philihp.com » Cylons Win

Relentless Boarding Parties

philihp — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:21:56 +0000

Aaron Dixon – Saul
Paul Houlbrooke – Apollo
Sean George – Tyrol*
Chris Rabeler – Baltar
Phil Busby – Roslin
Ken Mather – Boomer*

To shake things up this game, and keep people from picking characters they’ve been before, everyone picked the character for the person to their right going clockwise. Paul made Aaron be Saul first, then it went down in the order above. Phil picked Chris to be Baltar because he’s such a horrible horrible human anyway. Ken picked Phil to be Roslin so Chris wouldn’t be president. Aaron picked Ken to be Boomer so he could be admiral.

Apollo draws Missing G4 Explosives as the first crisis to put Boomer in jail as she starts in the armory. Tyrol puts in 1, pass, pass, Boomer says she’ll take care of it and puts in 3 cards. It fails, and there’s a blue 5 point skill card in it, so Boomer goes to jail, but she accuses Tyrol of sabotaging the check. It’s pretty suspicious though, so Roslin and Saul both think Boomer’s a cylon. Food Shortage advances jump track. Roslin cherry picks Water Sabotage to advance the jump track, then a Survey Team, Forced Water Mining, and Rescue the fleet all advance the jump track for a quick first jump. Saul takes us 3 distance for 2 fuel. Good Saul.

Tyrol draws Declare Martial Law, and the presidency goes to Saul. Then a Raiding Party, but the jump track is at 0, so we just get some friends. Scouting For Water pushes the jump track up, then Low Supplies, then Besieged giving us a base star and friends on the board. Apollo draws Network Computers, and it passes, but Tyrol is all like “oops, blind devotion (his once per game) says it failed”, so instead of advancing jump twice, it goes back once and gives us a boarding party. Tyrol’s turn is next too, and he reveals sending Baltar to sickbay so he draws only 1 skillcard next turn. Crap. He leaves and goes to the Armory, rolls, and hits a lucky 7 removing the boarding party. Baltar draws Analyze Enemy Fighter advancing the jump track, but activating raiders to blow up 3 ships to kill 3 pop. Then a Jump Control Failure pushes jump back one, and population is now in red which is good for making sure the sympathizer sides with humans, but it really is the worst thing to be in red because it inhibits sprinting through jumping early. Boomer draws Elections loom to advance the jump track, but three heavy raiders are about to board.

Boomer and the Heavy Raiders

Saul’s turn, Boomer says she has two max firepowers to fire on them, probably killing or at least getting rid of two of three, so he executive orders her for two actions. But instead, she scouts twice for bad crises and high-fives Cylon-Tyrol. Technically it was better than execing Apollo, because if Apollo were a cylon, he’d get 3 actions in a row; but we had all forgotten about suspecting Boomer was a cylon from the beginning. She decides to stay a “human” so she can still bomb crises and use her once-per-game. So crises suck for a while, Cylon-Tyrol hits us with his supercrisis, Fleet Mobilization, which fails from already low cards, and advances the heavy raiders further. Baltar manages to shoot at a boarding party killing it, but draws the Guilt by Collusion crisis which fails from a bad skill check. Roslin cherry picks a jump counter with Water Shortage.

We jump past 4 distance, and the sympathizer is neutralized going to the already cylon Tyrol. Heavy raiders urgently need to be killed, as they’re at 2/4 (we lose at 4/4). Saul moves to the President’s Office, and says he has an Authorization of Brutal Force, so the plan is he execs Roslin to use her once-per-game and hopefully draw the other Brutal Force, Apollo execs Saul to use the president’s office, so in total there are 6 quorum draws, and Baltar’s turn to adapt, and maybe Roslin’s turn to do something. And since Boomer didn’t reveal, unless someone’s crisis activates heavy raiders, Saul and Apollo will get turns.

