I am not a Cylon!

Between a family member in hospital, getting ready for an overseas trip and writing up Cataclysm leveling guides, I've been struggling to level up Jahger through to the level cap of 85. He's currently stalled at 84. I had hopes of doing that final push this last weekend. But the gods had other plans for me...

This weekend I finally had a chance to play the Battlestar Galactica boardgame again. Our game last time was a bit chaotic and overly long as we were all just learning the rules. This time, everyone at least remembered the basics and the two games we played, each about three hours long, were exciting and tense affairs the whole way through.

First game, I played as Commander William Adama, Admiral of the fleet. As Admiral, you get to decide on the fleet's destination each jump, plus get to make command decisions for many of the crises. In the end, with Cylon players on either side of me, and our population about to run out, I was able to make the final jump to Cobol and get a victory for the humans.

Second game, I played as Apollo, the Admiral's son. He's the Galactica's CAG (Commander of the Air Group), and so for the first time I was really involved in the space combat. It was a fun change of pace from the "big picture" decision making that I'd experienced with the President and the Admiral. This time both the President and the Admiral were Cylons. With these two to play after me, our morale about to run out and me out on a Viper in space, I had to use the Executive Orders card to get someone else to make that final jump. Again a victory for the humans!

So three games now, three victories for the humans and me a human each time. Is the game too easy for the humans? It certainly didn't feel like it. Every time we've been about to run out of one of our resources and we felt that if the Cylons' play had been slightly different or with a bit more luck, they'd have won.

What has helped the humans is that every time one of the resources has ended up "in the red" before halfway through the game. This ensures that there is one fewer player on the Cylon side. It's clearly meant to be a balancing mechanism to ensure one side doesn't run away with victory. However, it could lead to some non-intuitive gameplay where the humans want to let one of the resources drop in the early stages. Well there should be plenty more games for us to see if that's a real problem or just us newbies fumbling around for strategies.

A proper review will come as soon as I get a chance to experience the other side of the game. Since it's determined by randomly drawn cards each game, I don't have any control over whether I play as a Cylon or not. For now, I am not a Cylon.