Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game

Imagine, the scenario: You and you’re four trusty team mates have been hurtling through space, patching your ship as needed, dealing with food shortages, prisoners rioting etc.
You have faced every crisis together and beaten it together. You hit the half way point and you are all given your loyalty cards,
You know now, that one or two of the five of you who are playing are now cylons, interested in dooming your mission.
You face another crisis, Put in the cards to deal with the situation and then tally the results. You all gasp, there are three negative cards in the selection, the once-happy crew all start to look at each other, and saying who they noticed put in three cards or who said that thing earlier that, now… in a different light, sounds cyloney!!!
A couple more rounds and crisises happen and then your best mate, grins and plays his cylon card after you are all ambushed by the cylon fleet. The card sends you, the admiral, to the brig, You turn to the president saying you need top get out asap and help your fellow shipmates.
She nods understanding. She asks is it her turn. You shout, ‘Yes, woman, it is! Do Something!’ She smiles and turns over her card… Cylon! She sends your best pilot to the sickbay as a cylon destroyer gets into position to board the ship. ‘When,’ you ask. ‘Just a few turns ago’, she answers shrugging an apology. Your best mate laughs, though. ‘I’ve been against you all from the start.’ He laughs like a maniac as your ship gets boarded and you look on helpless.

This is what this game does best! It tells a story, that is tense, full of treachery and holds a nugget of hope as you all try to work together and root out any evildoers amongst you. Each game is so amazing that any other bad points are bypassed by the highly thematic story unfolding before your eyes. You aren’t being told to follow a story or anything like that, the people who are playing the game are creating it themselves without realizing it and they are totally absorbed.

The rule book is a little messy as is the FFG standard, but a few rounds in and it all flows seamlessly. Basically a turn happens like so;
1. You draw your skill cards based on the character you are playing as.
2. You move to a different location on the ship.
3. You play an action card from your hand or activate an action on the space you are on.
4. You draw a crisis card and deal with it.
5. Play passes left.

At it’s most basic, There are two types of crisis cards, the first is where a character, usually the admiral, the president or you, have a choice of two tough decisions, the second is a skill check.

A skill check, has flavor text, like there is an air leak on the ship, there is a number on the top right which is everyone’s goal, say 8 points, there is usually a few colors, say blue and red, highlighted out of the 5 different colored skill cards everyone has. Two random colored cards are drawn face down so no one know what is going in. then everyone can put in cards on top of the random ones towards reaching the goal. In this scenario any blue and red cards that are played are plus whatever points is listed on the card. (always 1 to 5 points). The cards are then shuffled so no one knows who put what in. and are counted. Any cards of the other three colors are minused from the total and that’s it. If you are over 8 you win the scenario, if you are under, you face the consequences listed.

The game is tough but not unbeatable so you always feel like there is a chance you can win as the humans, but it is the cylon players who are playing in secret that can throw a spanner in the works. They can slip in one or two sneaky minus cards if they want, or spread rumors about other players and watch the humans tear each other apart. Or they can do nothing and watch the desperate struggle unfold, picking there time to destroy the good intentions of the crew with a reveal or ensuring a fail of an important crisis.

Humans win if they can reach earth, a destination everyone is traveling to. Cylons win if they can do one of three things, Make a counter drop to zero on food, morale, population or fuel, damage the Galactica 8 times or board the ship and reach the deck.

This is one of my favorite games of all time, I will play it anywhere at any time, just make sure you have a few hours as it can be 90 minutes to 3 hours depending on all the different goings on.

Replay Value: So many characters and combinations of them and so many ways to play if you are a cylon. The struggle as the humans is engrossing.

Components: All fine, do their job, Ships are nice miniatures. Everything is dripping with theme. I really like the counters for the four resources, really give a doomsday effect.

Easy to Learn: The rulebook is a hot mess, but if you do things step by step, it really comes together.

To some it up, This is a must have for any avid board gamer.

