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The crisis card 'Thirty-Three' has the following special rule:

Relentless Pursuit: Keep this card in play until a civilian ship or basestar is destroyed. If this card is in play when the fleet jumps, shuffle it back into the Crisis deck.

What exactly does this mean? My gaming group has come up with 3 possible interpretations so far:

  • the card is kept in play, and has no effect, other than to be shuffled back into the deck afterwards -- in other words, the special rule is simply that "there's a chance it may reappear later in the game", but that just seems a really weak rule, partly because the odds of it ever reappearing within the same game are pretty low, and partly because it's just not a very strong attack (place one basestar, no raiders and no heavy raiders)
  • the card is kept in play, and all instructions on the card are repeated every turn. This seems to match the actual episode which the card is named after (the fleet is attacked every 33 minutes until they lose a civilian ship), but means a lot of ships are put on the board every turn (two vipers, 4 civilians and a basestar), and that raiders are activated
  • the card is kept in play, and the raider activation is repeated every turn. This seems a bit milder than the previous interpretation, in that new ships aren't put on the board.

is there an official explanation somewhere? Or just some kind of consensus on which interpretation makes sense?

3 Answers 3

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We've always played it as option #1, and I've only ever seen it played as option #1. I agree its 'weaker' than the effect in the show, but its the only interpretation that is supported by hard-and-fast rules-as-written logic.

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  • Yeah, what puzzles me isn't just that the effect is weaker than in the show, but mainly that it's so much weaker than pretty much every other card. I mean, practically speaking it makes no difference that the card is shuffled back into the deck. It just seems strange.
    – jalf
    Nov 24, 2010 at 23:16
  • 2
    One side effect of this card is that the pocket of really nasty buried crises at the bottom of the crisis deck are shuffled, so they it's not just 33 that may show back up. Every bad crises that you thought you scouted past is now "back in play". :) Feb 9, 2014 at 0:46
4

Your first option is the correct ruling. I think it was done mostly for flavor. However while it may not be the nastiest card in the deck, Thirty-three can be nasty if Galactica is currently under attack because it scatters so many civilian ships around and immediately activates the Raiders.

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    Doesn't it activate the raiders first? The raiders are activated as step 1,and step 2 says to deploy all those ships (that's true for all attack cards though, not just 33)
    – jalf
    Nov 26, 2010 at 17:24
  • That's correct. My mistake. I was going from memory. I've amended my answer.
    – Todd
    Nov 26, 2010 at 18:04
0

I agree that option #1 is the correct rule.

I've played with a house rule that states you shuffle thirty-three into the top 3 cards of the crisis deck. This makes things quite a bit more difficult because

  • The attacks are in general much worse than the other crisis cards.
  • Thirty-three is much harder if there are ships to be activated.
1
  • Ooh, that's nasty! I love it
    – jalf
    Nov 10, 2011 at 21:29

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