Ok, back from PenguinLand, and here's my wrap-up. Congratulations Cylons, commiserations humans. Been saying that a lot lately, the last human victory was game 13. (Next game, surely.)

First up, let's talk about the new Daybreak elements in this game. Five in particular: the mutiny cards, the new Treachery deck, assault raptors, motives for Cylon leaders and the roster of new characters. What did everyone think about these? From my perspective, I give each one of them a thumbs up.

• The motives look like a huge improvement over the old, erratic agendas. Interesting too to have the possibility that a Cylon leader could conceivably choose either side. Leoben mostly played it pretty straight helping the humans, but there was that one check at the start, which apparently had some interesting consequences for the blame game.

• The old Treachery deck was pretty anaemic; most of the time, they just weren't that useful. They fell short of the promise of giving a revealed Cylon actual things to do. One caveat, by game end the destiny deck was something like half Treachery. Not sure yet if that's going to be a common state of affairs or not.

• I like the new characters too, they feel interesting without being overpowered. I noted that many characters made use of their abilities (less so their OPGs, after Baltar hoovered up the miracle tokens). One exception: Helo used his Raptor Pilot ability (to look at two cards with a single scouting action) only once. Just once. And on that one occasion, hand to God, he scouted and buried two consecutive Cylon attack cards. This was in the same cycle as Hoshi's Massive Assault. Helo gets the human MVP, as he probably kept the humans alive for another jump cycle with that one action.

• The mutiny cards provide another dimension and give players extra options, and for those reasons I quite like them. (One example, which sadly couldn't get played: late in the game, Cottle had a mutiny card that would repair every single damaged viper. Unfortunately, it required at least one undamaged viper already in space, so he was unable to play it.) I was concerned that they'd see half the crew in the Brig, but that didn't eventuate. (It happened to Cottle, and he got released the very same turn.) However, they most likely make the game harder for the humans, which brings us to:

• Assault raptors. They didn't get much use, which may have made a big difference this game. Raiders only hit them on a 7-8, making them more effective defenders. I think we can agree that the humans need all the help they can get.

Now, some noteworthy events in the game:

Turn 1.1: Leoben used his GetFoG and then spiked the check with an AAC-5. That was the card he'd got from GetFoG. If he hadn't done anything, Destiny would've spiked the check exactly the same.

Turn 4.3: When Hoshi revealed as a Cylon, he gave Helo his other loyalty card, which was the other Cylon card. Helo had been 100% human up till then. Which made it all the more hilarious that the very next action was Apollo stealing the Admiralty to become Pradmiral, in the process convincing everyone but the Cylons that he was the second Cylon. (It was a close-run thing, what with all the damage Hoshi and Helo managed, but nonetheless for his services to rampant paranoia at a time of space battles I am awarding the Cylon MVP to Apollo.)

Turn 4.5: Coming into this turn, the humans had 25 non-Treachery cards between them. The fleet was under attack by a basestar and 10 raiders. Then Helo, at Baltar's urging, executed Apollo. By turn end, the humans were down to 13 useful skill cards. A reminder of some of the cards that Apollo discarded:

Evasive Manoeuvre 1
Maximum Firepower 3
Combat Veteran 4
Maximum Firepower 4
Run Interference 5
Best of the Best 6

It was at this point that the space war was lost, (continued...)

( continues...) with the loss of momentum, the loss of a phenomenal quantity of firepower, and the death of the fleet's only human pilot-type. Within four turns, six civvies had been destroyed and six vipers damaged. Not a single raider had been destroyed. (On Helo's next turn, he revealed, and the humans went from 12 useful cards down to 6.) By game end, 11 civilian ships had been destroyed, leaving only one.

The humans still passed a lot of skill checks. But they failed two - Training Snafu and Weapon Malfunction. They had two things in common - they both damaged vipers, leaving the fleet with no viper cover at all. They also both had Red positive.

To add insult to injury, the seven crisis cards before the final turn had not a single jump icon between them. However, I don't make too much of that. The five crises before them all had jump icons. Overall, you got jump icons on 19 of 35 crisis cards, not far off the ratio of the full deck.

So that was the game from my perspective. Humans had a decent helping of troubles as usual, but in contrast to many games, in this one it was a lot easier to draw a line between the players' actions and the final outcome. For me, that made it one of the most enjoyable games in recent time.

What did other people think, particularly about the new Daybreak elements?

BSG

I liked the new elements, although those fucking Mutiny cards really made it hard to do anything but get rid of Mutiny cards; I'm surprised they only ended up brigging someone once. They made it feel like it was a constant threat, and every action was a choice between keeping yourself safe and helping the team. They did have some cool powers, though, so that was nice.

The new Treachery was interesting too. Since they triggered all the time, not just in Reckless checks, they were even more dangerous, and they were harder to get rid of by tossing into checks.

I am awarding the Cylon MVP to Apollo

Hurrah! No, wait. I did what I thought was best for Team Human, godsdammit!

BSG

I was going to reveal immediately. It was only the power grab and urge to airlock that kept me from it. I didn't count on Leobon ( or anyone) playing a card for extra cards. I forgot about that option I wanted to see the Hans waste valuable cards. Although if Cain had been executed a pilot could have been picked . Not sure it would have made a difference.

BSG (Leoben)

A very fun game. I liked the new elements although it added to the confusion for me, maybe playing a cylon leader was a bit too much for me.

I for one am shocked that in a game containing both P-C and ND, neither of them was a Cylon.

Ha! Me too!

BSG

This is in fact the second game where both ND and P-C were human. (Out of 10 games with both of them.)

X-Posted with Animation:

So I got Young Justice: Legacy for Christmas, and so far I'm very underwhelmed. Graphics/animation look dated; each character has all of three catch-phrases they say over and over again in combat; the music is annoying and repetitive; the camera frequently gets stuck behind scenery during fights; forcing you to try to move it while trying to not get your head knocked off; it's difficult to tell where you're actually able to go, as invisible walls are everywhere and the assorted caches you find are either broken and have nothing in them, or the game is simply not telling you what you find, while still prompting you to hit the button to open them even after the lid is open.

It's sad, really, as the entire voice cast is there (so far) and I know Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti wrote the script of the game and consulted with the game creators to make sure everything was canon. I know Greg Weisman in particular wanted the game to be successful as a potential jumping-off point for continuing the franchise, but the game itself is pretty lame as an actual game.

Firefly the boardgame. Still conflicted about this game but I do believe you can criticize something and enjoy it at the same time. Does anyone else own a copy? Do you think it would be possible to run an on-line game?