Galactica's Nine Lives
Aaron Dixon - Apollo
Ken Mather - Adama (Obama)
Chris Rabeler - Roslin*
Sean George - Starbuck
Philihp Busby - Helo*
A mostly uneventful first jump for two distance. There were some narrow escapes with vipers, but nothing of note because just about every crisis pushed up the jump counter. One of the crises had a 5, two 4s, and a 3 so Adama used his once-per-game to grab it early on. Adama jumps for 2 distance for 2 fuel, which was fair.
The second jump is pretty much the same thing. Lots of quick crises, not too much attacking the ship. Mostly people scratch eachothers' back with exec orders to get the game moving and to build trust. There were some mishaps with two base stars coming out and firing at Galactica. The armory and a two other insignificant locations get damaged, as well as two vipers. Adama jumps for just 1 distance to the Anchorage to repair the two vipers, citing that it would be pretty good to go into halftime with a totally repaired ship, so everyone gets to repairing the ship; turning out to be somewhat difficult since Starbuck is the only one who naturally draws engineering cards to repair, and drawing one, and having to pick between a possible exec order and a possible repair. Consolidate powers and the research lab turn out to be the only reasonable way.
Third jump comes around. At this point we're all sure that nobody's a cylon, but we're also nervous because there's a high chance of becoming a cylon. Everyone starts to horde cards. By the jump, just the armory is damaged, andd the ship is at -2 from start on most stats. Adama takes us to a tillium planet or something for only 1 distance. A gamble that he'll turn out to be a cylon and have screwed the ship.
[caption id="attachment_318" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Aftermath of Cylon-Roslin Revealing"][/caption]Loyalty cards are dealt. Apollo notices that Roslin takes a second glance at her card, so everyone suspects her as being a cylon. Humans pretty much make a deal to only exec order people to their right to minimize the problems with a cylon getting three actions in a row. Helo's turn comes around and I ask for who needs to be exec'd. Helo is a cylon (the kill one morale type, fairly unknown to everyone else I'm pretty sure at this point). Apollo volunteers to Helo's left, which is highly suspect; but there are some raiders hovering on top of his viper in space so he would have something to do. Roslin points out that she could use her quorum cards in combination with Helo's reroll abilitty, so she's exec'ed. She ends up using her once-per-game to draw an arrest order to put someone from colonial one in the brig, and reveal the 'damage galactica' cylon card, hitting the ship with -1 fuel and a damage token on a location sending someone to sickbay. The humans all groan and figure Helo did it on purpose knowing Cylon-Roslin was the cylon, and figure he's one as well; something not far from the truth. The humans recover and send Helo to the brig, but it's costly doing so. And 5 or so crises in by now, there have still been no jump counters. Possibly due to the high frequency in the beginning, so Galactica is just floating in space getting beaten up upon. Cylon-Helo reveals, but is in the brig so no minus one morale (oh noes! not that! but it was still a good call to send him to the brig, there was a 2/3 chance it was one of the devastating cylon cards).
[caption id="attachment_317" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="A Cylon boarding party nearly destroys Galactica"][/caption]Cylon-Roslin plays a supercrisis at a particularly good moment when skill cards are low. It fails, and two boarding parties start. The Armory is also still damaged. The humans have a particularly tough time repairing it, not having many engineering cards and Starbuck having bad luck drawing for one. Without Helo's reroll ability, the situation looks grim for the humans. Some crises come out putting two base stars around Galactica, and a crisis makes the base stars fire bringing Galactica up to 3 of 6 damage tokens (at 6 the humans lose). The boarding parties are at 2 of 4 distance away from blowing up Galactica and there's one Heavy Raider about to land before the humans manage to repair it. It's Cylon-Roslin's turn comes around and we make the call to try and blow Galactica up with damage tokens, but only one hits bringing the total to 4 of 6. Starbuck rolls to hit the boarding parties but misses. Starbuck's at an important point. If her crisis is a heavy raider card, then the boarding parties get to 3 of 4 distance and Cylon-Helo uses cylon fleet to push them to 4 of 4 and win; however if her crisis is a base stars fire, then the cylons basically get four chances to make a 75% chance to damage galactica, and only need to succeed two times. But it's neither, so Cylon-Helo pushes the two boarding parties to 3 of 4, and a third boarding party starts on the track. Adama and Apollo have two turns to figure out how to kill them, and also pray that Apollo's crisis doesn't blow up the ship on a 1 in 16 chance. Apollo, now the president, plays an Authorization of Brutal Force to kill the first boarding party, but it's the best she can do. Her crisis comes up, but it's yet another raider card. Adama exec orders Apollo to use the president's office. There are 6 or 7 quorum cards left, 1 of which is another Authorization of Brutal Force card. President's office lets Apollo get three draws, one of which must be this. Apollo draws the first and top-decks it, killing the boarding party. But there's still one remaining at 1 of 4.
