Humans ALMOST win at Battlestar Galactica!

 Tonight was a rare visit to Andys shop on a BattleQuest games night. I opted to play Battlestar Galactica with Brian, Kevin, Nigel and Andy. Initially things went very well for us as Kevin was outed as a Cylon virtually straight away as we were playing the add on rules from the Pegasus expansion. This left the humans in a very good position to win, although we didn't know at the time we had another Cylon (Nigel) in our midst. Battling on long and hard (This can be a very long game), the odds became insurmountable - and when Nigel opted to leave for Cylon shores, things went from bad to worse and even though we were only one jump from winning, we suffered too much damage and Galactica went down ...again!!

Galactica - just too hard for family level with all rules?

Today we set out as a family to play BSG - as usual there is the long set up time and everyone picked their favourite characters - but quickly the game came to a stop because we found it was just too complex for us to follow properly what we were supposed to be doing. I knew what to do and tried to help the others by helping them in their decisions but I ended up playing a 5 player game by myself as the girls and Anita were making decisions they didn't understand or know why they were doing it, which was fair enough. Maya especially had a hard time with reading the cards.

This got me thinking about editing the rules slightly (or a lot!) to make the game easier to play simply because they are not used to playing games as complex as this. I thought about taking away the Admiral and Quorum cards plus having every Crisis card carry a jump prep icon - as one of the complaints was it was taking forever to initiate just one jump! Maybe also do a game end at distance 4 instead of drawing extra Cylon cards. Possibly also get the players to ignore the text on the cards and just use the colours. This may make it harder to win, but just so that the family get a good flavour of the game without being bogged down with ALL of the complexities and want to gradually introduce specific rules with each play.

I'll bring this up with them and see what they say...fingers crossed!!

"Perhaps today IS a good day to die!" - Galactica lost! All hands!

"Basestars, ten and two o'clock! Raiders incoming! They're launching missiles!!" And that was how our epic 5 hour Battlestar Galactica game ended on Saturday night, Sunday morning!! Battlestar Galactica (BSG) is one of my favourite themed games and I'll jump at a chance to play. Steve kindly lent his parents grand house whilst they were away and 6 players came to the table, Brian (who supplied BSG, the Pegasus and Exodus add-ons), Tom (Mathematics wizz, but not so good apparently when it comes to setting up the Loyalty deck, but more on that later), Nigel H, Steve, Paul (BSG newbie) and myself. As you can see the table was covered with boards, chits and cards which goes to show the depth of the game and the excitement that was due to come.

Game well under way, my Boomer character is
in the launch hanger ready to go!

Firstly there is the Character Selection - I cheekily jumped in and asked for Boomer - we needed a pilot, but I didn't count on her getting TWO loyalty cards dealt later on (again more later). Steve went for Tom Zarek (Political leader), Nigel went for Col Tigh, Paul went for Support/Engineer Cally, Tom went for President Baltar and finally Brian went for Commander Adama. Being the only pilot I also got the CAG position - a new role that allows my character to control other Vipers whilst flying myself.

Yay I'm Boomer! I was CAG, but what?! I'm a Cylon!? Noooo!

Then came the Loyalty deck - this is a secret hand of cards that determines if you are a Cylon or not - twisting the way you play. I was dealt Not a Cylon. The game set off and straight away there was combat that needed to be resolved. With Pegasus on hand to help we made short work of a basestar but my character ended up in sickbay. That seemed a theme of the night, as soon as I got into a Viper, I'd quickly end up in sickbay! A lot of suspicion was also being laid at my feet for not displaying strong human traits for some reason. Then a lot of suspicion was being laid at Tom's feet - I didn't know why - until suddenly he declared he was a Cylon and Resurrected back to the Cylon fleet; ready to start causing havoc on the human fleet - something which he took with relish.

It's all going wrong...two humans are actually
Cylons - the only pilot and the President!

Mid way to Cobol, the next set of Loyalty cards are dealt; as I was Boomer, I get two cards as did President Baltar. I was dealt a non-Cylon and Cylon Sympathiser ... oh no! It was as it happened in the show! Boomer finds out she's a Cylon! Then we found out there was an irregularity with the cards and they were handed out again. Good - I doubt I'll get the Cylon card again and I get out in my Viper and start blasting toasters!! Except I got it again! Exactly the same card! It must have been fate. So automatically I became a Cylon and transferred to the Cylon fleet. So now my fellow humans suddenly became targets - something I wasn't really sure about - conflicted loyalties! Typical Boomer.

Things start to come to an end - with the new President also a Cylon -
two Basestars attack complete with an attack armada of raiders and heavy raiders.
Galactica suffers its fifth and almost final serious damage marker.

