Sorry to leave many of you hanging about a detailed description of this amazing game, but this is my first GenCon so I've been super-busy running around trying to see and do everything. However, after more hours of playing BSG this evening, I've got a pretty good handle on what's going on to try my best and give a good description. Please excuse anything that is offensive to you, as this is the first time I'm writing something like this.

How the humans win: Getting on the road to Earth, by surviving long enough to complete enough jumps.
How the Cylons win: One of the 4 necessities is reduced to zero, Centurions invade the ship, Galactica is destroyed.

Choosing characters: There are 4 classes of characters: politicians (Roslin, Gaius, Zarek), pilots (Starbuck, Apollo, Boomer), military (Adama, Tigh, Helo) and support (Chief). The game keeps everything balanced by forcing players to choose a character from whichever class has the most when it's their turn (except Chief, he can be chosen at any time). In the game we played this evening, it was Adama, Roslin, Gaius, Starbuck and Chief in play. Each character has certain benefits (Starbuck gets an extra action when in a raptor, Roslin gets to look ahead and choose a course of action), detriments (Starbuck is easy to throw in the brig, Chief gets limited resources) and one "once per game" ability (Gaius gets to use the Cylon detector).

Gaining skills: Each character gets skill cards each turn that correspond with the type of character they are. The skills are Politics, Leadership, Tactics, Piloting and Engineering - as Starbuck, I got 2 Tactics, 2 Politics and 1 Leadership/Engineering. Adama gets 3 Leadership, 2 Tactics...and so on.

Loyalty Cards: At the beginning of the game, each player gets a card (Baltar gets 2) from the "Loyalty Deck" which is constructed based on guidelines for the # of players (we played with 5, which is the example I will use). In our deck, there were 8 "Not a Cylon" cards and 2 "Cylon" cards. At the halfway point of the game, everyone gets another Loyalty card. It is possible that noone is a Cylon during the 1st half of the game (which is what happened tonight) and that you will be a Sleeper Agent and become a Cylon.

The game turn:
At the beginning of your turn, you draw your skills, then you get to move and perform an action. Actions are chosen based on where you are or a skill card in your hand. For instance, on Galactica, you can fire on Cylons (from Weapons), pilot a Viper (from the Hangar deck) or direct civilian ships (from Communications). You can also possibly be on Colonial One, doing more governmental-type stuff (through the use of the Quorum deck, which the President uses to essentially give executive orders). Actions can also be flying Vipers into combat with Cylons.

After your action, a Crisis card is drawn. Crisis cards can cause more Cylon ships to be deployed, or have some sort of negative effect on one of your 4 main necessities. This is the most interesting part of the game, in my opinion. Crises will have a target score to exceed, that is matched up with certain skills. Players engage in an anonymous vote to try to pass (or fail) the Crisis. 2 random cards are added to the bids in order to introduce an element of destiny into the crisis result. Humans want to bid with those types of skill cards, which each contain a value, while Cylons would want to bid with the other skill types, in order to have them count as a negative.

Example: A crisis requires Tactics and Leadership to pass, with a score of 8. Add together the values of the Tactics and Leadership skills, subtract the other skills, and check it against the value of the Crisis. If it's higher, it passes, if it's lower, it fails (and bad stuff happens). After a crisis, the FTL may spin up (or not), the Cylons may move (or not) and then that's the end of the turn. After 5 FTL preps, the ship jumps (but you can do it earlier, if you want to risk losing population). Then, next turn.

Cylons: Cylons can reveal themselves at any time, causing bad things to happen (damage to Galactica, sending someone to Sick Bay, etc.) and they get a Super Crisis card, which is BAD NEWS. At that point, they leave the fleet and actively work against the humans by playing Super Crises and being able to add negative points to Crisis cards at any time. In the games we've played, subtlety works early for Cylons, but if they reveal themselves too late (like it occurred earlier tonight), they are too late in preventing the humans from winning the game.

OK, I think that's the best I can do at almost 2 AM after hours upon hours of geeking out. If anyone's got any questions, feel free to drop a line here and I'll reply in the morning.

Thanks for the description Alex. I wish I could have been there with you to get my own copy. What is your overall opinion of the game? From the review it sounds positive.

The first time through was slow, so we felt like the game was dragging. However, as we've played it more and more, we've discovered shortcuts on saving time and strategy elements.

Everyone in my group really enjoys it, especially the Crisis checks done with 'voting' with the skill cards. Really fun game mechanic. We can't wait to play some more.

Could you provide a little more detail on the skill cards? Are they in a way dual-purpose? So you can either use them for:

1: Their "voting" value, or
2: A special ability?

Or are they all just cards with just a number on them?

Also, how is combat implemented?

Finally, what are the Quorum cards like? What sorts of effects do they have?

Many thanks! I can't wait to play this game!

RE: Skill cards. You are correct. Skill cards can be used for their printed ability, or for their strength in voting. The strength in voting ranges from 1-5, and cards that have the same printed ability usually have different values. Here's a two examples of skill card powers from each category.

