[LNA]Gary said: Yes but what if the Cylon Leader gets an agenda where he has to help the humans? He can just tell the Cylons from the beginning, thus breaking the game very quickly... Although I guess it's uncertain that everybody will believe him. A good point (though I'm sure it would still be protected by secrecy rules).

Kamakaze said: What would be interesting is if the Cylon Leader was the one who dealt out the loyalty cards and was allowed to look at them and know who were Cylons from the start. (would make sense as they did know that). Though I think that would be tough for the Cylon Leader to not give it away! I like that idea! We already play with a variant that all players receive all of their loyalty cards at the start of the game, but can only look at however many they would normally look at then have to shuffle them up. Means that quite often, someone else can know you're a Cylon before you do yourself! I've never had a problem as Baltar using my Cylon detector before the SA phase not letting on to the unsuspecting Cylon what their true nature is!

Dan said: If you execute a loyal human then the other Cylon loyalty cards might be out there. If the new character new draws cards with the possibility of being a Cylon then there might be an extra Cylon in the game. Maybe the new character draws from the unused pre-sleeper agent phase cards if the execution is before the Sleeper agent phase? Cross-posted from BGG: There's nothing to suggest that there will be a Sleeper Agent phase if using the expansion. Seeing as the timing of the SA phase is shown on the Kobol objective card, and presumably the Pegasus expansion will have a new New Caprica objective (plus, there were no more sleeper agents after Boomer) it's very possible this phase won't exist any more (which would also imply that the "Boomer" card will be updated to an "Athena" card). My vote is that the SA phase will be replaced with a Galactica/Pegasus stand-off phase, representing the fire fight that took place between the two ships. More specifically, it might involve the execution of a character... maybe whoever holds the most treachery cards at that point?

RAFEL said: Is there any chance to buy a copy on gencon? Of course there's a chance! How big that chance is is completely unknown, though.

Wrong - the game has long been finished, been printed and is on the boat on the way to us now. Whether they have it at GenCon just depends on how fast the boat is moving. And if that point may be redundant, as I believe last year the copies of BSG they had at GenCon had been specially flown over so they could be there on time.

But then if, for example, only three executions are allowed before the humans lose, then you've just put the Cylon players 1/3rd of the way towards winning. Seeing as there are crises that also allow for executions, this would be very risky. One other thing to keep in mind is that there may not be a Sleeper Agent phase if playing with the expansion, so the 4+ distance part of your statement may not be valid.

Hem said: Now wait, wait. I've owned an Android copy for a few weeks so far, still not able to gather friends for having a game of it - and veeeery busy with Arkham, that's why. But I often check the rules not to forget them and I check this forum too, in case of... and its been a while I noticed the existence of these Director's Cut unofficial expansion/modification, which I partly read and realized it was an impressive work, a work which I shall keep beside me the day I played a few games of the original version and agreed that it was not that good, and needs the DCs. Not before. ANYWAY, all this to say that, today, reading that topic, I had a big doubt : Bleached Lizard, you would not happen to be the game designer, would you ? This question never occured in my thoughts until now, and I always thought "Director's Cuts" was just an eyeblink to movies and all... and the no-need-to-be-named-Kevin Wilson appears to be the creator, right ? So you're "just" a humongus fan of the game, happening to have so integrated the game's mechanism that you actually could create a remarkable transformation of it... "nothing more", right ? I just want you to reassure me on that topic LOL! Correct - absolutely NOT the designer. The title is just for the Blade Runner reference.

