Battlestar Galactica: The Return Of

[Artell]

As for the next game, I might be up for starting it on the 16th, with signups opening a week before. I'd like to hear opinions on whether we'd like to include Pegasus. I haven't played it yet and would be keen.

If someone else wants to take over GMing, that's fine too. I can help setting it up. You do need the game itself, obviously.

 

[Slinky]

Cylons

Thanks a lot Artell for GM-ing, it was probably quite time consuming and sometimes frustrating for you.

 

[jacob-Lundgren]

Had I the $$$ I would get it but not in position atm. Expansion can work if we have enough experienced people now as they will have the basics down, another normal is fine also by me. Fun game.

 

[Galle]

Good game everybody.

The Galactica's surprising resilience aside, I think we did kind of get lucky this game. Tyrol is hardly the most effective Cylon - the best I could hope for was to try to be as useless as humanly possible and wait for damage to pile up so I could reveal and leave you all repair-manless. In that regard, we were pretty lucky that Roslin had the "damage Galactica" reveal card. Set up my reveal perfectly.

Honestly, at the end there I thought Galactica was going to make a comeback and we'd lose. You showed surprising resilience, and if Lee had had an XO you probably would have been able to start repairing the ship faster than I could blow it up.

 

[sbr]

Woo-hoo!! Two wins.

Good game everyone and thanks again for GMing Artell, it was lottsa fun.

 

[Artell]

You're welcome! It takes an average of 5-10 minutes per day, it's not really too much. I'd say it takes up about as much time as a real life game would. The frustration only comes when mistakes slip in and I have to track them down to fix them.

I didn't actually rate Galactica that highly when the game dragged on. It was not the damage, though, it was the fact that you had two destination cards of distance 1. The fleet was still facing at least three jumps (possibly four) with resources ticking down. If the damage hadn't done you in, the resources would have.

I will give this piece of advice to everyone and I hope future players will take it to heart: scout. Launch Scout is a really powerful action. You can use it to bury terrible crisis cards and to purge as many destination 1 cards as possible. It's never a bad idea to scout if you have some breathing room. I also saw surprisingly little XO'ing once it was clear who the cylons were.

 

[sbr]

I have a quick question about this move by then President Apollo.

All crew, stand by for a presidential announcement:

Dear ... people. Some of you will be surprised to hear my voice. With sadness I have to inform you that former president Roslin wasn't who we thought she was. She has been acting a little bit strange for some time now, but the suspicion she aroused by throwing chief Tyrol in the brig while we needed him most was the final straw. When admiral Thigh confronted former president Roslin, she revealed herself to be a Cylon. In her escape she damaged a large part of the Galactica. Admiral Thigh was hurt and is recovering in sickbay. We hope that he makes a speedy and full recovery.

I now find myself acting president. I learned of this while I was out protecting our fleet in my Viper. Apologies if this address is less eloquent than you are used to, but I am still flying and on the look out for Cylons. I will probably be so for some time because of our damaged hangar deck. I urge you all to not give up hope. As my first act as president I am undoing the wrong of my predessecor and I will give a presidential pardon to chief Tyrol with my best wishes and the hope that he can repair some of the damage we have sustained in recent attacks.

Our focus will be to repair our offensive capabilities so that we can take this fight back to the Cylons and teach them to leave us alone. President Adama out.


------------------------------------
I will move to echo and I will play a presidential pardon on Tyrol releasing him from the brig to the hangar deck.

I was under the impression you had to be in the President's Office to play a quorum card, is that wrong? Can you play one from anywhere but can only draw one from the President's Office?

 

[sbr]

I can't believe how well things came together in those couple of turns leading up to me revealign myself, it was almost perfect. I knew I didn't want to put the first two damage markers on Galactica, and figured there was no way I would be able to finish her off. To get two damaged locations, with one of the being the Hanger Deck so Starbuck couldn't launch in a Viper was so perfect I couldn't believe it. Unfortunately for Jopi he had no choice but to XO me, and put the humans in an incredibly bad situation.

The fact that Tyrol was a Cylon still makes me laugh. I was originally going to Brig the Admiral so he lost his title, but that was a waste. Next I was going to brig Apollo so a Fighter Pilot and President was in the brig, which would have been amusing. It wasn't until I was writing the PM to Artell that I realized I should brig the one person who could actually repair the ship. For Slinky to Pardon Galle and have Galle turn around and reveal himself was almost too much for me. :rofl:

I am definitely interested in playing again, but only if you can't get enough people for another game. I don't want to hog a spot for the third time if there are newbies wanting to play.

 

[Artell]

Quorum cards are action cards and you can play them even if you are not in the Office (heck, you can play them from the Brig*). I am 90% sure I have told you this before in a PM, actually. The Office is just way more efficient. There's a super crisis card that can remove Colonial One from the game, it would be devastating if it prevented all quorum cards on top.

And yeah, I actually realized when you were close to revealing that you would brig Tyrol because he would be the one best equipped to repair the ship, and was laughing all the way as you concocted the plan. Being omniscient is fun.

* Mind you, the Pardon card says "play this on another player". The President can't pardon herself.

