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[theorel]

@QVist: not sure where you're lost at.  There's the complications of PbF play where it can be hard to follow what game actions are going on, and then there's the complications of discussions around what we should do and analyzing the various options.  It may be that both are confusing, but I'll give a game-so-far summary because that's easier to explain and less subjective, and might help you feel less lost even if you're not following all the discussion.  I think the first thing to figure out is what's happening.

Turn 1: "Chief"/Jorbles
a. Draw Cards: he drew 2 ENG, 2 LEA, 1 POL
b. Move: He didn't move (he was already in the Hangar Deck)
c. Action: He played an ENG-1: Repair card which allowed him to repair to Viper Mk. VII's (which started the game damaged).
c2. Action: Tyrol's Special ability enabled him to take another action when playing a repair card, so he played POL-1: Consolidate Power which allowed him to draw 2 POL cards.
d. Crisis: He drew Power Failure.  This crisis card invoked a skill-check where Purple(TAC), Green(LEA), and Blue(ENG) cards were positive and Yellow(POL) and Red(PIL) cards were negative.  No one played any interrupts.  No one played any Skill Cards.  The Destiny Deck added 2 cards (POL-1, and ENG-1), so the final skill-check result was +1 (ENG)-1 (POL)=0. 

Which meant we failed the check.  The result was for the Jump Track to move back 1 space (from 0 to 0).  No 0-strength cards were played, so the Consequence was ignored. 

Finally a Heavy Raider was launched from the Base Star.

Turn 2: "Apollo"/Grujah
a. Draw Cards: he drew 2 PIL, 2 LEA, 1 TAC
(Note: in a viper you get 2 actions rather than a move and act, it requires an action to move)
b. Move: Moved his viper from 5 to 4 (behind Galactica)
c. Action: Used CAG title to give an action to an unmanned viper and then take an action.  Moved viper from 5 to 6.
c2. Action2: He escorted a Civilian Ship.
d. Crisis: He drew Unwelcome Faces.  This card invoked an "Admiral Chooses" decision.  So Davio had to choose to either lose morale and suffer damage or discard his hand and send someone to the brig.
He chose to discard his hand and send "Chief" Tyrol to the brig.

Turn 3: Zarek/winterspartan
a. Draw Cards: he drew 2 POL, 2 LEA, 1 TAC
b. Move: he moved from Administration to the Press Room.
c. Action: he played a LEA-1: Executive Order, which lets him choose another player to take 2 actions.  He nominated "Chief" Tyrol
c1. Action: "Chief" took his first action which was to activate the Brig.  Activating the Brig causes a skill check of difficulty 7 using POL/TAC.  If passed he can leave the Brig, if failed nothing happens.  We are currently performing this skill check.

Refer to Page 1 for exact text on locations and skill cards used above.

[theorel]

Also, Tables explained in the first check how skill checks work, but just to be 100% clear, here's how all skill checks work.
Some General Stuff:
Skill Check: The skill check will have some number of skills which contribute to success and some skills which contribute to failure.  Tables is showing this by putting a color-coded letter for each COLOR which contributes to success.  (So YP means Yellow (POL) and Purple (TAC) cards positively contribute to the check).

Interrupts: I think 3 skill cards can interrupt a skill-check.
1. Investigative Committee (POL): This forces all cards to be played face-up to the skill check.
2. Scientific Research (ENG): This makes engineering cards positive for the skill check, if they wouldn't be normally.
3. Political Prowess (POL): This card makes a location check automatically pass or fail. (Brig, Administration, or Admiral's Quarters)
There is also 1 card which can be played AFTER a skill check.
-Declare Emergency (LEA): This card lowers the difficulty of the skill-check by 2.

Finally, when the skill check actually happens, players add cards in clockwise order around the table starting with the player after the current player, ending with current player.

Okay, so given all of that here's how a skill check works in a nice step-by-step:
1. Skill Check revealed (by player action or Crisis card)
2. Interrupts.  A chance for anyone to play interrupts.  This is not done in player order.
3. Skill Check.  Each player in turn order adds cards *SECRETLY* to the check (PM your cards to Tables).  Announce in thread how many cards you add.
4. Total result.

[Davio]

Don't forget Zarek used his power to lower the difficulty on the brig check from 7 to 5.

Oh, and I have a personal power which functions like an interrupt after a skill check: Command Authority.

[WinterSpartan]

A good summary, Theorel! I do have a minor correction - you don't get two actions in a viper; you couldn't (say) shoot twice without moving. You CAN use your action in a viper for an additional move, though, which might be the source of the confusion.