Here are the details of the Murder Specific Event variant. Note that the values I have assigned to things should be taken with a pinch of salt, as these values are based on the game effects of my event cards (which are all different to the originals). So... You'll need to make some kind of mark on some of the faces of your conspiracy tiles. I think the easiest thing to do is buy some sticky circular labels (about 0.5cm in diameter) from a stationery shop and use those, as they can also be easily removed later without damaging the conspiracy tiles. You need to place one mark on each of the following tiles: From the "shift" pile: Both "T" shaped pieces without a bonus Both "+" shaped pieces without a bonus From the "favour" pile: Both "+" shaped pieces without a bonus The "L" shaped piece with the shift conpiracy tile bonus The "I" shaped piece with the physical lead bonus From the "baggage" pile: The "T" shaped piece with the documentary lead bonus The "L" shaped piece with the testimony lead bonus The "L" shaped piece with the favour conspiracy tile bonus The "I" shaped piece with the favour conspiracy tile bonus Then, you need to arrange the Murder Specific Events into the following groups for each murder and mark them with their incident numbers. You can either put the cards into sleeves and mark the sleeves, or just reference this list each time you play: Evil at the Estates Cardinal Reese has Asked to Speak to You (4) A Virus is Making Bioroids Go Berserk (6) Haas-Bioroid has Issued a Recall (9) Last Call at Roxie's The Haas Family is Blocking Us (4) Thomas Haas is Holed Up with Human First (7) Androids are Being Attacked at Random (9) Mons Wolff Massacre The Martians have Shut Down the Beanstalk (3) We've Got Martian Dignitaries in Town (6) The Martian Embassy Just Called (9) Freetown Fright Jinteki's Giving Support to Mark Henry (4) The Clones are Refusing to Work (7) Terrorists have Struck the City, People (11) Revenge at the Races Protests Over G-Mod Restrictions have Begun (1) The Mafia is Stepping Up their Operations (6) Vinnie's Friends are Helping Him Out (9) Murder on the Midway New Angeles is Burning (2) Noise is Cooking Up Something Nasty (6) Armitage has Hired a Lawyer for Noise (10) During the game, as soon as there are enough incident markers showing on the conspiracy puzzle as the incident number for the next Murder Specific Event, place that event in play and discard any previous MSE that was in play. Any effect text on an event that specifies a time period (such as "for the first three days of this week") is ignored. Instead, the event simply has its effect until the next MSE enters play. And that's it! Simple as. By the way, anyone who wants to see my modified Android board can find it here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/520019

klarlack said: Bleached Lizard said: 2) NPC favours only count as ONE type of favour from those shown on the chit. The player must choose at game end what type of favour it is. This is exactly what the rules tell you. so it is impossible for a favor (and also a npc-favor) to be worth more than 4 vp's at the end (but only in the unlikely case, that you will link this favor bonus 4 times...) Incorrect. From page 39 of the rulebook: **Although favors are not normally worth points, the conspiracy puzzle may cause them to be worth points. Note that NPC favors gain all VP bonuses for each type of favor they show on their token (e.g., a Mr. Li favor gains the VP bonuses for all four types of normal favors). Also in the strategy article for Louis Blaine, it explicitly states that Mr Li favours could potatially be worth 16VPs each at the end of the game.

I can only find a couple of bits and pieces of them there - the rules for politics and trade. There was a whole load of other stuff as well, which I was wondering if anyone had...?

Does anyone have the full compendium of Borg's house rules that used to be on the old boards? If so, could you please re-post them here (hopefully within the next hour or so, as that's when our game starts)?! Many thanks!

Dan said: Bleached Lizard said: Survive, yes, but subjugated. Which is pretty much a "lose" scenario for the humans. I like that a lot. I think "Subjugate" captures a human loss better than "show mercy" Pound the humans heavily, just close to killing, but not, so to do it at a later date if desired. Humans would of course want to be strong enough to survive and not just scrape by in this agendas case. For role-playing, thematics, but also for better understanding I hope the Agendas could be explained better, either in the rules or an official thread FAQ. No need to explain - just use your imagination and make it anything you want it to be!

