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Gutter Owl posted:Okay, I get that Conflicted Loyalties is hot garbage and Ionian Nebula is a silly module, but what's wrong with the Cylon Fleet Option? I like having the Cylons as a persistent threat that can't be jumped away from forever. And the Exodus characters and skill cards seem perfectly functional, if not worth $40 by themselves. Am I missing something? The board is fine, except that the rules are a complete mess and the Bridge is stupidly powerful. Also, the skill cards and the characters are really really poorly designed. If you want the Cylons to be a persistent threat, use the CF BOARD (no bridge) and combine it with DEFCON. Ask Corbeau for the nitty gritty; I haven't played in a while.
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Jun 17, 2014 20:39
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 01:06 |
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This is a post that shouldn't exist! Thanks forums!
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Jun 17, 2014 20:53
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We're still pretty constantly tweaking, but haven't played recently so haven't gotten more testing on our new CLs and tweaked CAG rules. We hope to rectify that tomorrow. Our last iteration of changes felt really good though. Our house rule package has roughly three components, all of which are designed to accomplish two goals: to eliminate complete dud games where one side has a runaway victory and to make pilots an interesting role that involves trust (which they aren't and don't in the base rules). 1) The first part is modified DEFCON, which we originally imported from these forums when Some Numbers started playing in our group. Most of it is the same, or at least very similar, but there's one very crucial difference at the end. Recapping the whole defcon rules: You separate crises into Cylon attack cards and normal crises, and keep a defcon track that goes from 10 to 1. It begins at 8. We've used a D20 or a collection of beads or whatever - someday when we get the variant nailed down for sure I'll produce a nicer board track. Anyway, when a player would draw a crisis at the end of their turn (or when a Cylon activates Caprica), they roll a D8 (no modifiers nor re-rolls). If the dice roll is less than the current defcon number, then draw a normal crisis (or two for Caprica) and reduce the defcon number by 1. If the dice roll is equal to or greater than the defcon number, then reset the defcon track to 10 and trigger a Cylon attack (see below for details). 2) We play with the CAG and Escort rules from Exodus (civilians don't auto-jump off the board, but Vipers can escort them off as an action), and Assault Raptors (and the Pegasus Mk. VII Vipers), but we DO NOT use the fleet board rules. We retain the board, but for record-keeping only; none of the text is in play. Instead, when the fleet jumps, every non-basestar cylon ship is transferred to the fleet board. When a cylon attack is triggered by a defcon roll, either the CAG (if an end-of-turn crisis draw) or the current cylon player (if activating Caprica) draws two Cylon attack cards. That player chooses one to resolve and puts the other on the bottom of the Cylon attack deck. 3) When setting up ships from a Cylon attack card, use ships from the cylon fleet board first if possible (current player's choice of which are used first - though I feel like we should make this the CAG's choice). Then, once all of the printed ships are on the board, half (rounding up) of the remaining Cylon ships in each category (light raider, heavy raider) in each sector will jump back in to their corresponding sectors on the main board and the other half (rounding down) remaining on the fleet board will be returned to the supply. Those are our variant rules, though we've also removed all of the Exodus skill cards and characters for being batshit insane. Oh, and, importantly, we removed all of the Cylon attack supercrises. So why did we add all these rule changes? Why Rule 1) The modified DEFCON, at it's core, is designed to prevent both enormous droughts of cylon attacks and ridiculous floods of attacks. Those are both causes of bad games. The deck ought to generate semi-predictable opportunities for the Cylon players to do damage. We've found that this mix of timing accomplishes that without being too predictable (and thus possible to heavily meta-game - we like the game to feel fluffy). Rules 2&3 address the same fundamental issue: pilots, as a role, are boring. The interesting pilots are interesting because of their crazy abilities (Apollo, Starbuck, Boomer), not because of their role. This becomes really obvious when you pick up and play almost any other pilot in the game (like Kat or Hot Dog). There are two very, very severe problems behind this symptom, each of which are mitigated in turn by rules #2 and #3. Why Rule 2 - The Lesser Problem) Part of that issue with pilots is that their title has very limited betrayal potential. Treachery is incredibly easy to spot in space combat: as originally written, pilots simply don't make any hidden decisions. You can't soft-ball combat sabotage like you can with the destination deck or quorum deck. By making the CAG draw 2 attacks and choose 1 of them, in addition with the new rules about how cylon ships can return to the board, you can now soft-sabotage as a CAG - and the title matters. When we first proposed this rule we wondered how much effect it would have, and we're still testing this one, but I found it to have a huge impact when I first played as CAG. It's not quite as pivotal as destinations, but if the human fleet gets into a sketchy tactical set-up then picking the "wrong" attack card can be devastating. The CAG role card mattering adds spice to the pilots who aren't intrinsically bonkers powerful (I will never understand how Apollo got through playtesting), and adds