Cylon-Roslin pushes it forward to 2 of 4. Starbuck takes another pot-shot at it and misses. Cylon-Helo pushes it forward to 3 of 4. Again, Apollo and Adama have two turns to figure out how to kill it. With their options limited, they take a coin-flip by playing a Strategic Planning on using the Armory and take it out. Then Adama starts to repair. Then Adama moves to FTL Control and repairs it, and jumps early losing 3 pop bring it down to 7. Adama pulls out yet another 1 distance jump and the Cylons count their blessings for it. With so many near-death oh-god-fail-this-and-we-lose rolls of Galactica, the Humans count their blessings there.
Humans begin repair the ship. Cylons start using the Caprica location and manage to bury Legendary Discovery and give the humans a new cylon fleet to tangle with, which turns out to be not too much of an issue, since Apollo and Starbuck are able pilots. Helo uses Caprica and gets Jump Drive Failure, choosing the "or" effect of pushing back the jump counter by one, and losing one resource. Morale stays pretty high in the 7 range, while fuel starts to drop to 5 and food to 2. Then the humans jump, again jumping only 1 distance bringing the total to 6.
[caption id="attachment_316" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Galactica's running on fumes"][/caption]Resources getting dangerously low. A failed crisis brings fuel to 3, however the Adama get the Water Sabotage crisis of pass for +1 food, fail for -2 food (or just take -1 food). The food version of Colonial Day for morale. Cylon-Helo decides between a 1-point red card and a 3-point red card (his highest) on this, and picks the 1-point forgetting about Adama's ability that 1-point cards count positive, regardless of color. The crisis passes by 1. Had it been the -3 instead of +1, it would have failed outside of Dec. Emergency range; winning the game. No worries, food's now at 3. Still low. Adama lucks out and draws two 5s and a 4. Cylons keep hitting the humans with Caprica and wear down their skill cards. 4 crises hit in a row, most requiring leadership (green) and tactics (purple) to pass. One of which would destroy the Humans' last raptor, but Adama uses a 4-point declare emergency to save it (which ends up happening anyway from something else). Humans jump early, fail to pass the roll, and population falls to 3. It would be their last jump.
Cylon-Helo checks skill card counts; Apollo has 2, Adama has 9 or 10 (4 of which he just drew with pressroom), and Starbuck has only a couple. Adama is pretty confident he can pass whatever it is. Cylon-Helo hits the humans with the Inbound Nukes supercrisis (after making the humans nervous all game), which requires 15 green and purple to pass, and Apollo passes, not having any cards, and Starbuck looks at Adama hoping he can solo 15 points plus whatever the Cylons add on. So the nukes hit the fleet head on, burning fuel to 4, food to 2, and population to 6. A turn goes around, some cylons come out, but the pilots beat them up pretty successfully.
Cylon-Roslin uses Caprica to give the humans a water shortage, forcing Apollo to take -1 food and lose his cards. Then in the most anticlimactic of events, Cylon-Helo uses Caprica, top-decks the Scouting for Water crisis, and chooses the "or" effect dropping food to 0.
Cylons win.
In retrospect, since Phil picked last, he should have picked the chief for repairing, however it seemed decent at the time to pick Helo for his rerolling. Technically the humans ended up with 3 pilots, and after half-time, Adama, Starbuck, and Apollo don't make a very good team. They caught plenty of breaks though, plenty of lucky rolls and draws from the mid-game boarding parties. Also, there really wasn't the opportunity for much deceit on behalf of the Cylons, so most of the action was direct. The excitement in this game came from the random chance, not from the political drama. Adama caught some really bad luck with destination cards after half-time, always being a choice between two 1-distance destinations.