Stuck with two Cylon cards
[caption id="attachment_289" align="alignright" width="200" caption="You Are A
Ccylon"][/caption]Ken Mather - Baltar
Chris Rabeler - Tigh
Laura VanZant - Starbuck*
Phil Busby - Sharon
Aaron Dixon - Zarek*
Paul Houlbrooke - Helo
The game on 2009-01-30 was a little of an outlier as far as games go. It was Paul's first game, Aaron's second game, and Laura's second game as a cylon. Laura laid low for the first half, and the second jump brought Galactica to 5 distance. The ship was green on all resources by halftime so the sympathizer went to the cylons. At half-time, Aaron became a cylon and Laura got the sympathizer card, but waited 1 turn too long to use the resurrection ship to give someone her cylon card. Galactica jumped to 8 distance, and she was stuck with two cylon cards. It left the humans suspecting, but no resources went under far enough to be a threat, and no major cylon fleet mobilizations hit.
I'd say the better games are when the experience is mixed among both sides. In this game, both Phil and Ken had 3 loyalty cards (picking Baltar and Sharon), but both ended up being human. Laura really didn't get a good opportunity to reveal in the first half, and getting to 8 distance really shut her down. She was unaware of the errata that would have allowed her to reveal as a full cylon, and get a Supercrisis as well as either damage galactica twice or shoot someone in the face.
[b]Cylon Tip[/b]: If you suspect the person to your left to be your fellow cylon, then executive order him. If you're a cylon, try to get the person to your right to executive order you. The most devastating way to reveal yourself is to position yourself so that you're defending civilian ships, raiders are right on top of you, and you need an executive order to use a Max Firepower (that you may or may not even have in your hand) on the player to your right's turn. He or she execs you for 2 actions before your turn. You launch scouts (maybe you blow up a raptor? maybe you bury that Legendary Discovery?), or do something worthless... maybe you're the Admiral too? Fire a nuke off into empty space! Then you reveal, shooting the player to your left in the face (no chance for him to get exec'ed out before his turn). Then the humans get a crisis (possibly activating raiders to blow up those civvy ships!), and you get a full turn as a cylon. If that crisis triggered an auto-jump, your turn would be a great time to play the Massive Assault supercrisis, chances are their other pilot isn't in position, and the jump track is at zero.
The worst way for a Cylon to go out is to reveal while in the brig. You don't get to use the action on your card, and it's a full round before you get to inflict any damage. Don't waste your time trying to convince humans you're a human, though. It usually takes a few rounds for this, which is enough time for a jump or two. Often, the impact of your Cylon loyalty card isn't worth it. You're in the brig anyway, so you only play 1 card per skill-check so you can't bomb any crises, and you don't draw crises on your turn, so you don't get any "Current Player Decides" choices. Make sure you use your once-per-game action if it makes sense.