another element to the trust game (which is the heart of BSG). Worth noting that this rule is the one we've playtested the least: we like it so far, but it doesn't have the same weight of playtesting that rules #1 and #3 have. Why Rule 3? - The Big Problem) In core, the best way to "destroy" Cylon ships is to jump away: none of them are ever coming back, and all of the attack cards make sure to set up civilians in such a way as to give multiple activations worth of buffer time before the ships are a threat. That means that the best "pilots" are Communications and FTL Control, and that's incredibly dull for actual pilot characters. The Exodus fleet board helps with this problem, but brings backbreaking issues of it's own. We tried a bunch of homebrew solutions and discovered two core requirements for a fix: Cylon ships you leave alive have to come back somehow and Cylon ships can't always allow massive "buffer time" before they're dangerous. Having excess Cylon ships jump in at their original positions satisfies both helps fulfills both criteria. In combination with the Escorting rules, the humans have to stay active about space combat without devoting their entire game to it (which some of our variants did demand due to ridiculous overwhelming Cylon flood - those were fun for pilots, but not so much for anyone else, and almost every game was a Cylon win). In this variant we've found that Cylon attacks generally (though not always) demand a scramble of activity from the pilots, and simply trying to jump away from everything rather than destroying part of it will get you overwhelmed later. Yet there is also down-time between attacks for other roles to come to the fore. We've also been tinkering with new motives for Cylon leaders, but they're still at "complete shot in the dark" stage. Suffice to say that CL rules in Daybreak are an improvement over the previous ones, but still have some enormous problems that we haven't fixed yet. Corbeau fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Jun 18, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 00:55
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Ultimately exodus was a bunch of bad ideas executed well enough to hide how bad they actually were. At least for a few plays. I still think one or two conflicted loyalties in a loyalty deck might be cool, but I am firmly in the minority on that.
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Jun 18, 2014 01:36
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Crackbone posted:Ultimately exodus was a bunch of bad ideas executed well enough to hide how bad they actually were. I think it's the other way around: a lot of it wasn't bad ideas executed well, it was good ideas executed poorly. The basic idea of Conflicted Loyalties - "give humans their own agenda-like things to accomplish" - is fine. The problem is that they take an Action to fulfill; revealing them upon completion removes mystery; and the agendas were often things you couldn't really attempt to complete on your own (how else is Tyrol supposed to grab two titles?) or were otherwise complete bullshit (discard half the skill cards you'll see this entire game, FUN). The Cylon Fleet board isn't a bad idea in concept either, but the way the implemented it made it much too weak if the Cylons didn't reveal and start hammering Basestar Bridge immediately and much too strong if they did. Even Ionian Nebula might have been salvageable if they hadn't decided to infest it with random executions and unavoidable instalose Crossroads effects.
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Jun 18, 2014 01:43
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I do at least like the Final Five cards - gives an innocent reason to keep your loyalty secret. Personal goals needed better design. The main problem with Conflicted Loyalties is the leftover loyalty card.
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Jun 18, 2014 01:57
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Lottery of Babylon posted:Even Ionian Nebula might have been salvageable if they hadn't decided to infest it with random executions and unavoidable instalose Crossroads effects. I consider the butchery of the Ionian Nebula concept to be one of the great crimes of Exodus. It's a fantastic idea that could have added immensely to the game, but it's utterly horrible when played as written. I'd like to try salvaging it someday but it's not at the top of our priority list.
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Jun 18, 2014 02:01
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Exodus was made when the large majority of games of Base+Pegasus were being ruined by just executing everyone early to be sure of their loyalty, so the designers went in with a couple ideas which I think they forgot to take into account their own fixes: 1: Executions are a good choice too often, we need to add in some things to make them not as preferable. Result: Final 5 cards and the new Loyalty deck system 2: Executions are happening all the time, so they're a part of the game to include in crises and such. Result: Ionian Nebula and Admiral/president chooses 'execute player' crises. What they forgot is that they did both of them, made it more punishing AND more common. Ionian Nebula is still pretty fun adding in that little resource management game, as the end goal is surviving crossroads to stay in the game. My instinct is dialing back the harsh parts is probably enough to save it - change bloodsplatter tokens to instead maybe discard your hand(or just 5 cards), so you keep your character and more importantly keep your Once Per Game. Also change the final crossroads loss to be an execution rather than being removed from the game to dial back that bullshit too, as being executed in the last jump is still pretty devastating. And finally remove the 'Admiral is executed instantly' crossroad card, because really, what the gently caress.
