XAos said:

Can you explain how having it cost cards to activate locations i an advantage to anyone, much less what makes it such a good thing for the president.

James McMurray said:

Lol, we've been going back and forth about this on several threads here... Xaos argues that she should not be drawing Quorum cards or using the spaces on the board much and should instead be spending her actions to XO.  I'm starting to come around on this, but I doubt I will ever be 100% with him/her. 

Skowza hsa expressed my opionion accurately. It's based on about 50 games of BSG, about half with Laura and half with some other president.

Initially I tried this strategy just to stop one player who "always" played Baltar, from messing us up as president. But the results shifted way in favour of the humans. Playing Laura becomes an exercise in finding something constructive to do. Other president's just don't have that incentive, with nothing "urgent" to do they get lazy, stop looking for a strong action and draw quorum cards. Laura's strength is she prevents anyone else from doing it. If someone else tries to become president just after the sleeper phase, it's almost certain they have just drawn a "you are a cylon" card. Even when it's a human who replaces Laura, it usually ends badly for the humans.

If your playing with pegasus, there is always something stronger to do than drawing quorum cards. If your playing without Pegasus, There is (very very)rarely  no useful action, so drawing a quorum card is only a small loss.

Testing this strategy is easy, play Laura for one game, you don't need to even tell the other -players that your testing an "unorthodox" strategy. As Laura, you will be president & you obviously won't draw quorum cards...

Note: Pre-Exodus, It's requires extreem circumstances for Humans to loose with Laura as President. Exodus is much better balenced.

Whether it's a good strategy or not, I fail to see how being forced to use it at all times or pay a severe penalty is "a good thing".

So it sounds like its being called a benefit even though it's not, because it forces people to not do the things you want them to do? What about when it prevents them from doing things that need to get done: like jump the fleet, shoot at centurions, etc.?

ronsen_04 said:

I almost never see people choosing the same characters, or even the same group of characters, from game to game, and that experience has repeated itself across many different groups of players. I also haven't often seen people choose characters based on how good they think they are, or at least the commentary that people frequently make when choosing a character hasn't reflected anything about power levels.

Keep in mind that anyone posting on these boards is a fairly hardcore (at least!) player of the game; the vast majority of people who play the game don't bother coming here to read or post anything, so anything you read on these boards is likely to have a tendency to skew towards overanalysis. :)

ronsen_04 said:

A friend of mine proposed a similar idea (http://blog.tornsignpost.com/2010/12/battlestar-galactica-character.html), and I'm looking forward to trying it out, but I haven't played BSG since he came up with it.

ronsen_04 said:

On the other hand, I harbor real reservations.  When it comes to the fleeting excitement of flipping over that card and not knowing who'll be staring back at you from the other side, what's it really worth?  For my money, the tingly feeling of walking into a blind date is a poor trade for the very real possibility you'll wind up stuck spending an evening with someone whose company you won't enjoy.  Like Sam Anders, for example, who is a very selfish lover.

In all seriousness though, I think your idea of semi-randomizing the starting lineup is interesting and maybe worth a shot.  I know a lot of people on these boards like Arkham Horror, which uses random character selection, and your modification would make this more like that.  So I'm okay with the idea, even while I concur with Skowza that I enjoy choosing the team.

And then there was your big question: Are we reducing the fun and variety in the game by taking considerations of relative character value into account?  My answer would be a categorical "no."  I believe that considering the relative strength of a character when making initial selections is rational and responsible.  Doing so reflects a recognition of, and respect for, reality, not a dearth of creativity.  The cumulative effect of all this rational behavior is that the starting lineups begin to reflect a homogeneous quality, but I don't think the solution to that is for players to stop behaving rationally.

By way of analogy, if I could pick my starting hand in Texas Hold 'Em, I would very frequently pick A-A because it is the strongest possible hand.  I would not always pick it, because there are a variety of factors in poker, as in BSG, that reward dynamic behavior over static behavior.  Other hands I would frequently choose would be A-K, K-K, A-Q and occasionally Q-Q or J-J.  I might even mix in a low-to-mid pocket pair or a suited runner-runner just to keep opponent's guessing and have a distant shot at stealing a surprise pot.  The important point I want to make here though is that, if I could choose my hand in Texas Hold 'Em, I would very rarely, maybe even never, 2-7 off suit.  I say this not because I lack the imagination to consider that the flop might come 2-2-7, but because I'm rational enough to take into account all the other possibilities that the table might present for which I'll be unprepared as a result of my poor hand selection.  

One could look at the above analogy as an expression of a too-narrow thinking process.  I certainly can't argue that in the strictest sense of the word, applying calculations of expected value to decisions is "formulaic."  But I can tell you that I could play Hold 'Em for hours, days, weeks at a time, just as I could for BSG.

