BSG

Quick wrap-up. Congratulations Cylons, commiserations humans. When you hit Sleeper phase, you'd only lost a couple of Fuel (which actually put you ahead of the curve) and a couple of Morale. The game usually gets a lot tougher once there are two Cylons.

Congratulations especially to omnis, who managed to stay off everyone's radar, even after he started causing mischief. My favourite: twice in the space of three skill checks, Baltar made the check Reckless - in both cases with a fairly useless interrupt. And in both cases, the check just happened to turn up some Reckless Treachery. (the good doctor played a BL into one and a BYC into the other.) In addition, Baltar drew two Politics per turn - more than any other player - and yet he never once contributed an Investigative Committee to a skill check. Oh, and your President played only two Quorum cards the entire game, and look how well that worked out. (The other one was right at the start, on turn 1.2.) Kalshane had it pegged, truly Baltar was the Ron Swanson of the Colonial fleet.

I went back and tracked how the fleet lost the Morale. Here's how it played out:

• On turn 1.4, Cally's crisis card was Truth and Reconciliation (President's Choice). Baltar chose to drop Morale, and send Cally to the Brig - he even got the crew's blessing.

• On turn 4.2, Baltar visited Kendra Shaw. She was Benevolent, and Baltar took advantage to swap Morale for Food. Granted, Food was one point lower than Morale at the time, but Morale causes more losses than Food.

• On turn 5.1, Starbuck's crisis was Forced Water Mining. Baltar made the check Reckless, and spiked with a BYC-1. However, Gaeta was the one who really doomed the check, with a well-timed Red Tape. Another Morale lost.

• You didn't have long to wait for the next loss, on the very next turn, with Hera Rescued. Baltar got everyone on board with just taking the 1 Morale hit (though it would have been difficult for the crew to pass, especially if Gaeta and Baltar spiked).

• No more Morale loss until turn 6.5, with Reunite the Fleet. Baltar pushed for Helo to choose the skill check, then spiked it hard with a Calcs-5. (Gaeta spiked too with an RI-5.)

Oh, by the way, on this check Helo had two TI-0s in hand, which he declined to play. Sensible enough with only two positive colours; but it so happens that if he's played it, Destiny would've added +9 to the check (PoP-6 and DE-3), bringing it to a pass. Instead, that mega-Destiny went to Weapon Malfunction, where it counted negative and doomed that check.

• That left Morale at 4 as the fleet made its final jump to the Ionian Nebula. Helo had a choice between Tylium Planet (which would extend the game by another jump cycle, and incidentally would've meant that you'd meet two attack cards, Thirty Three and Scar, at the Nebula) or Deep Space. He brought you to Deep Space instead, kicking off Crossroads and costing another Morale.

• Both Cylons, of course, hit Morale with their Crossroads cards. (If they'd both chosen the other option on their cards, Galactica would have been fired on by the raiders 24 times. Seriously.) This was perhaps the worst luck the humans had in the game, that both Cylons were given the opportunity to hit Morale (and that they both ignored the space battle to go after it) with their cards.

• The final point, of course, disappeared in the slums of Dogville, courtesy of President Baltar's final (in fact, his second) Quorum card play.

Final tally: of the nine points of Morale that were lost by the fleet. President Baltar had a direct hand in six of them, and in each case through a different avenue - there was a President's Choice, a Current Player's Choice, an NPC encounter, a spikes skill check, a Crossroads card and finally a Quorum card. He wins this game's MVP award.

BSG (Gaeta)

Daaaaaaamn, very impressive job, Baltar. I bow before your superior Morale destruction. I was focusing on taking them out via Food.

slow clap

Thank you! Thank you! I read BT's email about how morale can take a dump at crossroads, and thought that the best to look to. Lots of chances. Lots of luck. I tried to spike a few other checks, but the humans kept over playing the checks, nobody noticed my -1 or -2 points played.

I do laugh at the IC thing. At one point BT was asking for interrupts, and pointing out that I had it, and I was like "why would I do that? I want to spike the damn thing! Conditional order, if it helps the humans, pass!". And we only had 2 or 3 IC's, I want to say. As a hidden Cylon, they really do keep the spikes away. Well worth the card. Of course, then was the challenge of looking at who had cards, and what draws they had, to try and avoid playing the IC in a check for fear of "hey, who had the IC and didn't play it as an interrupt".

Yep, my big worry with saving an IC or SP or whatever is needing to wait to actually play it in a check without suspicion. Usually I have to wait a full round so I could have conceivably drawn it on my next turn.

This was the first game with the Ionian Nebula. No one got eliminated, which is what usually happens. Eliminations are uncommon (though not freakishly uncommon). However, avoiding those eliminations pushes people in particular directions. They turn up in locations they would otherwise have passed over, which reduces the efficiency of the crew.

The NPCs themselves can be good or bad, but since most people visiting NPCs want to ditch bad trauma, NPCs wind up being Antagonistic more often than Benevolent. (Incidentally, another tip for the sharp-eyed that Baltar wasn't what he appeared to be is that the NPCs he placed turned out to be Benevolent. He was perfectly happy to hold onto his Antagonistic trauma.)

In my experience, the main thing the Ionian Nebula adds to the game is more chaos. The NPCs and Crossroads cards make it harder to keep everything under control. In theory, that can benefit either side; but in practice, it's the Cylons that typically do better out of the greater unpredictability. On boardgamegeek, it makes a huge difference whether the Ionian Nebula is included. The Cylons have a 35% success rate in Exodus without the Nebula (over 17 games), but their win rate with the Nebula is a hefty 72%.

What did the players think of the Ionian Nebula?

It added two big twists. I was apprehensive at first. But as I slowly grew to understand it, I liked it. I'd like another crack at it, to see if I learned it all.

I'm kinda surprised that nobody posted anything about the Xbox One. Granted, it is rather underwhelming at the moment. Lot's of "might do this" type of thing. And rather ugly.

:: cross post with tech ::

I'm still in love with the PS3. Or Skyrim at least. (spoilers)

Soon after I first met Paarthurnax I headed back to Esbern and Delphine to tell them all about him but "OMGWTF Dragon!" was not one of my dialogue options.

So I forgot all about it until I headed to the peace council and they're all "you hid this from us; you have to kill Paarthurnax or we'll never help you again!" and of course "guys let's discuss this" is not a dialogue option.

I am so torn! I always wanted a dragon as a best friend (and also I own him) but I don't want to fuck up what could be a pivotal plot point. So I'm just going to do side quests for a while while I think about it.

I have zero interest in the Xbox One at the moment. Too many downsides (internet connection required, install of games required and those games becoming tied to a specific account, no backwards compatibility, even for XBLA games, no clear answer on how used games are going to work) and not enough positives for me right now.