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Jun 18, 2014 03:22
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Don't forget Cally!
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Jun 18, 2014 04:47
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Okay, I know Cally's miracle is a bit strong (though I think the Daybreak execution/miracle mechanic makes it less of a perfect loyalty-checker, since a human mispick loses a miracle token for the team). And Gaeta's Misguided drawback is pretty negligible. But is there something else I'm missing? Likewise, the 0-strength skill check cards seem pretty reasonable to me? Are the 6-strength cards just too game-breaking? (I think by this point I'm just trying to justify a fraction of the money I spent on the thing.)
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Jun 18, 2014 06:39
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I love POL-6 Political Prowess, it's my favorite card in the game before Daybreak, but I also recognize just how strong it is. If you're playing with Pegasus and Exodus it lets you execute anyone on demand without anyone else being able to stop you. TAC-6 Scout For Fuel is nice I guess if you can SP the roll, but LEA-6 State of Emergency is a trap since it lets hidden Cylons get a free chance to reveal while not on their turns, and already-revealed Cylons get to take actions on that card in addition to already losing Food just to play it. ENG-6 Build Nuke is only useful 1% of the time and PIL-6 is garbage unless you want to sabotage. This is going to be bragging a bit but once I managed to annihilate Morale with heavy use of LEA-0 Iron Will in a previous game on this forum, though I had a lot of other things suddenly go my way in a game where the Cylons were way behind for most of it. Iron Will and POL-0 Red Tape are really strong, TAC-0 Trust Instincts is really bad, ENG-0 Establish Network can be really powerful for good or ill. The Consequences effects on LEA-0 and TRE cards also don't come up very often, such that I didn't know what the icons signified even after playing with Exodus a couple of times. Don't get me wrong I am also glad I bought Exodus, but especially after having played games with Base + Daybreak there's just so many little things not to like. Nothing's stopping you from using the Exodus characters in Base + Daybreak games if you want to though. Gaeta and Tory are both really fun and strong.
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Jun 18, 2014 07:16
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The 0 strengths are fine, red tape generally sucks to draw as a Human though. The 6s are likewise fine except for Political Prowess, because as soon as you realise you can instant-airlock someone you have yet another Cally on your hands. A lot of games I've played have had a big meta game about drawing yellow when possible to ensure you're the one with Political Prowess so it can't be used against you. Ionian nebula is fun but needs fixing, CAG is fun except completely overpoweringly ridiculous with Apollo, final five loyalties is a fantastic addition, personal goals needs to be houseruled to not take up an action but still only be able to activate when you can use an action and then are fine, the new loyalty deck system needs to be immediately thrown in the garbage, and Basestar Bridge honestly is flat out the best cylon action every time however that won't stop you having a good 10+ games with the Cylon Fleet board before you feel you need to change it. Its still worth buying, just needs a few kicks to it.
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Jun 18, 2014 07:22
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I was actually coming in here to ask what sort of stuff I needed to know about Exodus, since I picked it up today.   We'll probably tinker with everything eventually and see what works. Shame the fleet board's such a hard swing.
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Jun 22, 2014 04:34
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Gutter Owl posted:Okay, I know Cally's miracle is a bit strong (though I think the Daybreak execution/miracle mechanic makes it less of a perfect loyalty-checker, since a human mispick loses a miracle token for the team). That's insane. gently caress Cally. quote:Are the 6-strength cards just too game-breaking?
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Jun 22, 2014 05:49
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I don't much care for modifying characters in my games, live or forum, so when me and my friends play we just ban Cally and Cain. That works out pretty well.
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Jun 22, 2014 09:34
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Gutter Owl posted:Okay, I know Cally's miracle is a bit strong (though I think the Daybreak execution/miracle mechanic makes it less of a perfect loyalty-checker, since a human mispick loses a miracle token for the team). And Gaeta's Misguided drawback is pretty negligible. But is there something else I'm missing?