Right now we are in the "Interrupts" phase of the skill check, waiting for Jorbles/Chief, Grujah/Apollo, and Boomer/Qvist to all either play an interrupt (not really recommended for this one) or officially pass on interrupts.

On the subject of the die roller: random.org is certainly more than sufficient; another one I'm fond of for transparency (since it saves all rolls and makes them searchable) is invisiblecastle.com, which allows you to enter both a "campaign name" (e.g. F.DS BSG), a "character name" (e.g. Zarek), and a "comment" (e.g. Launch Scout) for each roll. I'll probably be doing all my rolling there.

[theorel]

Dang it...I looked that up to check (because I was after typing it out I became uncertain) and then realized I was wrong, so I changed "Action1" to "Move", but then I forgot to remove that line about the 2 actions.  Yeah, probably the action can be move is what I was mis-remembering.

[Tables]

Yeah. Just to make things slightly more less confusing, in a Viper your move action is either moving one sector (one or two in a MKVII), or discarding a card to move to a Galactica or C1 location. When activating your viper as an action, you can't land.

[Jorbles]

I think we're just waiting on Boomer/Qvist, I've sent in a CO already.

[WinterSpartan]

Because theory is awesome (and I mentioned it while playing Innovation), we now have a die roller on this forum. Motion to have that be the one we use?

Also, Jorbles - even if you sent a CO about the check, I think you still need to pass on interrupts. If you sent a CO to pass on interrupts, fine, but why not say so here too?

[Davio]

Testing 1,2,3: Rolled 1d8 : 2, total 2

Instructions:

Code: [Select]

Use [ roll ]1d8[ /roll ] without spaces between brackets

[Jorbles]

Because theory is awesome (and I mentioned it while playing Innovation), we now have a die roller on this forum. Motion to have that be the one we use?

Also, Jorbles - even if you sent a CO about the check, I think you still need to pass on interrupts. If you sent a CO to pass on interrupts, fine, but why not say so here too?

I guess it was only implied that I passed on interrupts, but I'll send a CO about that too.

[Tables]

We're still waiting on some interrupts. If you haven't CO'd your choice yet please send it ASAP!

[Davio]

Advise: Don't edit posts that have rolls in them, it will mark them as "tampered with".
Rather, just make a new post.

[Qvist]

Sorry, as written in the V/LA thread I wasn't able to go online tonight. I really wanted to catch up yesterday. Thanks for the summary, theorel, I will read it now and then I hope that I can contribute more. I can't tell you really where I'm stuck, I think I just didn't get the whole picture. Give me a few turns, then I'm fine.

[Davio]

The main picture is this:

We are fighting Cylons who have various threats against us (ways to lose the game)
1. A resource drops to 0 (food, fuel, morale or population), happens through crisis card fails, losing civilian ships and damage to Galactica
2. They destroy our ship (6 or more areas have damage tokens), happens trough ship activations on crisis cards
3. The centurion track reaches "Humans Lose", happens through heavy raider activation on crisis cards

We are trying to win by going to Kobol. We do this by jumping our fleet. Each time we jump, the admiral picks a new location and that location has a number on it, specifying the units of distance. We need to get 8 units of distance and jump one last time to win. Advancing the jump marker happens through crisis cards. Jumping is done from the FTL Control room.

At the end of each player's turn, a crisis card is drawn which we need to resolve. Normally we do this by passing or failing a skill check as done before. When we fail, something bad happens. When we succeed, something good may happen or something less bad.

So the big picture is that we're trying to prevent the Cylons from reaching one of the objectives 1 - 3. At the same time we try to stay alive long enough to make 8 units and jump one last time.

But there's also a Cylon among us, trying to thwart our plans. If that isn't bad enough the Cylon, once revealed, gets all sorts of extra options to try and reach one of his objectives.

[Qvist]

@QVist: not sure where you're lost at.  There's the complications of PbF play where it can be hard to follow what game actions are going on, and then there's the complications of discussions around what we should do and analyzing the various options.  It may be that both are confusing, but I'll give a game-so-far summary because that's easier to explain and less subjective, and might help you feel less lost even if you're not following all the discussion.  I think the first thing to figure out is what's happening.

