so say we all ... by your command

Tried Battlestar Galactica the board game last night. This is another of those "one of us is a traitor" cooperative games like Shadows Over Camelot. The human players win if they manage to get to Kobol and then jump to Earth, the Cylon players win if the humans run out of food, fuel, morale, or humans before they do. An interesting twist on this idea is that half the loyalty cards (which determine whether you are a Cylon) are handed out at the beginning of the game, and the other half, halfway through the game, so that you may very well be a Cylon sleeper agent. This means that it may not be in your best interests to work too hard toward a human victory in the beginning of the game, because you might not be human at the end of the game. Worked fairly well, although like many FFG games it is extremely reactive rather than proactive, which limits the amount of strategising you can do outside of your turn (this can lead to players being bored when it is not their turn). At least it was accepted with much more grace than last week's contribution (Galaxy Truckers), which seemed to have irritated people immensely. In our game one Cylon realised the gig was up when he played a negative card in a skill challenge that nobody else had access to, but unfortunately before anyone could imprison him in the brig (where he couldn't do much harm), he revealed himself. The other Cylon, a sleeper agent, went undiscovered, because he was careful to play small bonus cards in the crises, so remained helpful, but highly ineffectual. It didn't help that both Cylons were our political leaders in the game. We remaining humans, who were then rather top-heavy with pilots, mananged to make it to Kobol, and were nearly to the point of making our final jump away from the toasters (who had appeared in enormous numbers outside of the ship), when we either ran out of fuel or morale (the choice of which was moot, since we were down to our last lot of both). A very close game. As a helpful hint to anyone playing the game in the future, if the President isn't drawing and using Quorum cards, then he/she is a Cylon. The Admiral can get away with not using nukes and still not automatically be a Cylon. And whilst the hoards of basestars and raiders outside the ship look quite dangerous, you only really need one pilot in most games (we had two), as you will eventually be able to jump away from them (FTL Jump Control is your friend, even if it does mean leaving people behind). And many of the crises are political in nature, meaning that characters with the Politics skill are very useful (especially for getting out of the brig, a place a number of us humans ended up being familiar with, often due to being in the wrong spot at the wrong time).