To be totally honest, I see my approach as an evolution from yours.  At some point I outgrew looking for variety in the fleeting, superficial difference between, for example, looking at Saul Tigh's picture all night vs. Helena Cain's.  Once I was liberated from looking for trivial distinctions between this game and the last, I began enjoying, *and creating* meaningful ones.  There's plenty of variety in all the explosive and unpredictable events that arise from a dynamic board full of real and imagined threats, with an unknown number of hidden enemies seeking to deceive and destroy me.  I don't feel I add much to the equation by trying to create superficial variety through making suboptimal choices for no other reason than I chose optimally last time.

 Aargh!  I tried to edit the above post because of weird formatting and somehow my first paragraph went into the quote box.

I STRONGLY oppose randomization of characters.  First of all, I don't like being forced to play characters I don't like.  That takes away from my fun.  I hate Starbuck and Roslin.  I hate Starbuck cause I hated her on the show, I hate Roslin cause I hated her on the Show and I think she is in the race for worst character in the game.  Regardless of one of those reasons being simply asthetic and one being more pragmatic, If I don't enjoy playing the character it is infringing on MY having fun playing. 

I get the idea behind any game is to have fun.  For my group however, in BSG, the humans nearly always get demolished.  Humans have not yet one a game since the Exodus expansion.   The game itself so slanted to the cylons that despite best efforts it seems that the cylon players dont have to do much to insure a victory.  Now,...while playing the game is fun, being constantly crushed almost to the point that it is a for-gone conclusion that you will loose takes alot of fun away.  It is still a game, and the goal of any player in a game is to do their utmost to win no matter what point or what the odds are.  This I believe starts at game setup including character selection.  In some six player games we have had some players pick a military guy in the first 4 picks and then players pick one or 2 more extra military people.  That is almost throwing the game in my opinion.  Having randomized characters, (you get 2 to pick from)...could very easily lead to a glut of one colour that is quite frankly extraneous.  Or it could lead to a set up like, Roslin, Tigh, Anders and Dee.  If that is a starting lineup your going to war without bullets.  Add to this that at some point the humans are going to be losing 1 or 2 (depending on the game size) characters to the cylons.  If the humans loose a lynchpin character it can be devestating.

Fun is the most important part to any game, but it is a game and part of the fun is the chance of winning.  If the outcomeis are nearly gauranteed or have to depend on a total cosmic alignment in order to win that takes away from the fun of the game.  We see some different faces, there are some good characters that get picked that are not, "THE" starting lineup, but we try to keep it to one per game or else the humans are just giving themselves another handicap.

If all of your group wants to do the randomization thats great, but if even one person doesn't want to they should not be forced to.  If you want yours random go for it, nothing is stopping you, but I think for the sake of "fun" all the way around if a player likes choice,...hand over the whole pack of dudes to em.

Napoleon

It is against the rules for three players to all have the same category of character, except support, unless you're playing a 7-player game, in which case if the first and last players both choose the same, then someone in the middle may also have chosen that as well, so long as no one chose support.  If you're finding that there are too many military or too many pilots or whatever in your game, I recommend you go back to the rulebooks and review how choosing a character makes that class off-limits for the next few players to pick.

Keithustus said:

Yes, but it's a worthy point, right?  Random character selection advantages cylons by leading to weaker teams and players in roles they're not suited for.  Setting aside the "fun factor," if a group's already seeing a cylon advantage in their games, this idea should give them pause.

To be fair, Ronsen did say he uses sort of a hybrid system where they start with randomization and then let players trade or even swap out for one in the box, but then that's another problem, isn't it; to defend a rule by saying it's better if you don't enforce it?

we usually have 6 player....first four pick...poli, mili, pilot, support(hopefully they pick support,...this gets worse here if they pick mili)...2 more people to go...but all requirements met....5th person picks mili,...6th person picks mili ...now have 3-4 mili with 1 pilot and one poli....I have SEEN this happen and it is most annoying.

And that is,..."by the rules"...dont think i need to revisit rules but thanks.

Napoleon.

hmmm...ok....I see. The most plentiful character bit threw me...very well Touche...

napoleonWilson said:

 No, that is clearly against the rules and results in a fucked-up, unbalanced set of characters for the game.  That's why they have the rule against doing that.  The sixth person CANNOT pick the same class as the fifth player because the "second round" of classes have not been picked.

What you're saying is like if  there is one civilian ship in every space except the one space that has two civilian ships, and you as the CAG try to place another ship into that space that has two.

napoleonWilson said:

I think you understand now that this isn't actually playing by the rules, but just to make it easier in your future games:

A good way to keep track of which classes are available to any given player is to initially arrange them in three columns, with the support characters set to one side. (You can also use these columns to indicate president/admiral/CAG succession without needing to have everyone keep checking the lists in the rulebook). This way it's clearly visible which classes are available to be chosen and which aren't - any column which is shorter than any of the others isn't a legal choice.

I use cool program from BoardGameGeek site for random crew selection. It shows skill set of the generated team and if every player agreed with it, then we take this team and have another roll if they're not.