This review was first posted in the Cracked LCD GameShark boardgame column that ran on December 04, 2008,

http://www.gameshark.com/entertainment/features/545/Cracked-...

It is reposted here with permission from the GameShark Editor in Chief...which happens to be me.

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I don’t watch much television and rarely get involved in any current series, but BATTLESTAR GALACTICA hooked me from the first episode and even despite some sloppy writing and rushed resolutions, I still think the show is one of the best I’ve ever seen.

So when Fantasy Flight Games announced that it had licensed the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA property for a board game, my response was a hearty Frack yeah! I couldn’t imagine a better company to bring the world of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA to the table. FFG’s track record with licensed games is very nearly impeccable and the licensed games they have produced over the last several years such as WAR OF THE RING, STARCRAFT, and A GAME OF THRONES have been top-shelf material respectful of their sources and largely successful in conveying the stories, characters, and settings of these properties to the board gaming medium. Announced as a cooperative game with a traitor mechanic, it was pretty clear early on that right design decisions were being made. With designer Corey Koniecszka (STARCRAFT, TIDE OF IRON) in the admiral’s seat there shouldn’t have been any doubt that we were in good hands all along, and at the end of the journey what we have to show for the trip is not only one of the very best games of 2008, but one of the most thematically dense games that I’ve played in the past decade.

Let’s get it out of the way up front- you don’t have to know Lee Adama from Gaius Baltar to get into and fully appreciate the game. A little knowledge about the basic concept is really the only completed homework you need to bring to it. In a nutshell, humanity gets wiped out by Cylons, a race of bio-mechanical replicants created by humans themselves. The surviving humans flee in the titular ship along with a ragtag assortment of civilian ships, looking for the planet Kobol, which promises to point the way to Earth.

Along the way, characters are revealed as Cylons and Cylons infiltrators wreak havoc and generate paranoia. It’s obviously much more complex than that, but the game actually manages to flesh out the story quite a bit, even for the uninitiated. With fairly complex rules encompassing a lot of interlocking mechanics and subsystems, the game is not as accessible as I expected it to be, considering that it is based on a mainstream, hit TV series. It is definitely a hobby market game, but fans of the show patient enough to deal with learning the game will be richly rewarded in ways that hobby gamers and the mainstreamers alike can appreciate. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, unlike so many of today’s games that emphasize clever mechanics, is actually about playing and creating a solid, engrossing narrative.

Three to six players get to assume the role of one of GALACTICA’s principle characters, who each come packaged with a special ability, a one-time use special ability and a drawback that negatively affects their gameplay. My favorite is Colonel Tigh’s alcoholism. Each character also has two or three skills, which indicate which skill cards they will have access to throughout the game- players will use those to resolve crisis cards and to perform certain tasks. Galactica (and Colonial One, the presidential ship) is abstracted into a handful of areas where players can take specific actions. A turn consists of getting your prescribed skill cards, moving, taking an action, and then resolving a crisis card. Pretty simple stuff, and as long as players remain attentive it flows seamlessly. Expect anywhere from two to four hours depending on the number of players.

The mule-kick to the whole thing is that players also receive a loyalty card at setup indicating whether or not they are actually a Cylon, who must through various clandestine means derail humanity’s struggle for survival. Halfway through the game, another set of loyalty cards are dealt and players who thought they were human all along might find themselves batting for the other team- just like in the show. It’s a simple mechanic, obviously inspired by the traitor mechanic from SHADOWS OVER CAMELOT but the possibility of one, two, or no Cylons creates an even greater sense of tension, unease, and suspicion throughout the game. There is also a lot more nasty stuff for the Cylons to do- some of which is incredibly sneaky and potentially disastrous for the human players. The Cylons are looking to damage six sections of the Galactica or to zero out one of the resource dials representing food, population, fuel, and morale.

I was amazed at how many ways the Cylon players can act as a monkey wrench. At the end of each player’s turn, a crisis card (generally depicting an actual event from the show) is drawn. The skill card could be a decision to be made by the active player or it could be a skill check. Of course, if it’s a decision then the Cylon player is faced with risking the bad choice and being called out for it or playing nice and using the good outcome as a smokescreen. In a skill check crisis, each player can contribute certain skill cards towards its resolution in an attempt to reach a target number. However, skill cards that are played into the resolution pile that do not match the called-for skills subtract their number so a Cylon can sabotage the skill check to get the negative result. And to make matters more complicated, two blind cards are drawn as a baffle from a prepared deck, so even if there’s no Cylon then those negative cards may turn up and create paranoia.

And then there are offices in the game. Through election, force, or politicking you can find your character in the admiral’s seat, getting to choose between two location cards drawn every time the ship jumps- of course, if you’re the Cylon, you pick the bad one. The Admiral also gets to control the ship’s two nuclear warheads. Or you can take Laura Roslin’s title and become president, granting you access to Quorum cards which can have a huge impact on resources and other critical functions- or you can pull a Dubya and play dumb while leading the human race to its extinction.

