every one of my choices made it into the group

Three of mine did, so I'm still not sure who I'm playing.

I...have no idea what makes for a good mix. So I'm fine with this one.

I just got a Royal Flush in Texas Hold 'em.

Oh, that makes sense. I've not played with a Baltar in the mix and hadn't looked closely at his ability.

Baltar's an odd bird. Most characters, the advantages and disadvantages of their abilities are pretty straightforward. Baltar's abilities, however, relate less to the mechanics as to the "traitors among us" aspect of the game.

For example: his weakness is that he gets an extra loyalty card, so he's more likely to be a Cylon as any other player. But there's nothing wrong, in terms of the gaming experience, with being a Cylon. A lot of people prefer it. The weakness isn't that you're more likely to be a toaster, but that everyone else knows it, and you'll therefore be the least trusted crew member no matter which side you're on. Either way, Baltar has an uphill climb to advance his agenda.

His OPG too can be great - the chance to prove conclusively where another player's loyalties lie. But everyone else only has Baltar's word for it. Given Baltar's extra loyalty card, he'd better be extra persuasive.

It doesn't seem to hurt his popularity. On BGG, he's the most popular choice by a substantial margin.

It doesn't seem to hurt his popularity. On BGG, he's the most popular choice by a substantial margin.

Well, he was the third choice for the two people that picked him.

Given that 3 of the ten characters weren't picked at all, it's pretty amazing that almost everyone got their first choice. Given the popularity of Starbuck and Roslin as second choices, the ripple effect of someone not getting their pick could have may it confusing for the assignments.

BSG

Since I know Liese is not really available until next week, and she got her first choice, I'm going to assume she's fine with this mix. Hope that's not a problem.

The Final 5 for Buffistica 5:
William Adama: billytea
Helo: -t
Baltar: Kalshane
Starbuck: Laga
Chief: Liese

Therefore, billytea starts as Admiral and Kalshane as President. Use your power wisely (so say we all).

I will send out individual character abilities as a reminder next week when I send out turn order and loyalty card information. Remember, since there are five players, we are not playing with the sympathizer card.

It feels so strange being a spectator after driving the bus for so long. But looking forward to the entertainment!

Yup, that looks fine to me. Not that I know!

Tried out BSG in face space for the first time today. We had 3 players who had never played before (and one who hadn't seen the show) and myself who only played here.

Our character alotment was Admiral Adama (me), President Baltar, Starbuck and the Chief. The humans pretty much dominated the game, especially with only 4 players and, it turned out, no Cylon until the Sleeper phase.

One of the first Crisises was Martial Law, which I promptly used to remove the Presidency from the shifty Baltar. Which convinced his player that I must be the Cylon.

For our first jump, I chose Cylon Ambush, which almost became our undoing as we got hit by Cylon attack after Cylon attack. Plus we failed the Network Computers crisis just prior to our first jump, so we had Centurions onboard.

At one point almost every raider, every undamaged viper and all but two civvies were on the board. Starbuck kept us alive by mowing through wave upon waves of raiders and even shot down a couple heavies. We miraculously only lost one civvie during the whole mess, and for only 1 population. When we finally managed to eke out enough on the jump track to make a forced jump, we went for it and managed to avoid the pop loss thanks to a Strategic Planning played ahead of the roll. I had the choice of Asteroid Field or Asteroid Field. Whee. But it got us into the Sleeper phase already sitting at 6 distance. Plus, we lucked out and the destroyed civvie had no resources on board.

We then had a very quiet phase with no Cylon attacks and our newly (unrevealed) Cylon Chief trying to figure out what his best options were with no confusion of attacks to capitalize on and us using ICs to keep checks open. Finally we jumped again to the Cylon Refinery for 2 distance to bring us to 8, and 2 of my guests needed to leave, so we declared Team Human the winners by default since the only resource in the red was Fuel, and it barely so.

Definately want to get a group together to try again, especially if we can get at least 5 players to allow for two Cylons. Plus, it should go a little smoother now that I've got some experience actually physically playing the game under my belt.

Our one big mistake, I think, was not bothering to use the Turn Indicator chip. We wasted a lot of time going "Wait, whose turn was this?" between the XOs and the Crisises and Cylon activations it gets a little confusing. Though it probably would have been easier to track if we'd followed the rules and had each player pretty much run the game on their turn, rather than divying out duties based on what part of the board/counters/cards people were sitting closest to.

Question for those of you who play the BSG board game: how do handle the tokens (damage tokens, civilian ships) that are supposed to be randomly drawn? We sort of stacked and "shuffled" them, but it was kind of clumsy.