Saul ready to be exec'ed

So Roslin is exec’ed, but doesn’t draw it. Saul is exec’ed, uses the office to draw one, doesn’t get it, uses his Brutal Force in hand as the second part of the office, then as his second action uses the office to draw, doesn’t get it, so he draws another as the second part and doesn’t get it. Cylon-Tyrol’s turn uses Cylon Fleet to push the boarding party further, they’re right on the edge now. Baltar’s turn, he execs Apollo to use the armory twice, but we’re all out of Strategic Planning cards so we have two 25% chances of hitting (a little less than a 50/50 chance). He misses both times with a 2 then a 3, so the Strat Planning wouldn’t have helped anyway. He draws Boarding parties, immediately activating heavy raiders, and the humans lose.

Before the second jump, humans could have jumped early to bring pop down to 3 at half-time and save the ship from boarding parties, but having 3 pop is really rough. I guess having two cylons actively sabotaging stuff before half-time is really devastating for the humans.

Galactica’s Nine Lives

philihp — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:54:18 +0000

Aaron Dixon – Apollo
Ken Mather – Adama (Obama)
Chris Rabeler – Roslin*
Sean George – Starbuck
Philihp Busby – Helo*

A mostly uneventful first jump for two distance. There were some narrow escapes with vipers, but nothing of note because just about every crisis pushed up the jump counter. One of the crises had a 5, two 4s, and a 3 so Adama used his once-per-game to grab it early on. Adama jumps for 2 distance for 2 fuel, which was fair.

The second jump is pretty much the same thing. Lots of quick crises, not too much attacking the ship. Mostly people scratch eachothers’ back with exec orders to get the game moving and to build trust. There were some mishaps with two base stars coming out and firing at Galactica. The armory and a two other insignificant locations get damaged, as well as two vipers. Adama jumps for just 1 distance to the Anchorage to repair the two vipers, citing that it would be pretty good to go into halftime with a totally repaired ship, so everyone gets to repairing the ship; turning out to be somewhat difficult since Starbuck is the only one who naturally draws engineering cards to repair, and drawing one, and having to pick between a possible exec order and a possible repair. Consolidate powers and the research lab turn out to be the only reasonable way.

Third jump comes around. At this point we’re all sure that nobody’s a cylon, but we’re also nervous because there’s a high chance of becoming a cylon. Everyone starts to horde cards. By the jump, just the armory is damaged, andd the ship is at -2 from start on most stats. Adama takes us to a tillium planet or something for only 1 distance. A gamble that he’ll turn out to be a cylon and have screwed the ship.

Aftermath of Cylon-Roslin Revealing

Loyalty cards are dealt. Apollo notices that Roslin takes a second glance at her card, so everyone suspects her as being a cylon. Humans pretty much make a deal to only exec order people to their right to minimize the problems with a cylon getting three actions in a row. Helo’s turn comes around and I ask for who needs to be exec’d. Helo is a cylon (the kill one morale type, fairly unknown to everyone else I’m pretty sure at this point). Apollo volunteers to Helo’s left, which is highly suspect; but there are some raiders hovering on top of his viper in space so he would have something to do. Roslin points out that she could use her quorum cards in combination with Helo’s reroll abilitty, so she’s exec’ed. She ends up using her once-per-game to draw an arrest order to put someone from colonial one in the brig, and reveal the ‘damage galactica’ cylon card, hitting the ship with -1 fuel and a damage token on a location sending someone to sickbay. The humans all groan and figure Helo did it on purpose knowing Cylon-Roslin was the cylon, and figure he’s one as well; something not far from the truth. The humans recover and send Helo to the brig, but it’s costly doing so. And 5 or so crises in by now, there have still been no jump counters. Possibly due to the high frequency in the beginning, so Galactica is just floating in space getting beaten up upon. Cylon-Helo reveals, but is in the brig so no minus one morale (oh noes! not that! but it was still a good call to send him to the brig, there was a 2/3 chance it was one of the devastating cylon cards).

