I had the great fortune of being able to demo and to play Battlestar Galactia at GenCon 2008. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to do so until Saturday -- after Fantasy Flight had sold out.

Having not had the chance to purchase the game, I do not have photos or the rules to use during this review. Still, there are no other reviews of this game, so I'm going to do my best to some the game up from memory (which is a bit fuzzy since we played until after 4am!) So, this won't be the best review of this of this game, nor will it be the most complete. And it may have a few mistakes in it, too. Regardless, I think it'll give people a decent idea of how the game works. For those wanting to skip to what I think of the game overall, scroll down to the bottom where my Final Thoughts section is located.

Components

The components of this game are not exactly the most exciting that I've seen. The game board has Galactica sitting in the middle of it, the president's ship up to the top (sorry, I haven't watched Battlestar since the Cylons were all metal toasters and Starbuck was still a man, so I'm not up to date on all the names here.) Surrounding Galactica are six space zones where space combat takes place.

The board also has a few other trackers for keeping tabs on how many cylon raiding parties have boardesd the ship and for how close Galactica is to being able to make a jump. And the board has a place for holding some of the cards used in the game. Finally, the board has four dials on it that keep track of Galactica's fuel, food, population, and morale.

Each of the ships has multiple spaces on it that allow each of the players to do various acts (such as launching vipers, firing Galactica's weapons, etc.) And there are four spaces for any of the cylons that have revealed themselves.

There are cardboard markers for each character that get placed in little plastic stands and also small round ones to mark when you're out flying in a viper.

Speaking of vipres, the only molded plastic bits are the ships. Well, most of the ships. The population ships are just cardboard markers. So are the battlestars.

There are also a few decks of cards. There's a small deck of cards for revealed cylons to use, a deck for the president to pull from, a deck of event cards, and a deck of skill cards. The skill cards are broken into 5 different stacks (politics, leadership, engineering, piloting, and tactics.) Each stack is colored differently on the front, but all share the same backing.

There are few other bits here and there, but that sums up most of them. Frankly, I wasn't overly impressed with the components. They're nice enough, but you're not getting the stuff you'll find in Descent or Starcraft here. And I really didn't care for all the photos used on the components. That's a personal thing, I just like drawn stuff more than photos. Regardless, the compoents work just fine for the game.

Game Play

The game starts by assigning various characters from the show to each of the people playing the game. Each has different characteristics and special abilities. Importantly, each draws cards from a limited selection of the skill decks at the start of the turns, this ends up becoming quite important.

After each person has been given their character they are given loyalty cards that let them know whether they are or are not a cylon. Depending on how many people are playing the game changes how many cylons are going to turn up during the game. Either way, cylons will show up in each game. That being said, an interesting feature of the game is that cylons might now show up during the begining of the game. Once the humans have gotten 1/2 towards winning the game a second batch of loyalty cards are handed out, which can cause people who thought they were playing humans all along to really be cylons. And one person will end up getting a sympathizer card that switches the player to be on whichever side is currently doing worse.

Once everyone has been given their starting skill cards and they know if they're human or not, the game starts up.

Each turn a player decides what action they want to take, which could be playing one of their skill cards or taking one of the actions printed out on the board. What happens here can be important, obviously, but when the game really gets interesting is after the player has taken whatever action (or actions, sometimes you take more than one.)

After a person has taken their actions they draw a card off the event deck. These events are never good for the humans. Sometimes they are just bad, sometimes they are devestating. There are two general types of events. Some event cards have the cylons showing up to attack Galactica. The humans can't stop that from happening (there is an exception to this, some players have special powers that can stop it. For example, Starbuck can allow a revealed event replaced with a new one.)

The other event cards are where the game really shines. The other set of events the humans might be able to avoid. These events have a difficulty level that, if the humans can meet, will cause them not to happen or sometimes will give a benefit to the humans. If they can't meet the difficulty then they will typically lose food, morale, population, fuel, some combination of those, will send players to the sickbay or the brig, or to lose skill cards.

One thing I forgot to mention above, a destiny deck is made by taking two cards from each of the skill decks and shuffling them together. Two cards are taken from this deck to seed the challenge pile with random cards.

When these events turn up each player, starting with the player to the left of the current player, can play any of their skill cards in hopes of countering the event or at least minimizing its effects. Each of the skill cards has a number printed on them (I saw from 1-5.)

