Battlestar Galactica is a semi-cooperative game for 3 to 6 players designed by Corey Konieczka based on the Battlestar Galactica (BSG) series from 2003.
This is a game that lasts for about 3 hours, but if you get what the game is about you won’t even notice them passing by.
But first I have to talk a bit about the show the game is based on, it’s not a requirement to have seen the show to play or like this game. The first time I played I only knew BSG was an old show with some shiny robots shouting “By your command!”, I had never seen the old or new show, but the game hooked me all the same.
What is it all about?
In the show, humans have created robots (Cylons) that eventually rose against their masters (don’t they always?), after a long war a truce was declared and the twelve colonies (where humans reside) never heard of the Cylons again. Fast forward 40 years into the future and Cylons come back with a vengeance and destroy most of humanity. A single soon to be out of commission ship called the Battlestar Galactica and a few other civilian ships from the colonies survive trying to find their way to the mythical planet called Earth. How did the Cylons manage to wipe out most of humanity? Well, now they look like us.
How do I play it?
In the game each player will receive a loyalty card, this card will tell whether that player is a human or a Cylon. If you’re a human you want to perform various “faster than light jumps” to a planet called Kobol with all of your resources (Fuel, Food, Morale and Population) above zero, you also can’t allow those sneaky Cylons to deal enough damage to destroy Galactica or invade with a Cylon Centurion boarding party. Cylons want to destroy you in all those ways preventing you to reach Kobol, but they have to do it by sowing confusion and being inconspicuous at the same time.
However when the game reaches its half, you, a totally decent and helpful human might find out that you are a Cylon after all! This is because only half of the Loyalty cards are dealt at the beginning of the game. As far as humans know in the first half of the game there can even be no Cylon! There are 2 special roles, the Admiral and the President, which have more responsibilities than the other players and as these roles can be attributed to either humans or concealed Cylons it all adds up to a state of constant paranoia between the players. This is what makes this game a great social experience, as players must cooperate but must always be weary of what their companions are doing.
Each player starts his turn by drawing a hand of skill cards dictated by their character sheet, they then can perform an action, either through one of the cards or through the various locations on the Galactica and Colonial One, a presidential ship that is following Galactica and allows the President especially to impact the game a bit more, the player then proceeds to resolve a crisis card. Crisis cards are skill checks players should pass to avoid bad effects, first 2 cards are drawn from a Destiny deck made of 2 cards of each skill type then each player plays as much skill cards as he wants to this check secretly, then the cards are shuffled and results are totaled, the skill check then passes or fails and it’s effects are applied accordingly. There are some crisis cards that present a choice to either the current player, the Admiral or the President. Despite passing the crisis or not the cards may also activate Cylon ships that attack civilian ships on the board, damage Galactica or assault it with Centurions. These cards may also have the “prepare for jump” icon which will allow you in due time to jump forward in your way to Kobol.
However Cylons can reveal themselves to wreck havoc in specific Cylon locations, this is particularly useful if he has been found out or if several people are suspicious of him. If players get too suspicious of a player they may try as an action to pass a skill check to send that person to the brig where it can limit the damage that person might do and avoids special effects the Cylon loyalty cards allow if the player is not in the brig when he reveals himself.
In the box
As is typical with Fantasy Flight games, the box is full of goodies, player markers with plastic stands, detailed plastic ships and assortment of cardboard tokens and a board with good clean design. The cards are of great quality and have screen shots from the show , if you know the series the cards make perfect sense in accordance to their effects.
Is it a good game for me?
This game is all about the experience it offers. It isn’t a game with great mechanics, and many players will feel they contribute very little to the game, but the mechanisms are there merely to support the game, the discussion that ensues. Actually because there is often so much to do and so little one player can do to help it feels that everyone is needed. Playing as a Cylon alone (3 and 4 player games) isn’t as fun as playing as with another Cylon (on 5 and 6 player games), but it works. It’s very complicated for the Cylons if they only receive their Cylon cards on the second half of the game, but that’s because most of the time people play disregarding that they shouldn’t play optimally until they actually know if they are a Cylon on the second half of the game.
I actually dare you to have a pause in this game and check how people will continue to conjecture who is a Cylon based on several assumptions they make.
If you have a consistent playing group breaking this to someone new to the group can be very hard as the player can feel himself a little left aside even more so if they end up being Cylons. It is up to the experienced players to make sure the paranoia stands out from turn 1 for that player to enter the mood of the game.
The game stands on a finely crafted balance in which most actions you take can be interpreted with duality, because of this some important decisions will sometimes be dependent of luck. I have had several games culminating in the roll of a die deciding the winners. Somehow the game never seems to have excessive luck as those situations are often the result of the actions the players performed early in the game. There is a risk in every decision you make, this makes the game tense but very enjoyable as most of the times wins are by a short margin.
External links
Tiago is the mastermind behind Breaking the Magic but he usually isn't the mastermind when playing games getting a lot of humiliating last places. He is however a cunning Cylon. Also never ask him to roll a die, even though he doesn't have bad luck at critical times he is known to roll the worst possible result. He loves receiving mail and answers every single one. 