Throughout the game there are all kinds of ways that the Cylon players can do bad things- but none are more effective than when the Cylons willfully reveal themselves. They are presumably thrown out of an airlock and wake up on the Resurrection Ship and are given a random Super Crisis card- something that in general is really tough for the humans to overcome.

So obviously, a big part of the game is sniffing out who the Cylon or Cylons are and preventing them from accomplishing their mission (destroying six sections of the Galactica or running one of four resource dials down to zero). But along the way, players have to deal with the effects of various crises, repairing damaged sections of the ship, participating in elections, throwing suspicious characters into the brig, and other various minor tasks and choices that could literally spell success or failure.

Through it all, I really felt like Mr. Koniesczka 'gets' the show and understands what its strengths are. The interpersonal relationships are there, the politics are there, and the social drama is there. It feels like a complete BATTLESTAR GALACTICA experience and even with all the mechanics and rules it feels that every element is mapped directly to a story point, a character trait, or a thematic resonance. I haven’t played a game where I felt the mechanics were so holistically and organically tied to the game’s theme and narrative setting since DUNE.

But wait, there’s more. This being a space opera game, it would be incomplete without a suite of rules for space combat. And somehow, unbelievably, the game manages to incorporate a fairly comprehensive yet easy-to-manage out-of-ship experience into the on-ship game.

Viper pilots Starbuck, Lee Adama, and Boomer can hop into a Viper and hot dog around the ship, taking down the Cylon Raiders and Basestars that threaten Galactica while hunting the defenseless civilian ships in the convoy. Heavy Raiders appear and if they attack Galactica they dislodge a Centurion boarding party represented by a track- if it fills up, it’s metal curtains for the hapless humans. It’s all done with simple dice combat and a basic AI that triages how the Cylon ships move when they are called to do so by crisis cards. What’s more, some crisis cards act almost as scenario setups, indicating what Cylon ships show up to harass Galactica and provide special rules for the encounter. Even Raptors, the chubby reconnaissance ships used by the humans, come into play as useful scouts that can help Galactica steer clear of poor jump locations that can cause dangerous resource losses.

For the humans, the imperative is jumping and staying as far ahead of the Cylons as possible- as in the show, they’re on the run from superior forces so a lot of the game’s tension comes from getting from jump point to jump point. But it takes a while for the FTL drives to spin up, so what happens is that at the bottom of some crisis cards there is an icon that indicates that the jump track gets advanced until it reaches an automatic jump. It’s possible for a player in the FTL control to order a jump prematurely, which can incur population loss. Late in the game, those ill-prepared jumps get awfully tempting, even when the population dial is in the red. At each jump, the current Admiral looks at two cards and picks where everybody is going to go. Each card has a relative distance, and when the destination cards total eight, the next jump is to Kobol and to a human victory.

What emerges out of all this- a game that is obviously draws inspiration from other cooperative games like the previously mentioned SHADOWS OVER CAMELOT- is something that I think is quite special, a unique game that offers a new way to interact and play with our friends, families, and fellow BSG fans. While playing the game, I’ve been continually amazed at how accurately it replicates the BSG atmosphere and story in a relatively manageable set of rules. It seems like, in every game, that so much is going on and so many things are happening but because Mr. Koniecszka has orchestrated them all so masterfully with sensible, theme-driven rules and systems, it never feels gamey, empty, or too rigidly structured. Warily watching Galactica’s resource dials dwindle over the course of a game, sweating as the Cylon player when the humans are onto you, facing a personal decision that could literally cost the game, or praying for a jump to get out of a sticky space engagement are among the tense and dramatic delights that will keep players coming back for more, and in the end the fact that the game is brilliantly designed along mechanical terms is almost a footnote to what the game is actually about and how it engages the player.

Another part of what makes BATTLESTAR GALACTICA such a success is that it isn’t a game about the show despite the license. It’s a game that occurs in that setting but is ultimately about the same concepts, questions, and ethical situations that the show is about and in that I think the design reaches for something beyond what we usually see in genre games. I think it, like the show, has something to say about human nature, fear, and conditional morality that most adventure games have never bothered to- or simply couldn’t- address. Even someone who has never seen the show is going to have a reaction when they realize that the person they’re sitting next to is working at cross purposes or when they have to decide between accepting the loss of population or food supplies. And since the level of interaction is so high- it is persistent and almost constant throughout the game- there is always a sense of engagement with not only the game but these themes and ideas.

It wasn’t until the very end of last year that Fantasy Flight and Corey Koniecszka delivered STARCRAFT, the best game of 2007, which was also ironically enough a licensed game and here it is in the tail end of 2008 and it looks like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is poised to be the game of the year. After all the mediocre games I’ve played all year, all the repetitive and uninspired designs, it’s refreshing to experience a game such as BATTLESTAR GALACTICA that invites you to become totally engrossed in a narrative that is created by interaction with other gamers and skillfully deploying an array of game mechanics that support rather than impede the experience. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA receives my highest recommendation, and if the recession means you’re only buying one game this year then you’ve just received your marching orders.