BSG

Since I am going to follow the game with my own board, where does Apollo's character token go when he is launched? Off the board? In the Hangar Deck? Or elsewhere?

Off the board. He'll just have his pilot token with his viper; when he lands again, his character token gets put back on the board.

BSG

Game start! And I'm just so proud to be here. We have a few problems at the moment. The most obvious, we're under attack. It's the most obvious, but it's not the most dangerous. Consider: it will take four activations before those raiders can threaten our civvies - on average, we have about seven turns to sort out a response. With three pilots (including Apollo, who for mine is the most effective pilot in the game), we would need to pull a ridiculous number of attack cards to be in real trouble.

The biggest problem we have right now is that we start woefully short on cards. We'll pick up more as the game progresses, but if we get any troublesome skill checks early on, we could have trouble. And even as the game progresses, as a fleet we have all colours well covered - except one. We're short on Politics, which means we're potentially woefully short of Investigative Committees.

I will therefore:

Move to the Press Room (discard Red-1).

(Side note: in the three games run so far, the Press Room has only been used twice, both times by Cylons. The humans have never made use of it. I suggest this was one reason that skill checks caused such trouble in the first couple of games.)

President Zarek, another resource that I feel we should not underestimate is the Quorum deck. I suggest for your turn, that you move to your Office in preparation to receive an XO (which would allow you to draw four Quorum cards in one turn). I will also ask that (barring anything drastic in my Crisis Card) that you use your action to XO me. That will allow me to draw 4 Politics cards. Between the two of us, we should be able to ensure we have an adequate supply of ICs for the coming cycle.

I'll wait to hear from the President before declaring an action. Meanwhile, concerning Cylon attacks, it's easy to panic in the face of an attack, but we actually have several options to keep it manageable. Two of them I think we should regard as our first lines of defence:

1. Scout. The game's pretty simple at bottom. If we rack up Distance faster than we lose resources, we win. (Almost) every Crisis without a jump icon costs us for no gain. If we scout regularly, we jump faster and cheaper. (If we scout the Destination Deck, we jump further and finish faster.) Even better, we get to bury attacks; and when we're close to jumping, existing attacks lose a lot of their power to threaten us. This is our first and most proactive line of defence.

2. Communications. Moving civvies lets us manage raiders. In a race between raiders and our FTL, keeping the civvies one step ahead is valuable. We can bunch the civvies together, making them easier to defend. We can also learn what's on the ships, in case we have to choose between them.

So Mr President, what do you think? Would you be able to XO me on your turn?

BSG

That all sounds very reasonable. Of course you might be a cylon trying to get an extra turn in order to wreak havoc. On the other hand it would be good to find that out early. OK Boomer, I'll give you that extra turn.

BSG

Spoken like a gentleman, Mr President. In that case, for my action I will:

Play Purple-1 to scout the Crisis Deck.
Pass on interrupts.

(Concerning this scout, I intend to bury anything without a jump icon, unless it gives us something else good, like Legendary Discovery. Obviously, this includes attack cards. I'm inclined to keep any jump icons. Anyone else has ideas, I'm all ears.)

Edit: the scouting mission has a 75% chance of succeeding, which becomes 100% if someone plays an SP. With 4 raptors in reserve, I don't think we need to use an SP on it. We can save it for nukes and early jumps and such like. However, if someone does want to play an SP, we do draw 9 Tactics cards each cycle, so we likely won't be too short of them.

BSG

I'm on board with playing jump icon crises. When I was playing Boomer & I was a cylon I buried them.

BSG

While omnis is away from the thread, I'll put up the reminder: my scouting mission involves a die roll to determine whether it succeeds or we lose a raptor. As with any die roll, it may be modified by a Strategic Planning interrupt. Everyone who's drawn Purple so far (which I think is everyone except Chief Tyrol and Apollo) can post orders to play an SP or pass on interrupts. (Alternatively, you can send a CO to omnis.)

I've passed, which leaves Zarek, Helo and Tigh.

BSG

Tigh will pass on interrupts. As billytea says, it's early game, better to save for later. Not to mention Purple is commonly needed to help resolve crises, and SP is 3-5 points.

BSG

I know I'm a little out of it down here on Caprica, but I was waiting for Zarek. Do we not have to do that?

BSG

I was waiting for Zarek. Do we not have to do that?

Omnis is moderating this game, so it's his call, but in the games I ran, I didn't require interrupts in turn order. The game bogs down too much. (We still need to play into skill checks in order.)

BSG

In that case, since I can do so little this round, I'll play an SP interrupt.