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Jun 22, 2014 09:53
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Played an offline game of base BSG recently. I've never seen so many attack cards in such a short time; at one point we got several in a few turns, including right after a jump. Shortly after this picture, three Centurions boarded, and we could only kill two due to a few Heavy Raider activations. The revealed Cylon then pushed it to victory  
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Jun 28, 2014 13:50
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That is, quite literally, why the DEFCON variant was invented. Highly recommended.
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Jun 28, 2014 18:10
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I mentioned it and they were interested, but I didn't remember the exact rules, and two players had only played the game once so I didn't want to overcomplicate things. Next time I'll print out the Defcon rules and see if I can use those.
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Jun 28, 2014 23:49
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Had a really funny game today. I was last in turn order and I was a Cylon from the start. Early in the cycle, another civilian spawned behind Galactica and we got an Attack that put 4 Raiders on top of said civilians. Raiders activated and the first Raider blew up the only Viper, so we start flipping civvies. Two population. Two population. So it's my turn, the only I've done is play a card into a check and the fleet is at -4 pop with more poo poo going wrong. I decide that the most disruptive thing to do is to reveal. Half a round later, they're at 3 population. The other four players are human and I have done almost nothing overtly aggressive. They actually did manage to get all the way to 7 distance and stay at one population. There was a Centurion at stage 4 and the Armory (along with four other locations) was damaged. Zarek did a Hail Mary of "dig for a Mutiny to maybe kill the Centurion so we don't auto lose." He actually found one, but it also damaged Galactica, so the ship blew up right before he shot and killed the Cent.
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Jun 29, 2014 07:34
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Corbeau posted:We're still pretty constantly tweaking, but haven't played recently so haven't gotten more testing on our new CLs and tweaked CAG rules. We hope to rectify that tomorrow. I tried these CAG and fleet board rules out last night in a 4-player game and they were a ton of fun. I took Starbuck and ended up as CAG. It was the most fun I've ever had playing BSG. Having to weasel to get help fixing Mark VIIs and getting Assault Raptors since we kept pushing DEFCON really low, coordinating civvie ships, getting XO'd constantly to use the CAG title action, it was great. I think I screwed up and was rounding down when adding ships from the fleet board, but it was only like 3 ships that didn't get added on throughout the game, so I don't think it was a huge deal. I mean, the humans still lost, on the last jump, no less, but yeah, these are really solid and make pilot and CAG really enjoyable since you always have something to do. I also feel like a Cylon CAG could wreak utter havoc, since I had a LOT of opportunities to murder Galactica with basestars that I, obviously, didn't take. Echophonic fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 15:07
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Corbeau posted:Our last iteration of changes felt really good though. Our house rule package has roughly three components, all of which are designed to accomplish two goals: to eliminate complete dud games where one side has a runaway victory and to make pilots an interesting role that involves trust (which they aren't and don't in the base rules). I really like the DEFCON rule, but I only own the Daybreak expansion at the moment. I can make up a CAG card and fleet board to use your other rules, but do you think it will work without the Viper MkVII's and Crisis Cards from the Exodus expansion?
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Jul 11, 2014 18:19
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Taran_Wanderer posted:I really like the DEFCON rule, but I only own the Daybreak expansion at the moment. I can make up a CAG card and fleet board to use your other rules, but do you think it will work without the Viper MkVII's and Crisis Cards from the Exodus expansion? You can survive without the Mark VIIs. We don't use Exodus Crises, I don't think.
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Jul 11, 2014 18:25
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To be honest I think base game + Daybreak is the best combination of expansions you can have.
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Jul 11, 2014 19:13
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Agreed, with the caveat that Pegasus introduced a number of crucial errata.
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Jul 11, 2014 19:16
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Just had my most epic game of BSG. We played with Pegasus and Daybreak to Kobol, our crew was Daybreak Helo, original Zarek, Daybreak Baltar, Tigh and Kat, in that order. By turn 5 we had seen 2 CACs, which left a large number of the civilians on the board. On turn 5 Kat XOs backwards to Tigh, with the intent of stabilising with double communications action. He then promptly reveals as a Cylon. By our first jump, population is in the red from all the civilians we've lost, and the assault raptor didn't survive, with all vipers damaged. We somehow manage to struggle to 8 distance, hitting cylon attacks on each jump cycle. Along the way sleeper Baltar soft reveals by stealing all the OPGs except for Helo. By the time we get to 8, all the resources except fuel are into the red and food, morale and pop all at 2 or 3, Pegasus just a distant memory. The only destination that can get us to 8 distance is the one that sets up a base star in front and our last civilian behind. We tank the raiders in front with the assault raptor which we got from one of the cylon attacks until the toasters then find yet another cylon attack to drop raiders on the last civ. With population at 2 and the jump prep at -3, we get a crisis which gives us jump prep, but destroys the last civ taking our population to 1. With food and population at 1, morale at 2 and only FTL damaged we scout the crisis deck and find a basestar activation jump prep crisis and go for it. Roll for basestar damage and the first one hits, flipping the food token..... After all that we lost to food...
