Battlestar Galactica - The Boardgame
Tried the Battlestar Galactica boardgame last night and enjoyed it. It's an interesting cooperative game in which all the players are trying to get the Galactica to earth while various crises and cylon attacks deplete their resources. The catch is that, at the start of the game, one of the players might be a cylon, and by the mid-game, one of them will be a cylon, but none of the other players knows who it is, until that player decides to reveal themselves, at which point they switch from trying to undermine the other players to openly opposing them. Until the cylon player chooses to reveal him or herself, the only thing the other players can do is throw the player they suspect of being the cylon in the brig, and if they're wrong, they'll actually be hurting themselves. The game does a surprisingly good job of capturing the feel of the show - the constant crises, the food and fuel shortages, the paranoia, the political conflicts, and especially the fact that the cylon player might not even know that he or she is a cylon at first. Players also get to choose from ten different characters to play all of whom have different strengths and weaknesses based on the show. For instance, I played Starbuck, who is really good at dogfighting, and who has a special destiny that can, once per game, let the players avoid a specific crisis, but who also can be sent to the brig much more easily than anyone else because she's insubordinate. What's more, the game is designed so that the characters have talents which cover all the bases (rather than, say, having everyone pick pilot-characters, which would mean the players would have a hard time with political crises). The only criticism I have is that in the three-player game I was in last night, it was immediately obvious who the cylon player was. Also, it was a long game, and with more players it might go even longer, although more players means that you'll also move toward Kobol quicker, so that might balance it out. At any rate, the game was fun with three players, and I suspect that four or even five players will make it even better.