“Okay, so Starbuck is a cigar-chugging chick, Tigh is white and Boomer is Asian. And a woman. Sure…”

That’s pretty much my initial reaction to news of the recent Battlestar Galactica TV remake. From my childhood I have two strong Science Fiction memories: the original Star Wars Trilogy and the original Battlestar Galactica. Messing with them in the wrong way is a sure fire way to raise my ire. Fortunately, I loved the new remake! Sorry people but Starbuck is absolutely a chick. And she can and will kick your butt if she wants. I loved the drama of all the flawed characters and the paranoia created when cylons can look like humans. For me, the new series worked. Oh, and for the record, there is no way that Greedo got a shot off first. But back to Battlestar Galactica.

Another thing to be feared, like the remake of an old classic, is a licensed game based on a beloved movie, TV series or book. Historically, only certain very big companies have been able to afford the license. And said big companies have, historically, not been very good at putting together interesting and engaging games for adults. More to the point they seem to have just wanted to throw together something quickly to sucker in some poor fans and make a quick buck. Fortunately, Battlestar Galactica dodged a second bullet as Fantasy Flight Games took up the challenge of creating a board game based on the remade TV series. Designer Corey Konieczka and the team at FFG have created what is, in my opinion, a licensed game more true to the spirit and feel of its source material than any game before it. And I’m struggling to think of a better one since…

So what’s it all about? The basic story is that a rag-tag fleet of humans are fleeing the cylons who have just leveled all of their homeworlds and want to finish the job of wiping out humanity. The humans are trying to reach the legendary planet called Earth with the first major stop along the way being the, also legendary, planet of Kobol. On a player’s turn they’ll draw some skill cards based on their character’s aptitude. Then they can move to a new location and take an action. The actions they can take will be based upon their current location, their character’s abilities and cards that the player has in hand. Finally they’ll draw a Crisis card which will generally cause stuff to go from bad to worse and it’s this stage that is the real heart and soul of the game. Crisis cards can cause the cylon fleet to jump in and attack, force a particular player to make a dire choice that affects everyone or call for a skill challenge in which everyone will contribute to pass. Or perhaps they’ll secretly try to thwart the challenge… That’s right. While the game may possibly start out as a nice cooperative game, by the end the group will have been split into two teams as cyclons in human form, either secretly or openly, try to bring about humanity’s downfall. This split is determined by some Loyalty cards which are secretly distributed both at the start of the game and halfway through the game. It’s during the crisis stage that the game becomes very social as players offer opinions and try to sense what motive is behind everyone else’s opinion. Finally the Crisis card may cause the cylon fleet to attack and hopefully for the humans they can successfully prepare for their next jump. Of course our heroes are going to have hope that the Admiral isn’t actually a cylon because they’ll be choosing the destination of the jump. And so this paranoid game will progress until either the humans win by managing to complete enough distance in jumps or the cylons finish off humanity by running down the fleet’s resources or destroying the Galactica herself.

Okay, this is a bit of a gushing review. But I love this game. As an occasional role-player and a cooperative games fan in general I love the social nature of this game. This is a game where you have to talk to the people you’re playing with and you will question everything they say in turn, no matter how off-hand and innocuous. And the game can be tense! Really tense. You can be cruising along nicely leading someone to say the fateful words: “II think we should win this.” Next thing you know, fate will backhand you with a couple of cyclon attacks and leave everyone desperately scrambling for survival. As a fan of the show I can get into the characters and I love how well FFG have recreated the characters within the game rules with their individual abilities and drawbacks. The overall production is of excellent quality with good quality boards, cards and miniatures of the various ships. And finally I like that you don’t actually need to know the show to enjoy the game. So long as you understand the basic premise you can play along just fine.

