You were a Cylon from the start and you got the second Cylon card in the sleeperphase. But pre-sleeperphase there were 3 negative piloting cards in a skill check. Did you play one? Or did somebody make a mistake playing the wrong skill cards?

One of our human pilots thought it would be fun to throw in a couple of bad cards on that skill check. It confused the hell out of us.

Games are not about winning or losing, but how you play. Such an intentional mistake certainly adds to the fun and paranoia! Even if it means you'd be spending the next couple of turns in the brig

I know you guys were new players...but, I don't get it. I have a person who played like you describe. The game's objective means nothing. He often wants to 'break' the game...or ruin it for everyone else. Then it is 'fun' for him (we've stopped playing with him). There is a social contract in gaming...you are playing to win and you play by the rules. This pilot thought it would be fun for his side to lose. It wasn't a mistake of throwing the wrong card. Equivalent 'mistakes' would be looking at someone's card while they are away from the table...or flipping the board over in frustration.

True...the game is not about winning or losing, it's about fun. But would you play doubles Tennis with someone who intentionally keeps hitting it out of bounds? Oooh...let me spice this game up!

Games are not about winning or losing, but how you play. Such an intentional mistake certainly adds to the fun and paranoia! Even if it means you'd be spending the next couple of turns in the brig

The way you describe it, I don't understand why the humans trusted Helo and distrusted you.

There were red spikes in a check; Helo draws red while Baltar doesn't.
Helo assumed the Presidency, making him President/Admiral.
When you tried to look at his loyalty, he used his once-per-game to make it so you couldn't.

That last one is the kicker. Helo's once-per-game can save the humans if a Cylon gets a crisis card with a game ending choice on it. Not only was it a waste in that situation, but it also looks supremely suspicious that he didn't want his loyalty looked at that badly. Humans have nothing to hide when people want to look at loyalty. There's no reason for a human to not want to be cleared by another player.

After all that, the human team definitely deserved to lose, although it probably should have happened much sooner, because they should have kept Helo locked up and let you out long before you revealed.

I disagree here (with the specifics, not the general statement). BSG has plenty of paranoia without random play. It's also hard enough for the humans as is. If your group isn't serious about the game it's one thing, but if folks are trying to win it can be very frustrating when players aren't in the same mindset.

Baltar can draw reds, situationally with with his delusional intuition.

Agreed with you analysis. Our group is very suspicious of having both offices concentrating is a single person.

Games are not about winning or losing, but how you play. Such an intentional mistake certainly adds to the fun and paranoia! Even if it means you'd be spending the next couple of turns in the brig

On the other hand, spiking occasionally as a human can improve your (personal) chances of winning in the long run - once the rest of the group realises that you sometimes spike for either side, being caught spiking no longer identifies you as a Cylon.

Games are not about winning or losing, but how you play. Such an intentional mistake certainly adds to the fun and paranoia! Even if it means you'd be spending the next couple of turns in the brig

I'd brig the living daylights out of a player playing like this, regardless of his "loyalty". Intentional sabotage deserves punishment, and if I realized someone tried to pull this trick... I'd make them think again about how profitable that strategy is. After all, MY personal winning chances improve when the rest of the players don't play to confuse, so going after that player personally is at least as legit tactic as spiking checks while human.

Besides... if you spike a check as human, and lose some resources in early game... and then you run into a bad stream of crisis cards that targets the same resource... did you increase or lower your chance of winning if you stay human for the rest of the game?

You can spike a check without significant risk of failing it - for example, if you're playing late into a check where others have played a lot of cards, or if you play a small negative and a high positive into an easy check - yes, it does waste cards, which may jeopardise future checks, but the total cost is pretty minimal.

If you spike a check and end up losing a game that humans would have lost anyway due to a bad run of crisis cards, then have you lowered your chance of winning?

If humans are winning too often, then it can be worth playing suboptimally, if only to encourage people to play more in future - when becoming Cylon means spending 3 hours fighting a doomed battle, people will tend to choose something else to play where you can have an enjoyable game more than 60% of the time... Of course, there are other ways of adjusting the game balance closer to even, and one of them may suit your group better.

Of course, if you play with others sharing your view on tactics, quite a few of those cards already played may be negative regardless of loyalty

The more players who are likely to spike checks, for whatever reason, the higher margin you need to plan on when adding positive cards to a check... or just live with an unreasonable amount of failed checks.

The total cost is only minimal if you are the only one doing this

The sum of which may cost you several games as a human compared to if everyone just played their actual loyalty sensibly

I'm not advocating that human players should spike recklessly, just pointing out that there are benefits to playing an occasional spike in a "safe" skill-check, so it's not unjustifiable for players to do it.

I still fail to see what the benefit is. You spend more cards than you need to, and you risk unnecessarily hurting the team you're playing for. Your benefit for this is "because it's fun to do"?

The benefit for you of it being known that you sometimes spike as a human is that getting caught spiking then doesn't automatically out you as a Cylon.

There may also be a benefit for the group as a whole of making the game more interesting/exciting/enjoyable, but that's going to vary from group to group.

I still don't see it. Even if this strategy works, then all you've accomplished is making the game random. If folks can't tell who's who reliably by what's played then you might as well just guess. This might appeal to some, but for me the game is too long to be random.

I'm working from an underlying assumption that spiking should be a viable tactic for a hidden Cylon without it being an immediate soft-reveal. If you check out the PBF games on here, there are players who, most of the time, can tell you precisely which combinations of colours each player is holding, how many of each colour, which colours are in Destiny, and, on the occasions where there's no Investigative Committee involved, can make an educated guess at which specific cards were played by which player. If you're playing in a game with one of those guys, the only way you might be able to spike a check without it being known that the check was spiked by either you or maybe one other player, is if that guy is an unrevealed Cylon. If there are two of those guys playing, you have to assume that any time you spike a check, you're soft-revealing.

If that level of card-counting, with its implications for Cylon play, is either acceptable, or not an issue for your games, then spiking as a human is probably inappropriate in that context. If there is a problem with spiking checks being an automatic soft-reveal, then human-spiking is a valid strategic choice.


Again, it's not something I do, but I can see reasons why it is a valid choice for someone seeking to maximise their chances of winning future games. It's unquestionably a valid choice for someone seeking to maximise group enjoyment of the game when playing with the appropriate group.

I'm working from an underlying assumption that spiking should be a viable tactic for a hidden Cylon without it being an immediate soft-reveal. If you check out the PBF games on here, there are players who, most of the time, can tell you precisely which combinations of colours each player is holding, how many of each colour, which colours are in Destiny, and, on the occasions where there's no Investigative Committee involved, can make an educated guess at which specific cards were played by which player. If you're playing in a game with one of those guys, the only way you might be able to spike a check without it being known that the check was spiked by either you or maybe one other player, is if that guy is an unrevealed Cylon. If there are two of those guys playing, you have to assume that any time you spike a check, you're soft-revealing.

If that level of card-counting, with its implications for Cylon play, is either acceptable, or not an issue for your games, then spiking as a human is probably inappropriate in that context. If there is a problem with spiking checks being an automatic soft-reveal, then human-spiking is a valid strategic choice.


Again, it's not something I do, but I can see reasons why it is a valid choice for someone seeking to maximise their chances of winning future games. It's unquestionably a valid choice for someone seeking to maximise group enjoyment of the game when playing with the appropriate group.