... naw, just kidding, we played Galactica.
We chose to play with New Caprica as a destination, using all the rest of the Pegasus and Exodus components.
The characters were:
Gaeta (Kristen) ->
Baltar (me) (Cylon) ->
Cally (Matt) ->
Apollo (Max) (Cylon)->
Tori (*and Anders) (Kevin)
Predictably, I was a Cylon from the very first turn.
As soon as I was able, I spiked a check with a yellow card, and balked about it publicly when there were 3 negatives in the check. I figured, Baltar's already a suspicious character so it is best to play to that early.
For the most part, I played as a nice friendly human, because Baltar always wants to live to the sleeper phase to use his OPG.
The humans had halfway decent luck before the sleeper phase, and we hit sleeper at Distance 5.
Gaeta at this point was Pradmiral, and Tori decided that she wanted to use Administration to make herself president, to improve her special ability, without consulting anyone.
This was definitely my "in".
On my first turn after that (my first turn after sleeper), I peeked at Tori's pair of Not-A-Cylons (one of which was a personal goal but I really wasn't interested in that).
I took advantage of the suspicion of her last action, and of course called out Kevin. "Oh, Kevin, how could you?"
Apparently, this was convincing enough for Cally, because she went right over to Tori's location and discharged her firearm, revealing my lie.
At this point, I should point out that we were using a slight variant on Executions.
Instead of choosing any new character, we shuffle up the non-dead characters and deal out 3, letting the player choose 1.
Kevin's choices were grim: Boomer, Helo, or Anders, the very 3 characters who have "screwed on the first turn" as a penalty. He chose the least of the evils, Anders.
I thought this might mean Cally was my partner in crime, but it didn't take long for me to find out that I was wrong. Apollo's followup action was to Reveal, damaging 2 areas of Galactica. Evilly and thematically enough, the two damaged areas were Command and the Hangar Deck, leaving no way for vipers to get out as Galactica was swarmed with Cylons on the outside.
On Gaeta's turn, he used an Arrest Order on me (which I had been holding on to before the title was unceremoniously taken away).
I used the Political Prowess that I'd been holding on to since the very beginning as a Get Out of Jail Free card, but unfortunately, the fates would give me a crisis that had the admiral choose to send me right back to the brig.
On my following turn, I would reveal, because my Reveal Power did not need any help -- move the Jump Track back 2 spaces, when there had been 5 crises in a row without a jump icon, including one that moved the track backwards.
Did I mention that by this point, all of the raiders were on the board, and 4 Centurions were marching?!
Skipping ahead a little bit.. the next jump was apparently a choice between 2 1-distance destinations, because it left us at distance 6.
By the time New Caprica was reached (and it was), both Population and Morale were at 1, and there were 3 Centurions 2 steps along on the track.
The humans conceded, rather than perform the futile setup of the New Caprica board.
So that makes my second game with New Cap, and I still haven't fully experienced the.. experience.
Fun game :)
I'll still play Glen More, I swear!
Posts
Two thoughts, firstly, I did consult when I attempted to take the presidency, I had the full verbal support of the soon to be revealed Apollo! I still think there was nothing wrong with that play. It was bold and perhaps suspicious but it was doubly useful because it helped with the two title personal goal and it would get the quorum deck moving for Tori's special. I think Matt either a. overthought it (an experienced BSG player would NEVER do that!) or perhaps he needs to reread his book on lying.
ReplyDeleteI didn't like the change to the character choices for obvious reasons. Do the current rules favor the humans a bit? Yes. Could that have been considered in game design as something balanced, I'm more inclined to believe this the case.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
That pretty much sums up my mistake. :)
Taking the presidency, without consulting anyone, is a very suspicious action in my book. Admittedly, I hadn't thought of the two-title personal goal card, but it's still a big waste of an action and skill cards unless you are really sure the current president is a problem. Tori gets her quorum card bonus regardless of whether she's president or not.
BTW, the lying book is "Liespotting," and I haven't quite figured out how to translate the useful elements of the book to in-game bluffing situations. It's mostly about situation where you're getting a full narrative from someone, and you're trying to determine whether they're reconstructing the narrative from memory or concocting a lie. It's got some good stuff, but it's not about one-shot mind reading. :)
-Matt