newb question, but plz help

[awp832 447]

Played the first game of BSG last night, but we must be doing something wrong.   I hear that Cylons win quite often, and I'm having trouble seeing how that should be.

 

A Cylon basestar is placed during setup, but after the fleet preforms one FTL jump, it's removed from the board (correct so far?)

 

After that, basestars seem to only spawn with Cylon Attack crisis cards, of which there are very few.  Our poor pilot had nothing to do the whole game  (thought she got to be the admiral eventually when current admiral was a sleeper agent), and it just seems like the Cylons aren't *there*.   Are there any more ways to spawn a Cylon base star?  Page reference please if possible, please!

 

In the same vein, colonial ships are also removed after one FTL jump,  correct?   When do they come back, other than Cylon Attack Crisis cards? 

[azuredarkness 0]

There are three ways for basestars to be placed on the board:

1. Cylon Attack Crisis cards - the way you already noted (and the most common one).

2. Some crisis results (in a skill check or an event crisis) place basestars on the board.

3. A destination card called "Cylon Ambush" which the Admiral may select.

There are 10 Cylon attack cards out of the 70-card Crisis deck. You should have been drawing a cylon attack every two rounds or less. If this was your first game, the deck may not have been sufficiently shuffled, as the game comes with all the 10 attacks at the bottom of the deck.

 

The Cylons generally have plenty to do even without ships on the board. Creating paranoia, and sabotaging skill checks are just two of the possibilities.

[ninjamatic3000 16]

This happened to my group in our first game as well... we were wondering where all the cylons were, and after the fact we realized it was due to poor shuffling, as stated by azuredarkness above. A couple of times since we have seen every cylon ship in the game on the board at once! So don't worry, shuffle that deck a little better, play a few more games and there will be times you'll beg for just one "boring" jump!

[FunkyBunch 2]

The worst part is, that you can still lose, even if you don't see a single cylon ship for the rest of the game.

[Sinis 0]

1.  As others have said, there are certainly more ways to lose than from cylon ships.  More often, the cylon ships present enough of a threat to civilian ships and the humans so that the humans cannot spend their turns drawing cards, but instead have to spend cards like Executive Order, or Launch scout, and can no longer devote as many cards to skill checks as they'd like.

2.  A revealed cylon can go through two crises at a time, looking for attack crises or crises that put a targeted resource lower (morale is easiest).

3.  Of the 70 crises, 10 are attacks, and 20 do not have the jump prep icon.  You can reasonably expect to go through a fair number of crises (including attack crises) before the game is over.

My group tends to run into three or four attack crises per game, though there are some with more, and some with less.  More often than not, the attack crises only delay the human players in terms of card drawing and action usage.  Very rarely will raiders deal a large amount of damage to the resources of the humans, or manage to land a number of centurions that will manage the run to the finish line.  Generally speaking, a colossal number of raiders must be launched in order for the humans to suffer losses, and in the case of centurions, at least two must be on the track before using the cylon fleet location to march them forward will become a good option.

[apu2 0]

About the centurions: It is correct that you do not have to worry too much about one of these, but two quickly become a problem. It happened twice now, that the Armory location became damaged right before Galactica has been boarded by two centurions.

If one of the revealed cylons then turns out to be Chief Tyroll the humans quickly run out of engineering skill cards. Destruction came very quickly.