Let's talk BSG expansions

As I become less interested in picking up new games, I'm getting more interested in picking up expansions for my favourite games.

I have so far avoided any of the BSG expansions. Partly I didn't want to make the game any longer or more complex, and partly we'd just had our second baby so the game just wasn't getting table time.

So now we've got the benefit of hindsight, tell me about them. Which is best, and why? How do they affect play time? Are there any combinations that should be avoided, or do you just throw everything from all three into every game? Are they even necessary, and why? Do they help balance the game (I think humans have about a 20% win ratio in my experience)? Which is most accessible? Does it make any difference if, like me, you know or care nothing about the TV show?

Any other stuff. Let's hear about it.

I can't speak to Daybreak since I've never played with it, but the other two are hit and miss.

Overall, I'd say Pegasus is stronger than Exodus. The addition of the Pegasus, the new human characters and the treachery cards are all good. The New Caprica ending is so-so. The only real negative I have is that the cylon leader roles really aren't that interesting. You need a really good, experienced player to pull those off, I think. Most of the time, that player can just be totally ignored. They might be on your side, they might not, but there's not really a damn thing to do about them, so who cares.

As for Exodus, the Cylon fleet option is fantastic! The best add-on to the game in the first two expansions. I wish you could just buy that and forget about the rest of the box. The additional human characters and the Final Five loyalty cards are fine. However, I found the Ionian Nebula option to be totally craptastic. It totally moves the game away from what makes it enjoyable to play.

My preferred setup - normal base game ending, Pegasus, fleet characters only, cylon fleet track, treachery cards.

I've played parts of all three expansions and I largely didn't mind playing them, but vastly prefer the base game. They all seem to add significant overhead, and don't do much by way of making the game more fun. There's a couple new characters that are fun, but not worth the price of admission.

I thought the Cylon fleet board was awful. It totally changed the pacing of the game, there was too much emphasis put on more directly dealing with threats rather than working on the intrigue part of the game while abstractly dealing with threats.

The plastic basestars are the best addition.

Background: At least 20 plays with all the expansions, and a bunch more plays using different expansion mixes. Good thing I woke up early on a Sunday morning without a lot to do:

Pegasus
The best expansion for interesting characters.

Introduces the best Characters of any expansion. Treachery Cards are also a really nice addition. The Cylon Leaders in Pegasus are nice for a change of pace, but they really only shine when you get Daybreak into the mix (more on that below). You do want an experienced player to play the Cylon Leader. A good player means the Cylon Leader cannot be ignored.

I'm a bit torn on the Pegasus game board. It has some nice abilities and is a nice complement to Galactica, but it becomes a simple damage soak. Every group I've every played with almost always uses Pegasus to soak up the damage that Galactica could be taking. It makes the Cylons weaker in that respect because humans losing the game due to Galactica damage now takes 4 additional hits. One simple house rule that I love, that very few groups are willing to use, is to put all the Galactica and Pegasus damage tokens in a bag and draw for damage. That means when you draw damage there's a 60/40 Galactica/Pegasus damage token split at the start of the game, which makes damage to the ships much more scary than just using Pegasus as a damage soak. That one simple change makes me love the Pegasus board.

New Caprica is an interesting ending for a change of pace, but not one we choose often. Most groups I've played with aren't wild about it. The one really cool thing about New Caprica is that it gives the Admiral extra power which has to be considered. You cannot have a Cylon Admiral, even more so than without using New Caprica. When New Caprica comes into play the Characters move to the New Caprica board and do human-y and Cylon-y things until Galactica jumps back to save everyone. Then the name of the game is to get everyone, and the Civilians, off of New Caprica. BUT the Admiral can jump Galactica at any point once it comes back, so a Cylon Admiral can ditch everybody, which will cause all the morale loss of everybody dying and all the population loss of losing a bunch of Civilians. It's one of the more satisfying ways to win as a Cylon Admiral.


Exodus
The best expansion for pilots.

Introduces the CAG (pilot leader) role, which is great and gives the pilots more to do with greater flexibility. There are some interesting Characters, some are good but most are average.