Politics - Use an action to draw any two new skill cards; show all cards face-up during a Crisis skill check.
Leadership - Use an action to allow any player to take 2 actions immediately; subtract 2 from the total value needed to pass a crisis
Tactics - Risk a raptor to try and see the next Crisis card before it plays; add two to any dice roll.
Piloting - When piloting a Viper, make 4 attacks instead of 1 during an action (which was AWESOME last night when Starbuck took out 3 raiders and a heavy raider single-handedly); prevent damage to a Viper with a successful dice roll
Engineering - Use an action to repair any viper when in the hangar bay; all Engineering cards count as positive during the Crisis check.

Skill cards that give an action can only be played on your turn. Skill cards that interrupt things (like the adding to the dice roll, or manipulating the crisis score) can be played at any time.

RE: Combat - At the beginning of the game, there's a basestar and 3 raiders on the board, with 2 civilian ships. Space is divided into 6 areas, one in front of Galactica, one behind, and 2 on the side of each landing pylon. When a Crisis card is revealed and resolved, there's an icon on the bottom that serves to "activate" the Cylons in some way. There's a variety of things that can happen: Raiders get activated and they can attack vipers and civilians, more raiders can be launched, heavy raiders can move and try to board, or basestars can fire on Galactica. Combat is resolved with a d8 - roll above a predetermined value, score a hit. For instance, Starbuck's piloting in an area with a raider and a heavy raider. She attacks the raider, which is destroyed on a roll of 3-8, and rolls a 5, so the raider is destroyed. She then attacks the heavy raider, which is destroyed on a 7-8, and rolls a 6, so she misses. Attacking a basestar depends on what you're attacking with, vipers, Galactica or a nuke (which destroys a basestar on a 3-8). It's very easy to resolve combat.

RE: Quorum cards - haven't gotten to use many of them in-game yet, but they do things like raising one of the 4 necessities with a successful dice roll, looking at loyalty cards, sending characters to the brig...stuff like that. Only the president gets to use them, and if the President loses their title to another player (usually through failing a crisis), they get control of the Quorum deck.

Hope I answered all your questions. Be patient, the wait is well worth it!

yes, and yes. Generally-speaking, the higher the "voting" value (which is used for other types of checks too, not just votes), the less generally useful the special ability. But even low votes can be very good when used as vote cards.


checks using the vote cards, requiring you to get above a certain number (IIRC).



they can be on-off events, or subtle game-environment altering effects as I recall. Similar to how event cards are handled in other games.

It's a long way from being my favourite co-op game, but I'm sure I'll give it another go when it actually gets over here.

Does the game require any previous knowlege of BSG that cannot be learned from the back of the box?

Also it seems like loads of fun to play a Space Opera co-op game.

That would be extremely unlikely. I've played A Game of Thrones, Arkham Horror, Doom, World of Warcraft (both The Board Game and The Adventure Game) and Starcraft without any previous experience of the licences on which they are based (I didn't even know A Game of Thrones was based on a licence until *after* I'd played it) and had no problems at all. I don't see why FFG would start with BSG.

The absolute most you would need to know is:

The Cylons are the evil robots.
The humans are the morally-ambiguous good guys.
Some Cylons look like humans.
The Cylons bombed the living crap out of the humans' homeworld.
The last surviving few human ships are looking for a new home.
The Cylons continue to hunt them down.

Thanks a whole ton Alex. This game is so on my must-buy list now!

Yup, that pretty much sums up all that you'll need to know. I'm sure that there will be the usual introductory paragraph in the rulebook that explains everything to anyone previously unaware of the premise of either the original BSG TV show or the new version.

The only thing that having a working knowledge of the show gives you is the ability to quote lines and recall favorite scenes from the series.

Other than that, all you need to know is that Humans are good, Cylons are bad, and some Cylons look like humans.

Fantastc review. Wasn't on my wish list, now it is.

From the rulebook:

"The Cylons were created to make life easier on the Twelve Colonies. And then the day came when the Cylons decided to kill their masters. After a long and bloody struggle an armistice was declared and the Cylons left for another world to call their own.

Forty years later, they returned, and brought humanity to the brink of extinction. The remaining humans, led by the crew of the Battlestar Galactica, fled in hope of finding a new home, one known by legend as Earth.

Humanity's only hope lies in finding Earth's location while fighting off the unrelenting Cylons. But as resources run low, it is discovered that the enemy can now appear human and has infiltrated the fleet from the inside."

I am very impressed with this game so far. Not only is the theme expertly woven into the gameplay, the overall design of the game is just great. Being a cooperative game, it has the same sort of tension that Pandemic or Shadows Over Camelot has, but unlike those games, the tension in BSG is cyclical. This is because every time you jump the ship, all of the Cylon basestars, raiders, and heavy raiders are removed from the board. Then the buildup starts all over again as the Cylons "find you" and start deploying ships to wreak havoc and whatnot.

