At this point, with numerous reviews of the standard game available here on BGG, I’ll presume you’re familiar with such things as the components for the board game and how the game rules work; as such, I’ll concentrate on the differences between the single player version and the standard.
Not All Characters Are Created Equal
In the single player game, you are not allowed to choose Laura Roslin or Sharon "Boomer" Valerii. You control a single active character (without the character flaw in play), and you have an assist character assigned to the brig who grants you the benefit of their once-per-game ability once, with the option to draw one of your five skill cards per turn from their skill set, rather than your own.
The characters are not all equal in ability; in the multi-player game, this is one of my favourite aspects to gameplay. Characters are chosen for the way they compliment each other, helping create a combined front against the vagaries of the Crisis deck and the rampaging Cylon hordes.
In the single player game, you know at the outset that there are aspects of the game you're not going to be able to handle with your single character. Non-pilot characters can't fly vipers, and can usually only contribute to combat via the Command or Weapons Control Areas. Once you've been swamped by Cylon raiders, you really learn to appreciate the ability pilot characters have to jump into a viper and then make multiple attacks through their red Piloting skill cards.
Equally, choosing a main character who can pilot a viper (and who generates Pilot skill cards by default) poses problems when it comes to skill checks; checks calling for green, yellow and purple skill cards are far more common than those using red or blue, and having a single hand of skill cards to face each Crisis Card with means that there will frequently be skill checks where a hand of 10+ cards still doesn't generate enough cards to pass.
So, choosing your character and your assist character plays a huge part in shaping the game you'll be playing. The research area of Galactica allows you to draw small quantities of either blue Engineering cards or purple Tactics cards, enough to make repairs to the ship or to damaged vipers with a little time - assuming you have time. Yellow Politics skill cards can't be generated from Galactica, though; for that, you either need to head to Colonial One (burning a skill card in the process) and risk being away from Galactica when Cylon forces jump in, or you need to be generating yellow skill cards from your main or assist character.
Obviously, missing the co-operative element of the game, some character abilities are less useful than others. There is little point in taking Saul Tigh as either main character or assist character, as both of his powers relate to either brigging characters or transferring the Presidency title. Added to which, he can only draw cards from the green and purple skill areas - and you have to be able to draw regularly from more than two of the five areas to be able to survive. Saul Tigh is singularly unsuited to saving the human race on his own - which feels like a comment on events early in Season 2 of the tv series!
Saul Tigh - incapable of command? Picture uploaded by hahnarama
While Saul Tigh is the weakest character in the single player game, other characters are weakened to a lesser or greater extent; Tom Zarek generates a useful combination of skills, but his standard ability will never be used in a single player game. The same is true of Helo's once-per-game ability - and while Baltar's once-per-game ability can be used, it effectively only generates a once-per-game reshuffle of the assist-players loyalty deck, without the option to remove the negative effects of being revealed as a Cylon.
Despite these factors, it's fairly obvious that some characters are going to complement each other well. Being able to generate 4 different colours of skill card a turn alone makes Apollo a tempting choice as main character, although having to draw two red Piloting skill cards a turn (unless replacing one with an assist character skill) is a handicap, particularly if your assist character is revealed as a Cylon. Equally, Gaius Baltar feels like a strong choice as main character, able as he is to choose a skill card after drawing a crisis card.
If you've chosen a main character who isn't a pilot, then one of the pilot characters makes an ideal assist character - particularly Boomer or Starbuck, for access to either red, blue or purple cards on demand combined with once-per-game powers that allow Crisis cards to be passed/discarded and redrawn.
After several games, perhaps the character who stands out the most in the single player game as a main character is Helo; his ability to re-roll any one die just rolled per turn is a huge benefit, given how often you find yourself rolling on Destination cards, to avoid failed Crisis Card penalties or to shift difficult targets such as Heavy Raiders or Centurion boarding parties. He also allows access to the red Piloting skill deck - ideal for those occasions where you need to be capable of destroying more than two raiders a turn. If you find yourself facing more Cylon forces than can be dealt with, his re-roll ability combined with the ability to draw multiple purple Tactics skill cards, hunting for those cards with their ability to add to any one die roll make the civilian population usefully resistant to the hazards of early jump travel. A minor point is that Helo's weakness in the standard game is that he's not present aboard Galactica for the first turn of the game; in the single player game, the weaknesses on the character cards are ignored, but Helo has no starting position to indicate where he should begin. I’ve simply taken to starting him off in the hangar deck.