The Ionian Nebula ending is a mixed bag. The best thing it adds are Allies on the game board. There will be locations that have an NPC present, with a card that lists a positive and negative effect on it. There will be a random Trauma Token placed on each NPC at the start. If a player encounters an Ally they reveal the Trauma Token on it, resolve the effect, replace the Ally, and put one of their own Trauma Tokens on the new card. At the end of the game Humans want more blue Trauma Tokens than red in their own individual pools, and the Cylons want the reverse. This makes placing the tokens on Ally cards interesting, because you have to decide when placing whether it's better to get rid of your red token or save the group from the Ally's negative effect if the Ally is encountered in the future. It also looks highly suspicious when it comes to light that a supposedly human player has been ditching red Trauma Tokens all over the place.
The actual Ionian Nebula end is a bit weaker because it shifts the dramatic final, "We made the jump!" ending into a big final resolution step where Trauma Tokens are revealed, effects are dealt with, and such. When we first started playing Exodus we played that ending a lot, because there are some cool ideas there, but ultimately we migrated back to the original Kobol ending.

The Exodus Cylon Fleet board is my single most favorite BSG addon. My main complaint against the BSG base game is how the Cylon Attack Crisis Cards can sometimes be distributed poorly enough to greatly skew the game's difficulty. The Cylon Fleet board produces better pacing, and makes when to jump a more interesting choice. The Cylon Fleet board has its own track that advances until all the Cylon ships on the fleet board jump to Galactica's location. If it is on the very last step before they jump to Galactica, then Galactica probably doesn't want to jump as soon as possible because if Galactica jumps before the Cylon Fleet ships arrive then they'll probably just arrive immediately after and the humans will have a board full of Cylon ships to deal with and an empty Jump Preparation Track. The Cylon Fleet board also puts more of an emphasis on Civilian ships and Pilot Characters.


Daybreak
The best expansion for Cylon Leaders and for finally getting rid of the Sympathizer mechanic.

I'll start with the Demetrius board. Demetrius is the humans' best friend if they believe they might have a Cylon Admiral and are having trouble getting rid of him. There are Demetrius Mission Cards that can add to the total distance jumped to help you get through the game. A human player or two can cycle through the Mission Cards aboard Demetrius to get to those, but a Cylon could do the same thing to bury them. There are other good missions on Demetrius, but the ones that add distance are often the most important. Beyond that the Demetrius board doesn't add much when used with Pegasus and Exodus because there's just a lot of other things to do. The Missions become more important when you're only playing the base game with Daybreak.

Additionally, Daybreak comes with the Earth ending. Earth requires 10 distance to Kobol's 8, so it can be used to offset the Demetrius bonuses. If the humans start winning too much using the Demetrius Mission Cards then use the Earth ending. Interestingly, and this could just be our group(s), but when Kobol is the destination our humans don't always make a big deal out of the Demetrius distance Missions, but when Earth is the destination they do. Which ending to use with Demetrius will probably depend on your group.

The characters in Daybreak are little better than Exodus', but probably not as good as Pegasus'. The one interesting character shift in Daybreak is that each character gets a Miracle Token that they use to fire off their once-per-game ability. There are sometimes ways to get another Miracle Token which means the once per game ability are only usually, but not always, actually once per game. Additionally, the new Gaius Baltar can take and give Miracle Tokens. Whether new Baltar ends up being human or Cylon, things can get interesting.

The next-to-best thing about Daybreak is that it makes the Cylon Leaders way more fun to play and significantly more interesting. Now Cylon Leaders draw 2 Motive Cards at the start of the game, and an additional 2 during the Sleeper Phase. Motive Cards have prerequisites/requirements on them and may be revealed when those requirements are met. If not revealed, and the requirements then become unmet, they can't be revealed retroactively. Each Motive Card will state either Cylon or human allegiance. Whichever the Cylon Leader reveals more of is his true allegiance.
For example: Cylon Leader is dealt one Human and one Cylon Allegiance Motive Card at the start, and the Human Allegiance card seems like the easier goal. It turns out to be and he chooses to reveal it before the Sleeper Phase. The humans rest a little easier feeling like they can trust the Cylon Leader so far. Then during the Sleeper Phase the Cylon Leader draws two Cylon Allegiance Motive Cards. Now the Leader has no choice but to turn on the humans if he wants to win. Naturally, the inverse can also happen. The Leader could also draw an equal number of Cylon and Human Allegiance Cards, in which case the Cylon Leader has some choices to make.