Each challenge has a combination of colors that show what type of skill cards will help the humans out. For example, if the challenge has a red and green square on it then piloting and leadership (I think it's leadership, again doing this from memory here) will help the humans out. Going around the table, each player can choose to add cards to the challenge or to pass. Cylons, of course, will often try to hurt the humans out by either passing when they have helpful cards or putting in cards that don't match the challenge.

Once everyone has played skill cards, they are gathered up, shuffled, and revealed. Any cards matching the challenge are added up while any that don't match subtract from that value.

Once it's known if the challenge was passed the effects of the card are played out. After that you'll look to the bottom left of the card. It shows whether the cylon ships activate or if they attack Galactica. Cylons will move towards the closest population ships (clockwise if it's the same going either way around Galactica.) If the humans have launched any vipers they will stop the cylons from moving through a space, instead they will attack the humans. If there's nothing but population ships, however, they will destroy them causing the population dial to get bumped down by whatever amount is printed on the back of the ship's marker.

And after that you'll look to the bottom right to see if Galactica moves up the jump track. The jump track has six spots on it. There's a starting spot, two spots where Galactica cannot make a forced jump, two where it can, and one where it automatically jumps. Forcing a jump causes a loss of fuel, an automatic jump is free. When Galactica jumps any ships outisde of Galactica are removed from the board, which can be a life saver for the humans if there's a lot of population ships and cylons out.

Those are the basics of what takes place. Various skill cards can influence many things. For example, there is a declare an emergency card that can be played after its shown whether the humans passed a challenge or not. It reduces what was needed to pass the challenge by two. There are other cards that can allow other people to take two actions right away. Other cards benefit space fights by either giving extra attacks or forcing cylons to reroll when they've succeeded.

Final Thoughts

The challenge system is great. It is what makes the game so good. If only two non-matching skill cards show up during a challenge it leaves all the players trying to figure out if it was just plain bad luck from the destiny deck or if a cylon was out there that dropped in some cards to screw things up. It makes for a great meta-game. It's a perfect time to start throwing out accusations and to even throw people into the brig, which limits what they can do dramatically. Also, once a person's in the brig the only way out is through a challenge that they cylons can continue to screw up (I was told whoever is the president can get a pardon card that will let them out, but I didn't get a chance to look through the president's deck.)

Regardless, watching what cards show up, seeing who had the chance to get whatever color cards screwed things up, who played cards, etc. It leaves all the humans guessing about who they can trust (and having been a cylon in a demo game, it often leaves the cylon wondering if there's someone else out there working with them.)

When I first heard about the hidden cylons, etc., being in the game I immediately though it was going to just be a Shadows Over Camelot clone, a game I don't really care about. It's not. Not knowing what cards people are throwing in on the challenges, not knowing if the destiny cards screwed things up (although if three cards show up you'll know that there's a cylon out there.) Those things make things fun and makes this a game that I really, really enjoy.

In the end, this is a game that I will buy when I get the chance. I know it'll hit the table a lot.

And I do want to take a second to say thanks to Mike from Arizona (at least I think your name was Mike, if not well, it's the guy from Arizona that was originally from New Zealand) who let me play this game at GenCon.

Things I realized I forgot

The following is from a message I put together further down in this thread, but I realize that not everyone will read that far down. I've cut and pasted that message here for those who just want to stick with this review and not with things that followed it up:

----------

Most the questions that have been asked so far have been answered. Your first question, however, made me notice that I really lacked any description on how either side wins.

The humans win in they manage to make 8 jumps. Once they either force a jump (which anyone can do) or an automatic jump happens two cards are pulled off a deck (what it's called, I'm not sure, I'll just call it the jump deck). One of the players looks at two cards and picks one of them to play. Each contains events (from my recollection some are bad, but none of the ones I saw were that bad) and has a number on the bottom that shows how far of a jump is made. Once that totals to 8 then one final jump of any distance needs to be made and the humans win.

The cylons have a number of ways of winning. Running the humans out of food, population, morale, or fuel will do them in. Getting four cylons raiding parties onto Galactica will win the game for them. And destroying 6 parts of Galactica will also win the game for them (whenever the battlestars successfully hit Galactica it destroys one area of the ship, the area is randomly determined by flipping over a damage marker.)

Moving on to the sympathizer, that card must be immediately revealed. I'm not sure how to tell if the humans are losing, I think if any of the four dials are showing red numbers the humans are considered to be losing, but the sympathizer always went to the cylons in the games I played.

There are rules for what to do if one person ends up with the sympathizer and a you are a cylon card as well as what to do if one person ends up with two you are a cylon cards. I'm not certain of the rule for the earlier, but in the later situation the cylon can give one of his cards to another player to force them into being a cylon.

