After our first rollicking, frenzied, knock-down, drag-out, shouting match of a game last night, my family has declared the Battlestar Galactica game our current favorite, hands down. This game is a keeper, and it'll be in the front of my bookcase on the easiest-to-reach shelf.
Here are a few highlights as to what made the game so much fun for us:
1. The game is essentially a team vs. team game, humans vs. cylons (i.e. androids), although the members of the cylon/android team may not be fully known until the end of the game. I find games that require teamwork, as opposed to "every man for themselves", are much more involving, and this game really gets the players interacting.
2. The cylons/androids want to kill the humans, as you might expect, but the mechanics of the game allow the cylons/androids to remain disguised as humans while they attempt to sabotage the efforts of the humans. Thus, it's sort of a detective game, like Clue, as the human players try to identify the cylons/androids. We had a huge amount of fun trying to figure out who was a cylon while accusing everyone else of being cylons! There was lots of finger-pointing and excitement. Trust no one.
3. There was enough action and involvement that no one became bored while waiting for their next turn. Each player's turn tended to go slow, expecially since this was our first game, but after a few turns everyone got the hang of it and the pace picked up. Everyone had different jobs to do, but all players were involved in assisting--or sabotaging--everyone else, so there's not really any downtime. Each turn there was a new crisis to overcome, whether fighting robots aboard ship, engaging in ship-to-ship battles, or repairing damage, or... Well, you get the idea.
4. Finally, if some of your friends lean towards the theatrical, there can be an element of roleplaying to the game as you take on the personas of the Battlestar Galactica characters. Roleplaying isn't necessary, but if you are a roleplayer at heart, then you can have a lot of fun with this, especially if you've watched the Battlestar series. Even if you haven't watched the series, don't worry, the roles are fairly generic to the science fiction genre and it's easy to use your imagination. Two of our players had not seen the series, but enjoyed themselves immensely as our admiral bellowed out orders, as our fighter pilots screamed for backup, and as the politicians, well, pontificated. Some of our group hammed it up and that only added to the game's intensity and silliness.
This game comes with my highest recommendation. Give it a try.
Hurm.
Great game but it is a bit slanted towards the Cylons.
After playing about dozen games the humans finally won one.
This game is AMAZING!!
In my experience, Cylons usually win at first because the people who are new to the game (usually everyone "at first") simply aren't good at playing as Humans yet. They aren't good at being Cylons either, but the game itself wins sometimes. Literally, my friends played a game (I couldn't make it) and lost. They finally threw up their hands and revealed loyalty cards. Everyone was Human.
Eventually you get to the point that people get better at the game and at that point Humans win more.
Overall, my favorite character from each category:
Political: Tom Zarek. He has a lot of power when it comes to letting people in and out of the brig along with a nice card draw.
Military: Felix Gaeta. He has an AMAZING once per game and a great card draw.
Pilot: Apollo. He's a very good character with good abilities and a nice card draw.
Support: Chief. Can't go wrong, though Cally is fun too.
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I played my first ever game of it on Saturday, and had loads of fun.
Someone played the wrong card by mistake(!) on pretty much the first crisis, and convinced us we had a cylon in the party. It was a 4 player game but the colour of the card narrowed it down to 3 suspects.
I was playing (President!) Balthar, and used the cylon detector on the admiral - and found out he was a cylon. Next turn I had him arrested and thrown in the brig. Problem was, the other two players were worried that I might be a cylon, and had brigged an innocent man.
First chance they got, they put me in the brig as well.
At that point, the humans were doing really well - then the second round of loyalty cards revealed another player as a cylon sympathiser which resolved as a cylon because the humans were winning.
The remaining unbrigged human player refused to let either of us out of the brig, and tried to carry on as the only human player left. That worked out about as well as could be expected, and eventually I was able to convince him to let me out of the brig.
Unfortunately, the cylon in the brig was also able to escape, and whilst we did not have enough time to finish the game it was pretty clear the cylons were going to win.
I found out the hard way that it is not enough to be human if nobody believes you. Guess it was my own fault for playing Balthar. I still think the others should have waited for at least some evidence of treachery before brigging me though!
I played my first ever game of it on Saturday, and had loads of fun.
Someone played the wrong card by mistake(!) on pretty much the first crisis, and convinced us we had a cylon in the party. It was a 4 player game but the colour of the card narrowed it down to 3 suspects.
I was playing (President!) Balthar, and used the cylon detector on the admiral - and found out he was a cylon. Next turn I had him arrested and thrown in the brig. Problem was, the other two players were worried that I might be a cylon, and had brigged an innocent man.
First chance they got, they put me in the brig as well.
At that point, the humans were doing really well - then the second round of loyalty cards revealed another player as a cylon sympathiser which resolved as a cylon because the humans were winning.
The remaining unbrigged human player refused to let either of us out of the brig, and tried to carry on as the only human player left. That worked out about as well as could be expected, and eventually I was able to convince him to let me out of the brig.
Unfortunately, the cylon in the brig was also able to escape, and whilst we did not have enough time to finish the game it was pretty clear the cylons were going to win.
I found out the hard way that it is not enough to be human if nobody believes you. Guess it was my own fault for playing Balthar. I still think the others should have waited for at least some evidence of treachery before brigging me though!
So, so true. They had statistics on their side due to your extra loyalty card. What more evidence did they need? :P
Sounds like it was a good game though.