From there it went downhill for the humans - first came one hammering from the Cylons and they suffered some heavy damage. Then suddenly Steve (Tom Zarak) was revealed as a Cylon - leaving the humans without a President (Presidential powers passed to Commander Adama who also had taken on the position of CAG after Boomer had jumped ship) - and hope fading fast. But they battled on, taking on one Crisis card after another, but for some reason, they suffered a serious lack of Jump Prep markers. Finally, after a combined series of assaults by Centurions, several key locations taken and a cataclysmic attack from virtually all directions, Galactica suffered its 6th, and final, serious damage and she was lost, all hands.

"Game over man, game over!" Galactica is gone! 

Over 5 hours had flown by - the game had swung back and forth in favour of the humans and the cylons. In the end the cylons won - but just - the humans just needed to make one more jump to win and the cards were stacked against them. Brilliant game!

Some family gaming at last yay!

Finally we managed to get down to some family gaming today - everybody has been very busy with homework and everything, so it was good to sit down on the rug in front of the fire and and get some good games done - but which to play in our limited time together! We opted for 7 Wonders - fantastic as ever with Roshni winning by far with her Statue of Zeus Wonder. I tried to hedge my bets with a military win right at the end of the 3rd Age but to now avail! 

Maya gives 7 Wonders a "Thumbs up" endorsement!

After we packed 7 Wonders away, we went on to play Battlestar Galactica - yay! It was our first 5 player game and Kavitas first play as Roshni had had a quick go before. Maya was very excited about choosing her character Starbuck and wanted to dive in but I needed to overview the rules and game actions before we started - also Galactica has a reasonably long set up time that has to be done in a particular order, so as I did this with Mayas help I ran over the rules quickly mainly for Kavitas benefit. 

Play got under way, although we knew we really only had time for one jump, so we made the most of it. Within a two rounds, Galactica had taken a heavy pounding from the basestar near by and several Vipers were battling it out with Cylon raiders. Crisis after crisis was being dealt with and a Cylon Heavy Raider appeared so we knew we had to hustle to get out of there. Luckily we managed to Auto Jump before any more serious damage was done (we'd taken hits to the main guns and the body work). And that was it, we were 1 jump closer to Kobol! The family like the game once they get into it - Anita says it is very tense once it gets going but the set up did take a little time - perhaps the best course would be to set up the game before calling people to play - as Brian has done in the past! 

Oh, and at the end we revealed our Loyalty cards to find out everyone was human! 

Just about to start play - prior to character selection

Lots of Galactica!

Eventually I took the plunge and bought Battlestar Galactica - riding on a popular wave of family opinion at the moment as everyone is loving watching the series - at the time of writing, Anita and I have finished the show but the girls are coming up to watching season 4.5 or the Final season. I bought the game with some remainder Battlequest vouchers plus a little extra. Although complex looking, I found the rules fairly easy to follow. I did some test rounds by myself to get used to the mechanics and then invited Roshni and Maya for a test round or two.

Then I was lucky enough to be invited to a game at the gamers circle run by Brian who frequents the BQG boardgame nights. With Brian was Ruth, two Nigels and Andy of battlequest. Added to the base game was part of the Pegasus addon, but we left off the New Caprica board piece as there was a lot to get used to for the other players, let alone me! :)

It was a great game, 6 players - so it lasted a good 2+ hours and it turned out, along with Nigel who was an established Cylon Leader - a "6" Model, there were 4 Cylons or Cylon activated players!! Ruth whom I thought was acting suspicious actually turned out to be Human.

So a few days later, Anita, Maya and I played a few rounds, with Anita as Helo the Admiral, Maya as Starbuck and me as Tom Zareck the President. We did a reasonable job in destroying a base star and out running a Cylon attack armada but we succumbed to a lack of food! It is very hard for the humans to win this game, which is what makes it so exciting. Anita loved it enough to want a game next week, but with an insistence that the other two play to ensure finding out who the Cylon is (it was her and I clocked it, so off to the Brig she went...) is made harder...

Good fun all round - by your command!

Battlequest board game night....Cargo Noir and Red November...and BSG!!

Another great night at Andys place with some cool company and some cool games. I saw Battlestar Galactica was in play and really wanted to get involved but they were already running with a full crew. Still it looks like a great game and one I'd love to get hold of. I had brought over our copy of Cargo Noir - which Andy and a guy called Julian had a go of. It was a good game, although I tripped over the rules a few times - have to remember when in company you can't just gloss over things you can't remember. :)

Afterwards it was a game of Red November with Andy, Nigel and a few others - the idea is that Red November is a co-op game where problems keep breaking out on the submarine and your gnomes have to run about and solve them; fires, flooding, all whilst air, fuel and pressure run out or build up. It was a good game and we almost all made it, but a few were killed off and then it all came apart. Good little game.