Forum Overview :: Reviews :: Re: Battlestar Galactica

[quote name="Lizard_King"][quote name="fabio"] God yes. Whose bright idea was it to take a game where most of the fun was guessing the mole and change it so they're out in the open? The mechanics of Cylon leaders is so impossible to influence for both sides that it's like they're playing a separate game that just happens to use the same components.[/quote] Personally, I actually prefer playing with the alternate non-sympathizer rules (with the resource reduction) rather than doing anything other than having true Cylons in the game, or the 2 card draw cylons in smaller games. It's a decision I made early because the prospect of ever being stuck with a Cylon agenda but human limitations sounded like the shittiest possible game. Then the Cylon leader concept doubled down on that. Since they have instant new player appeal, I don't even take them out of the box anymore; they sit under the divider with the New Caprica stuff. [quote] New Caprica, in addition to being boring, also made the admiral boringly dangerous. Mandatory airlock until you get a confirmed human. It's an instant game over if a Cylon has the position.[/quote] Yes, that's probably the most obviously broken aspect. It kind of reminds me of a Squaresoft minigame, in that the game experience gets totally hijacked by new mechanics that have been whimsically designed and minimally playtested. I think that Exodus doesn't fix it so much as ignore its existence speaks volumes. [quote] The treachery cards were a good idea to help mask Cylons, but their opportunities just don't come up often enough.[/quote] In general that and the Reckless dynamic have been poorly developed past the initial novelty. The problem is that there's never a pro-human use for treachery that would allow them to become as powerful (as a positive or negative, situationally) as the others, and they are not going to sway most skill checks because they are so low value. So as a cylon you ostentatiously draw one or two to dissuade people from going reckless, and then they are mostly forgotten. [quote] The other aspects just seem overpowered. The Pegasus board is vastly superior to anything on Galactica. Camping the engine room is too efficient a strategy, and the guns render pilot characters even more useless. Kane's blind jump ability ridiculously slants the game towards the humans (just make it mandatory they have to use it on the first turn or else they're a Cylon). [/quote] Well, I haven't played with just pegasus in a while but the general consensus was that the base game + Pegasus (without Caprica) was slanted towards the humans. At a minimum, having a bullet sponge for Galactica is pretty useful, and that's really where the ship remains primarily handy once you add Exodus into the mix. I don't agree that blind jump is mandatory first turn behavior for Kane (and I play her often), but I think generally the people I prefer to play with don't try to game the game in terms of assuming guilty until proven innocent relative to how important a person's position is. The more mechanics-focused/rules lawyery crowd apparently has a tough time with making "non-optimal" moves, but it has not come up with my regular groups or at games with strangers. [quote] I held off on Exodus after experiencing Pegasus. The objective cards that encouraged humans to perform sabotage sounded lame (trying to tell the difference between human sabotage and cylon?) and some of the character cards seemed ridiculous (automatic execution?). Is it really that good? [/quote] The short answer is "yes". I can't emphasize enough what a big difference the piloting upgrades (including the new vipers, CAG) combined with the change in how the Cylon fleet musters makes in how the game plays (starting with the fact that all cylon fleet crisis cards are just removed from the deck). The fact that pilots are no longer errand boys cuts down your free moves a lot more than you'd think on the surface, and the repair/support guy becomes more relevant as a result. A lot of the issues you talk about (optimizing Kane's jump, using Pegasus constantly, etc) start working on a totally different timetable because pilots are so much more useful and therefore can't just do busy work all of the game, alongside the impending doom of a persistent fleet and civilian ships that have to be individually evacuated mean that you spend a lot more time dealing with the high tension space combat and anticipation of it while dealing with the particular crisis at hand rather than either/or. The last two games I've played no one has used the engine room a single time, and not for lack of need. It has been an even split of human/Cylon victories thus far, with the better players having slightly better outcomes overall apart from my wife who still has a perfect record regardless of which side she lands on. If there's a downside it's that I don't think the super crises have kept up all that well with the increase in cylon abilities in the new basestar board and their persistent fleet, but I'm not convinced that those were all that well balanced to begin with given the opportunity cost of using them and how shitty some of them can be. I think Cally's insta-kill ability is a lot like Kane's once per game: people trying to game the game might still try to do superficially rational things with it (like killing Baltar first turn or Boomer at distance 4), but I think the balance of opportunity cost has changed significantly for a number of reasons (not least that depending on the starting crises and their impact you might not want an overt cylon running wild on the new board, and the potential returns on using it with someone later on when you really need to neutralize them are great). Nothing is going to fix the reality that playing with people who operate under "guilty until proven innocent" is going to stress the mechanics, I think, but I tend to have as much of a problem with the gaming attitudes that drive those approaches generally as with that particular manifestation of it so I don't have much experience with it. [/quote]