Someone expressed concern over the theme of the game. I've only seen the pilot episode of the new Battlestar series and I was bored to tears with it (I've heard it gets better, but meh.) And while the game does drip with theme that didn't detract from my enjoyment of the game. I couldn't care less about the theme here. Its the mechanics of the game that really drive the game and make it so enjoyable. Unlike Shadows where there's some chance that there won't be a traitor there's always going to be one or more in Battlestar. And unlike Shadows where the traitor has nothing to really cover up their acts, the destiny deck (which does get recreated if it runs out, I think that was answered earlier, but it may not have been) gives a great way of hiding whether the cylons are being played.

I don't care for Shadows much at all. And that's a theme that I typically would have enjoyed more.

Finally, as for the person who felt that their demo of the game wasn't done well, give the game a chance. The people demoing at Fantasy Flight were getting slammed with one demo after another with barely a break. I think they sometimes changed what game they were demoing with someone else. Regardless, given that amount of demoing I think it's a shame that you didn't get a great demo, but it is somewhat understandable. They're only human (and overwhelmed humans at that.) Anyhow, hopefully you'll get a chance to try it out because it really did suprise me about how good this game was.

Thanks for the review! I got sucked into the hype for Shadows Over Camelot, and didn't like it, and I've been fighting hard to avoid ordering Galactica until I read a bunch of reviews. People have been saying such nice things though...

Thanks for the info.


FYI: Richard Hatch, who played Apollo in the original BSG, plays Tom Zarek in the new one.


I love this idea. What if you are already on the losing side?


Is the destiny deck rebuilt if it runs out?


Can only Adama force a jump?


Do cylons ever know each other without being revealed? Is the sympathizer always revealed?

Since I already have Shadows Over Camelot to fill my cooperative-game-with-traitor niche, my main questions about the game are how well it lives up to the BSG theme. Does it?

A question about the Character Stands.... Are these Cardboard ala Arkham Horror, or Cardboard ala...some cut out RPG?

EDIT: Scratch that. I found a picture, and it does look like they are Arkham Horror style stand ups. I LOVE this. I've heard people clamoring for plastic...but think about it. Plastic can't keep Katee Sackhoffs tough sex appeal, now can it?

Great preview, thanks!

I guess my questions are:

- How is scoring handled? IE., if you have two Cylon players, how do you decide if your 'side' wins? Or do you win individually? Or do the Cylons all win as a group only by preventing the Colonials from winning? IE., how is this handled?

- Along the lines of the above...the 'sympathizer' card seems interesting, but...how do you know which side "is doing worse"? And since the cards seem to be played "close to the chest"...can't you just lie about getting that card and keep playing on the winning side?

I imagine it's like any other secret role game: When the game is over, you reveal your roles. If you helped the other side win, you lose.

I don't like Shadove Over Camelot either. Happy to see these two games are not that same. Might just order a copy of Battlestar now.

Sounds like a really, really good game! It takes quite a bit to peak my interest to the point where it's a 'must have'. But this one does.

Great! Thanks for the review.

The Cylon Symphatizer joins the Cylon side if they are losing, otherwise he stays at the human side.


Yes. It runs out a lot of times during the game.


No, anyone can force a jump, by using the FTL Control location on Galactica.


The Cylons have to guess just like everybody else.


The Cylons win as a group.


"Doing worse" is expressed as the number of resources the fleet still has. As far as I know, the Symphatizer Card is revealed, and if the player becomes a Cylon, then that is resolved immediately.

Thanks so much. I can't wait for this game now.

I would say give it a play before you buy if you can. It is a very similiar premise as SOC. As players, you fight against the game, one guy is a traitor etc. However, I did have fun playing it, and as I expected from FFG, the production is top notch.

I'm probably the last person that should answer this question, as I've only watched little bits of the new show and wasn't able to get into it. I wasn't interested in the game either. However, at Gen Con a group of gamers were able to rope me into the game although I knew it would be a 3 hour commitment. I was pleasantly suprised with the game and one of the first things that impressed me was the obvious respect or love for the show.

This is especially obvious in the characters and their weaknesses. Starbucks insubodination makes it easier for her to be thrown in the brig. The President's illness limited her actions (if I recall correctly), Tigh's alcoholism makes him discard his last action card if left unplayed, etc.

The events within the game, the images, the characters, the way the whole game played gave me a good feel for what the show is really like, ,and now I'm considering checking out the DVDs.

So, to answer your question: does it live up to the theme? I give an unqualified, yet resounding YES.

