My first visit to my local gaming club, LivingstonBattleground, for 2015 so after the round of belated 'Happy New Years' I was
quickly subsumed into a five player game of Fantasy Flight's Battlestar Galactica board game. Having never played before my fellow players soon had me
up and running with at least a basic understanding of what I was supposed to be
doing.
"Each player is secretly assigned his or her loyalty at the start of the game. Players will either be loyal to the humans, or to the Cylons. Humans and Cylons have specific and conflicting winning objectives. The human players win by reaching Kobol, but the Galactica will be threatened by a host of challenges along the way. Only through the cooperation of the humans will the ship (and fleet) survive. The Cylon player(s) wins by either destroying the Galactica with attacks from the Cylon fleet, or, through sabotage, by reducing one of the necessary resources (Food, Fuel, Population, or Morale) to zero."
The game is designed to be played cooperatively for
3-6 players. We had five players, so there were two Cylons amongst us - but
who? It quickly became a delicious game
of bluff and paranoia, with each player drawing and playing various skill cards, all done exhibiting their best poker faces.
For example, my character was the Chief Engineer, Galen Tyrol, who somehow
seemed to spend much of his time in the ship's brig - apparently my fellow
players all somehow suspected him of Cylon tendencies. Not sure how to take
that! On my turn my fellow players can pool some or all of their skill cards in
their hand to help me escape the brig, but as it's done without revealing what
they've actually played in the skill test they may be surreptitiously making it
more difficult for me to reach the required pass score!
