The cast:
Porochaz as President Dr Gaius F. Baltar [Political Leader]
Patrick as Cylon Leader D'Anna Biers
Sudo_Nym as Admiral Louis 'Some Guy' Hoshi
ChannelDelibird as Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace, CAG
Somewhere in the fleet, someone is a Cylon. Prozac picked Baltar. Does this need to take very long?
Baltar attempted to draw some sneaky Piloting on the sly on his very first turn, as well, which endeared him to precisely nobody, but otherwise the early stages seemed calm enough. D'Anna made a swift move over to Galactica, without coming pre-armed with the load of super crises that would ensure her a smooth ride back if she needed, but soon had to go home when Starbuck was forced to brig somebody. Why not the Cylon Leader, right?
On her way out, D'Anna gazed deep into Starbuck's eyes. Humanity's only pilot was not a member of the Final Five, and D'Anna declared her human through and through... but who can trust the words of a toaster?
A good choice of destination led Starbuck to voice strong support for the glorious admiralty of... er... y'know... kinda... short guy, I guess? Maybe brown hair? Dunno. Anyway. Baltar seemed keen enough to make up for his earlier mistake and the fleet made solid early progress, though a reasonable force was beginning to build in the pursuing Cylon fleet. Probably the only real problem was Starbuck's habit of having her ships explode. First the assault raptor then two top-of-the-line Mark VII vipers were obliterated thanks to repeated reckless flying under enemy fire.
Soon after the sleeper phase, the Cylon fleet jumped in and prompted a moment of crisis among humanity. With ships bearing down on vulnerable civilians, D'Anna bravely... filed some paperwork. Interpreted by some as an act of mutiny, she abandoned important duties to force a regime change, her partially confirmed faith in the CAG leading her to anoint a rebellious, self-destructive viper jockey as the lawful president of the colonies.
The battle raged on, now-President Starbuck repeatedly rushing out of sickbay to launch a daring solo mission against the Cylon raiders before rushing straight back into sickbay when her latest craft inevitably exploded, leaving the whims of the quorum largely unattended. The wheels began to turn, however, when Baltar took a reading of Starbuck's genetic makeup and declared her a Cylon agent.
Though Admiral Somebody's humanity was now confirmed, he was unsure whether to believe the cowardly Baltar or the foolhardy president, who had behaved bravely but had the dubious backing of D'Anna. When the quorum grew fed up of Starbuck's idleness and made him Supreme Governor instead, he used his newfound power to make a judgement call and throw Baltar into the brig, noting that Starbuck could have used her political power for evil and had chosen not to.
Thanking him for his faith, Starbuck revealed herself as a Cylon, framed Redshirt McBlandington for collaboration and threw him into the brig, probably crashing another fighter into the side of the ship to book a one-way ticket to Casa Toast.
The two humans looked at each other from across their shared prison cell. "Well, frak," noted Baltar.
Supreme God-King Whatever paused, looked at the edict papers that he'd smuggled in with him, then up at Baltar. "How badly do you want to get out of here?" he asked. A few moments later, the corpse of Dr Baltar floated out of the prison airlock.
While D'Anna sat in the research lab, drawing tactics cards and eating pretzels, a slightly confused Apollo wandered out of the shower and asked what year it was before being unceremoniously shoved into a viper and crowned Admiral of the Fleet.
The fleet was making progress across the stars but the pursuing force of raiders was reaching incredible size, a daunting prospect without a pilot. Starbuck reached out to D'Anna to see if their agendas might be similar, electing to delay bringing to bear her deadliest revenge in the hopes of stalling long enough for her fellow toaster's interests to fall in line. Meanwhile, Some Guy escaped from the brig.
The fleet reached distance 7. Again, Starbuck reached out to D'Anna: Should she take a slightly riskier route by playing her super crisis, which would need D'Anna's help to be at its most effective, or just pound the Cylon fleet for a quicker, dirtier win? Rolling the dice, Starbuck went with the former, daring Apollo to let centurions on board or die preventing it. But the time to unleash that particular power was earlier, not now, and Apollo had little drawback to pulling the trigger on himself, summoning Laura Roslin from the aether for a late-game vision boost.
From then, the fleet made its final jump before Kobol and the Cylon fleet followed right after it. It was a straight race for the raiders to mop up the gaggle of civilians to extinguish the last of humanity's population before they could escape. Starbuck thought she had the humans on their knees when three ships were destroyed but one, a decoy, left her needing one last big score from the two remaining vessels. What she didn't count on, however, was Admiral Person's dutiful manning of the communications console to steer the civilians out of the grasping reach of her raiders. It bought enough time for the humans to escape, as D'Anna showed that she had been as pro-human as they come, winning handily with all four motives completed along with her team-mates.
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In summary: Gaaah. This was a really fun game and an enjoyable close finish, but really should have been a Cylon win - just undone by some poor decision-making on my part at the end. In trying to court Patrick, I played my supercrisis too late and lost my chance to near-guarantee a win by raider hurricane, just as I subsequently overlooked Hoshi's comms skills to let the civilians out of my reach at the last instead of trying my luck on reducing jump prep to buy me the extra turn that I needed.
Still, really fun.are you thinking of me when you're with somebody else?