I'm flattered! Thank you very, very much for the compliments. I completely agree with you; the concept and scope of the game is amazing - I love it (which is why I'm dedicating so much of my time to it). But when it comes to the nitty-gritty of the implementation, it just could have been so much better. It could have been one of the most original Ameritrash games of recent times, where instead it was made into a weird area control/resource management/tile laying game. In response to a few of your other comments: I personally don't mind the length of the game, though some of my gaming group do think that it can start to drag towards the end. We usually only play 3-player too. I'd hate to think how long a 5-player game would go on for! I've decided that if we ever play 5-player, each "week" will be a day shorter. Should help some. There are many more modifications I've made to my copy of the game that go beyond what you can read in The Director's Cut variants (I semi-jokingly refer to my copy as "The Final Cut"). I've modified the board, updated all the conspiracy bonuses, altered the murders, changed all the events and am even in the process of re-writing all 200+ twilight cards. Obviously I would never expect anyone would want to go to all the trouble I'm going to, so I won't bother publishing it, but I may upload some pictures to BGG for anyone who's interested. One of the changes I'm making, as I mentioned, is indeed to re-balance and simplify the twilight system. With my redesigned cards, the twilight costs only range from 1 to 4, with most cards only costing 1 (and usually only one 4-cost card). The effects the cards have are also much more proportionate to their costs; it always amazed me that there's a Louis card that allows him to place an alibi (extremely useful, usually costing the equivalent of 9 Time if you use the location on the board) that only costs 2 twilight, but then there's a Caprice card that lets her look at an opponent's hand (next-to-useless) that costs 5 twilight. Where on earth did these numbers come from?? With a few other rule changes, such as not allowing discards to pay for twilight cards, all twilight cards costing 0 Time to play, and not allowing certain twilight cards to be played during the climax, the twilight system is made more viable and the randomness is brought a little more under control. I've also completely redesigned how murder-specific events are brought into play, to give more of a story to the story. It struck me that none of the murder-specific events were actually murder-specific in any way; you could really just shuffle the entire deck of MSEs at the start of any game and choose one, as neither the theme of the cards nor their effect text was at all related to the murder you have chosen to play. So the new system I created works like so: Each murder has three MSEs associated with it, all of which will (probably) come into play during the course of the game. Each of the three cards has a "incident value", ranging from 1 to 11 (on average, the three cards will have incident values of 3, 6 and 9). Additionally, half of all the conspiracy tiles have an "incident marker" on them. As soon as there are enough incident markers shown on the conspiracy board to match the value shown on the next MSE, it enters play. So for example, the murder Evil at the Estates ("...the body was mauled beyond all recognition... it was probably someone close to the victim...") uses the following three MSEs with these values: 2 - Cardinal Rees has Asked to Speak with You ("...Eve and I have a special relationship... please don't let them take her from me...") 6 - A Virus is Making Bioroids Go Berserk ("...Androids are going crazy all over the city...") 10 - Haas-Bioroid has Issued a Recall ("...just a safety precaution...") So as players uncover the conspiracy they really are uncovering the story behind the murder. Of course, the murderer may not end up being the one as stated on the MSEs... but then there wouldn't be much game otherwise. Also, have you tried the alternate plots that I have created (also available in the file section on BGG)? They add a lot more theme to the game, rather than just using the overly-abstracted mechanic of discarding dark cards or sacrificing Time to create "plot". Anyway, I've probably been waffling on a bit too much. I'm very glad you've enjoyed my variants - even if it's only one person, that makes the effort worth it! And disagree that if you have a flawed design then no amount of house rules will make up for it... it's just a lot more than you might think. All the best, Chris.

On the flip side, it's not nearly as good.

Sorry to post four posts in a row, but I've had the past couple of hours to think about the shared win/exclusive win problem (I'm a bit obsessive like that) and the more I think about it the more it seems that it must be exclusive win, and here's why: If two teams could share a win, there would be no point in the Cylon leader player(s) keeping their agenda secret from whichever side they would share a win with (this would be especially true if they shared a win with the human team). I'm sure agendas are also covered by the secrecy rules and so they can't be stated explicitly, but if a Cylon leader player wanted their intentions to be known then I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to communicate that through their actions. The sooner the two teams can know that they will share a win the sooner they can start cooperating and assure that victory. Apart from the complete lack of tension and suspicion this would lead to, it would also create the aforementioned problem of lopsided gameplay balance; in a 4-player game for example, you would either have two full Cylons working against two human players or two human players and a Cylon leader working against a lone hidden Cylon. The problem is even more pronounced with six players. The game can't be balanced in this way. I don't believe that you will be getting different teams working towards the same long-term goal. What I think you'll get is each team co-operating with the other for short periods in order to achieve short-term advantages, and then screwing the other team over at just the right time so that they get less of an advantage than you do. This is much more like the sorts of things that happened in the TV show, rather than both the humans and Cylons working together for the "win". I've also had a thought about how the humans might still be able to win against the "Grant Mercy" agenda, despite it's apparant difficulty: it's not a stretch to imagine that the New Caprica board will offer many ways for the humans to increase their resources - especially food and morale. If the humans have figured out that a Cylon leader holds the Grant Mercy agenda, then they will concentrate their efforts on increasing these two resources on New Caprica.

