Played a two-player variant last night. Each player takes on two players...all are human to distance 4, then Cylon and Sympathizer are dealt out and one player controls a side (which usually means a switch of characters).

Had trouble with the first basestar, as it kept pumping out raiders, but finally jumped away. Next jump was pretty uneventful. I, as the admiral, picked another distance 2 card (to go to 4 - cause i wanted to move the game along!) and we dealt out the cards. This actually put our fuel to the red, so the sympathizer stayed on the human side, 3 vs. 1. Yes, with no cylons to start the game, our fuel was in the red!

I ruled that the Cylon reveal would be played as an "interrupt", not on that person's turn, since this variant basically makes it open handed at this point. Roslin was the Cylon, and shot Adama (who then had the sympathizer card and went to the brig!). Her super crisis was boarding party, which we had no hope of winning, so the Centruions boarded.

This is when things started to go bad.

The next four out of five crisis cards were Cylon attacks. At one point there were 2 basestarts, 5 heavy raiders, ~10 raiders, all vipers and the rest of the civvies (probably 8) ships on the board. The only success I was having was giving executive orders to Lee, who would play maximum firepower to wipe out a sector of space...but he could only handle one section at a time. The raiders were picking off civilian ships left and right. The cylon attack crisis cards were not moving the jump track either, so we couldn't spool up the drives.

Adama is fighting of the Centurions and gets one, but another is at the same distance. Jump track is at the -3 spot, and our Pop was at 1 (!) and i was seriously considering jumping the ship (using strategic planning) to go for a 50/50 shot either to at least clear the board and concentrate on the centurions, or lose the game. I didn't jump the ship, and tried to take out the remaining raiders. Next turn, the centurions advance again (something i missed here!), and we all get vented into space. AHHHHH!!

Thoughts: It's a little cumbersome managing 2-3 characters. You forget about the abilities and your options (quorum cards, skill cards...etc). Skill checks actually become a bit tedious after awhile. I really wish i didn't have to keep re-filling the destiny deck, that's kind of a pain, but whatever. Even so, with out the blame game traitor mechanic, it was still fun.

Would you recommend the 2-player variant then? It's tough enough finding players in my community.

It's fun enough, but you lose the best part about this game (the hidden cylons). Ironically, i haven't played a non-2 player verison yet.

I also think that in either case, humans have a really tough time winning. Even in this variant where you KNOW what the other human's cards are to cooridnate skills and actions, we still got spanked (one run through isn't a good data set, though).

I think the variant needs some tweaking, but it works for now. There was another one where you only play one character each and simulate Cylon actions (a "true" co-op verison)...so that 2 players are always working together. I haven't tried that one yet.