Battlestar Galactica strategy game

[Excellen Browning]

Note: I still have quite a bit of TRE cards.

[Jaybee]

The thing is that if all of them play a Tre-6 card, we need to hit 57. (I know they don't, but hey, what the hell!)

Also, me and Excellen should go since it leaves us with 2 Lea/2 Tac/2 Pol players. If the next crisis is like this you guys can go for that.

[Haze]

Feh. I'll still play in two cards since I can redraw those anyway.

[Excellen Browning]

Or activate G&I?

[Excellen Browning]

Also Tables you're supposed to tell us how many skills everyone has.

[Tables]

Ceadeus as Helena Cain: 10 skills

Kevin as Laura Roslin: 7 skills

Excellen Browning as Gaius Baltar: 10 skills

Wen Yang as Cylon Samuel T. Anders: 4 skills

JBCWK as Felix Gaeta: 10 skills

BK-201 as Cylon Tom Zarek: 6 skills

Queen as Cylon Louanne "Kat" Katrine: 7 skills

Eclipse as Cylon Callandra "Cally" Tyrol: 4 skills

WeaponsOfMassConstruction as Leoben Conoy: 6 skills

Edited June 27, 2011 by Tables

[Excellen Browning]

Right. Thanks.

If all of Jaybee's hand is positive, and if he plays them all, we should be fine with me pitching in all my positives and someone else(Hazekitty) some more.

[eclipse]

Oh. . .oh my. . .

TEE-HEE~!

[Haze]

Yeah you're getting two cards from me since I can just redraw them and still have a full hand, it's a better use for them than discarding them, in addition to G&I which I have in fact activated.

[WeaponsofMassConstruction]

I played everything.

[Excellen Browning]

inb4 we pass the check twice.

[Tables]

Inb4 I decide to call the game early because humans can't lose from here.

...

Which I'm going to do now.

As it currently stands the humans were going to obliterate this (they've already played about 60 points between them with a few people still to play, and the Cylons can't put in more than about -12). After this the final two crises are:

Crippled Raiders

Pass: No Effect

Fail: -1 Population. Human players may only draw 1 skill this turn

Difficulty: 14

Skills: TAC

And finally:

Hera Rescued

Pass: No Effect

Fail: -1 Morale

Difficulty: 17

Skills: POL/LEA

Since you'd be on 2 Pop/2 Morale you can't lose.

So, no point prolonging the game, methinks.

GAME OVER, HUMANS WIN!

So, what is there to say postgame... I might as well tell you Wen (Anders) was the Cylon spiking the first check, with Eclipse as the other pre-sleeper Cylon. He got really screwed over by rule clarifications, as well as an amusing reveal ability he'd never get to use (execute someone in the brig, when his general ability sends him to the brig). He also got bad draws repeatedly, further annoying him.

Zarek and Kat were the post sleeper Cylons. Kat immediately set to work on screwing pop over in an impressive way I hadn't forseen, but really should have.

The other two possible Cylon reveals that didn't appear this game were: -1 morale, and each player must discard 2 skills.

The tables for skills drawn were as follows:

Rating 2:

1: 60%

2: 30%

3: 10%

(Average 1.5)

Rating 3:

1: 25%

2: 35%

3: 30%

4: 10%

(Average 2.25)

Rating 4:

1: 5%

2: 25%

3: 40%

4: 25%

5: 5%

(Average 3)

Rating 5:

2: 10%

3: 35%

4: 30%

5: 20%

6: 5%

(Average 3.75)

Rating 6:

2: 5%

3: 10%

4: 30%

5: 40%

6: 15%

(Average 4.5)

I was tempted to disseminate this information in full, but, well, didn't.

Also the crises weren't just entirely random. There were three blocks of Crises: Early crises, standard Crises and major crises. Before the game the early and standard crises were shuffled together, then 9 were picked. These were then shuffled until no early crises appeared in the last three of them. Then three major crises were picked randomly from the major crises. Finally, a random number from 2-4, 5-7 and 8-10 was chosen, and a major crises was put on each of these months, then the other 9 crises were put in all of the remaining months. In this game you had a major crises on months 2 (Bomb Threat - the fail: -2 morale, -1 population crisis), month 6 (Sabotage investigated - the pass, someone looks at a loyalty card crisis) and month 10 (Forced Water mining, the pass +1 population fail -1 population, -1 morale crisis).

Standard crises were just your bog standard effects.

Early crises were ones that, for some reason, I didn't want to occur very late in the game. This could have been because they had no resource loss (such as the month 1 crisis) or had an ongoing effect (such as one with "Until the end of the game, each skill check in which Politics is positive has one random (rating 4) Politics card added" as a pass).

Major Crises were ones that were designed as, well, being major points in the game, that could really shift things around without being the single most important things in the game. As it turned out, two of the three in this game were, which was good.

Now, I'll give feedback on what I observed from moderating the game...

Some characters were far more powerful than others. Cain and Ellen are very powerful, with Ellen drawing significantly more skills than anyone else and being able to pass some off to other people, and Cain being able to throw a very powerful positive into any LEA/TAC check equivalent to drawing a large number of skills. Cally was weak, poor skills and a one-trick ability that helps but not overly so, and besides, she can lead to quickly overpowering situations which could be a problem...

The rules may need a little tweaking. Cylons can reveal in incredible power, which is a problem as essentially the game comes down to 'Can the Cylons reveal in an epic enough way to sway the game in their favour'. One idea I had to combat this is have a brigging/executing phase between the skill check and action step: This would lengthen the game, but encourage Cylons to act covertly, damaging things but staying under the radar in the process, rather than saving cards (which all the humans did anyway) then bombing a key check.

Overall, I think I'm going to refine the system, possibly shorten the game somewhat as well to, say, 8 crises, and then possibly release those rules as a freely available game system people can take, tweak and run on their own.

Now, I'll open up the floor to feedback from the players. Did people enjoy the game? Did they feel they had a serious impact on the game? Did you feel anything needs urgent change?

The spreadsheet for the game can be found here. It may be a little hard to understand some sections, but... the crisis page and players page might be interesting.

[Excellen Browning]

I think it dragged on way longer than it should.With that I mean the phases.

Edited June 27, 2011 by Excelkitty

[Haze]

I extend my most heartfelt "HA!" to Rein and Wen.

[eclipse]

One, and only one thing. . .

I AM A SHE!

Now, about my hand. . .the reason why I didn't care about burning a TRE card a few months back was because my hand after I revealed was three TRE-2 cards. I figured that as long as the checks weren't POL, TAC, and everything, in that order, I'd be able to mess things up regardless. My best draw was a TRE-4, courtesy of Wen. Otherwise, my draws were horrid.

[Guest Wen Yang]

We could've won this had BK not revealed himself so early.

Seriously. That reveal of his when I spiked the crisis big-time was pointless.

[Excellen Browning]

Very true. BK would have been my second cylon scanner target, though.

[Tables]

Sorry Eclipse :(. I derped while writing.

[BK-201]

I had dropped in enough Tac + Lea that if anyone had decided to look back at my actions it would have been fairly obvious as I literally almost never drew Pol.