Are you man or machine? Group Let's Play of Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game!

I'll take a Politics and Piloting. Then I'll stay on Caprica and reveal my Super-Crisis.

Hey guys, remember that time Chief was repairing Colonial One? Well, he left a present for you!

Suuuuuuuuper Crisis!

In this season, we prove that Chief is not only good at yelling and fixing and beating future wives, he's also a pretty sneaky saboteur.

Bomb on Colonial 1

Check of 15, Purple, Red, and Blue (Tac, Pil, Eng)

Pass: No Effect,
Fail: -2 morale, and all characters on Colonial One are sent to Sickbay. Colonial One is down for the rest of the game.



Contribution Order

Destiny: 2 cards
Boomer: 5 cards
Helo: 0 cards
Baltar: 2 cards
Apollo: 1 card
Chief: 1 card

Well, this is it, ain't it?

No cards to contribute.

Do or die I guess. Throwing in five.

Since I'm in the sick bay, I can only contribute one card, correct?

Nope, that's the brig. You only draw one card on your turn.

2 cards to contribute.

It's been nice knowing you humans. I, President Gauis Baltar, welcome our Cylon overlords. Unless we pass the check. Then I don't.

You'd best believe I'm throwing my one card into this.

The Chief adds one card and cackles maniacally.

Cards are in! The fate of the humans is at stake...

Bomb on Colonial 1

Check of 15, Purple, Red, and Blue (Tac, Pil, Eng)

Positive
Tac - Launch Scout 1
Tac - Launch Scout 1
Pil - Evasive Maneuvers 1
Pil - Evasive Maneuvers 2
Pil - Maximum Firepower 3
Eng - Repair 1
Eng - Repair 2
Eng - Repair 2

Negative
Pol - Investigative Committee 3
Pol - Investigative Committee 4
Lea - Declare Emergency 4


13 - 11 = 2, a Fail! -2 Morale, and that drops it to 0.

Cylons win in Turn 50!

I'll be back for a wrap-up post tomorrow, but for tonight, savor this victory, and congrats and huge thanks to all players, current and past, for helping me run this game. I had a ton of fun, and I hope you (and any readers we have) had fun as well.

I will not be running a new game with the expansions at least until late next year, as this encroached a bit much into my home and work schedules, but if anyone is interested I can provide my files. If anyone's curious to the system I used, PM me and I can send a link to the google spreadsheet. Just don't use it to print off your own copy of the game please, go buy a copy from your Friendly Local Game Store!

Thanks again!

Wow, humanity got taken to the trash here.

We died of sad!



I guess we would have been better off with someone in the Brig after all!

Good game, everyone! Well played, Cylons.

They were only two Jump Preps and an Action from winning on their end, though. The crisis deck was against them here, as the Cylons kept fishing for Cylon Attack cards and discarding all the good ones. If we were playing with Pegasus rules where we don't ignore the Cylon Activation and Jump Prep when using Caprica, they would have won.

Post-Sleeper phase, scouting the Crisis deck is hella important. Those, combined with smart XO's are how the humans stay ahead.

I was referring specifically to the rundown of that last Super Crisis. I guess the crew were pretty tapped by that point.

Yep, we were. Didn't help matters that almost all the cards were low numbers — just no chance against one bad Destiny card and two bad Cylon cards.

Had lots o fun. Now I wish I didn't blow that inspirational speech

I'd actually be curious to see what the next five or so crisis cards would have been. Aside from some bad destiny and crisis draws those last few turns, this was an incredibly close game.

It's not surprising to see humanity bite it when a game takes five intermediate jumps to get to the finale, but it was indeed quite close for how things happened. As a corollary to what John said, you need to make the sleeper phase as short as possible - even if the Cylons only awaken at 4-distance, you want to get as much of a lead on it as possible.

Damn, if we had made it through that Super Crisis, we had a decent chance of winning. As it was, we were that close to passing a really hard check.

Well played, Cylons. You played everything perfectly.

The major downfall with the Play by Forum format is communication. It may take a day or so to ask someone what they think, so in the hopes of speeding the game up people stay quiet. That was one of the Humans' major downfalls in the game. There were a few major checks that they should have tanked from the beginning if they would have just asked what everyone thought they could contribute.

The other main problem was the Admiral was playing very conservatively with the Destinations. Rai was right to question why the fleet was jumping a measly one distance after he already scouted the deck and saw there was a 2 that would have gotten them to Sleeper Phase. That jump did have the chance of gaining a Fuel which they capitalized on, but in the long run the other resources suffered.

The President had a hand full of Inspirational Speeches, which could have raised Morale, but he didn't ask for an XO late in the game. One XO could have raised Morale by two, and they would still be in the game (but limping along).

By the end of the game, if the humans still have Raptors left they did something wrong. Once Sleeper Phase starts, and you have weeded out who the Cylons are, as long as nothing else is in imminent danger, use them. If raiders are one space away from a civvy ship, screw fighting them, scout the Crisis deck. If you find Jump Prep and it's not absolutely horrible, then you are one step closer to winning. Humans always lose on a war of attrition.

The humans did do a great job of passing checks pre-Sleeper, especially when they figured out they were all humans. Before that, they did over contribute, but that's to be expected. With a couple tweaks in strategy, they would have landed on Kobol and had sad unfulfilling lives.

The game is weighted to side with the Cylons, at least for new players. I have only played one game with real people where the Cylons were turned into scrap. Much of that is because I play with new people almost every time, so they haven't learned the nuances. There's an "easy mode" variant where you start with two more of every resource, and the Humans have even lost that! There's no statistical way for the fleet to pass every check, especially with the Pegasus expansion's Treachery cards added into the Destiny Deck. It's about making the smart choices, and mitigating the disasters you see.



The board is put away, and my library is open for the first time in 2 months. Thanks again to all, and see you next time!

In my defense, I was trying to take advantage of the rare opportunity to gather extra resources and mitigate damage (like all those hits the Galactica was taking) early on without fear of Cylon player interference (not only did we not have any Cylons before the Sleeper Phase — unless they were doing a terrible job at it — neither Baltar nor Boomer was a Cylon; what are the odds of that?), then throw everything into the post-Sleeper jumps once the teams switched. And it was very close to working! I'd usually agree that taking it slow is a killer for the humans. I'm not convinced that's what led to the loss this time; our resources were about as high as I've ever seen them post-Sleeper phase.

Good stuff, this game was really fun to follow along with.

GJ, cylons! Sorry humans, I was rooting for you, but you really had a rough go of it once the cylons revealed.

Thanks for the good (half) game, folks. My record in Battlestar Galactica remains unbeaten (twice human, twice cylon). We Cylons got pretty lucky with the crises in the last few turns. Especially what Rai managed to pull. I mean, how many humans will choose to devote cards to passing a crisis that will send someone of their choice to the brig.

But yeah, lots of fun. Especially to come in right as it was about time to reveal.

6/12 * 5/11 = 22.7%

This, of course, assumes the events of one of the three non-Boomer, non-Baltar characters receiving both Cylon cards and then passing the second one to either Boomer or Baltar don't count.

I guess the probability of that happening, given that neither Boomer or Baltar get any of the Cylon cards initially, would be:

3 * 2/6 * 1/5 * 2/4 = 10%

Which means that the probability of that not happening is 90%, which means that the total probability of neither Boomer or Baltar turning out to be Cylons from either initial distribution or redistribution is:

.227 * .9 = 20.5%