yeah, I've seen a number of games end due to damage. Two basestars being activated repeatedly can do it, but so can lots of raiders, either through activation or from the CFB. Remember, if there are no civilian ships on the board, and no vipers in their space area, raiders fire at Galactica. They only hit on an 8, but I've seen 4 hits in one turn come out of a raider activation.
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Carl Bussema
United States
Lansing
Michigan
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Treat each die roll separately. Strat Plan / Helo / Calc can be applied individually. It's usually simplest to just have a convention "galactica first, then pegasus" (the damage dealt to Galactica by a basestar attack cannot be redirected to pegasus).
We haven't used that rule since adding Cylon Fleet, which seems to normally create large hordes of raiders on the board. 
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Allen Michaels
United States
Brooklyn
New York
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Two rolls seems a bit much. Doesn't it make a bit more sense to have damage be random/mixed between the two ships? (You still have the explicit damage Galactica cards/outcomes)
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Then you run back into the problem that with Pegasus, the battlestars have 10 'hit points' among them rather than 6, while the damage output of the Cylons hasn't increased in a meaningful way.
(There's Sabotage, which is really marginal, and arguably, Broadcast Location means more basestars show up during a game.)
You could increase damage output by tieing it into the basestar attack roll; basestars hit on a 3+ rather than a 4+, and an 8 means both battlestars get damaged, that kind of thing.
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ackmondual
United States
Virginia
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My groups have had alot more cylon victories when both exp are added, so we've held off on "damage sponge" variants. While the 'creative juices' are flowing, I'll add (some of these were proposed by other users):
--Someone has to be on Peggy for it to be damaged
--3 damage is enough to destroy it, and you lose 1 morale and/or pop too
(this may be even better suited for NC where morale and straight pop loss are more harmful)
--when Broadcast location activates, basestars get a free shot at Galactica
Even when both basestars are already on the MGB, perhaps there's still a free shot (only 1 though, NOT 1 per basestar)
--whenever basestars fire, any revealed cylons (including non-infiltrating CL) get to decide which to damage.
--when rolling for a large mass of a "raider ball", the first 1 or 2 hits vs. Galactica needs 7+ to hit, then turn all others back to 8+
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Allen Michaels
United States
Brooklyn
New York
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Hannibal Rex wrote: Then you run back into the problem that with Pegasus, the battlestars have 10 'hit points' among them rather than 6, while the damage output of the Cylons hasn't increased in a meaningful way.
(There's Sabotage, which is really marginal, and arguably, Broadcast Location means more basestars show up during a game.)
You could increase damage output by tieing it into the basestar attack roll; basestars hit on a 3+ rather than a 4+, and an 8 means both battlestars get damaged, that kind of thing.
But in this case, it'd be a probably out of your control.
If there is 5 hits on Galactica, but non on Pegasus, a random draw could end the game. Conversely, 3 on Peg means that Pegasus could blow up next damage token. In either case...the currently player has the choice. Save the ship, or let it blow up (and win/lose).
I don't might the "10 hit points"...but why is it current player chooses? That doesn't even make thematic sense. I wonder why the designers didn't just do one random pool of damage tokens. I don't know if that helps/hurts the humans one way or another.
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ackmondual
United States
Virginia
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al_fredo wrote: Hannibal Rex wrote: Then you run back into the problem that with Pegasus, the battlestars have 10 'hit points' among them rather than 6, while the damage output of the Cylons hasn't increased in a meaningful way.
(There's Sabotage, which is really marginal, and arguably, Broadcast Location means more basestars show up during a game.)
You could increase damage output by tieing it into the basestar attack roll; basestars hit on a 3+ rather than a 4+, and an 8 means both battlestars get damaged, that kind of thing. But in this case, it'd be a probably out of your control. If there is 5 hits on Galactica, but non on Pegasus, a random draw could end the game. Conversely, 3 on Peg means that Pegasus could blow up next damage token. In either case...the currently player has the choice. Save the ship, or let it blow up (and win/lose). I don't might the "10 hit points"...but why is it current player chooses? That doesn't even make thematic sense. I wonder why the designers didn't just do one random pool of damage tokens. I don't know if that helps/hurts the humans one way or another.
Too many things don't make thematic sense that I'll just leave those at those/(that?). Gameplay-wise, it does make since:
1) it gives the current player more power and choices, which since players in the Brig don't normally resolve crisis cards, that's yet another incentive for them to reveal or simply get out
2) I suppose it may have been too clumsy for the cylon players to get to choose when there are revealed cylons, but stick with current player when there aren't any. And then there's also how you would count cylon leaders.
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