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Jul 12, 2014 00:45
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I cracked and bought this game on the advice of the board games thread. Any advice on how to introduce the game/rules to a group for the first time? Good videos to watch? Things to avoid?
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Jul 12, 2014 01:13
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Vengarr posted:I cracked and bought this game on the advice of the board games thread. Any advice on how to introduce the game/rules to a group for the first time? Good videos to watch? Things to avoid? Don't let anyone play as helo or boomer the first game since skipping a turn is skipping an hour or two and being in the brig sucks. Don't use the sympathizer loyalty. If you have player counts that need sympathizer, instead google the errata and use the alternate resource starting points. Those are the simplest fixes. edit: Yeah I do agree with you Poison Mushroom about the changes to the Cylon fleet and new investigative committee, but those are a little trickier for just learning the game without having the new text in front of you. I mean the game is still playable without those, it just gets much better with them. Coolness Averted fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 01:22
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Vengarr posted:I cracked and bought this game on the advice of the board games thread. Any advice on how to introduce the game/rules to a group for the first time? Good videos to watch? Things to avoid?
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Jul 12, 2014 01:37
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The investigative committee errata really isn't optional. It might not matter if nobody realizes how busted the printed card is in the first game, but it's a pretty critical change and it's not really tough to remember that destiny is always hidden.
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Jul 12, 2014 02:48
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Also: Quorum Hand limit (10 cards), Caprica errata (ignores cylon ship activations but NOT jump prep activations on crisis cards)
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Jul 12, 2014 04:59
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Also revealed cylons immediately handing off their additional loyalty cards
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Jul 12, 2014 10:30
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My biggest sugestion if you're playing this is, if you haven't already, don't read the strategies of the forum. It's more fun to learn strategies together than and someone knowing the strategies when most players don't has a really easy potential to become a situation of Single-player multi-player co-op games.
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Jul 12, 2014 16:02
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Thanks for the advice. I just need to be competent enough with the rules that I can teach them without constantly looking things up. And the game needs to be run smoothly and entertainingly enough that another game is possible. Should I try the DEFCON thing for a first game, or save it for a second playthrough?
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Jul 12, 2014 19:54
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Vengarr posted:Thanks for the advice. I just need to be competent enough with the rules that I can teach them without constantly looking things up. And the game needs to be run smoothly and entertainingly enough that another game is possible. save it. it adds extra steps and doesn't mesh with written instructions on the board preciesly.
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Jul 12, 2014 19:55
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Vengarr posted:Thanks for the advice. I just need to be competent enough with the rules that I can teach them without constantly looking things up. And the game needs to be run smoothly and entertainingly enough that another game is possible. Keep in mind nearly all of the advice you're being givne is also from folks who've seen the problems that pop up once there's system mastery. I'd really say keep to vanilla as much as possible until there's some of that mastery and you see the cracks that need to be solved. That's why my advice was just two things even acknowledged in core that suck away fun out the gate; not getting to play.
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Jul 13, 2014 02:45
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Hey Coolguye, I don't mean to be a pest, but I'm just checking in since you haven't posted in about three months.
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Aug 4, 2014 01:02
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Just looking up the page, since a friend bought the base game recently, and the errata I found online makes no mention of investigative committee. Is there somewhere else I should be looking?
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Aug 12, 2014 02:22
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GoatLord posted:Just looking up the page, since a friend bought the base game recently, and the errata I found online makes no mention of investigative committee. Is there somewhere else I should be looking? It's not errata. The base game Executive Committee cards got replaced in the first expansion. The replacement card text reads: "Play before cards are added to a Skill check. All Skill Cards are played face up during this Skill check [excluding those from the Destiny deck]."
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Aug 12, 2014 02:54
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The important change is, IC doesn't reveal Destiny cards anymore, so checks aren't completely deterministic.
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Aug 12, 2014 04:22
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