But sadly it isn’t all milk and honey for Battlestar Galactica as there are certainly elements of the game that can detract from the experience for some people. Some of the character roles can see you pigeon-holed a bit too much with pilots flying around shooting cylons, the President stuck on Colonmial One and so on. And it’s best not to mention “sympathizers” to some players of this game. The nature of the game can also make it harsh on new players playing with experienced players. I mean, I might be giving you good reasonable advice. Or maybe I’m a cylon… And perhaps you really did make an innocent mistake. But maybe you’re a cylon… And mistakes can really hurt. Also, not everyone is going to enjoy the level of tension and paranoia that the game generates. My final gripe with the game is sadly a production one. Seriously FFG, Cardboard basestar tokens? I realise the moulds for the plastic bits are expensive, but could you seriously not fit a couple of plastic basestars in there? Did you really need to wait for an expansion?

And yes, as a great FFG game there are a couple of expansions out for it. But honestly I think this is one game that doesn’t necessarily need them. For me, the base game is a near perfect creation. Well except for those frakkin basestars…

I have a love/hate relationship with this game. I love it because it’s a co-op game, but the secret enemy in our midst, however, makes things unnerving and stressful. But unnerving stress can be fun, right? Well in BSG, it is, so I guess I love it after all!

The base game works with up to 6 players, each with different abilities (the game is best with max players IMHO). It begins with each character getting a secret loyalty card. Most are humans but some may be Cylon saboteurs who secretly work against the rest. The humans are desperately trying to find Kobol before the Cylon fleet locates and destroys them or an essential resource (fuel, morale, food or population) is completely depleted.

People move from room to room aboard the Galactica on their turns solving problems, launching fighters, jumping the fleet to new systems and performing other essential tasks.

All is not good for the humans, however, who are constantly besieged by a new crisis on each character’s turn and players need to work together to counter these threats by each playing skill cards of the proper type to resolve the problem (or bad things happen). All such skills are played in secret which is where the hidden Cylon player(s) do their dastardly sabotage work.

Characters thought to be Cylons can be thrown into the brig or if revealed as Cylons, take up a separate function where they actively oppose the humans, typically by trying to destroy one of the resources.

Not so bad, huh? Well I didn’t tell you that on top of the despicable Cylons, there are sleeper agents as well! Half way through the game some of them “wake up” and turn on the other humans making life really miserable for the good guys.

Can the humans win? Of course, they’re the good guys. Can the Cylons win, well yeah… because life isn’t always fair. But whoever prevails, the game is fun with it’s nice components, excellent theme, decent balance and good replay value.

How would you react if you were part of a team, working toward a common goal, and you had the inkling one of your “teammates” was a spy working against you? Would you try to limit their abilities to have a say in decisions? Would you keep them away from any sensitive responsibilities?

Now, what if you were absolutely certain that there was a spy on your team, but you weren’t sure who? Could you balance getting things done against tracking down this/these nefarious individual(s)? Do you unmask such a villain if doing so could make their impact even worse? What if you eventually received information that compelled you to work against your colleagues, regardless of whether you wanted to or not?

These are the types of questions a game of Battlestar Galactica will make you face. Your ability to work towards completion of the game while constantly keeping one eye on everyone else will be tested. For some groups, this leads to a fantastic time with tons of replay value, while other groups will grind to a halt, turning a gaming session into a tedious affair that you’ll hope you never have to go through again. Unfortunately, you will often not know which type of group you’re in until it’s too late.

Gameplay

At its core, Battlestar Galactica is a cooperative game, with one or more guaranteed traitors. You’re trying to get your fleet to Earth, but you don’t know where Earth is, exactly. Along the way, you’ll face different crises, working as a team to be successful (or sabotaging to decimate the humans).

Each player represents a specific character with different specialties. Additionally, each player is given a loyalty card, either telling them they are a human, or a cylon. Part way through the game, more loyalty cards will be dealt, which could cause someone that was a human to suddenly realize they are a cylon. For those not familiar with the TV show – human=good, cylon=bad.

A turn consists of 6 steps:

Receive Skill Cards

Each character has certain skills, which determine the color of cards they draw. These cards will be used during crises for skill checks, some colors will count positively towards the objective, others will count negatively. These cards and hidden, and clever play (with a bit of luck) will allow cylons to cause a crisis check to be failed while not revealing who caused the failure.