Another thing that makes me doubt that the agendas will enable shared wins is game balance. If the agenda card that a Cylon leader is dealt determines what team he is on, and assuming the agenda card is random, then you will have random numbers of players on each team. I can't see how the game could be balanced this way. Also, what would then be the difference between a normal Cylon leader who is helping the humans, and a "Sympathetic Cylon" leader?

Dan said: Always good reading your threads. Since the game has both mechanics and thematics, bit of role-playing etc., how do you explain the humans "losing" when they win with a Cylon leader "Mercy" agenda? The humans did survive. Just a bit of devil's advocate. Survive, yes, but subjugated. Which is pretty much a "lose" scenario for the humans.

DCAnderson said: This game is about suspicion. If the Cylon Leader's victory trumps your victory, then you don't have to be suspicious at all because then you would KNOW he's trying to shaft you and there would be no paranoia at all. So my guess would be that it will not trump other players' victories. You're right, that may be the case. But the game may not be about whether the Cylon leader is trying to shaft you or not, but rather about in which way he's trying to shaft you. Could go either way.

A Cylon leader can only be in games of four or more players. So I'm guessing that in a 4-player game there would be one Cylon leader, one hidden Cylon and two human players (no sympathiser). Not sure how this would scale upwards, but remember that there is now a "sympathetic Cylon" loyalty card, so maybe a 5-player game has two Cylon leaders (with the possibility of one of them switching sides) and the 6-player game just has two Cylon leaders outright. As for the rest, this is just a guess, but I'd say that if a Cylon leader doesn't fulfill his agenda then he loses; he does not win along with the hidden Cylons if the humans lose. I'd also guess that a Cylon leader win will trump a human win, as it would seem odd to have two teams both winning. It does seem difficult (with what we know of the game so far) for the humans to win if a Cylon leader has the "Grant Mercy" agenda, though. The mechanics would be easier to determine if we had more examples of Cylon leader agendas.

The house rules we use are: 1) You need a pair of favours of the same type to count as one favour on the conspiracy board. 2) NPC favours only count as ONE type of favour from those shown on the chit. The player must choose at game end what type of favour it is.

She may have treachery as a skill. The new preview states that there are penalties involved if ever a human player must discard treachery cards (my guess is that they get shuffled into the destiny deck). This could be Cain's drawback.

Locutus Zero said: Maybe if you get executed you have to show your loyalty cards. If you have a cylon card, you get res'ed and don't get to use your cylon action. If you don't have a cylon card, maybe you lose your character card and become like a nerfed human, maybe? I'd say this is unlikely, simply because the Sympathiser mechanic got enough flak for being an "un-fun" role to play in the game. I doubt they would introduce another nerfed, un-fun role.

RAFEL said: Well we all have to wait until it will be REVEALED to us. I wonder for how many players this game will be whit the expansion? Is it going to be max 6 players game? When I play the game I have a feeling that there is room for one or two more players. What do you think? Whit revealed cylon players and humans and all the characters to choose from is it possible? Sorry for my english... Cheers Corey has stated in an interview that the game will officially still be for just six players, but the extra components included in the expansion will make it easier to play with 7+ if you want to.

They've probably had expansions 1, 2 & 3 already done since the base game was released!

What if so many executions are performed that the human team runs out of characters?