The best thing about Daybreak is that it finally gets rid of the Sympathizer role and replaces it with the Mutineer, which is much more fun. The Mutineer doesn't have the weird allegiance-changing mechanic. The Sympathizer can cause the humans to want a resource in the red before the Sleeper phase, which is just weird. The Mutineer has no such concerns.
The Mutineer introduces Mutiny Cards into the game. There are various ways to get Mutiny Cards, and you generally don't want them. If a non-Mutineer gets 2 Mutiny Cards he goes to the Brig, because he's a mutinous cretin. The Mutineer goes to the Brig on his 3rd Mutiny Card. Getting rid of Mutiny Cards is tricky though. Generally they require you to use your action on your turn and generally they're bad. They Mutineer and Mutiny Cards do just enough to manage the game balance, just like the Sympathizer used to do, but without the weirdness of the Sympathizer.


Recommendations: Single Expansion

If you really like the base game and don't mind the Sympathizer, but want some more great characters and some extra ship locations with neat abilities then Pegasus is the easy answer.

If you really like the base game, but want to add just a little meat to it, and the Sympathizer leaves a bad taste in your mouth, the Daybreak is the easy answer.

If you're like me and always thought the Cylon Attack Crisis Cards were a little clunky in pacing, and would like the pilot characters to be more interesting, then Exodus is the easy answer.


Recommendations: 2 Expansions

Pegasus and Daybreak complement each other the best. You get rid of the Sympathizer, your Cylon Leaders are now much more interesting, and you get a bunch of new ship locations and some great characters. If you like the Cylon Attack Crisis Cards then this is the obvious way to go.

Pegasus and Exodus complement each other nicely. You get some pretty good characters, more for pilots to do, more ship locations, and all the added fun of the Cylon Fleet board. If you don't mind the Sympathizer but don't like the occasional clunky pacing of the Cylon Attack Crisis Cards then go this route.

Exodus and Daybreak are good together as well, as they let you get rid of both the Sympathizer and the Cylon Attack Crisis Cards. But they also add the most complexity over the base game compared to either Exodus or Daybreak paired with Pegasus. If you have no qualms about complexity then I would just pony up for all three expansions rather than buy Exodus and Day break without Pegasus.


My Favorite
All three expansions. Come on, you knew that was coming. It adds all the great stuff I talked about above. My favorite arrangement is:

• All three expansion
• With or without Cylon Leader or Mutineer, because I enjoy them both
• Earth destination because using Kobol with Demetrius can sometimes let the humans end the game too quick
• Put the Pegasus and Galactica damage tokens in a draw bag, because it's not like the Cylons would decide to attack two Battlestars in close proximity and completely ignore one of them

I feel like FFG was patching things along the way with the expansions after Pegasus. Pegasus mostly introduced cool new things. Exodus introduced cool new things and got rid of the Cylon Attack Crisis Cards. Daybreak introduced cool new things while replacing the Sympathizer and finally upgrading Cylon Leaders into a truly interesting role to play.

That is an awesome post. Should be on the front page.

The npc part about the Ionian nebula was cool but the ending was a bummer. FFG released rules for playing w/I a sympathiser on their website.

wadenels wrote: Background: At least 20 plays with all the expansions, and a bunch more plays using different expansion mixes. Good thing I woke up early on a Sunday morning without a lot to do.

I'm feeling lucky. Thank you

Putting the Pegasus and Galactica damage counters in a single bag is such a simple yet ingenuous idea Wadenels. Can't believe no one in my group thought of that.

Awesome post Wade! Agree on the damage tokens, I'll definitely suggest it next time we play.


I also agree with Forelle, Cylon Leaders don't tingle my fancy at all. You can't really do anything about them as you don't know if they're for or against, most likely a bit of both (no, you really SHOULD damage Galactica rather than Pegasus! Why? Um, no particular reason, Pegasus can't only be used to soak up damage, right?)

Also, Exodus has much better Treachery cards than Pegasus.

In my experience, humans win roughly half the time.

Why would people be upset or "dirty mouthed" about the Sympathizer cards? I've never noticed them being anything other than what they are...what's the beef with them?

Just a guess, but some people don't like the Sympathiser mechanic because early on, people figured out to game the system by deliberately letting one resource go into the red so as to ensure the Sympathizer was on the human side.