So we're discussing planning with friends ... the local who went to GenCon returns late Monday, so...

"We're playing Pegstivus all day Tuesday."
"Pegstivus?"
"Derived from Festivus...you know, the airing of grievances."

We played four times today. Jon, Dennis, Steve and myself were in all 4 games and Chris joined us for the last two.

In the first game, I was Cavill in a 4 player game with the agenda that required the humans to win and all the dials to be at 3 or lower. It turns out there are very limited opportunities to lower food in the New Caprica crisis deck and so I ended up sharing the Cylon loss as food remained at 5 from the jump to New Caprica on despite a deperate hunt with my one shot for some help. Dee (Dennis) was the first person executed for the day on a random skill check that Jon and I spiked when we suspected him of shenanigans. He was good then, but became the other cylon at the sleeper phase after being forced to switch and choosing Starbuck I think. Cain and I believe Baltar rounded out the crew.

In the second game, Dennis took his turn as a Cylon leader and chose Leoben. He drew a pro-cylon agenda (cylons win but galactica has at most 2 damage). Jon was Cain, Steve took Ellen Tigh and I took Apollo. Despite my concerns that this would be an insurmountable tasks for the humans before playing the game, Jon and I managed to pull out a win against (sleeper Cylon) Steve despite a few missteps on my part. In the endgame the Cylons had a couple of full bombards trying to hit our last fuel but could not pull it off.

In the third game (5 player now), Steve took Caprica Six and made no secret of his open hostility against humanity from the beginning. He infiltrated us early and used his one shot to ensure the brigging of Dee (Jon) who was saving us from an early onslaught of Cylon ships. Both Chris (Cain) and Roslin (Dennis) were doing some hinky things (Our first 2 jumps were 1s and every turn Roslin was bottoming her first crisis card (still playing with our nerfing).

So when morale hit 3 before we had moved beyond 2 distance, I didn't know who was winning, but I thought I knew that Jon and I were losing. I was wrong. A crisis card came out that let Roslin throw someone in the Brig and she chose Cain giving me the admiralcy while still at distance 2. Meanwhile, Dee decided to off herself as morale dropped and was reincarnated as Adama. Finally, mercifully, we jumped out and moved straight into a Cylon Ambush, triggering the sleeper phase, and my sudden realization that I was in fact going to win this game as there was a happy "you are a Cylon - brig" card staring up at me when I received my sleeper cards. I revealed, leaving only Roslin free as President and Admiral.

The humans struggled some more and actually got to New Caprica, but the morale situation was pretty much hopeless by this point. Steve's agenda required a Cylon win with him in the Brig or Detention or having been executed at least once by game end. He achieved this on New Caprica by spiking a Resistance check to ensure his death.

The final game brought to fruition all my fears about the Cylon Leader mechanic. Here was the setup:
Jon - Cavill - Wants Human Win + Play a supercrisis - Probably the most carebear agenda that there is
Chris - Tigh - Human
Dennis - Baltar - Human
Steve - Kat - Human
Me - Roslin - Sleeper Cylon

I took 5 turns total in this game, 2 as a human, 1 to reveal, and 2 as a cylon. This was a complete blowout from the beginning as expected with 4 essentially human players vs. one. There was a slight glimmer of hope in the endgame but it was not a glimmer that I would expect to hit ever.

My thoughts:
I don't think 5 player works with the Cylon Leader mechanic because a friendly Cylon Leader removes basically 100% of the tension of the game. Especially when he has that agenda that we saw in game 4.

The treachery cards are pretty lame. Ones that require a human to discard a treachery card are easy to work around by dumping treachery cards into checks the humans are punting. We almost never used Reckless skill checks. I absolutely believe we have to house rule something about treachery to make the mechanic more meaningful in our games. As is, Crisis cards with treachery and especially the Super Crisis cards involving treachery are so weak.

The change to Caprica and the addition of Pegasus are huge boosts to the human cause. In the second game, just being able to absorb bombards we drew on human turns onto Pegasus in the endgame protected our Fuel.

Fuel is not nearly as tight as in the base game.

