I got hooked right into BSG over the holidays last year (best frakkin show ever!). So naturally, I wanted to get this game. However, it's usually just me and my better half so I really got excited to see there was an official 2-player variant...so I bought the game.

After an excellent introduction to the full game recently at GottaCon, I was ready to show the game to my wife and try out the 2-player variant. While it was very good in showing how the game worked and getting a feel for play, the official variant falls flat for really getting into the game so I devised my own variant that we've only played once so far but it plays well.

Set-Up:
One player needs to take the Politician the other, the Military. Then both players take an additional character (pilot or the Chief...note; Boomer isn't used in this variant, remove her from play). Play proceeds as normal after that and players alternate activating their characters.

Skill Checks:
The player's play skill check cards as per the rules but once all character cards have been played they are flipped and totaled. Then the 2 cards (Optional 3 cards...see below) from the Destiny deck are flipped apart from the player cards and either added or subtracted accordingly. Note what skills the cards from the Destiny deck are, once removed after the Skill Check, replace the skills pulled from Destiny and re-shuffle the Destiny Deck (this prevents any kind of card counting and is a true Destiny Deck).

Sleeper Agent:
Players work together until the Sleeper Agent phase. Then 2 loyalty cards are set up, one 'not a cylon' and one 'you are a cylon'. One player randomly picks one of the cards. The player who is a Cylon now picks up both of his character cards and mixes them up so that the other player draws one of the characters randomly. The character drawn continues to be a human and goes over to be put into play with all of their cards, titles etc... the Cylon player is now left with one character who is the actual cylon and goes through the cylon procedure as per the rules but ignores the text effect on the cylon card.

End Game:
The jump count is reduced to 6 for this game. The human player must now try to successfully jump to 6 then jump again. The cylon player wins by preventing that as per the rules.

Optional Rules:
While making up the above and playing them it occurred to me that, in the cooperative phase the Skill Checks are a little easy because you know both players are definitely working together. So to make things a little more challenging, draw 3 Destiny cards on each skill check until the Sleeper Agent phase when one player becomes a Cylon (the cylon will then get to play a card so the Destiny draw now goes back to 2 cards hereafter).

For some added drama, and if you are up to the challenge, have each player play 3 characters. Do the same procedure as above but when the Sleeper Agent phase kicks in the human player randomly picks one of the newly revealed cylon players characters. This character dies! Remove that character from the game and discard cards, change titles etc.. The remaining 2 characters are Cylons. While I haven't tried this variant yet, I imagine it would be quite a challenge.

Enjoy!
(I played Bill and Lee Adama...turned out to be the Cylon..."I can't believe my own frakkin son is a Cylon...how can that be?! He was my own flesh and blood!" - William Adama)