http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=687

This is officially the second time I was caught off guard when Ellen Tigh was chosen for something.

SO there is a sleeper agent phase, Bleached Lizard... ^^

Thanks for the link!

In my FACE!

You can always hope they'll remove it in the next expansion :P

Very impressive mechanics, I must say...

Looks good :P

Seems like it is no longer get to 8 and jump once, but get to 7, then immediately be at New Caprica. So it replaces 1-2 jumps worth of game time with lots of new problems to sort out, and then you have to protect Galactica and New Caprica at the same time! Madness!

Wow ... I'm the fanniest of fanny fan-boys of this game right now, but this looks ... way too complicated. Knee-jerk judgment, happy to revise it later.

They had bloody better!

"What, another senior crew member has just realised they're a Cylon? Again?? That's the third one this week! *le sigh*"

Looks good, not too sure about what's going on with the occupation forces, but I am sure it will all become clear!

Yes, maybe this preview isn't as clear as the other one, but New Caprica seems a bit complicated. Guess it'll get clearer when we have the actual expansion in our hands.

AFAIK, when you hit New Caprica, all remaining civvies are placed on the locked stack, in a random order.

Occupation forces are placed at the beginning of the track by various things including Cylon actions, and can be advanced by Cylon actions and/or crises. If they reach the last space, they destroy a locked civilian ship. Bad for humans. Humans can fight this by stopping the occupation forces (roll 5+) or by evacuating the ships (or prepare them if Galactica hasn't returned yet).

New Caprica does seem a bit overcomplicated, especially for a phase that I can't imagine taking very long. Humans will use XOs to spam Shipyard or Breeder's Canyon, and Cylons will use Occupation Authority to march occupation forces. At the end, you just do the math to see if you kept enough resources to win. The Detain a Human action might be useful, but if it is, then the humans will just execute all the Cylons. And what happens when a Cylon is executed on New Caprica? There's no Ressurection Ship yet. Maybe they come back when Galactica reappears? That's actually probably exactly what will happen, but then they'd be functionally immune to being killed again. (Not that that's bad, I guess.)

Especially once Galactica is back in orbit, the game simply can't take very long. If this:

is true, then it sounds like you don't even need to advance the jump track before hitting FTL for the last time. There just won't be enough time for cylon ships to appear and activate enough times to matter. I mean, if Cavil isn't in the game, how will a basestar even appear? A Cylon Fleet card? What exactly would that do if Galactica hasn't reappeared?

My concerns may be unfounded, and I do trust the designers to some extent. But what makes the base game great is how smoothly it integrates interesting gameplay and faithfulness to the source material. I'm just worried that New Caprica may be sacrificing the former to the latter.

One tidbit: The Pegasus can in fact be destroyed independently of Galactica.

Another speculative factoid: We have Ellen Tigh and Helena Cain confirmed, plus an image of Kat's piloting token. That's Political, Military, and Pilot characters locked in. If Cally appears as a new Support character, that will mean all four new humans are ladies. Pretty cool, actually. (This is assuming we get a new character in each category, plus three Cylon Leaders, for a total of seven characters.)

Also, do we have to get permission to post the preview images here?

No need. FFG has already posted the images to the BGG gallery.

And another thing! I really like Ellen Tigh's character card. Her drawback can be used as ammunition (by giving away the Treachery cards) or make her vulnerable (if an unrevealed Cylon accuses her of doing exactly this). It's the kind of double-edged sword that I think is great in this game.

Also, I just love doing interesting things with skill sets and drawbacks in general. I was sort of hoping for a character with a Piloting draw and a drawback that said they couldn't fly a Viper, just because it would be interesting to see in action. This is close enough for me to still like it a lot.

Agree that it's pretty cool, but I'd much rather have Gaeata or maybe Doc Cottle as a support character. Cally's kind of annoying, and we've got annoying pretty much covered with Ellen (though her abilities seem pretty cool).

Well the New Caprica board is an optional part of the game.

Once you have 4 jump icons Galactica is back and then the Admiral can jump at any time. So the humans just need to get enough Civilian ships off Galactica so that population does not reach zero.

We do not know if there are ways for Cylon ships to appear while Galactica is there but I would expect for enemy ships to start the game with Galactica when it appears at New Caprica much like they did in the show.

It doesnt seem that complicated to me though, its basically a series of "boarding parties" moving along the track and trying to take out the Civilians before you can escape.

If you dump all the civilian ships into space by XOing at the shipyard then there is nothing to protect them and I am sure they need some protecting.

Of course if the humans have lost most of their civilian ships before reaching New Caprica they will be there for much less time, but will have much lower resources by that point.

That misjump destination card seems a bit off - there's no legitimate reason for a admiral to choose it, so by picking it you are moderately hurting the humans while clearly tagging yourself as a cylon. Unless there are a bunch of all-bad cards now in the deck.

well if the 2 cards you got were bad you could pick that and hope for a better destination card. Remember you do get another destination card after that one is chosen.

Cally was indeed annoying. I do think she will be the new support character as she is already featured prominently on two of the New Caprica crisis cards already. Gaeta would be the only other major name that would be a possiblity for a Support character, but, I see him as more of an addition in a later, possibly card only expansion (like the small box Arkham Horror expansions) that would cover the events of seasons 3 and 4.

So, now we have:
Military - Cain
Pilot - Kat
Political - Ellen
Support - unknown possibly Cally

Cylon leader - Cap. 6
Cylon Leader - Cavill
Cylon Leader - unknown. my money is on D'anna Biers/Number 3. Reason being: (yay. spoiler tags....) Besides, she is probably the most interesting and conniving of the other Cylons not yet covered. Simon is just dull, Leoben is interesting, but never really dastardly, and Aaron Doral was more of a henchman than a leader.

I am a bit saddened by the apparent exclusion of Anders in this expansion, but, I can see him being included in the same expansion that includes Gaeta.

You're forgetting one...

Also if you jumped using Cain's OPG imagine you draw exactly that card! Double Whammy!

Who? Of the Significant 7, that is everyone (since Boomer is in the Base set).

Yes, but not as a Cylon leader.