The skill checks are very original, espeically with the addition of the 2 cards from the "destiny deck" every time you do a skill check, so that you never know whether "bad" cards came from the secret Cylon player(s), or whether they were just part of the destiny cards.

I haven't had a chance to play through a full game yet, but I think it's pretty awesome so far. If you've never seen the show, you'll still be able to pick up the game pretty easily. But, if you're a fan of the show, I think you'll find that this is an extremely detailed and faithful representation of the show in board game form.

So say we all!!!

Could anyone upload some example images of the skill cards, crisis cards, loyalty cards and Quorum cards (say, three of each type in each picture would be good!)?

Also, one more question: the special location abilities for Admiral's Quarters, Brig and Administration all say that you must pass a skill check to use the special ability. Does this mean that the character at the location simply has to play enough cards from his hand to match the number in the top-left? Or are skill checks carried out in the same way as votes, with all players contributing both positive and negative cards to determine what happens?

It's just that looking at it, if it were the first option it would seem ridiculously easy to get out of the Brig or to pass the President title around to whoever you wanted! But the second option doesn't make as much thematic sense (though would probably be much better gameplay-wise).

Skill checks for those locations are just like all the other skill checks, meaning that the entire group weighs in on them.

WinterWolf

We've been using the term "skill check" and "vote" interchangeably in my group, as they essentially are the same thing. The post below is correct, everyone gets to weigh in on the decision, which is fun when someone tries to brig a suspected Cylon, even though that person is innocent and the players that are actually Cylons swing the vote to get said innocent suspect into the brig.

So...regarding the second 'loyalty' card deal...

...what if you already WERE a Cylon? And get a new 'you are a Cylon card'? Other than knowing there obviously is no one other than you (in a 2-Cylon deck), is there any effect?

...what if you WERE a Cylon, and are now dealt a 'congratulations, loyal human!' card? Are you now...loyal to humanity? Or 'stuck' a Cylon? And if the former, how does this impact scoring?

Thanks heaps for all this info Alex! I've been excited ever since I heard this game was coming and everything I'm hearing and reading sounds fantastic! Can't wait for it (even though I'll have to). Thanks again!

Don't forget the "Sympathizer" card as well. I'm guessing that Cylon trumps human, but Sympathizer trumps Cylon. So, if you get Cylon your first time, but get Human the 2nd draw, you're still a Cylon. Likewise, if you were a Cylon, and draw Sympathizer, you are now a Cylon on the side of the Humans, if the humans are losing.

This also holds true in the case of Sharon "Boomer" Valerii and Gaius Baltar, since they both draw 2 loyalty cards. Either one is more likely to be a Cylon (and also more likely to be a Sympathizer!).

Fearing that this game would not live up to the hype of itslef and the show, I decided that I would not get this game. Now reading this review, I think I am going to have to get it as soon as I humanly (or is that Cylonly) can. Thanks for the great review Alex.

Thank you for your review Alex. I sent my friend Lou to Gen Con with a mission to try this game out. I had no idea it would be for sale there! Hopefully he got a chance to try it and can give me his impressions as well.

-Will

All I can say that this will be a big hit with my SoC coop game maniac-group Judging by the rules summary, I feel that they did extremely well in capturing the "feel" of the show in regards of theme (unlike a certain similar game I'm afraid to mention, but which still kicks ass anyway) , so I'm looking forward to it!

For those who had played it: Is there any way for the humans to actively uncover the cylons? do they get benefit if they do? Do the cylons get benefit from staying hidden the whole time? From your summary, I read that it's almost mandatory to reveal yourself at one point. Are there any consequences of "false accusations"? Thanks for your answers in advance!

Mind you, these are some totally random questions that popped out of my head, not inspired by any similar game whatsoever. No, really.

Orso-

There are very few ways that people can actively look for Cylons. The only two we have found (and are pretty sure are the only ways) are the President using cards from the Quorum deck to peek at only one loyalty card. The other is by using Baltar's one-shot "Cylon Detector" to let you look at ALL of the Loyalty cards of one player. However, there is a Crisis that, if failed, prevents anyone from looking at Loyalty cards for the rest of the game. Pretty awesome, if you're a Cylon.

The nice thing is that if you're a Cylon and you have the ability to look at other people's loyalty cards, you can totally lie about it and get other people to turn against them. Sound strategy, actually. Is there a penalty for false accusations? No, especially since a fair amount of it has gone on every time we played.

As a Cylon, you're going to want to reveal yourself, and definitely not too late. The last time we played, the Cylons revealed themselves way too far into the game and were unable to prevent us from hitting 8 distance and jumping to win. The Cylons, when they reveal themselves, get a Super Crisis card, and get the ability to cause considerable more havoc through the Cylon location actions (resolve a crisis immediately, reduce resources, activate Cylon ships immediately). I hope the next time we play (which will be tomorrow), I'll be the Cylon so I can try out some Cylon strategy.

What reasons do the Cylon players have to not reveal on their very first turn? I can imagine the game wouldn't be near as fun if the Cylon players simply reveal at the very first opportunity. But, if that is the best play for them to win...