Turn 1: "Chief"/Jorbles
a. Draw Cards: he drew 2 ENG, 2 LEA, 1 POL
b. Move: He didn't move (he was already in the Hangar Deck)
c. Action: He played an ENG-1: Repair card which allowed him to repair to Viper Mk. VII's (which started the game damaged).
c2. Action: Tyrol's Special ability enabled him to take another action when playing a repair card, so he played POL-1: Consolidate Power which allowed him to draw 2 POL cards.
d. Crisis: He drew Power Failure.  This crisis card invoked a skill-check where Purple(TAC), Green(LEA), and Blue(ENG) cards were positive and Yellow(POL) and Red(PIL) cards were negative.  No one played any interrupts.  No one played any Skill Cards.  The Destiny Deck added 2 cards (POL-1, and ENG-1), so the final skill-check result was +1 (ENG)-1 (POL)=0. 

Which meant we failed the check.  The result was for the Jump Track to move back 1 space (from 0 to 0).  No 0-strength cards were played, so the Consequence was ignored. 

Finally a Heavy Raider was launched from the Base Star.

Turn 2: "Apollo"/Grujah
a. Draw Cards: he drew 2 PIL, 2 LEA, 1 TAC
(Note: in a viper you get 2 actions rather than a move and act, it requires an action to move)
b. Move: Moved his viper from 5 to 4 (behind Galactica)
c. Action: Used CAG title to give an action to an unmanned viper and then take an action.  Moved viper from 5 to 6.
c2. Action2: He escorted a Civilian Ship.
d. Crisis: He drew Unwelcome Faces.  This card invoked an "Admiral Chooses" decision.  So Davio had to choose to either lose morale and suffer damage or discard his hand and send someone to the brig.
He chose to discard his hand and send "Chief" Tyrol to the brig.

Turn 3: Zarek/winterspartan
a. Draw Cards: he drew 2 POL, 2 LEA, 1 TAC
b. Move: he moved from Administration to the Press Room.
c. Action: he played a LEA-1: Executive Order, which lets him choose another player to take 2 actions.  He nominated "Chief" Tyrol
c1. Action: "Chief" took his first action which was to activate the Brig.  Activating the Brig causes a skill check of difficulty 7 using POL/TAC.  If passed he can leave the Brig, if failed nothing happens.  We are currently performing this skill check.

Refer to Page 1 for exact text on locations and skill cards used above.

Where was stated the Viper came into play damaged?
Apollo moved from 5 to 4 and then from 5 to 6. How is this possible? Scratch that. Not his one, another one, got it.
I know now where I got lost. Turn 2 was basically an "Exodus only turn" and so far I have only read the basic rules. So I didn't knew what CAG means, what "escorting a civvie" does and so on...
Can anyone give a basic summary of Exodus? This might help me a lot. If I would have known that Exodus introduces a lot more, I probably wouldn't have joined. Oh well.

[Qvist]

Chief's Great Brig Escape  5 YP
   
Please Post or PM for any of the following:
Investigative Committee
Scientific Research
Pass
 
Chief:
Apollo:
Zarek: Pass
Adama: Pass (no cards)
Baltar: Pass
Boomer:
 
Consider CO's for the following:
Declare Emergency
Does Chief use Blind Devotion to zero a Colour? If so, which one?

So, this was the last state? So, I'm next? It doesn't look good so far, right? As you know I have a Purple Card, so should I use it?

[Tables]

So, each skill check has two phases, Qvist. The first is interrupts, done in any order, where you can play the cards mentioned above (in your case, you might have a Scientific Research). Also it's the chance to use relevant character abilities, such as Zarek's Friends in Low Places or your Mysterious Intuition.

After interrupts, we move on to the skill check. This is done in player order, and usually secretly with only the number of cards being revealed.

[Qvist]

Ah, right. I knew that, I knew that. Ok, I won't play interrupts.

Chief's Great Brig Escape  5 YP
   
Please Post or PM for any of the following:
Investigative Committee
Scientific Research
Pass
 
Chief:
Apollo:
Zarek: Pass
Adama: Pass (no cards)
Baltar: Pass
Boomer: Pass
 
Consider CO's for the following:
Declare Emergency
Does Chief use Blind Devotion to zero a Colour? If so, which one?

[Tables]

Everyone else passes by CO.

Chief's Great Brig Escape  5 YP
   
Skill check is face down and in player order starting with Zarek, please post number of cards and PM cards played.
 
Destiny: 2 cards
Zarek (WinterSpartan): 4 cards (CO)
Adama (Davio):
Baltar (theorel):
Boomer (Qvist):
Chief (Jorbles)
Apollo (Grujah):

Consider CO's for the following:
Declare Emergency
Does Chief use Blind Devotion to zero a Colour? If so, which one?
Does Adama use Command Authority to take all skill cards into hand?