Combinations of characters that I've found to work well together are:
Karl "Helo" Agathon (main) + Chief Tyrol (assist) - Tyrol contributes yellow or blue skill cards, with the ability to influence a single skill check through his once-per-game ability.
Chief Tyrol (main) + Sharon "Boomer" Valerii (assist) (which is surprisingly ironic, given story plotlines in the tv series) - Boomer provides purple and the occasional red skill card, and a very useful once-per-game ability. For those occasions when the Galactica’s birds have been beaten to hell and back, Boomer can also allow Tyrol to draw up to three blue Engineering cards in a turn - enough to give him a good chance of being able to repair four vipers in a single turn.
Gaius Baltar (main) + Lee "Apollo" Adama / Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (assist) - Lee's combat orientated once-per-game ability can be very useful for flooding space around Galactica with vipers or launching a single large attack. Kara's once-per-game ability combined with Baltar's standard ability allows him to make more than one Crisis Card draw - gaining a skill card each time. Both Lee and Kara also generate useful purple or green skill cards for Baltar, allowing him to avoid drawing the less commonly checked blue Engineering cards on a regular basis.
Gameplay
One of the biggest differences you'll notice between the single player and multiplayer games is that at the outset, you can expect to fail two or three Crisis checks straight out of the gate. You simply won't hold enough skill cards to pass any but the easiest checks for the first turn or two.
After that, balancing your hand becomes a big part of gameplay. Drawing in cards in limited quantities per skill type makes the instinct to hang on to those big 4 and 5 point skill cards manifest; often, passing a skill check will require emptying the bulk of your hand for that particular check - and because of the pace of gameplay with just you playing, you'll find that resources drop at a frightening rate and that it takes several turns to rebuild enough cards to pass another difficult check when you’re only drawing a single card of any particular colour per turn.
It's also quickly apparent that there is no super-character in the game capable of doing everything; from the outset, you are under attack from the Cylons, and a regular theme in the game will be trying to decide between spending your time in Weapons Control, trying to batter Base Stars into submission before they can launch even more Raiders/Heavy Raiders, or the Command Area, trying to purge multiple Raiders per turn as they home in on the civilian fleet. This is particularly the case if you're playing a main character who can't fly; bereft of the opportunity to draw red Pilot skill cards natively and the ability to hop into a viper and make use of those Maximum Firepower cards to clear the skies rapidly, battles often become a case of trying to throw enough vipers into the air around those civilian ships to soak up damage while you wait for an opportunity to jump out.
The biggest single difference is the change in the nature of the tension you'll feel while playing; the interactive element of the game is gone, but everything - absolutely everything - depends on your character, making the single player game a salutary lesson in the importance of juggling resources and consequences, something that doesn't come through as such a strongly personal theme in the multiplayer game. The fact that the pace of the game is entirely dependent on you adds a certain something, too!
Ironically, some skill checks will feel easier than others, because of the decreased utility some cards now have.
Card Redundancy
Some cards are noticeably less useful in the single player game. Perhaps the biggest example of this are the 1 and 2 point green Leadership cards; a strict reading of the card indicates that these cards have to be played on "any other player." That makes these cards an easy choice to make for throwing into skill checks or discarding down to the 10 card hand limit. Trying to play by house ruling that these cards can be played on the main character create a game that is much, much easier to win - and less fun, as a result. Equally, high-value yellow Politics skill cards are now worth only their points value in general.
The green Executive Order Leadership card; sadly redundant in the one-player game. Picture uploaded by rgatti
The difficulty inherent in passing Crisis Card skill checks from a single hand naturally shape your card hard towards holding high numbers of yellow, green and purple skill cards, particularly for non-Pilot main characters unable to use high-value red Piloting skill cards for anything other than skill checks.
The game deck affected perhaps the most strongly in the single player game is the Quorum deck. The Arrest Order and Encourage Mutiny cards all serve no purpose; the Release Cylon Mugshots card is useful only for checking if your assist character is going to turn against you. The Accept Prophecy, Assign Vice President, Assign Mission Specialist and Assign Arbitrator cards are useful only for their ability to generate yellow Politics skill cards when played. This makes them slightly more useful than the 1 and 2 point yellow Politics skill cards, in that Quorum cards don't count towards the 10 skill card limit while still requiring an action to activate.
