Chris Hurd
United States
Massachusetts
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This weekend, I attended Unity Games in Woburn, MA. I had a chance to play the game total strangers. That type of experience is pretty rewarding to me, because it's a chance to play with different playstyles, and I enjoy the challenge of trying to "read" people you don't know. I also got a game with 4 other experienced BSG fanatics, which makes the game very smooth.
Set-up: The party agreed to play with some Exodus rules, but nothing from Pegasus, and no additional boards. We used the 0s and 6s from Exodus, but not the 1-5 range or Treachery from Pegasus. This made the destiny deck seem a lot more random, because it would often surprise us with Iron Will, Red Tape, or Trust Instincts. The crisis and destination decks had cards from all three sets, and attacks in them. Personal Goals and Final Five were in play.
Player choice went as follows:
Louanne "Kat" Katraine (played by Sam)
Felix Gaeta (played by Patrick)
Laura Roslin (played by Damon)
Galen "Chief" Tyrol (played by Jim)
Tory Foster (played by me, Chris)
Jump 0 goes relatively well. Kat and Gaeta do some early scouting, and Roslin has visions, ensuring that the early crises don't have that detrimental of an effect. The cylon ship activations are relatively spread out, resulting in some early damage, and a heavy raider who never boards. A second attack shows up at around -3 on the jump track and only adds damage rather than death.
Roslin pulls Release Cylon Mugshots somewhere in the first round and uses it on me/Tory rather than on Admiral Gaeta. The logic is somewhat self-serving: she doesn't want to give a giant hand of cards to a Cylon. She declares me to be human. Tyrol repairs, then I executive order Roslin for more cards. Food goes up.
Jump 1 is to a Tylium Planet, successfully rolled. Now we're above starting position on two dials, but distance 1. Kat and Gaeta have a short discussion about the high priority of repairs, which results in Kat moving to the Research Lab, then Gaeta XOing her while simultaneously drawing blue cards himself. Immediately afterwords, we have our first skill check with three bad cards: 1 yellow and 2 blues on a green/purple challenge. Because Kat drew cards out of suit, and because everyone threw, everyone is a suspect. Great.
Jump 2 is Missed Jump into the distance 2, -1 fuel, -1 raptor. Cloud 9 is left behind, and the journey gets a little more depressing.
The earlier spiked check and a couple more failed checks follow. A couple more checks are voluntarily failed because the only downside was "X person goes to Y." Roslin and Kat both volunteer to go to Sick Bay rather than waste cards passing the check.
In this sequence, the group also fails a check which causes Roslin, the current player, to send someone to the Brig. Damon (Roslin's player) has a lengthy debate out this, identifying his suspicions on Gaeta and Tyrol while declaring confidence in Kat. Ultimately, Roslin decides to brig Gaeta, using the logic that he can use his once-per-game ability to get himself out.
A round after escaping the brig, Gaeta reveals the reason he has been hoarding cards and not contributing to skill checks: personal goal, discard 20 points worth of cards. He figured that despite the fact that he would draw a new loyalty card, this revelation would take a lot of suspicion off his head.
All eyes turn to Tyrol. Roslin uses a tactic on him that lies somewhere in between interrogation and coercion. It's the "If you were really a human, you would do this thing that obviously helps only humans." Using her visions, she picks a yellow-green skill check, and asks Tyrol to contribute a significant margin. He offers to pass the entire check single-handedly. After some discussion around the table he does. That's still not enough for Roslin. She then asks him to use his turn to repair Command then activate vipers. He decides that that also probably won't be enough, and reveals: place a centurion at the start of the boarding track.
As usual, the humans' newly-discovered harmony is short-lived. Jump 3 occurs and takes us to 6 distance with -2 fuel. New cards are passed out and everyone understandably tightens up. Roslin asks me flat-out if I am still human, and doesn't like the response she gets. That's a play-style difference. I don't like straight-up revealing information to any player, just in case that person is a cylon. Roslin apparently expects humans to be straightforward.
Jump 3 is long. Early on, Gaeta draws Thirty-Three, which is not so bad by itself. Roslin decides to prioritize the on-board centurion and kills it by Authorization of Brutal Force.
The jump is then made longer by failure on the purple/blue skill check which moves the jump track up by 1 on a success, but moves it back one on a failure. That check hit a rainbow spike, which had 1 yellow, 2 red, 1 green, and an ill-fated Trust Instincts which revealed another green and a purple for a net 0 effect. Once again, everyone's a target. Roslin feels particularly hard-done by this, because she picked that card over another crisis, trusting that her fellow humans could get the job done. Kat is also upset that we missed by exactly 3 points. There had been some discussion about playing Iron Will but it did not end up in the check.