Movement

Characters can move about the ship to different locations, or to different ships. The locations have different abilities.

Actions

Each player gets one action. These can come from locations, from their character ability, or from their skill cards.

Crises

This is where a lot of the action of the game happens. There are different types of crises you may face, cylon attacks, skill checks, and events. The way a skill check works is one of the more interesting parts of the game. A skill check will have certain colored cards that count towards the total value you’re trying to reach, and the other colors count against the total. Each player can play cards towards the skill check, and do so face down, so no one knows what colored cards they played. In addition, two cards are played from the “Destiny Deck”, which are in essence a random draw and may be good or bad. The existence of the Destiny Deck is what can help cover for a cylon, as many times, negative cards could be brushed off as being “destiny”, instead of being a ploy from the cylons to force a check to fail. Depending on the final total played, different results can occur.

Activate Cylon Ships

Ships (if any) attack, based on the card in play.

Prepare for Jump

If the crisis card has the jump icon, the jump token advances on its track. If it reached the end, a jump in made (you can also choose to take a more risky jump earlier than the end of the track). These jumps take you closer to your final objective. Ultimately, you want to get 8 units or more of jump distance (each selected jump with have a certain unit of distance). After this, one successful final jump will win the humans the game.

Game End

If the final jump is made and the four resources (food, fuel, morale, population) are all above zero, the humans win. If at least one dial goes to zero or below at the end the players turn, the cylons win. Cylons also have the ability to destroy the Galactica (damage 6 or more ship sections) or invade via their Boarding Party track.

My Thoughts

I have friends that consider this one of their favorite games, and I admit to being a bit jealous because my plays have been very tedious. Games can take over 3 hours, with a good deal of time added for people to accuse each other of being cylons (not in-game accusations, just general banter back and forth, which can get old after the 50th or so repetition), and almost becoming paralyzed from doing anything because they are so caught up in unmasking the traitors. Players can be voted into the brig, in essence stripping them of much of the gameplay, even if the accusations that got them put there are wrong. Having to sit through a game that is already going long without much ability to do anything should have been one of the punishments of Dante’s circles of ****.

There are some interesting concepts the game introduces, especially the skill checks where the Destiny Deck can either help cover for, or out, the traitors. The Destiny Deck starts with two of each color card, so you can try to track what you “think” has come from the Destiny Deck, versus what players may have played. The addition of more loyalty cards partway through the game keeps suspicion high, and ensures there will always be at least one cylon. Unfortunately, this ups the chances of people focusing on the traitor aspect of the game and forgetting to work towards actually completing the game. (This is a game that would benefit from Antiquity‘s strategy suggestion from the rulebook of not forgetting to try to get something done).

One plus for the game that should certainly be mentioned, I fully believe you need not have watched the show to get the full game experience. You may miss out on some of the side chatter, but the game itself is solidly built, not requiring external knowledge.

If you feel your group can handle a game with a guaranteed traitor without becoming completely derailed (or are ok with 1+ hours added due to this aspect of the game), Battlestar Galactica could well be a hit for your group. If you’ve had bad experiences with the traitor mechanic of Shadows Over Camelot, steering clear may be a good idea, as those issues will be magnified in Battlestar Galactica.

This game is fairly rules heavy, requiring a lengthy explanation and a good attention span. As such, social/casual/family gamers my find this game overly trying. Strategy/Avid/Power gamers may all really enjoy this game, though the game can easily see the playtime explode without much “fun” being added.

Fans of the show and groups that revel in backstabbing should add Battlestar Galactica to their list of games. Others may want to take time to analyze the gaming group(s) they would play the game with and determine whether those personalities will lead to a fun experience, or one to be avoided at all costs.

The second Cylon war is over. Humanity has lost, and now it’s only hope for survival is a small fleet of ships carrying all that remains of the human population, lead by the aging Battlestar Galactica.

Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game is based on the first season of the 2004 re-imagining of the classic 70’s TV show, where the surviving human fleet desperately tries to escape their Cylon pursuers on their way to the planet Kobol – the legendary planet where humanity began (and a waypoint on their longer journey to find the fabled 13th colony, Earth).

Players each play a character from the show, each with their own special abilities, and must work together to survive Cylon attacks and the perils of deep space…but there’s a twist! The Cylon’s have evolved and can now take human form – making them almost indistinguishable from any normal person.

Good use is made of this premise to add an excellent bluffing and strategy element to the game, as at any time up to 3 Cylon’s (depending on the number of players and stage of the game) may be working against the human players, with their only aim being to destroy Galactica and end human life forever!

Gameplay
The game starts with each player choosing a character, performing their set-up (positioning their player marker on the board, drawing cards etc) and drawing their loyalty card – which determines whether they truly are human, or a cylon in disguise! (At this point its usually wise to invoke a house rule for viewing your loyalty card for 60 seconds, as the Cylon ones often have special powers on them, so staring at them can give the game away!)

Cylon’s can either attempt to sabotage skill checks, or can reveal themselves to gain additional powers.

Each players turn (whilst they are either human, or unrevealed as a cylon) takes place over 6 stages:
1. Draw skill cards (as defined by their character)
2. Move (to different board locations)
3. Action – this can be either activating a character action, using a board location, piloting a ship, using special cards (in the case of the president character) or revealing themselves as a Cylon if they hold a ‘You are a Cylon’ loyalty card.
4. Draw and resolve a Crisis card (all players partake in most crisis resolutions).
5. Resolve Cylon fleet activity if marked on the Crisis card (i.e. launching ships from Cylon basestars and moving cylon raiders to either attack ships in space or to land boarding parties aboard Galactica.
6. Resolve the FTL jump track if marked on the Crisis card – jumping the human fleet a certain distance is the human’s win condition, so increasing the FTL drives preparation track is essential!

The Crisis resolution is the core of the game, and in most cases this is where all players interact in ‘skill checks’. If a skill check crisis occurs then each character can play as many cards face down into a pile as they like to attempt to match the win condition – for example, a skill check might ask for a total score of 10, and be coloured yellow and purple (different skill types have different colours such as Tactics being purple, Politics being yellow etc). Only colours which match those requested on the skill check count as positive, all other colours are negative to the score.

In addition to all the players being able to play cards, two random cards are played into each skill check from the ‘destiny deck’ – this allows any potential Cylon sabotage activity to be masked…or at least not too obvious!

At the beginning of the game it’s possible that there are no Cylon’s in play, however at the half way point a second draw of loyalty cards occurs meaning that in the latter half of the game there are definitely forces working against the humans! In larger games there is also a ‘sleeper agent’, who becomes a Cylon in the second half if the human’s resources are all above a certain level – this provides an interesting meta-game, where it can actually be sensible for the human players to purposefully lose some resources to make the later game easier… although it isn’t always easy to convince other players of this without receiving accusations of being a “frakkin’ toaster!”

This really just scratches the surface of this great game, and doesn’t really touch on the space combat or roles of special characters like the president and admiral…

Components

As usual the quality of the components provided by Fantasy Flight is top-notch: the board is solid and the cards are all excellent (although the skill cards are a little on the small side).

The game also comes with several ship miniatures, which whilst not on par with dedicated miniatures games are still nicer than using wee tokens for the space combat element of the game (other ships, such as the rest of the colonial fleet are represented by tokens which have values printed on their underside.)

It’s a shame the Cylon basestars don’t have their own models, instead represented by large ‘tokens’, however I believe two are contained within the Pegasus expansion (which expands the game into the events depicted in the second TV series…)

Play time

BSG is a big complex game, so be prepared to lose an afternoon or evening to it, especially on the first few plays as it’s likely you’ll be double checking the rules as you go along. My first play (with a full group of 6) took us about 5-6 hours, although subsequent plays tend to be closer to 3 hours long now that we’re accustomed to the rules.

Whilst the long playtime may put some people off, the game does always keep all players engaged, and the time flies by as alliances are made to attempt to root out and beat the hidden Cylons!