Population is much more dangerous. Punching FTL at -3 without a sure thing (i.e. Kat) is very risky as added population gives you a much bigger buffer in the end game.

I was very disappointed in the new politics card that lets you use a movement to reduce the next loss in a named resource that turn by one. In theory, it sounds great, but in practice, the timing rarely works out correctly.

I like the New Caprica phase. It creates some automatic tension in the end game even in situations where the humans have dominated.

4 games of Pegasus. Man I hate you

And then you didn't play when I was available. That's totally a cylon thing to do.

I'm hoping it will be there Saturday. And Jon at least claimed earlier that it will be there Monday.

Odds are we may be willing to play it once or twice more given our history with BSG.

The "Humans win and you must play a supercrisis" definitely sounds like too nice an agenda for a hostile one. Maybe there should be an added condition, like "pop under 3" (to stick to the "mutual annihilation" thing) or modify the secondary condition, like "you must play two successful supercrises" instead of "you must play a supercrisis".

I have the feeling that the ideal table is:

4 players: 2 humans, 1 Cylon, 1 Cylon leader with a friendly agenda
5 players: 3 humans, 2 Cylons.
6 Players: 3 humans, 2 Cylons, 1 Cylon leader with a friendly agenda
7 Players: 4 humans, 2 Cylons, 1 Cylon leader with a hostile agenda.

But if "Mutual Annihilation" is changed, maybe a Cylon leader with a hostile agenda will be ok... That's the only agenda card which seems really unbalanced to me.

I was the Cylon in the last game with the care bear agenda, and I have to say it was very boring for me to play.

I got 6 total turns in the game and they went like this:

Turn 1: Infiltrate
Turn 2: Return to the Resurrection Ship
Turn 3: Draw a Super Crisis
Turn 4: Play "Fleet Mobilization" while no cylon ships were on the board
Turn 5: Used the shipyard space on New Caprica to bottom a decoy ship in the locked ship pile and told the humans not to worry about leaving it behind
Turn 6: Use Caprica location to get another Civilian Ship Prepared

This has to be the most useless agenda in the game, I was not even paying attention in the second half of the game I would just throw in a positive card into any skill check and just wait till my turn again.

Yep, this card seems a bit... off to say the least. Maybe an added condition "population must be 3 or lower" could make it better?

By the way, when you guys were playing the Cylon leader, was it hard to gain the trust of the humans or of the Cylons? Were there interesting interactions because of this? Obviously I'm not asking about the game with the "mutual annihilation" card.

Another question: isn't it tough as a Cylon leader not to say anything about your hidden agenda or did you allow the Cylon leader to let the other players guess his hidden agenda?

Very good question... Or did it quickly become obvious which side you were on?

It was pretty much obvious usually. My misstep in game 2 was backing myself into a corner where I was basically forced to "hope" that the obviously evil cylon was actually good. We won despite that but he had been obviously evil before that time.

How could you only have 5 turns in the game? Is jumping that much easier in Pegasus? In the original, the humans would get stuck for 2 rounds easily between jumps... and if the distance was only 1, which happened all too many times.... 5 turns would go by before getting to Sleeper Phase.

Yes. You can engine room to force a jump icon. That means that you'll likely have a jump slightly less than once every time around the table (5 players) assuming you never punch out early. So, about once around the table. And if (as in this case) you only have one cylon, you can afford to dump two cards a turn into the engine room.

And Pegasus has Jump to 7 (3 jumps almost always, and sometimes just 2 with a legendary discovery) + New Caprica (one jump) + Leave. Leaving is usually less than once around the table.

Base game has Jump to 8 (sometimes 3, but often four jumps) + final jump.



Sounds like you need to be willing to brig the admiral more. A '1' jump is only forced 11% of the time (by drawing two 1s). Even if you allow a bit for when the choice is a one or a terrible '3', that's taking too long.

I played a 6 player game earlier this month, there 24 crisis cards in the discard pile and the humans one. That's 4 per player, less a few for revealed cylons and brig time, maybe. Between scouting, human Roslin and human Boomer, always jumping on -1 and good luck, you can go a long ways.

David