Session Report – 12 January 2012

8 again this week with Gordon making another appearance. The split was 5 & 3 with Battlestar Galactica on one table and a couple of games on the other.

I played Battlestar Galactica, the other players being Dave C, Ben, Mike and Steve H, we were probably a bit rusty since all but Dave & Ben who had played over Christmas had not played for at least 6 months. We used the Exodus expansion using the Cylon Fleet option and Conflicted loyalties giving the humans the potential to have personal goals, the Final Five cards were not used, neither was the Ionian Nebula destination. For this game I had taken out all parts of Pegasus with the exception of the Cylon location overlay and revised Investigative Committees. This account is based on my memory and some consultation of the card decks as they were returned to the box, so the exact order of events may have been slightly different.

Characters chosen were:

Cally (Ben)
Tory Foster (Steve H)
Admiral William Adama (me)
CAG Starbuck (Dave C)
President Tom Zarek (Mike).

I drew one of the new Cylon loyalty cards (reduce jump track) at the start.

The game started and immediately I was presented with a choice on a crisis (Unwelcome Faces) either discard my cards and send someone to the brig or lose morale and damage Galactica. Now I'm a cylon and both of these options are pretty good from that point of view, but it seemed to me that the most cylon looking choice would be to go randomly throwing people in the brig so I chose the second option, morale dropped and Command was damaged. The problem arose when it got round to President Zarek who moved into his office and obviously wanted to prove he could run a decisive administration. He activated the office and drew and played a Quorum card, brigging me with an Arrest Order citing his dissatisfaction with my choice on the earlier crisis, I immediately accused him of being a cylon, which I thought he might be. In the meantime Starbuck rose to the rank of Admiral when I went to the brig, I'm sure there being many in the fleet actively praying to the Gods of Kobol at this point.

Things weren't going too badly for humanity as the jump track advanced to auto jump in not too long a time. Admiral Starbuck considered her options and the fleet emerged at a Gas Giant, Admiral Starbuck sacrificing a Viper to regain the fuel lost leaving the fleet a distance 1 and still at 8 fuel. When the turn got round to me again I was able to get a promise of support from Tory and activated the Brig the check passing to free me. Things were starting to go wrong for humanity at this point with a series of crises causing the jump track to stall or even go backwards at one point. At the same time there were several basestar activations causing the Fleet board to accumulate 2 basestars and then when the pursuit track was one short of an attack one of the basestars moved over to the main board (together with a Heavy Raider) and started launching raiders. Meanwhile President Zarek was showing signs of megalomania taking the CAG title using a Presidential Order, although he would later reveal a personal goal explaining his action.

When the fleet next jumped with the loss of 1 population to protect civilian ships, the arrival point was a remote planet moving the distance onto 3 with the loss of another raptor (the batch of raptors carried by Galactica for this trip must have been defective considering the rate at which they were lost). All the cylons went back to the fleet board and the next crisis caused 2 basestars, at least a dozen raiders and a Heavy Raider to jump straight in on the fleet.

I decided to take the opportunity to reveal my true nature on my next turn and headed to the Resurrection ship with cylon ships swarming all around, my reveal power backing the jump track to the start. There followed frantic efforts to protect the civilian fleet and all but one were saved by the efforts of Admiral Starbuck in a Mk VII viper together with nameless other human pilots despite my use of the basestar bridge to cause CAG Starbuck (having regained the title due to Zarek's use of it to activate an unmanned Viper) to place another while at the same time damaging Galactica, however all resources continued to fall towards the red zones. It was becoming apparent at this time that there was other mischief afoot as skill checks were being sabotaged when I hadn't put a card into them, so it was probably not too surprising when Cally walked into the President's office and shot Zarek at his desk, Tory taking over as president while Mike chose Chief Tyrol as a new character, no doubt horrified at Cally's actions. President Foster took immediate action going straight to the Admiral's Quarters and using Political Prowess to send Cally straight to the brig, from where she revealed at the first opportunity.

The sleeper phase was reached when the fleet next jumped, Galactica having just escaped bombardment by about 10 raiders which lacked targets with all civies either escorted away or destroyed, fortunately for the humans they all missed, but the reprieve was short. The fleet arrived at a Tylium planet, triggering the sleeper phase at distance 4, all the Raptor's had been destroyed at this point so the Admiral could not gain any fuel which the fleet desperately needed. Extra loyalty cards were distributed, but at this stage it was academic although President Foster did receive the Selfish personal goal. All resources were in the red and by the time what was to be the final jump cm round fuel was on 1 due in part to the failure of the check for my "Inbound Nukes" super crisis. The game was over at this point when fuel was exhausted on that final jump.

This was one of (if not the) most decisive cylon wins I've seen in our games. The Exodus expansion is regarded as pro cylon, so possibly there is an argument for including Pegasus as well perhaps giving the humans a boost but in this case I think it was mostly a case of a combination of factors that could equally have happened in the base game. 2 cylons in the original distribution together with some bad destination draws (from looking back at the cards, the first 3 discards seem to have been Barren Planet, Ragnar Anchorage and Icy Moon, I might have chosen Barren Planet over Gas Cloud, but considering the problems with fuel that might have ended the game quicker). There were also a good few bad die rolls at inconvenient time, but the cylons had this as well what with none of those raiders hitting Galactica and quite a few Basestar Attacks all rolling 3. The cylon fleet board was seen as a good addition, although not so much the personal goals.

Battlestar Galactica 150 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave D	0
1	Ben C	0
3	Dave C	0
3	Mike	0
3	Steve H	0

Over on the other table the main game was Egizia, which I have never played. Looking on the geek seems to indicate that it is another Worker Placement game, which is not much of a recommendation to me.

Egizia 120 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Gordon	98
2	Dave F	97
3	Donald	86

Finally a game of Dominion which had not been played here since last March, this was using only cards from the base game without expansions.

Dominion 30 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Gordon	43
2	Dave F	38
3	Donald	28