A Cylon boarding party nearly destroys Galactica

Cylon-Roslin plays a supercrisis at a particularly good moment when skill cards are low. It fails, and two boarding parties start. The Armory is also still damaged. The humans have a particularly tough time repairing it, not having many engineering cards and Starbuck having bad luck drawing for one. Without Helo’s reroll ability, the situation looks grim for the humans. Some crises come out putting two base stars around Galactica, and a crisis makes the base stars fire bringing Galactica up to 3 of 6 damage tokens (at 6 the humans lose). The boarding parties are at 2 of 4 distance away from blowing up Galactica and there’s one Heavy Raider about to land before the humans manage to repair it. It’s Cylon-Roslin’s turn comes around and we make the call to try and blow Galactica up with damage tokens, but only one hits bringing the total to 4 of 6. Starbuck rolls to hit the boarding parties but misses. Starbuck’s at an important point. If her crisis is a heavy raider card, then the boarding parties get to 3 of 4 distance and Cylon-Helo uses cylon fleet to push them to 4 of 4 and win; however if her crisis is a base stars fire, then the cylons basically get four chances to make a 75% chance to damage galactica, and only need to succeed two times. But it’s neither, so Cylon-Helo pushes the two boarding parties to 3 of 4, and a third boarding party starts on the track. Adama and Apollo have two turns to figure out how to kill them, and also pray that Apollo’s crisis doesn’t blow up the ship on a 1 in 16 chance. Apollo, now the president, plays an Authorization of Brutal Force to kill the first boarding party, but it’s the best she can do. Her crisis comes up, but it’s yet another raider card. Adama exec orders Apollo to use the president’s office. There are 6 or 7 quorum cards left, 1 of which is another Authorization of Brutal Force card. President’s office lets Apollo get three draws, one of which must be this. Apollo draws the first and top-decks it, killing the boarding party. But there’s still one remaining at 1 of 4.

Cylon-Roslin pushes it forward to 2 of 4. Starbuck takes another pot-shot at it and misses. Cylon-Helo pushes it forward to 3 of 4. Again, Apollo and Adama have two turns to figure out how to kill it. With their options limited, they take a coin-flip by playing a Strategic Planning on using the Armory and take it out. Then Adama starts to repair. Then Adama moves to FTL Control and repairs it, and jumps early losing 3 pop bring it down to 7. Adama pulls out yet another 1 distance jump and the Cylons count their blessings for it. With so many near-death oh-god-fail-this-and-we-lose rolls of Galactica, the Humans count their blessings there.

Humans begin repair the ship. Cylons start using the Caprica location and manage to bury Legendary Discovery and give the humans a new cylon fleet to tangle with, which turns out to be not too much of an issue, since Apollo and Starbuck are able pilots. Helo uses Caprica and gets Jump Drive Failure, choosing the “or” effect of pushing back the jump counter by one, and losing one resource. Morale stays pretty high in the 7 range, while fuel starts to drop to 5 and food to 2. Then the humans jump, again jumping only 1 distance bringing the total to 6.

Galactica's running on fumes

Resources getting dangerously low. A failed crisis brings fuel to 3, however the Adama get the Water Sabotage crisis of pass for +1 food, fail for -2 food (or just take -1 food). The food version of Colonial Day for morale. Cylon-Helo decides between a 1-point red card and a 3-point red card (his highest) on this, and picks the 1-point forgetting about Adama’s ability that 1-point cards count positive, regardless of color. The crisis passes by 1. Had it been the -3 instead of +1, it would have failed outside of Dec. Emergency range; winning the game. No worries, food’s now at 3. Still low. Adama lucks out and draws two 5s and a 4. Cylons keep hitting the humans with Caprica and wear down their skill cards. 4 crises hit in a row, most requiring leadership (green) and tactics (purple) to pass. One of which would destroy the Humans’ last raptor, but Adama uses a 4-point declare emergency to save it (which ends up happening anyway from something else). Humans jump early, fail to pass the roll, and population falls to 3. It would be their last jump.