After several one-player games, I've taken to adopting the instruction given within the rules for purely co-operative games to remove the Mutiny, Release Cylon Mugshots, Assign Abritrator and Arrest Order cards from the Quorum deck; the single-player game focuses heavily on the Galactica and often features little time to get to Colonial One to gather Quorum cards, so removing cards that serve no effective purpose from the deck makes life slightly easier.
The Assist Character
The assist character is a bit of a mixed blessing. It certainly adds to the tension, knowing that with each Heavy Raider activation icon that crops up, you run the risk of your assist character turning out to be a Cylon, abandoning the ship in a series of explosions - or while throwing you into the brig. There's a significant chance that your assist character will turn out to be a Cylon - in my first single-player game, my assist character (Tyrol) was revealed to be a Cylon on the second turn. In the next, the assist character stayed defiantly human all the way to Kobol.
The ability to use the assist character's one-use power is useful, provided you use it before your assist character turns Cylon. You'll often find a period of relative stability in the early part of the game, if your assist character has passed the first three Loyalty checks and remained human, but before you hit the 4 distance point that triggers the next loyalty card deal. The ability to draw one skill card from the assist character's portfolio in place of one of your own strikes a nice balance in terms of utility versus hand size; a couple of turns without skill checks will often leave you discarding cards to get down to your hand size, and the ability to bolster your hand through the assist character's selection can help in deciding what to discard - or just how many cards to throw into a skill check.
Combats
Combat are brutal in the single player edition. The starting setup for the game features three raiders, a base star, two vipers and two civilian vessels. Assuming that no other Cylon ships arrive through Cylon Attack crisis cards, and assuming that you hit with every attack, that's 5-6 complete turns of doing nothing but firing from the Weapons Control room - or a similar amount of time split between the Weapons Control room and the Command area.
Particularly debilitating is the Cylon Attack card that indicates that communications are jammed until certain conditions are met; if you aren't controlling a character who can jump into a viper and fight in space, that leaves you confined to a single attack a turn for so long as the Weapons Control area remains undamaged. It's actually fairly likely that if a Cylon Attack card brings more than one Base Star into play - or more than six assorted Cylon vessels - you'll end up hitting the end of the Jump Preparation track before you manage to drive the Cylons off. At least twice in every game I've played to date using the single player rules, jumping early has been the only method to avoid large numbers of civilian vessels being wiped out, or the Galactica reduced to floating shrapnel.
Playing Time
Currently, I'm averaging 60-70 minutes per game... for games where the human race survives. Games that involve running out of fuel, getting blown apart or starving to death tend to end much more quickly!
Summary
The single player game is obviously different to the multi-player game. To it's credit, it doesn't feel like a stripped down version of the multi-player game; the contrast between the interaction driven gameplay in the multi-player version to that exerted by constant skill checks and Cylon attacks in the single player makes the two feel markedly different.
It's a shame that some of the characters are not as suitable as others for playing as the main character in a single player game, but that's unavoidable and really only a problem if you're determined to save the human race as your favourite character.
From a straight gaming advantage point of view, some characters work better than others; it's possible to make the game more difficult for yourself via your choice of characters - sometimes much more difficult.
I think that like any game, you run the risk of it becoming overly familiar with repeated plays as you learn the range and frequency of crisis cards available or find yourself playing the same combination of characters repeatedly, but I don't see that as a particular problem. Being responsible for every single aspect of the game and having to micromanage all the various resources from those on dials to vipers, raptors and damage repairs is enough to keep you very busy whatever combination of characters you use, and I think it would take a considerable number of plays before you find yourself repeating games that feel too similar to previous plays.
The Battlestar Galactica Board Game is not a game I'd buy to play by myself - but given that's not the intention of the game, I'd be surprised if that was the case! On the other hand, it's not a multi-player game with a single player game tacked on as an inferior add-on - the single player game is a tense, strategic game in it's own right. I suspect that with time, rules variants to add single-player game specific alternatives for some cards will appear here on BGG just as new character templates have appeared, increasing the variability of the single player game yet further.
Posted Wed Dec 31, 2008 9:38 am