Summary

Battlestar Galactica is a favourite with my regular gaming friends. It can be tough going, but the co-operative nature of the game along with the constant threat of a hidden Cylon sabotaging your actions makes for a tense and exciting game.

So far, every game we’ve had has also been a very close call, with the humans either just managing to eek a win, or the Cylon’s managing to destroy the humans moments from their final FTL jump. The tension throughout the game is excellent, which has left us craving more every time we’ve played it – there is a lot of replayability in this, and there are lots of strategy options to employ for both human and cyclon players (whichever you end up being!)

I first picked it up as a fan of the show, however knowledge of the show isn’t a pre-requisite. Gamers who enjoy a bit of strategy, working together and (of course) stabbing others in the back will all enjoy it. Even some of my harder to please gaming friends often ask to pull this out for a game.

It’s not for everyone though – those that get upset easily might want to give it a miss, as it’s not uncommon to be accused of being a Cylon then locked in a cell (only for your accuser to turn out to be the real toaster!), and it certainly does need a good investment of time to play through – especially for the first few games.

It also certainly shouldn’t be played without first having a good read of the rules (and I’d suggest watching a quick gameplay video or two in advance as well, as it can be quite complex to begin with).

Overall though, since buying the game 3-4 years ago this remains one of my favourite board games.

Based on the (more recent) show of the same name, Battlestar Galactica is a game of team strategy, intrigue and suspense that comes to the table almost every time our gaming group meets. It’s faithful to the spirit of the show, but very accessible to those who have not watched.

Players take on a number of roles, mostly divided into military, political and piloting. They also take loyalty cards which determine if they are human or Cylon. In larger games, especially with the expansions, BSG plays more like a hidden teams game like Bang!, than a coop-with-traitor game like Werewolf or Shadows Over Camelot. The humans have an assortment of colored cards which have both a power they can use (generally) on their turn, and a numerical value which contributes to “skill checks”. Occasionally the players will be asked to add card secretly to these checks, where certain colors will count towards their goal and other colors will count against, allowing the tension of not having enough cards to pass and/or having the check sabotaged by a Cylon player.

The main goal is to survive long enough to advance the “jump track” and jump the human fleet closer and closer to their final objective, while managing a dwindling collection of resources, a persistent fleet of attacking Cylons and the constant skill checks, not to mention the looming threat of a traitor in their midst. The sublime twist is at the midpoint of the game, when a SECOND set of loyalty cards is distributed, meaning a player could have thought himself a human for half the game, then realized only later he was a Cylon sleeper agent.

The components for this game are great. The artwork is drawn directly from the television show, including a large number of stills featuring the various characters. The fighters around the base are small plastic ship molds, although the large basestars are cardboard punch-outs in the base game (this is corrected in the first expansion).

Gameplay flows nicely and generates a wonderful sense of tension throughout the game. Even with a large group, players can pass around Executive Orders to allow other players to take actions, and there are a number of skill checks throughout the game, so there is not a lot of down time between turns. This game carries a big advantage over the traitor aspect of Shadows Over Camelot, in that the Cylon can reveal his loyalty at a time of his choosing, and if he does so without being caught or killed, he gets a bonus. Also, the Cylons have a number of options available to play on their turn, meaning they are still interacting with the other players through the end of the game. The outcome of the base game is a little more prone to wider swings based on chance, but with expansions added, the vast majority of our games come down to the last jump.

If you like co-operative games, or if you like throwing a wrench into a team effort, or if you like sci-fi themed games, or if you just have a good-sized groups of sufficiently geeky friends, this game is not to be missed.

Why aren’t you playing Battlestar Galactica the board game? No excuses! Do you think I’m interested of your opinions? And while you’re at it, throw the Admiral to brig.

Today I’ll be reviewing BSG or story known by other name “How my evil Cylon plans came together and now as I stand above the corpses of my enemies. I feel satisfaction of how I am consumed by my own evil and it feels so good”.

