I recently had the opportunity to check out the Battlestar Galactica (2008) boardgame with my friend Jason.  He’d bought it on a whim, and needed a patient geek to play along, through the tangle of rules.  I won’t bore you with a full review, which would undoubtedly be inferior to this one over at BoardGameGeek, but will rather describe some particular thoughts, and show some photos of the game in action.

Unpacking

The first thing I thought when Jason opened the box was “holy crap, this has more pieces than Betrayal“.  Components include: Resource Dials (on the main board), numerous decks of cards, character markers, and plastic tokens for Vipers, Raptors, and two types of Cylon raiders. There’s not a ton of things to punch out (but a few), and all of the plastic tokens are pre-cut from their sprues.

Gameplay

We decided to play through the game totally cooperatively, so that we could each see all of the mechanics and try to understand what’s going on “under the covers” in terms of strategy.  We also played two characters each, to get to 4 total players.  This broke a few things as far as how the treachery aspect is supposed to work (how can you run a Cylon and a Human, etc).

I would note that the space required to play this game is absolutely massive.  Our kitchen table is 42″ square without expansion, and there probably wouldn’t have been space for 4 players.  The board itself is modestly sized, but it’s the decks and hands and character sheets that start adding up, in terms of space.

We found a few places where the rules were a bit unclear, in terms of how the Cylon Attack scenario cards work (we kept adding Cylons, not resetting the board each time). We also discovered that balancing the characters properly is a learning experience.  We had a single support character, and she was the Cylon. Needless to say, that didn’t go so well.

Conclusion

Overall, I think the game is a lot like Betrayal in that it’s  a blast, once you get the hang of it.  Having 100% Noob players didn’t help our cause any.  This is definiately the sort of game you should learn with some people who already know how to play.  Many “property-based” games (those based on an existing  franchise) aren’t much fun to non-fans.  The Battlestar board game is definitely more interesting to BSG fans, but is a totally acceptable strategy game in its own right.

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Games, Products by Kevin