Battlestar Galactica is a "semi-cooperative" board game where two teams compete to win the game. The trick is that no one knows for sure which player is on which team. The game is based on the TV series of the same name and revolves around the most popular characters. The goal for the Human team is to prepare the ship for enough Faster Than Light (FTL) jumps to get to Kobol and reach the legendary Earth.The goal of the Cylon team is to prevent that from happening by either boarding the ship with enough Centurions, creating enough damage to the ship, or reducing one of the four dwindling resources to zero. In the meantime, characters deal with crises, attempt to pass skill checks, fight enemy raiders all while trying to figure out who is loyal to the human race and who is an impostor. Cylons need to determine if they should continue to do their damage in secret or reveal themselves to attack in new way.
Session Report:
Finally, finally, we got Battlestar Galactica to the table last night. Since I was ill most of last month, my game playing time was limited. I was also way behind on work so most of my waking hours at home were playing catch-up there as well. PLUS, Christie wasn't convinced that BSG was a series she would get into (something about "my coolness" getting called into question for becoming one of my "dorky friends"). But John ("dorky friend") loaned us Season 1 anyway. After the miniseries, she was hooked; but I wanted to get through a few more episodes to remove the chance for any potential spoilers in the game.
So last night we attempted the official 2-player game just to learn the rules and get a feel for it. I selected Bill Adama and grabbed both titles of President and Admiral. Christie, after much deliberation, ended up with her favorite character, Starbuck. Wow! Even with just two players, the game was highly thematic. We got the turn sequence down pretty quickly and the game flow was pretty smooth. One hurdle was that there was lots of looking up things to remember what an icon meant (what to do when Cylon raiders are on the board, when they aren't on the board, and if there is anything to do when a Basestar is not present), but otherwise straightforward.My only two complaints were this: Dealing out Skill cards each turn and the frequently mentioned "downtime" if no Cylons are on the board after a FTL jump. For the first, nothing much you can do about it. You draw so many cards over a few turns that you are constantly reshuffling, and then possibly playing the cards, and then discarding down (and the frequency will only go up with more players). The mechanic does work - especially the "organized randomness" of the numbers for skill checks - but it seems like there could have been a less annoying way to implement the feature.
For the second one, I actually found that very thematic. They say police officers have the most stressful jobs not because of the danger involved but because of the long periods of boring downtime punctuated by the short bursts of intense activity. It makes sense that the crew of Galactica would suffer the same ordeal so I didn't find it boring, just that more stressful.
After the initial set-up, we moved through a Jump fairly quickly I think we moved the marker to auto-jump within the first 6 or 7 turns and cleared space rather quickly. But then that was followed by another 5 or 6 rounds where no threat came up, the jump track hardly moved, and we had little to do but activate ship locations that gave us more Skill cards. Christie liked the idea of no threats but also was disappointed that “there [was] nothing to do on the ship.” So I can easily see where this can be a turnoff for some.
But for as much downtime we had through the second quarter of the game, the third quarter was ridiculous. We hit the Sleeper agent phase pretty quickly as our first 2 jumps sent us out 5 spaces to Kobol. Though we had many resources on the last blue space, none were in the red when we built the variant Loyalty deck. That meant two Human cards with only one Cylon. We thoroughly shuffled and randomly dealt the cards. Christie had this nervous-bounce-thing going with no poker face. I interpreted that as “I am Cylon” and then read for her everything in the rulebook on how to play a Cylon character. I later found out that it was actually some contorted-happy-seat-dance which meant “NOT a Cylon.” But for the time, she immediately “confirmed” my suspicions when after the first of a series of Cylon Attack Crisis cards came up, she quickly looked at the Civies trailing BSG to see what resource they carried. But as Adama, I had no way to get her to the Brig. I looked suspicious to her when I forgot to use my nukes on one of the two Basestars while our jump track was in reverse.
On top of that, we pulled four Cylon Attack Crisis cards in a row. Starbuck used her destiny to send the last one to the bottom of the deck (I thought it was a Cylon trick!) although within a few turns, we still hit the 5th in that run. We literally had every ship on the board and were nowhere near jumping. Vipers were also dropping left and right after a series of 8-result rolls. After Starbuck returned to sickbay, she couldn’t find a Viper to launch and had to sit on the sidelines as 3 more Civies were gobbled up. Starbuck pulled a Skill Check crisis card where if we failed, the current player was going to the Brig. Adama finally had the power to move the suspected Cylon to the Brig but checked his gut and decided her Firepower was more important, so saved her in the Skill check.Adama: Do your job.
Starbuck: Yes sir...
Adama: And walk out of this cabin...while you still can.
With resources dwindling, we finally got the Faster Than Light calculations to work out and moved into the Blue. We jumped, cleared the entire board, but lost 3 of our 6 remaining population. With the temporary breather, Adama shuttled to Colonial One to draw through the Quorum deck more quickly while Starbuck jumped on a Viper to ensure she was part of the next fight.
As we entered the fourth quarter, “the gods” looked favorably upon us. I finally drew a Quorum card that allowed me to look at one random Loyalty card. Starbuck was exonerated and we could focus on going home. Our next jump sent us to Ragnar and we grabbed back three sorely needed Vipers and another Raptor, which doubled our supplies. A couple more Basestars appeared: my nuke took out one while Starbuck’s Viper scored a direct hit and prevented another from launching raiders. With the threats under control and a few draws with the jump icon, we managed to return to earth with one population remaining (the other resources were at 3 or 4).
Overall, we found the game an excellent addition to our collection. So much so, that I am willing to give it a 9 after one play and to dust off my session reporter. All in all, we went through about half the Crisis deck. We hit every Cylon Attack card except one though we had to suffer through “33” twice. There was enough tension in the game and the suspect Loyalty of both of us proved a two-player game could be fulfilling. Obviously, more players would be better, especially since I didn’t particularly like wearing both hats as President and Admiral: too few actions to make either that effective. Also, we never experienced an active Cylon thwarting our efforts or Centurions on board. So I am looking forward to those in a multi-player game. FFG scores another hit!By the way, one final word on "my coolness." One of us recently purchased a BSG-fan microbadge. And it wasn’t me....
All images from BoardGameGeek.
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