Now before we start, I feel some disclaimer is in order. I love this game and haven’t reviewed it before as I feel that I can’t do justice to it and it could turn out to be slightly biased. That being said, let’s take our Vipers on nose dive and splash some toasters.

Frakking skinjobs! (Summary)
Game starts by everybody picking their favorite (or near favorite) character from selection of 10. They all have their benefits and specialization such as pilots, politics etc. and this part is done with some thought on it. Not everybody can pick the same category, but they have to divide evenly by picking from most plentiful (with exception on engineer). This results that crew of Galactica will be good mix of handy characters and no field is left unattended. Then roles of President and Admiral are divided according line of succession, they as titles already say will have difficult decisions to make and will often be second guessed by rest of players. Then comes the soul of the game, possibly one of finest working traitor system I have come across in board games. Scaling to players there will be 1-3 Cylon traitors amongst the players, their job is to botch every skill check (coming to that later) and sow suspicion on the fleet, until the right time comes and reveal themselves to other players with often devastating consequences. Note it is possible that there isn’t any Cylons at beginning of the game, but they appear later.

When everybody know where they stand and have picked their skill cards from 5 different decks. Game starts by players being surrounded by Cylon fleet and hand full on defending Galactica and civilian ships while managing rising crisis onboard.

Each players turn consists of drawing skill cards according the character sheet, moving to a place (or staying still) and doing one action. This can be using character sheet actions, location action or action described in skill card. When this all is done it is time to pull a crisis card. These are seldom anything good, unless of course you’re a Cylon that is.

Crisis cards vary from skill check, key personnel decision, dice roll to enemy fleet attack. Skill check is the most tense of these, players place skill cards face down on a pile to benefit or trying to make it fail (only if you’re a Cylon) and on addition there will be added 2 destiny cards from a deck which composes 2 cards from each category to help to hide possible infiltrators. After this situation is resolved there might be attack from local Cylon fleet and with luck FTL jump track goes forward.

FTL jump track? Faster than light track which is kept to record when civilians and Galactica are ready to jump away from enemies. Galactica is old behemoth, not a top rate military ship so it takes a while to get there, but not as long as for civilians. Which some might have to be left behind when situation gets too hairy. This isn’t generally a good idea, since when the counter for civilians, fuel, food or morale goes to zero you’ll lose. You’ll need to get certain jump distance traveled to win the game, if any of counters go zero or Galactica gets destroyed humans lose the game and Cylons will be having “Mission Accomplished” banners everywhere.

Half way of the game there will be sleeper phase where remaining loyalty cards will be dealt. Now you might notice that you weren’t a human after all, even though you have worked so hard towards the goal. By this point of the game accusations will start flying even more than before. It’s almost like The Resistance, but with more meat on it and you get more invested with it.

Nice curves, Caprica Six… Nice indeed (Components)
The game is from Fantasy Flight Games, so art looks really nice and tokens are nice to handle (not too thin). There are quality unpainted miniatures for fighters, but I would have liked to have Basestars (enemy capital ships) as miniatures too, instead of cardboard versions. They were replaced in Pegasus expansion. Board sets nice atmosphere and the resource dials are sturdy and handy, better than any slider. Would have liked to have dial for jump track or a proper slider, but at least everybody can see where you stand.

Intelligence. A mind that burns like a fire (Learning curve)
On bottom line this is fairly simple game, but it has many small rules that needs to be taken to account. The good news is that it takes one player to know the rules and explain the core and fill in as game goes on, except the moment new player finds themselves as Cylon. So that part of them game should be made abundantly clear. Either way you can expect first game go for learning the mechanics.

Rulebook is decent and isn’t a long, indexes are big enough to find rules in question quickly and back of rulebook is quick reference for important things. There are a lot of good reference sheets made by fans in BGG (including mine). It should be noted that rulebook tends to go on and on which might make finding small details tough.

After 2-3 games most of players should be able to handle this game, of course you can forget rule here and there. Mostly the game goes by it own weight without suffering on small mistakes.

