At a board-game night last night a friend insisted on sitting us down to play this. We had 6 people there, so we got a full game.

Now, I've only seen a couple of episodes of the new BSG show, but I loved the original one as a kid and what I've seen of the newer series makes me wish I'd been able to follow the whole thing. So I went into this not knowing much of the show apart from the pilot episode.

I selected Starbuck. We also had Zarek, Apollo, Admiral Adama, Tigh and Baltar.

Our first crisis was an ambush. I used Starbuck's ability to discard for another, and got an even worse scenario. We also got an attack for our second crisis. And our third. Apollo and myself scrambled to launch in vipers to protect the civillian ships popping up. Soon, the Galactica was surrounded by two basestars, we'd lost a couple of vipers and a civillian ship or two. We were in real trouble, as far as we were concerned, because we had no chances to do anything other than defend the fleet and wait whil our jump marker slowly crept forwards. The Admiral used up one of our nukes in the first turn, destroying a basestar, which was soon replaced by another.

At some point in turn 2 we managed to make a short jump and escape the Cylons and all breathed a sigh of relief.

After that, things went quiet on the Cylon front and we were able to look to repairing the vipers. And of course with peace came the opportunity for spotting suspicious activity. No longer worried about fighting off attackers, we began to monitor each others' choices, but no-one did anything really bad.

In the Sleeper Agent phase, however, Admiral Adama drew the Cylon Sympathiser card and went to Caprica. Admiralcy passed to Tigh and Adama, being played by the friend who'd pitched the game to us (and has played about 15 games of it so far), began working against us. To make matters worse, we knew for certain that by now there were two Cylons on the ship. I wasn't one of them.

I first got suspicious of Tigh when we were attacked by two basestars, in a crisis which put a -2 penalty on the rolls for unmanned vipers, as they were only trainee pilots. Despite admitting that he had an Executive Order card, refused to order out either myself or Apollo to help protect the civillian ships. We launched anyway on our own turns.

While fighting off the raiders, we had left Zarek on Galactica alone with Tight, and Baltar was on Colonial One. On his next turn, Tigh moved to the Admiral's Quarters and played a card to take the Presidancy from Baltar. At this point, we were all certain he was a Cylon. Worse, because of Zarek's disadvantage, he couldn't use the Admiral's Quarters to put him in the brig. Things got worse when Zarek was put in the brig and the Admiral's Quarters got destroyed in the ongoing attack.

I managed to re-board Galactica and jump us out of there, after which a crisis caused me to be sent to sickbay. Then, Baltar revealed himself as a Cylon, putting Apollo in the brig with Zarek.

We were done. Utterly done. Two crisis cards later, and the Cylons won by reducing our Food to zero.

I love this game. I know we had a rough start with so many attacks, but I really think it psyched us up for the game. We got a real sense of urgency and need for survival early on, which lent a lot to our determination not to let the Cylons win once they'd started working against us.

I got home late last night and immediately went online to order myself a copy. :-)

Wordmaker said:

And now let the good times just roll !!!

I really loved the report, and glade you love it as much as our gaming group does.

Great recap of the game. I could almost feel the tension as if I was playing it myself.

Tigh made some smart moves there, moving to the AQ to keep Zarek from locking him in the Brig. Although with two cylons left unrevealed getting out might not have presented a problem.

The only thing I wish the game had was a mechanic or event or something that allowed a player to reveal an unrevealed cylon, and not allow them to trigger their ability (much like with the sympathizer card). It can be difficult to play when you know player X is a cylon, yet they are still working on the inside to destroy Galactica. Unless you are the Admiral or the President, it often isn't worth not revealing yourself, but there can be times where it is still the better option. A small gripe, though -- I love this game too much, and when you are the cylon you don't worry about this as much.

I was a little surprised no one play Chief. I think in every game I've played someone has played Chief. It really sucks when he is a cylon, though.

JerusalemJones said:

Yeah, it seems like there should be a rule that when a player does something obviously Cylon (like playing Evasive Maneuvers when the Cylon just missed the viper it was shooting at) that they can be tossed out an airlock.

We've had the Chief in every game because we made the mistake of thinking we had to. And I think I've played him more than anyone. He's real handy to have around.

Yeah, we could've used the Chief when we lost the Admiral's Quarters.

I think I liked that Tigh got to seize all that power for himself. I picture all these moves as being the character convincing the rest of the crew and people of the fleet that he's doing the right thing, so it's hard for the players to take a move like that against him.

Wordmaker said:

You do realize that ANYONE can do the repairs? It's just easiest for the Chief.

Oh yeah, I know anyone can do repairs so long as they have the right card in hand. What I meant was that, because I was the only loyal human who could draw blue cards on my turn, we spent the game very low on those cards. Having a human on board with more of those cards would have been very useful.

Wordmaker said:

That's kind of what I was getting at. ANYONE can draw blue cards. There's a spot on Galactica to do that. Just so you know.

Yes, I'm aware of that. What I was getting at was that doing any repairs would have been easier with a character in play who was more readily able to collect blue cards, without having to sacrifice a turn to do so.

On another note, the copy of the game I ordered at ten to one on Sunday morning through Shire Games, www.shiregames.com, arrived at my office today. Awesome!