Adama is next to play.

[Davio]

## Pass by virtue of no cards

[theorel]

Can anyone give a basic summary of Exodus? This might help me a lot. If I would have known that Exodus introduces a lot more, I probably wouldn't have joined. Oh well.

Sure. 
Overview
The Exodus expansion largely consists of some extra skill cards (the 0's and 6's), some extra characters (we're not using any currently), some extra crises (the green text in Tables' spreadsheet if you ever go look at it), and 3 "modules".

There are a few other minor things that shouldn't really impact your understanding of what's going on: there's 1 extra nuke available for the admiral, Executions can happen (I think only through a super-crisis or "Cally"-not in play, but I might have missed something), Quorum hand limit of 10 cards

We're using 1 module (the Cylon Fleet Board). 

If you want to read the relevant rules yourself sometime it's pages: 5-9 and 12-15...so just about 7 pages of FFG rules, which isn't very much).

Relevant General Rules
Skill Check Cards: There's some skill cards (the 0's) that are Skill Check cards.  These cards have effects when REVEALED in a skill check.  (i.e. if a player or destiny deck plays them into the skill check then we execute the effect when turning it over).  They also have an icon that activates a "CONSEQUENCE" that may be listed on the crisis.

Cylon Fleet Board
(Especially as you're a pilot you should probably read this over it's the pages 12-15 part I'm going to try to summarize not go into specifics).
Important Change: there are no Cylon Attack cards in the Crisis Deck.  This mechanic replaces that.  It is managed entirely through the Ship Activations.
When Tables posts the game updates you notice there's an image of Galactica, and an image of a BaseStar?  The BaseStar part is the Cylon Fleet Board (CFB).
It offers some additional options to revealed cylons (ignoring that part for the moment)

There is a "Pursuit Track" (the right track in Tables' image) which measures how close the Cylon Fleet is to finding us.  When it reaches the end of the track, cylon ships are added to the Galactica Board.

When Cylon Ships Activate:
-If they're on the Galactica Board it works as in the base game.
-If they're not on the Galactica board, they're added to the CFB, and the pursuit marker is advanced.

Pursuit Marker causes Civilian Ships to be added to Galactica Board periodically.
When the Pursuit Marker reaches the end, all ships from the CFB are moved to the Galactica Board.

Viper Mk. VII's.  We started with 4 damaged Mk. VII's.  These are superior vipers that can move 2 spaces, and are harder to damage (6-7/8 instead of 5-7/8).

When we jump (This one is the biggest impact to strategy):
Cylon ships go to the CFB instead of being placed in reserves.  So, the Cylon Ships will get worse and worse until we destroy them, jumping doesn't make them go away permanently, only temporarily.
Civilian Ships don't go anywhere when we jump, they're just left outside the ship.  The only way to remove Civilian Ships is to escort them.

Viper Actions:
This works as normal with the additional option to "escort" a civilian ship to safety (it's placed back in the reserves).

Nukes:
Targets an area rather than a basestar, might destroy all ships in the area.

Hopefully that makes sense, and is free of errors.  I glossed over some details, but it should get across the idea.

[Grujah]

So, this was the last state? So, I'm next? It doesn't look good so far, right? As you know I have a Purple Card, so should I use it?

No need to contribute, we already decided that Zarek and I will pass the check.

[Qvist]

So, this was the last state? So, I'm next? It doesn't look good so far, right? As you know I have a Purple Card, so should I use it?

No need to contribute, we already decided that Zarek and I will pass the check.

Ah, I missed that. Thanks.

And really big thanks to theorel. This helped me a lot. And now I know that I only have to read those pages in the rulebook.

[WinterSpartan]

And I believe that brings Baltar up to pass. I know I threw in 4 cards, but I will still need you to cover destiny Apollo - they were all low, thanks to our Cylon Mod. 

Also, since I didn't discuss it earlier: I moved to the Press Room before giving Chief his XO, to set myself up to receive XOs later. The Press Room action is just "draw 2 Politics cards", but Politics comes up a lot in skill checks and (more to the point) is our source of Investigative Committees, which we should play pretty much whenever possible. Since they reveal destiny, that will let us hit checks exactly and save a bunch of cards that otherwise would be wasted overshooting.

[theorel]

Oh yeah, I CO'd it, but I guess I can just post it in thread since I'm here and Tables isn't.  ## Pass Skill Check