Cylon-Helo checks skill card counts; Apollo has 2, Adama has 9 or 10 (4 of which he just drew with pressroom), and Starbuck has only a couple. Adama is pretty confident he can pass whatever it is. Cylon-Helo hits the humans with the Inbound Nukes supercrisis (after making the humans nervous all game), which requires 15 green and purple to pass, and Apollo passes, not having any cards, and Starbuck looks at Adama hoping he can solo 15 points plus whatever the Cylons add on. So the nukes hit the fleet head on, burning fuel to 4, food to 2, and population to 6. A turn goes around, some cylons come out, but the pilots beat them up pretty successfully.

Cylon-Roslin uses Caprica to give the humans a water shortage, forcing Apollo to take -1 food and lose his cards. Then in the most anticlimactic of events, Cylon-Helo uses Caprica, top-decks the Scouting for Water crisis, and chooses the “or” effect dropping food to 0.

Cylons win.

In retrospect, since Phil picked last, he should have picked the chief for repairing, however it seemed decent at the time to pick Helo for his rerolling. Technically the humans ended up with 3 pilots, and after half-time, Adama, Starbuck, and Apollo don’t make a very good team. They caught plenty of breaks though, plenty of lucky rolls and draws from the mid-game boarding parties. Also, there really wasn’t the opportunity for much deceit on behalf of the Cylons, so most of the action was direct. The excitement in this game came from the random chance, not from the political drama. Adama caught some really bad luck with destination cards after half-time, always being a choice between two 1-distance destinations.

Chris is a bad human and Sean is a cylon once again!

philihp — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 06:25:27 +0000

Another great game of BSG! Again, this is mostly for myself to look back and remember the game, but there are probably some good tactics if any other BSG Board Game players are out there. Also we played Roborally before BSG, which is incredibly fun, very easy to learn, fast paced, and quick to play. A+.

Aaron Dixon* – Apollo
Sean George* – Adama
Chris Rabeler – Roslin
Ken Mather – Chief Tyrol
Philihp Busby – Baltar
John (Aaron’s Friend) – Starbuck

John’s first game. Someone suggested John exec Aaron early on, things were pretty getting pretty hairy and Aaron revealed sending someone to the brig. His crisis is Massive Assault, too, which hurts us pretty bad at the time. We make it out, and everything’s pretty fine but there are a lot of jump counters, so the end of the game is pretty thinned out. First jump gets us to two distance. John uses his once-per-game to make a really bad crisis go away. Then a Detector Sabotage comes out, and Ken uses his once-per-game to save us during the skill check. We start guessing who the second cylon is, and morale gets to get one away from red. A crisis comes up shortly before the second jump that would bring morale into red, and we debate on if we should tank fuel into red (it needs to drop two, which a two-distance jump could do), which would make the cylon sympathizer side with the humans. Sean is giving Aaron all these great cylon-advice tips, so he’s pretty suspicious of being a cylon, but that’s not something Sean doesn’t normally do; try to play both sides. We end up failing it on purpose, but then Chris (Roslin) cherry-picks Colonial Day which brings us back into the blue on morale. No worries, we jump, and it’s two distance for two fuel. Second round of loyalty cards come out and Phil goes to the brig after he becomes the sympathizer for the humans. Then the fun begins.

We all can’t figure out who the cylon is. We’re sure someone is, but nothing really obvious has happened on a skill-check. Phil’s turn comes around, but he’s in jail. Wants to get out so he’ll get a crisis (possibly pushing the jump counter forward) and also get to draw another skill card from his Delusional Intuition character ability. Chris convinces him to exec him to try for the quorum card that pardons him, but no such luck, which is suspicious since he has a lot of cards already. John gets a crisis that passes to allow him to check one random loyalty card. Big debate on who to check, nobody is beyond suspicion. He says he wants to check Chris, and Chris immediately says “okay, but it doesn’t matter.” John says he comes up clean, and we’re all pretty sure he’s a human.