Jim decides to activate ships. On my turn, I fail a scouting roll, then turn over Ambush. As typically happens with Ambush, we ended up with civilian ships in 5 out of 6 sectors, and cylons in 4 of 6, with nothing in the front-right sector. Now, it's pretty chaotic. Kat is having problems avoiding her downside, I/Tory can't seem to get the right cards to pull my weight, and the administration is caught between multiple actions. Kat takes a sub-optimal move to stay out of sick bay. Gaeta nukes without the benefit of Strategic Planning, and hits only the basestar when a splash onto raiders would have been really handy. Roslin's best move is to XO for card draw. A couple skill checks are failed during this time. Despite the absolute chaos, there's still no trust between the 4 unrevealed players.
On Jim's turn, he wisely advances the majority of the raider squadron onto Kat's space, while also destroying ships and taking population down to 4. I'm now put in a position where the rest of the crew demands that I XO Kat so that she can stay out of Sick Bay. I don't have it. My best move is to use Communication to move the ships out. On her turn, Kat uses the 6-power piloting card plus strategic planning to take out a squadron of 6 or 7 raiders. She's the hero, temporarily, but pays the price.
Gaeta and Roslin use this temporary reprieve to get Kat out of sick bay, then scout for icons to make a get-away. They keep a couple raiders-activate-plus-jump-icon challenges and sacrifice some population, knowing that the flanking raiders won't get to the bulk of the civilian fleet in time. We jump to distance 8 with 1 fuel, 4 morale, 2 population.
Jim begins his turn by saying "I move back to the Resurrection Ship," and I immediately swear. He passes me the dull, boring face of Aaron Doral. The game comes to its denouement. Everyone else realizes that they've been played. There was no second cylon. By holding onto the card, and by understanding the original board vs the Pegasus cylon fleet overlay, Jim has won himself the game. He let the paranoia build, until the only thought in our heads were "why doesn't he/she just reveal already?" He put everyone on tilt.
What immediately followed is the most hilarious, off-the-wall conversation I've ever had while playing. Damon launches into a strong-willed speech pleaing for me not to reveal. He appeals to our bond of president to president's assistant, talking about all our hours spent together. He talks about the challenges we just overcame on jump 3. He appeals to me as a person, not as the-player-of-Tory. Everyone at the table can't stop laughing, because it was a spectacular effort, and something completely unique to this game of sabotage and humanity.
Ultimately, I was close to convinced, but I had too much respect for the way Jim played. I see that he considered the position and current damage on Galactica as well as just having another guy on his side. My reveal sends Kat back to sick bay. I don't even get a turn as a cylon, as they don't have enough card draw to handle 4 crises on their current hands +9 cards.
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Jimmy Sorel
United States
Providence
Rhode Island
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Wow, that Jim guy sure did a number on you guys
By far my favorite/best experience as a Cylon
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Matt Downey
United States
Alexandria
Virginia
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Jim didn't understand the original board at all; you can only pass off your loyalty card if you are at distance 7 or less.
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Pieter
Netherlands
Maastricht
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downeymb wrote: Jim didn't understand the original board at all; you can only pass off your loyalty card if you are at distance 7 or less.
Absolutely true. Still, awesome report.
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Matt Downey
United States
Alexandria
Virginia
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Flyboy Connor wrote: Still, awesome report.
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Patrick Twitchell
United States
Ayer
Massachusetts
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I played as Gaeta. That was a very fun game, and the highlight of the convention for me.
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Shawn Garbett
United States
Nashville
Tennessee
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hybridfive wrote:
All eyes turn to Tyrol. Roslin uses a tactic on him that lies somewhere in between interrogation and coercion. It's the "If you were really a human, you would do this thing that obviously helps only humans." Using her visions, she picks a yellow-green skill check, and asks Tyrol to contribute a significant margin. He offers to pass the entire check single-handedly. After some discussion around the table he does. That's still not enough for Roslin. She then asks him to use his turn to repair Command then activate vipers. He decides that that also probably won't be enough, and reveals: place a centurion at the start of the boarding track.
That is a powerful tactic. Your group has really gotten into the spirit of the game.
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Chris Hurd
United States
Massachusetts
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downeymb wrote: Jim didn't understand the original board at all; you can only pass off your loyalty card if you are at distance 7 or less.
My mind just got blown again. We completely forgot about that. I guess Damon was right, I should have stayed human!
This was the last game of the convention for most of us. We started around 7:30pm, ended around 11pm. It's easy to make mistakes like that after a long day and a long session. We got wrapped up in the action.
I also think that this ending to the game was pretty satisfying, and that there were some potentially less satisfying endings out there. Given the game state, the humans might have made the last jump before Jim got his next turn simply by drawing an extra crisis card for my turn. However, there was at least one personal goal out there. Humans losing to a personal goal is really painful, IMO. This was still a pretty great experience even if we were wrong about that rule.
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Posted Wed Feb 8, 2012 1:57 am
