Hey all,

I've never played BSG, but I loved the old series and like the idea of the traitor mechanic. I love how it works in Betrayal at House on the Hill and in Shadows over Camelot -- how does this game compare to either of those? What's the complexity level like? We have so many games that it's hard to keep all the rules straight, and frankly, investment in learning complex rules that we're just going to have to re-learn every time we play is a hard sell.

I'd love to love this game : Should I invest?

Cheers!

Unfortunately I’ve never played those two games so I can’t directly compare. As for complexity though, no single element of Galactica is particularly hard to grasp and most of the elements react in fairly straightforward ways. There are a good number of different things going on though, as someone who didn’t play many hobby level games prior to this it took some time to grasp fully. There’s also a bit of a learning curve for some characters, Roslin and Boomer, for example, are extremely powerful but have the two worst weaknesses in the game and Chief though solid and a life-saver some games is kinda dull in the base version.

Overall though it’s rather intuitive and fun. If you like traitor games this is certainly going to be worth it for you I think.

Played both of those games. They are relatively simple compared to BSG. The hidden-Cylon aspect is a little like SoC, and the concept of constant set of tasks maybe. BatHoH is a really fun game, but nothing like BSG. Maybe the tiny exception that sometimes you work REALLY hard to get in a "winning" positions, and turns out you are on the other team.

Its maybe a little more like Call of Cthulu… maybe. Heck, you can play the first game with NO Cylons and still lose! It's not a bad way to learn or demo the game. For the basic Mechanics, I often say it's like Puerto Rico… that game has many roles and lots of buildings, but on any ACTUAL turn there are only about 3 things you would really DO… so its not THAT complex. But you do have to have an idea of what all the space do, what the card do, how to vote.

Still say the best bet is to go to local game store or a convention and have someone show you the game.

Its pretty popular and there is the new expansion coming, so… you can buy the game and at worst sell it at half price in a few months!

Seems like new players are usually overwhelmed by all the pieces and such, but it really is an easy game to learn (though not easy to win as Mephisto indicated). After a few rounds new players have figured it out, really all you do on your turn is move, take an action (from the board, a card, or a character-specific action) and then draw a Crisis card that causes evil things to happen. Thats really all there is to it, learning the game is more about learning to recognize which decisions are good ones and realizing that sometimes you just have to be ok with something awful happening and not even trying to fight it.

Cool! Sounds like I'd really enjoy it. How is the art? It's not just photos from the TV series, is it?

It is …. mostly?… a lot of stills from the series. There are icons, a style of writing and boarders etc, but yes… almost every card and space is a still shot.