Then Aaron’s comes next and he turns the game upside down by giving Chris his extra loyalty card. Nothing big, except he hands it to Chris pretty obviously, and Chris takes one look at it and begins laughing hysterically. Sean’s turn, but he’s Adama so he can’t use the Admiral’s Quarters to send him to the brig so he executive orders Ken to do it. By now Sean is saying he’s a human, which seems a little hard to believe. Ken tries to arrest him, but it seems nobody had any of those skill cards so it fails. Crap.

Chris’s turn comes up, we’re all expecting him to reveal, but he does something unexpected. He executive orders Phil to try to get out and to use his cylon detector ability on him to prove his innocence. Phil and Ken both agree that his is very human behavior, so Phil decides to detect Sean. Phil reaches for Sean’s loyalty cards, Sean immediately picks up his skill cards and looks at them. Ken notices, and we’re all pretty sure even before Phil checks. Phil looks and sees the damage galactica cylon card so it’s pretty imperative to put him in the brig. Phil tries to get out of the brig. Both Aaron and Sean play cards, but it passes and Phil goes to FTL control having nowhere better to go. Afterward Aaron says he actually helped in order to get the humans to play more cards. Whatever. Ken execs Chris who uses Roslin’s once-per-game to draw four quorum cards, one of which is an arrest order to send Sean to the brig.

Through all this commotion, a lot of our skill cards are burnt, and we get some base stars flying outside the ship. John launches in a viper to try and fend some off. By now I think for some reason or another we’ve lost two civilian ships that turned out to be empty, so we lose three more which hurt us really bad bringing population down to six. Fuel is at four. Morale is pretty low. Food is great though! Sean reveals and admiralty goes to John. Some cylon raiders are hovering above some civilian ships behind Galactica undefended, so we all agree to jump early. Losing three population isn’t as bad as losing three civilian ships. Chris’s turn, but he doesn’t draw any executive orders, so he has to cough up three cards to go over to Galactica and use FTL herself. We jump early and lose the three population (now at three total) but John isn’t really experienced enough to pick a good destination. We tell him to pick the highest destination, which turns out to be bad advice; three distance, lose two fuel and destroy a civilian ship. Since it really doesn’t matter at this point, he shows us that the other destination is two distance for one fuel and risk a raptor, which we had four of. Civilian ship turns out to kill two more pop leaving us with one remaining. We’re pretty screwed. Some random crises bring morale down to two total and a fuel is lost from something.

At seven distance, the only thing that can save Galactica is a Legendary Discovery crisis passed and a lot of quick jump counters which are already thinned out. Chris execs Ken to draw cards, Ken does something, Phil moves to the press room and execs John even though he can’t use his actions for anything productive, it gets him out in a viper and in front of Galactica so he’ll be able to defend and get two actions during his turn. He launches scouts and execs Phil to use the press room and consolidates power coming up empty with two 1-value launch scouts. Ken’s low on cards, Chris is out of cards, it’s up to John and Phil to pass whatever happens. We didn’t get the Legendary Discovery, and the jump counter is one away from an auto-jump. Not that we could jump early anyway.

Aaron plays a crisis on us which we intentionally fail, the negative kills our morale down to one. Sean plays his supercrisis… Inbound Nukes! Probably the worst. Ken has no cards to help. Phil plays his two launch scouts. Destiny helps us with one point. We fail it pretty horribly. Game over!

I think if we could have taken a one-distance on the second jump to get us to three, then we would have had time to prepare ourselves and load up on skill cards. But maybe not. We never used any nukes, those could have helped a little, but not terribly much. Lots of fighting and distrust among the humans mostly spelled our doom.