Anything I have done, I can live with (Conclusion)
This game is my all time favorite and I don’t think I ever stop playing it. It has all that I like, traitors, suspicion, tense moments, panic and despair. You really get involved in the game and it does reflect the series extremely well. There isn’t anything that would be abundant, everything is really scarce and you feel every sacrifice might have been too much. On top of it you can’t trust your fellow players, they seem to help you, but you can’t help but feel that they’re not doing everything they could do to help your cause.

This game is fun to play, it’s difficult cooperative game and same time it isn’t too easy for traitors either. They really need to pick the right time to reveal to reap the benefits and if they become too untrustworthy they end up in brig which makes their game even more harder. Game takes about 2,5-3 hours to play, but it goes really fast as you sink deeper in your character in hopes to survive or see those dastardly plans of yours fulfilled. Also you should watch the re-imagined tv series, it is really good and despair hangs on survivors heavy. Not your average easy going heroes are heroes and villains are villains series, but neither is the board game.

Cylon consensus is; play the game or perish.

One thing is quite certain: you need some knowledge of the TV-series in order to enjoy or even understand this game. It’s thematically heavy, and character options and abilites are heavily reflected from the show.

That aside, it’s a highly enjoyable game with great replayability. Each player represents a character from the show, and your goal is to reach Kobol. But there are problems on the way. The Cylons are chasing you, and you have limited resources. And to top it all, you’ll have to face a crisis after each players turn.

The crises may vary from being short on water, heavy civil uprising and a lot more. In order to overcome the crisis and don’t face the bad stuff, you’ll have to contribute with your cards, which are very limited from round to round. Will you help? Can you help? You can’t show your cards to anyone. And to make things harder, two joker cards appear from a stack of random cards, that will either help or be negative.

Of course, in the series there are Cylons on Galactica portraying humans. That’s also a fact here. At the start of the game, each player receives a Loyalty card. That states whether you’re a Cylon or not. If you are, your job is to make it as hard as possible to win the game. But don’t make it too obvious, or they’ll put you in the brig and maybe execute you. So as a Cylon, try to put the focus on another player, and make everyone suspicious on other than yourself.

The game mechanism is on the light side, but the experience and suspicions is what makes the game. What do you do and how do you do it? Are you able to conceal yourself as a Cylon. Is there even a Cylon at all? That might happen, no one knows.

This is my favorite game, and it’s also my favorite TV-show. I can play this over and over with the right group of people. And a pro tip: learn the game well before getting an expansion – they really change things around.

I love board games with variety and off the board action, and Battlestar delivers this in spades. The gameplay is manageable, yet not overly simplistic, the components are of high quality, the BSG universe is pulled off very well, and the game itself is challenging without being frustrating.

The initial phase of the game is heavy on the suspicion and social interaction, and the second phase is heavy on action, allowing a nice mix of styles and experiences every time you play. The games that I’ve played always seem to go down to the wire and truly capture the sense of desperation that I found so attractive about watching the show itself. The ability to scream at your friends and give them dark, suspicious glances also is a huge plus.

I’ve never tried to play this game with someone who hadn’t seen the show, so I’m not quite sure how ignorance of BSG would affect the dynamic. However, I can confidently say that since this is one of the best games I’ve had the pleasure to play, with a little explanation of the flavor behind the game I’m sure even newbies to the BSG universe will enthusiastically buy in!

This is a board game centered around role playing. Everyone starts off with loyalty cards. Human or Cylon. No one but you knows where your loyalties lie. Then half way through the game another round of loyalty cards are handed out. You could become a sleeper agent.

The goal of the game is to get the fleet to new earth in more or less on piece. Along with a nasty event deck that brings out Cylon base ships and raiders you also have to worry about which of your friends are working against you.

For sure play with the full amount of people. It gets really fun accusing or denying whose a Cylon. The game also come with nice plastic ships to move around the board. If your so inclined to get an expansion you can get plastic Cylon base ships as well.

I give this one two thumbs up.