I've now played 2 games of the BSG Board Game. I'm slightly biased, because I love Fantasy Flight Board Games, and I love BSG. However, I've found this game to be fantastically fun to really get into. But I stress the “Get into” part. A lot of the enjoyment from the game relies on the players being able to deduce who the Cylon is, or who it may be. But possibly more importantly, it also relies on the players to be able to lie, or at least defend themselves. And to top it off, a game full of seeds of descent is one of the more enjoyable games. The group I've played with to this point is great at having fun with the accusations, but really giving everything a lot of thought before we go off and make rash decisions.
So far, the Cylons are 2-0, which I've heard is a common problem with the game. But it does feature a nice difficulty balancing mechanic if you think the game is too unbalanced toward one side. In the first game, I became the Cylon (Chief) in the sleeper agent phase, and managed to play it close to the vest. I had one player convinced that the other player was the cylon. As a result, I got the Admiral's title and the Presidency in the same hands. Partly because that put both important titles in one set of hands, so it was harder for both sets of powerful actions to be performed on the same turn. After a few more rounds of only gradually effecting the game in favor of the cylons, I revealed myself. It took a few turns, but I eventually had the game in the bag.
In game two, we had a cylon since round one, but he (Tigh) managed to hang low for a bit. When the sleeper agent phase came around, I was convinced that the player was a cylon. But the funny thing was that I was convinced for the wrong reason. The player had gotten quiet, and it was quite the drastic change. But it turns out that he got quiet due to becoming tired, and not because he suddenly changed sides. I was playing Roslyn, and had the presidency. Tigh was able to take the first hit, and throw me in the brig with a Court Martial action that allowed him to hold both titles.
At this point, I was 95% sure that he was the Cylon. The president gets access to a special hand and pile of cards called the Quorum deck. So Tigh got those cards in addition to the nukes he got, and the ability to choose destinations on jumps. I knew that the cards he had now were dangerous to the whole cause. So I pushed extremely hard for the other player to believe Tigh was the cylon. He was really cautious of who to believe since I was able to manipulate the other players so much in the first game. However, I promised him my support in vying for the presidency or sending Tigh to the Brig to take over as the Admiral. This was also tough to push through, since I had manipulated that the first game too. However, I made the valid point that a possible Cylon with both titles would be far too powerful.
By this time, I had used Roslyn's special ability to draw 4 of the Quorum cards (Even when not the president) and to play one of them. This card allowed me to look at the random loyalty card (Each player has two at this point) of another player. I chose Tigh's card, and it confirmed my suspicions that he was indeed the Cylon. So I was pushing HARD to get the presidency or the Admiral-ship back into our hands, and away from his. We finally made a push to brig Tigh, which failed the first time, then succeeded the second time. He went to the brig, which passed the Admiral title to the other player.
A card came up which allowed one player to escape the brig by being moved to sickbay instead. Since Tigh had since got out of the brig, I knew I had to get on equal footing with him, so I pushed for success. The third player stayed out of the card's power play, as he had nothing to contribute to it. This ended up being fantastic, because there ended up being 3 cards opposing, and two cards for. Because each player can only play 2 cards, I was able to prove that the other player was a cylon, by pointing out the cards played against the action couldn't have possibly been mine, as they were the wrong color. The other player was able to immediately see the truth, and chose to move me out of the Sickbay (The card gave HIM the choice, thankfully).
However, since Tigh still held the presidency, he was able to immediately move me back to the brig. However, I then once again started pushing for the other player (Starbuck, actually) to take the Presidency as well. Which she did after a couple tries. We had finally stripped the Cylon of both titles. Which meant he was able to reveal himself in a hit to the fleet's morale. Meanwhile, the new president was able to give me a Presidential pardon to get me out of the brig. From that point, it was a rush to get our last two jumps performed before we ran out of one of our four resources. The dangerous ones were currently fuel and morale.
To make a long story short, we needed one more turn to perform the jump we needed to win. All I had to do was succeed in picking a card that would allow us to jump without losing our last Morale point. Because Roslyn can pick two cards and look choose one, I was able to do this. Alas, fate had other plans for us. While they both allowed us to jump, they both risked Morale in different ways. One was a 50/50 die roll. The other was a skill check. We had to completely fail it in order to lose the morale. A pass, or even a partial pass would have had us home free. Unfortunately, we failed. Ran out of morale, and gave the Tigh the Cylon a literally last second victory.
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