I'd read the rules and/or play a game first before you clamor to order. I played the demo and found the game incredibly dull. That being said I know nothing about the show and it isn't really my style, and I feel that is the major reason I disliked the game: it is dripping with theme. That will impress a lot of fans I'm sure, so it may be a selling point for many, but for me the game itself, ignoring the theme I know nothing about, just wasn't that good. It didn't help that the gentleman doing the demo was clearly bored, distracted and not interested in teaching, but I think we hobbled along well enough for me to get a good idea that it wasn't something I wanted to purchase...

...which is a good thing after all the money I spent on FFG games at Gen Con

Are there any plans for expansions to this game yet? I've grown incredibly frustrated at companies that are more interested in building streams of revenue rather than providing great games out of the box. This looks like its a full game, but the last time I was totally happy with a FFG purchase was Blue Moon City.

Any information specific to this issue is appreciated.

The box will probably contain a game you can play. Glad I could help.

I have played SoC a few times, and I find the game incredibly boring, and frankly the theme is pretty much pasted on. Or rather the idea for the game and the theme were developed first, and then quests were developed, or at least that is how it seems to me. The quests in SoC (specifically the Grail Quest, the Black Night, etc.) all seem to be just playing cards down and hoping to have a better hand then what gets played through the game (or other players). To put it another way the quest mechanics seem to be very pasted on to SoC, and appear to me to be an after thought.

Because of these opinions of mine, I had a reputation as someone who hated Co-Op games, which absolutely was not the case. I actually really love the idea of Co-Op games, and Co-Op games with traitors. I'm also a huge fan of the BSG tv series, if truth be told.

So at GenCon this was on the top of my list of games to buy, and play. This game absolutely did not let me down, it actually surpassed what I hoped it would be. It IS the Co-Op game out there. Every little detail in the game fits into the politics and theme of the show. The characters are all well done. I personally love the look of the board, and all the components.

I can also tell you that the only similarity to SoC is that it is Co-Op, it is mainly card driven, and has traitor elements. Absolutely nothing else about the game is similar to SoC. It's like saying you don't need to buy El Grande if you own China. Both are are control games, but that in no way makes them the same type of game.

One of the really neat things about being a cylon in BSG is that you can still possibly end up helping out the crew of BSG. So you are a traitor traitor. Which once again, fits directly into the theme of the game.

This was the best game I picked up at GenCon. And I know most of the people I play games with are huge BSG fans, so this should be easy win for me on that front.

Good Review!

LA

Most the questions that have been asked so far have been answered. Your first question, however, made me notice that I really lacked any description on how either side wins.

The humans win in they manage to make 8 jumps. Once they either force a jump (which anyone can do) or an automatic jump happens two cards are pulled off a deck (what it's called, I'm not sure, I'll just call it the jump deck). One of the players looks at two cards and picks one of them to play. Each contains events (from my recollection some are bad, but none of the ones I saw were that bad) and has a number on the bottom that shows how far of a jump is made. Once that totals to 8 then one final jump of any distance needs to be made and the humans win.

The cylons have a number of ways of winning. Running the humans out of food, population, morale, or fuel will do them in. Getting four cylons raiding parties onto Galactica will win the game for them. And destroying 6 parts of Galactica will also win the game for them (whenever the battlestars successfully hit Galactica it destroys one area of the ship, the area is randomly determined by flipping over a damage marker.)

Moving on to the sympathizer, that card must be immediately revealed. I'm not sure how to tell if the humans are losing, I think if any of the four dials are showing red numbers the humans are considered to be losing, but the sympathizer always went to the cylons in the games I played.

There are rules for what to do if one person ends up with the sympathizer and a you are a cylon card as well as what to do if one person ends up with two you are a cylon cards. I'm not certain of the rule for the earlier, but in the later situation the cylon can give one of his cards to another player to force them into being a cylon.

Someone expressed concern over the theme of the game. I've only seen the pilot episode of the new Battlestar series and I was bored to tears with it (I've heard it gets better, but meh.) And while the game does drip with theme that didn't detract from my enjoyment of the game. I couldn't care less about the theme here. Its the mechanics of the game that really drive the game and make it so enjoyable. Unlike Shadows where there's some chance that there won't be a traitor there's always going to be one or more in Battlestar. And unlike Shadows where the traitor has nothing to really cover up their acts, the destiny deck (which does get recreated if it runs out, I think that was answered earlier, but it may not have been) gives a great way of hiding whether the cylons are being played.

