Board Game Review: Battle Star Galactica – Part 2
Continuing our review of BSG the boardgame, we’re going to be looking today at the phases, gameplay, tactics, and the traitor vs co-op concept.
The turns progress clockwise starting with movement. You can move freely from any location on the Galactica or Colonial One or you can move between the ships after discarding a skill card. Every location on either ship has an available action that is specific to the locale. For instance in Engineering you can force the ship into an FTL jump if the jump track marker has moved far enough rather than waiting for it to occur on it’s own, or the Hanger Deck allows you to launch yourself in a Raptor (assuming you are a pilot).
Next up is the action phase. A player has a couple of options during this part of their turn. First they can use the aforementioned location options simply by activating that space for their turn. Secondly they could play a Skill Card and use the action listed there. Thirdly they could play a special skill that is specific to their character and usually a single use skill. Fourth a pilot that begins their turn in a Raptor may attack any cylon ship in the same space quadrant as they are or move to an adjacent quadrant. Finally the President can opt to play a Quorum card or the Admiral can use a Nuke Token to attack a cylon ship with. Revealed cylon players have a specific track they have to function on with one of four locations to activate.
After the action phase comes the Crisis phase where the player draws form the crisis deck (see how they did that? Very convenient). One of two things happens, either a cylon fleet swarms the Galactica or something negative happens requiring the entire group to use skill cards to overcome (or undermine if you’re a hidden cylon) the crisis. Next any effects dictated by the success or failure to pass the crisis is applied, for instance a resource is lost, or an area of the ship is damaged. Cylon ships are activated according to any icons appearing on the lower corner of the card, a Basestar may launch more Raiders, Raiders may move or attack that turn, etc). Finally if the icon appears on the crisis card the FTL jump track (more on that later) moves up one slot and if it reaches the final location the Galactica and fleet will make the jump, resetting the track and escaping any cylon ships.
The Crisis cards allow for the primary method of undermining other players when trying to pass the required score printed on the card. The Crisis card will have certain colors of skill cards that count towards the total and any color that shows up and isn’t on the Crisis card counts against the total. So the process of resolving a crisis looks like this: At the end of a turn the player draws a crisis card, reads it and throws the card onto the board. Two skill cards are drawn from the Fate Deck, a deck made of two cards from each skill deck, each player may add as few or as many skill cards from their hand to help overcome or undermine the success of the crisis card, all cards are laid face down. The cards are shuffled and then turned and the colors and points are counted to see if they overcome the Crisis challenge rating.
Every time the Galactica jumps, either by the FTL track progressing to the end and the ship auto jumping or by using the FTL control location in Galactica to force the ship to jump, the player draws a card from the jump deck. It’s a bunch of small cards with events attached to them and points. Once the humans reach 8 jump points they make their final jump to Kobal and they win. That’s the only way humans get to win. Once 4 jump points have been reached the Sleeper Phase takes place where the second Loyalty Card is passed out to each player. Now at least one person is for sure a cylon agent. The problem is though identifying the culprit.
And that leads me to my last point about the game, subterfuge. This is perhaps one of the only games I’ve ever seen that actually places our right lying in the rules. There is a rule about secrecy and misguiding other players. Now two things can take place that will affect your approach to undermining the other players. You can choose to remain a hidden cylon agent or reveal at any point in the game, but once you reveal you move to a special track for revealed cylons and your ability to undermine the other players changes a bit. In a larger game there will be two cylons with the possibility of a Sympathizer. While in our group, we almost immediately begin making accusations; it really gets heated after the midway point of 4 jump points.
Some final thoughts on the game is that while there is a lot to keep up with, I mean I made a two part review just to explain it and I didn’t even do that for Arkham Horror which is much more complex, it actually isn’t that difficult to play. It’s a lot of fun as long as you don’t mind a little “screw your neighbor” in your evening. Some people may get upset or offended, if you do stay away from this and other traitor style games. Otherwise it’s a load of fun and even more so if you like the BSG universe. There are two expansions to the game I look forward to exploring later. As usual Fantasy Flight Games knocked it out of the park again.
What are your experiences with Traitor style games? Do you have super competitive types in your gaming group?
