Chris is a bad human and Sean is a cylon once again!
Another great game of BSG! Again, this is mostly for myself to look back and remember the game, but there are probably some good tactics if any other BSG Board Game players are out there. Also we played Roborally before BSG, which is incredibly fun, very easy to learn, fast paced, and quick to play. A+.
Aaron Dixon* - Apollo
Sean George* - Adama
Chris Rabeler - Roslin
Ken Mather - Chief Tyrol
Philihp Busby - Baltar
John (Aaron's Friend) - Starbuck
John's first game. Someone suggested John exec Aaron early on, things were pretty getting pretty hairy and Aaron revealed sending someone to the brig. His crisis is Massive Assault, too, which hurts us pretty bad at the time. We make it out, and everything's pretty fine but there are a lot of jump counters, so the end of the game is pretty thinned out. First jump gets us to two distance. John uses his once-per-game to make a really bad crisis go away. Then a Detector Sabotage comes out, and Ken uses his once-per-game to save us during the skill check. We start guessing who the second cylon is, and morale gets to get one away from red. A crisis comes up shortly before the second jump that would bring morale into red, and we debate on if we should tank fuel into red (it needs to drop two, which a two-distance jump could do), which would make the cylon sympathizer side with the humans. Sean is giving Aaron all these great cylon-advice tips, so he's pretty suspicious of being a cylon, but that's not something Sean doesn't normally do; try to play both sides. We end up failing it on purpose, but then Chris (Roslin) cherry-picks Colonial Day which brings us back into the blue on morale. No worries, we jump, and it's two distance for two fuel. Second round of loyalty cards come out and Phil goes to the brig after he becomes the sympathizer for the humans. Then the fun begins.
We all can't figure out who the cylon is. We're sure someone is, but nothing really obvious has happened on a skill-check. Phil's turn comes around, but he's in jail. Wants to get out so he'll get a crisis (possibly pushing the jump counter forward) and also get to draw another skill card from his Delusional Intuition character ability. Chris convinces him to exec him to try for the quorum card that pardons him, but no such luck, which is suspicious since he has a lot of cards already. John gets a crisis that passes to allow him to check one random loyalty card. Big debate on who to check, nobody is beyond suspicion. He says he wants to check Chris, and Chris immediately says "okay, but it doesn't matter." John says he comes up clean, and we're all pretty sure he's a human.
Then Aaron's comes next and he turns the game upside down by giving Chris his extra loyalty card. Nothing big, except he hands it to Chris pretty obviously, and Chris takes one look at it and begins laughing hysterically. Sean's turn, but he's Adama so he can't use the Admiral's Quarters to send him to the brig so he executive orders Ken to do it. By now Sean is saying he's a human, which seems a little hard to believe. Ken tries to arrest him, but it seems nobody had any of those skill cards so it fails. Crap.
Chris's turn comes up, we're all expecting him to reveal, but he does something unexpected. He executive orders Phil to try to get out and to use his cylon detector ability on him to prove his innocence. Phil and Ken both agree that his is very human behavior, so Phil decides to detect Sean. Phil reaches for Sean's loyalty cards, Sean immediately picks up his skill cards and looks at them. Ken notices, and we're all pretty sure even before Phil checks. Phil looks and sees the damage galactica cylon card so it's pretty imperative to put him in the brig. Phil tries to get out of the brig. Both Aaron and Sean play cards, but it passes and Phil goes to FTL control having nowhere better to go. Afterward Aaron says he actually helped in order to get the humans to play more cards. Whatever. Ken execs Chris who uses Roslin's once-per-game to draw four quorum cards, one of which is an arrest order to send Sean to the brig.
Through all this commotion, a lot of our skill cards are burnt, and we get some base stars flying outside the ship. John launches in a viper to try and fend some off. By now I think for some reason or another we've lost two civilian ships that turned out to be empty, so we lose three more which hurt us really bad bringing population down to six. Fuel is at four. Morale is pretty low. Food is great though! Sean reveals and admiralty goes to John. Some cylon raiders are hovering above some civilian ships behind Galactica undefended, so we all agree to jump early. Losing three population isn't as bad as losing three civilian ships. Chris's turn, but he doesn't draw any executive orders, so he has to cough up three cards to go over to Galactica and use FTL herself. We jump early and lose the three population (now at three total) but John isn't really experienced enough to pick a good destination. We tell him to pick the highest destination, which turns out to be bad advice; three distance, lose two fuel and destroy a civilian ship. Since it really doesn't matter at this point, he shows us that the other destination is two distance for one fuel and risk a raptor, which we had four of. Civilian ship turns out to kill two more pop leaving us with one remaining. We're pretty screwed. Some random crises bring morale down to two total and a fuel is lost from something.
At seven distance, the only thing that can save Galactica is a Legendary Discovery crisis passed and a lot of quick jump counters which are already thinned out. Chris execs Ken to draw cards, Ken does something, Phil moves to the press room and execs John even though he can't use his actions for anything productive, it gets him out in a viper and in front of Galactica so he'll be able to defend and get two actions during his turn. He launches scouts and execs Phil to use the press room and consolidates power coming up empty with two 1-value launch scouts. Ken's low on cards, Chris is out of cards, it's up to John and Phil to pass whatever happens. We didn't get the Legendary Discovery, and the jump counter is one away from an auto-jump. Not that we could jump early anyway.
Aaron plays a crisis on us which we intentionally fail, the negative kills our morale down to one. Sean plays his supercrisis... Inbound Nukes! Probably the worst. Ken has no cards to help. Phil plays his two launch scouts. Destiny helps us with one point. We fail it pretty horribly. Game over!
I think if we could have taken a one-distance on the second jump to get us to three, then we would have had time to prepare ourselves and load up on skill cards. But maybe not. We never used any nukes, those could have helped a little, but not terribly much. Lots of fighting and distrust among the humans mostly spelled our doom.