I don't care for Shadows much at all. And that's a theme that I typically would have enjoyed more.

Finally, as for the person who felt that their demo of the game wasn't done well, give the game a chance. The people demoing at Fantasy Flight were getting slammed with one demo after another with barely a break. I think they sometimes changed what game they were demoing with someone else. Regardless, given that amount of demoing I think it's a shame that you didn't get a great demo, but it is somewhat understandable. They're only human (and overwhelmed humans at that.) Anyhow, hopefully you'll get a chance to try it out because it really did suprise me about how good this game was.

One more question: It seems one difference Shadows Over Camelot and Battlestar Galactica is that the latter, with more hidden information (in the form of everyone contributing skill cards face down, possibly others I'm not aware of), it's easier for the traitor/cylon to actively play against the knights/humans. But then on what basis can humans figure out who's a cylon?

Also, how are cylons revealed and get sent to the cylon locations? Or do you just keep throwing them in the brig?

In my demo Admiral Adama was a cyclon and I figured it after watching the skill check in which if the humans lost they were going to get a pretty severe punishment, Admiral Adama put in a whole heap of cards (probably about 25% of all cards thrown in for the skill check). when the cards were revealed, and the there were so many cards played against passing skill check I knew who to turn my suspicion towards, and I made it quite clear to the rest of the group who was a toaster. Pretty much through the skills check, and watching what they do on their turn, you are able to determine who is who. There are also leadership cards that force players to play their skill check cards face up, as opposed to face down, so that it pretty much forces cyclons (if they want to remain hidden) to help out the humans.



We didn't get a full game in yet, so this is still a little bit murky for me as well, but I do know that a cyclon can reveal themselves at anytime (or maybe just on their turn). I believe if you accuse a cylon and you are correct they get sent to the brig (or killed), and are reborn on the Resurection ship (still quite able to mess with the BSG).

I hope this helps.

LA

The Jump track is a little different then this. It has 3 places where Jumps are not allowed (including the start place) and 2 spaces where you can force a jump and 1 place where it is automatic (although not a space per say but when it goes off the track. but if you force a jump you have a 75% chance on the 1st space to lose 3 population (1 - 6 on a 8 sided die) and I can't remember what the percentage on the -1 population space is.

The Detestation Deck will (most of the time) cost Fuel/food/morale depending on what the Admiral picks as a destination.

But this is a Great review of my new favorite game.

You as a Cylon can only reveal on your turn. I am at work now so can't look at the cards but I am not sure if you have to reveal when thrown in the brig or not. Revealing yourself as a Cylon gives you some GREAT abilities. The 4 Cylon locations and the Super Crisis Card are great ways to win the game.

Caprica allows you to play your Super Crisis Card OR draw 2 crisis cards and make the humans do 1 and they ignore the activate Cylons AND the Jump prep parts of the card. That is very nasty.

Cylon Fleet is great when you have ships on the board and the humans are a long way from a forced jump (Sympathizers can not activate this location)

Human Fleet allows you to directly damage Galactica (this is one of the victory conditions for the Cylons I think 6 damaged locations on Galactica) and allows you to take a good card from a Human player.

Resurrection Ship allows you to discard and draw a new Super Crisis if you don't like the one you have. Also if you were dealt more then 1 Cylon card or if you became a Cylon via the Sympathizer card and had a Cylon card in your hand you can make another player a Cylon.

I am rather good friends with the Mike of whom you speak (and yes, you have his name correct.) I would have to say that other than the occasional game of Risk and Stratego growing up, that same Mike is responsible for making me the gamer I am today. It was he who introduced me to my first CCG (Vampire: The Eternal Struggle), my first (painful) game of Diplomacy, and I was playing at his house the first time I tried Euro games (Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride.) Mike is the ultimate gaming missionary, since his geek-knowledge is suprassed by few I've ever met, and he has an infectious enthusiasm and passion for the gaming hobby.

I would also like to say that Mike is the ultimate ultra evil backstabbing bastard and my lifelong gaming nemesis, and the last thing he needs is another game that will encourage his uber-evil, super-satanic Sith tendencies. Seriously. I can bet you the first time we play he WILL be a cylon. I will just have to crush him like I always do.

(And if that last statement doesn't make him get off his butt and and actually register an account here instead of lurking, I don't know what will.)

Well, he has never stabbed me in the back in our games (though I have yet to play Diplomacy with him and probably shouldn't). He is always drawn to you like a lion to a wounded gazelle. All the same, I think standard procedure for you would be to toss him in the brig every turn just to be safe