mosiah

The art on the board and the plastic pieces are amazing, the choice to be a pirate or a merchant seemed amazing to me, braving the caribbean sea to make my fortune, lets get a brief read on this game.

I like being able to choose my destiny as pirate or merchant, pillaging ships or buying merchandise and pushing it to ports that needed it.

Those choices apart, being a pirate added a neat PvP component to the game but it felt it was too easy for a merchant to dodge me following someone through the waters, merchants seemed to start in a port, move out to sea move next door, then port and it never gave a chance for pirates to dig their scimitars into some merchant crew and pillage their booty. The battles were a bit daunting at first for PvP a large sheet of checking and double checking the rules, but let it be known we’re a rules lawyer group and will often read into the rules a bit to much and have a discussion about what was meant with the rules…

Being a merchant was amazing, leaping from port to port fixing right what once went….oh wait sorry, Quantum Leap is playing as I’m typing this and distracting, anyway being a merchant allowed me to buy stuff, and them haul it slowly across the sea to a port that needed it, selling it for a bunch of gold, possibly getting a glory point and enough money to make a secret glory point stash, in my plays this was by far the quickest way to win the game and left pirates in the dust.

TL:DR Pirates, fun but complicated, merchants have it easy and PvP combat was a bit complex at first.

TL:Dr Mechants, play this if you want to win, fast money, port hop, buy and sell in demand.

Characters characters, and more characters is pretty much what this expansion has to offer, and sadly for the $40 they asked for it I don’t feel it was worth it, the cylon leaders are kind of cool but it seems like a good role for the griefer in your group, you know she’s a cylon and you can tell based on how many players there are if you have a better chance of a pro cylon or a pro human goal for them or not, so they pop around trying to help humans or deter them or trying to be sly on screw them in the end (which personally I must admit sometimes can be fun if you play it close to the chest and convince everyone through your actions your goal is something else.)

The Pegasus board plays well with the original expansion and fits well with the other expansion Pegasus, in fact I feel its a need with the Cylon Fleet board interactions dropping a large amount raiders on the board more rapidly than you can sometimes grasp and the guns are a welcome addition, also the air lock can be fun if you can pinpoint the Cylon or blame a human as being a Cylon when you are a Cylon.

The New Caprica board was played once by my group and it just didn’t seem to take, they understood it well enough, but the humans have a hard enough time winning in our sessions so why drag it out?

The bits are pretty, and surprisingly the rules aren’t to bad, but, its a fantasy flight game.

I’ve only played 3 ‘first time’ player games of this despite owning it for a year, the time has been daunting for my game group, we have 3 hours to teach the game and play it at our LGS (Local Game Store) and it just hasn’t gone well, maybe its the heart of the players being in it, or its just not for my game group. the group picks it up rather well but no one wants to replay it, most complaints have been that its too long or that people would rather just play Civ on a computer rather the board game.

Before I go any further I’ve only played this game with more than 2 players, I know the box reads 1~2 but our group found an online variant and we played that. Now that being said lets go on.

Pros:

Easily the most visable is the art, beautifully screened onto each of the cards is something that’ll just make the theme of this game pop. I feel this is one of those games you should sleeve to preserve the card art.

Its cooperative, who doesn’t like a game working together with someone to vanquish some evil.

The game offers different scenarios that FFgames with hopefully be putting out often, also the games offers a random element so each game won’t be exactly the same even if you’ve played through a given scenario.

Cons:

Not enough cards right now, the deck building aspect of this game is still young and needs more expansions, FFgames, I want to give you my money, so please hurry up and give me a reason to do so, I’d like to customize my decks more but so far you haven’t given me enough to do so.

Multiplayer scaling. I know I stated I’ve only played games with 1~2 more than recommended, but, even observing games played through with 2 players it seemed they were blowing through the stuff too easily, we did have some games that played were the heroes got hosed early on though.

Overall this game has a lot of promise to do good, and with Fantasy Flight I’m sure we’ll get there after a few more expansions, a second edition, and some FAQs, but in the end it will be a great game, but while we wait the pretty pieces will always lull us into a false sense of security.

I love love love this expansion, the only thing I feel its missing is Billy and Doc Cottle. It’s like 3 mini expansions in one, the price seemed daunting and it sadly sat in my game bag forever untouched, but after a few of my BSG fans in the group made me pull it out I swore it would never gather dust again! The Cylon board is amazing and adds a little more to being a Cylon player and its makes it less worth it to jump. ( I mean its still worth it but dang, those ships keep coming back, need more fighters!) A great expansion to a great game.

This game gets me, as a person… Ok that was weird, but seriously, I’ve introduced to many people to board gaming through this game, I don’t dare say its the Catan of a new generation…but, its the Catan of a new generation.