Let's talk about Battlestar Galactica

Lately, I've been playing a bit of Battlestar Galactica. A friend of mine bought the full game with its expansions so I've had the chance to give it a whirl.

I truly wonder what you guys think of the game nowadays and specially how you feel the expansions change the game. It's an older game at this point and a favourite of the forum so I would love to see what you think of it nowadays.

From my small experiences with it, I think it's a very good game. It's much much longer than the usual social deduction game and hence the stakes are much higher. You have to be really, really sure before making a move against another player because getting it wrong can be fatal. It really benefits from being bigger, which is unusual.

On the other hand, it is a FFG game, warts and all. It's messy and the extremely small cards are annoying. It's one of those games that make me things of a redesign or a second edition and how such a second edition will almost invariably water it down.

What are your thoughts?

I enjoy the base game, but haven't played in several years. It runs a bit long for what it is, and works best with precisely {edit] 5 because the sympathizer mechanic is a bit unsatisfactory. I don't have much experience with the expansions, but they appear to be a messy grab bag of good and bad elements that tend to make the game even longer.

The license has lapsed, so I think a second edition is unlikely. But a new televisio.n show set in the universe was announced, and Ares has a license for the mi is game. So who knows what's in its future.

I found the game pretty variable, with some sessions being downright boring due to the cards drawn. That's fine, but I didn't invest in expansions because of it. I've only played the base game.

Then one time at our gaming getaway it was the featured game of the evening with no time pressure and a set of six players. It proved to be an exceptional play that evening. Made me regret trading my copy. So it's a mixed bag with me personally.

We played it so much when it came out.
The first expansion was really uneven, so we abandoned buying any more.

After many plays it started to show that, depending on the card draws, it could be a great experience or a boring one (not bad, just dull). And while it is still in my collection, it hasn’t seen play in a long while.

I wouldn’t be in this hobby if it weren’t for BSG. I played the base game into the ground, and there are things about it that even under the best of circumstances don’t work. The expansions only fix one of those things and the Cylon fleet (the pursuit board, IIRC?). The expansions however introduce a whole host of other problems that make an already clunky game with tons of detracting unnecessary bits that hurt the heart of the experience even more bloated and unwieldy. It’s one of things where you have to completely ignore huge swaths of content added to the game and I’m not being paid to be an editor. I had great times with it, but this is such a crowded genre now with many games out there that don’t betray the fun parts of the game. It’s second to only Runewars in terms of the exact kind of game I’m glad does not exist anymore. Too many shallow and cumbersome bits that are there only to serve the setting that aren’t actually any fun to play around with.

I think there are three viewpoints on the game:

- don't like it

- play it occasionally, like it for what it is, don't take it seriously/play for the experience and enjoyment of the IP

- groups who play the shit out of it, develop hardwired ways to play it with a curated set of expansions included ( Cylon Fleet to prevent the Cylon Fleet from disappearing, new characters, whatever ) . I find the player count comments interesting - I've encountered hardcore groups at cons that play ONLY five player and refuse to accommodate a sixth, although I think the meta has concluded that the Sympathizer should just be scrapped.

I fall into the middle camp. In looking at my logged plays, its been four years since I played it. Like so many other games, its hard to get to the table with so much other noise competing for play time, esp multi player.

AFAIK the license has reverted to Ares, so FFG is not going to reprint it. If you have a copy that you want to sell, you can get some decent money for it.

There is still a fair amount of activity on the BGG forums for it ; there is a consolidated rulebook that incorporates all the expansions.

I think it is still one of the better IP games out there. Sure its a bit overwrought in places, but it does capture the flavor of the show very well IMO.

My group still plays it regularly. We played our copy so much the board fell apart, so we bought a mat with a nice quality image of the board printed on it. We tend to use a grab bag of stuff from the expansions. It can run long but we're all so well-acquainted with it now the playtime usually stays reasonable. While it is a messy bitch of a game, it also allows players to get deeply involved no matter what role they pick, and you can have a satisfying game doing stuff that is super important to success without getting stuck with the stress of a critical die roll and feeling like you're to blame.

It's still one of the best of breed, funnily enough. Homeland is pretty bloody good but doesn't have the same epic feel.

It's one of the best game I've ever played for fun (with the right people, NEVER invite even one eurogamer to play) and for a thematic implementation of a board game. Saying that, it does not work well with four (Sympathizer required), while three is OK but I feel it is a bit too quiet and is more a deduction game than an experience, and six is OK if you're fine with the Cylon Leader or Mutineer roles in the expansions - personally I never play with less than five players (I have much better games for four or three head counts) so unfortunately I have not played it for quite a few years due to my AT group dropping in numbers.

For the pure hidden traitor game, and the reason it is rated highly by gamers of many persuasions, then the base game is unbeatable and only the Cylon Fleet board from the expansions should be added. But for gamers who want the BSG experience then the expansions are a must and whether it's exploring all the different characters with their strengths and weaknesses, escaping from New Caprica with most of your fleet, expanded Loyalty or Final Five cards, avoiding execution, controlling the CAG or the nukes, or surviving a Trial or Boxing there is enough different content for all Sci-fi fans.

I'm not a huge fan of the series, so I have no brand loyalty in that respect, but I was a fan of Konieczka's designs, so I picked it up when it came out. We played three times, with 4-5 players. I could see how it was supposed to work, but for us it just didn't. One game was a walk for the humans; the others were stews of futility with the Cylons laughing to the inevitable end. I wanted to like it, but it just didn't work for us for some reason, so I traded it.

I only play 5 player to avoid the sympathizer but otherwise I think the base game still holds up to even modern competition *except* that I think the game is tuned to be one jump too long. Otherwise, I think your point about it being a really different deduction game because of its length is spot on.

Fat Apollo is a must.

I played this game so much for its first year or so on the market. I'm not kidding, I probably played about 50 times over 2008-2009. The expansions kind of hurt this, but scaling them back did the trick.

But for our group there were two things that really killed it. First of all, the humans became far too good at playing the game well. I think in general the game doesn't give much for Cylons to do besides to add uncertainty. But as you become more familiar with the design, it becomes harder for that uncertainty to be as effective. In the end it became just as prone to a quarterback problem as other co-ops, with the odd game where the cylons could throw the game now and then. I understand this could have just been our group, but it became a consistent issue. It just was never ambiguous enough as to who was the Cylon.

The other big problem was that the show itself fell out of the zeitgeist, and while my original group who played it had watched it all, after a while successive groups were less familiar with it, and it just became less enjoyable.

BSG remains one of the most impactful games I've ever had in my life, but it ended up playing itself out for me. To some extent licensed games do depend on familiarity with the license to function well as an experience, at least for me. As a design it is also a little bit unwieldy, though it's generally able to get out of the way of the interaction. But I don't think it offers enough ambiguity in the end, and I think my time with it is done.

Eleven years ago, we played a game of BSG at Fortress: Ameritrash:

therewillbe.games/forum/30-pbem-pbforum/...lay-by-forum?start=0

Unfortunately, it wasn't play by forum, so you can't see the play-by-play action in the discussion thread.

Shellhead wrote: Eleven years ago, we played a game of BSG at Fortress: Ameritrash:

therewillbe.games/forum/30-pbem-pbforum/...lay-by-forum?start=0

Unfortunately, it wasn't play by forum, so you can't see the play-by-play action in the discussion thread.

That was a great game ! I had made images and a google doc to post updates as Kingput (I think) ran it for us - 11 years ago, bloody hell ... good times.