 

[Ciryandor]

I'll only play if Pegasus goes online. I like TREACHERY cards.

 

[Jopi]

Boo, hiss!!

Thanks for GMing Artell, this was a fun game, and I'd like to play again. The end game didn't go too well for me, being brigged and all that. I guess I should've tried to get us to pass the skill check which brought our first resource to red. That way at least I could've joined the winning side as the symphatiser.

 

[randakar]

I will give this piece of advice to everyone and I hope future players will take it to heart: scout. Launch Scout is a really powerful action. You can use it to bury terrible crisis cards and to purge as many destination 1 cards as possible. It's never a bad idea to scout if you have some breathing room. I also saw surprisingly little XO'ing once it was clear who the cylons were.

I used it two or three times in the 3 player game that we did last week.
I 100% agree with this assesment. It saved the humans some really terrible crisises and changed the destination to a tylenium refinery once too (other option: another distance 1 card that was a lot worse..)

I think I'm interested in playing but not sure if I want to GM if it means that my own brand spanking new game board is out of action for months ;-)

I don't mind the expansion, I don't mind not using the expansion either.

 

[Herbert West]

Should have saved that last nuke for a suicide run. No living human will ever fall into Cylon hands!

 

[Artell]

I think I'm interested in playing but not sure if I want to GM if it means that my own brand spanking new game board is out of action for months ;-)

Using my spreadsheet and other techniques, I was able to play the base game with people once while this game was going on. It's a bit of work, sure, you need to keep track of a lot of cards. The skill cards, the biggest deal, are easily taken care of by spreadsheet. The system I created basically randomly selects a new card from the skill deck based on the composition of the cards remaining in the skill deck, so Excel essentially does the shuffle for me. Similarly I had a master list of crisis cards, numbered for random determination, and I'd cross them out and place them in a virtual 'stack' as they got played so that actions that manipulate the crisis deck wouldn't be influenced (and to make sure buried cards will be found at the bottom, as opposed to discards which are just removed).

 

[randakar]

Very interesting.

So if I have this spreadsheet I may be able to run it .. I'm not quite sure I know the game well enough to do it right now though. Not to mention having to whip up DRADIS every now and then..

You know what, I'll make you a deal. Run it again and I'll consider running it for you next time around. By then I should have played it a few more times and have a better idea of the nitty details - things like player moves to vipers, what happens to destroyed ship tokens and thus with ships, how certain locations work etc..

(According to the manual destroyed ships get removed from the game. This appears to contradict what happens in the forum games, though.. hmm.)

The main concern for me is how to track the game without setting up a board somewhere though. The spreadsheet idea seems nice but it'd have to be fairly portable. A google docs spreadsheet might work .. hm.

 

[Slinky]

(According to the manual destroyed ships get removed from the game. This appears to contradict what happens in the forum games, though.. hmm.).

I do not understand this, during this game destroyed ships where put in the destroyed stack and never returned. Are you perhaps confusing destroyed with damaged?

The main concern for me is how to track the game without setting up a board somewhere though. The spreadsheet idea seems nice but it'd have to be fairly portable. A google docs spreadsheet might work .. hm.

Using a spreadsheet doesn't mean you have to bring your desktop along



I think the one thing I dislike about the game is that it isn't possible for more players to participate at the same time.

 

[Herbert West]

Oh, and btw, yes, we need Pegasus, and yes, I want to be adm. Cain.

 

[randakar]

I do not understand this, during this game destroyed ships where put in the destroyed stack and never returned. Are you perhaps confusing destroyed with damaged?

I'm talking about cylon ships here. Sorry about the confusion.

Using a spreadsheet doesn't mean you have to bring your desktop along

I don't like mailing files back and forth or lugging laptops around ;-)
Maybe an USB stick will work though.

I think the one thing I dislike about the game is that it isn't possible for more players to participate at the same time.

Doesn't the pegasus expansion allow for more?

 

[Artell]

Looks like we'll play Pegasus then!

You know what, I'll make you a deal. Run it again and I'll consider running it for you next time around. By then I should have played it a few more times and have a better idea of the nitty details - things like player moves to vipers, what happens to destroyed ship tokens and thus with ships, how certain locations work etc..

Sounds like a plan. You can play, or you can follow the game and we can talk about how I'm running it simultaneously as situations crop up.

(According to the manual destroyed ships get removed from the game. This appears to contradict what happens in the forum games, though.. hmm.)

Destroyed cylon ships are merely put back to the pool, if a new crisis card puts more ships on the DRADIS, then there they are placed. The game would be far too easy if all the humans had to do was kill 16 raiders and 2 basestars and you'd just run out of cylons for the rest of the game. There's a difference between "destroyed"/"removed from the board" and "removed from the game"/"placed back in the box". The latter only happens to things like nuke tokens and destroyed human ships (unless a card like Ragnor Anchorage allows you to get them back).

The main concern for me is how to track the game without setting up a board somewhere though. The spreadsheet idea seems nice but it'd have to be fairly portable. A google docs spreadsheet might work .. hm.

I am not familiar with google spreadsheets so I don't know if the randomization etc. would work.

 

[Artell]

Also, Peggy can fit seven players, I believe.