StarDestroyer.Net BBS

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111

Has anybody else played this fantastically fun game? The basic premise is that three to six people play, and try to fly Galactica to Earth. While this goes on they must deal with losses of fuel, food and morale. To make it interesting, at least one of the players is a Cylon who must sabotage said fleet. This of course leads to lots of Werewolf style finger pointing as people accuse one another of being a Cylon without a lot of evidence.

I've played a few games of this yesterday, and it's pretty amazing fun. I played as Chief Tyrol, and suspecting that President Gaius Baltar was a Cylon, I went to Colonial One and conducted a campaign for President. This led to President Tyrol fixing things on Galactica while making The Big Decisions.

I heartily recommend this game.

It works because it drops everything that sucks about nBSG and makes it advanced Werewolves instead. I hear it's pretty shit if you're a Viper pilot, but otherwise it's neat and pretty fast too. Is the addon out yet?

Yeah, I played a round as Starbuck. It was good when there were Cylon ships around, which was 30% of the time. Amusingly, the Admiral was dismissed by the President, and I became Admiral Starbuck.

I'm not sure if the expansion is out here yet.

Looks fantastic. If I find enough people to play (and money to buy it), I'll consider this for sure.

Luckily it doesn't require anyone to know shit about nBSG, since that's just branding over the super-Werewolves gameplay. I hope the addon changes the card density, so that it's less limited/predicatale thing.

They've also made a tabletop RPG of nBSG, so if you people ever want to really nerd out and play this and then some of that, tell me how that works out.

Except the whole point of the boardgame is that the nBSG shit is just window dressing; anyone can play it and it's fast and interesting. The RPG is totally different.

I enjoyed it, ended up being the traitor and there was a cylon sympathiser too who got outed and so had to go back cylon fleet HQ to control the guns. By the end of it, I had everyone in jail apart from myself, I was president and admiral and we had to abandon the game as it was clear that it was all over. I don't know if that's a sign of bad balance or whether I just got very lucky on my first go, but it seemed fun provided you could get the rest of the players past the initial 'play a game of a scifi show?' mentality.

Fun game, can be a pain in the ass to play with a card-counter as they meticulously weigh your every decision. Being a Viper pilot isn't the worst thing, as they do have a wide range of cards to draw from. A well-timed reveal of being a Cylon can be awesome, especially after you mess with people's heads by hurting/helping the same exact skill challenge.

It's a great game with, specifically, 5 people. We've found that to be the most fun size. Four players is a little harsh one way or the other and six is a little too easy for the humans we found.

I played this as well. First game I went straight for Adm. Adama, and played the game like a noob - or rather, I played the game to deliberately invoke rules and interactions that 'normal' players wouldn't go for. In my first three turns, I had nuked the initial Basestar (older player said that I was a cylon for that as "no one uses a nuke that early"), stole the Presidency, and jumped the fleet before the track was full.

I would up spending the last half of the game in the Brig after I got the Sympathizer card.

As a player of B5CCG, I was instantly into the diplomacy and backstabbing involved. But most importantly, I had fun with the game.

I like the game as well, it got voted best game of 2008 in my local game shop.

I've played it a few times over the last year, normally with 5-6 players. I think it gets better the more players you have. Interestingly all the games have been quite close but the cylons have always won (normally the humans were about 1 jump away from new caprica).

I think some of our out of game feelings about the characters may have leaked into the game, we always pick on anyone playing Baltar for example.

I think the expansion was either out last week or this week unless its been delayed. Bring on the plastic base stars

The expansion is out here (in the U.S.). I played it earlier. The Cylon leader is a fun new dynamic, since they might be trying to help the humans win so the leader and a revealed Cylon could be at odds. Having only played one game, though, it's hard to make any detailed analysis of how the New Caprica expansion really changes things because my game might've been a fluke, for all I know.

I might as well mention, we had a little incident when we started where DP (who was playing the Cylon leader) tried to infiltrate Galactica but the crisis card he drew was "Cylon accusation" where a fail meant him going to the brig, so we just let him fail the check. It was pretty funny.

So I just shot myself in the head.

Painful note - ALWAYS check Roslin for Cylon-hood if she's in the game. The amount of shit her special ability can rain down on you while retaining plausibility is just painful.

Fun game, can be a pain in the ass to play with a card-counter as they meticulously weigh your every decision.

Ummmm... that's kind of the point of the whole "skill cards" interaction.

Forget Roslyn (You are talking about her Visions ability, right?) . Adama is even worse as he can support the Humans with their skill checks, then frak the fleet on the Jumps. At least with the basic game, as there is dang precious ways to increase the fleet's store of fuel, and even more to screw it over.

The fleet jumps fairly rarely. Crisis cards happen all the time, and usually with nastier consequences. Roslin takes the win.

And fuel? You can get it with quite a few cards. It's population that's irreplacable.

Population seems like the indefatigable resource, but in the game we played the other day, we lost six population in one turn.

Faqa - Fuel can only be gained through locations reached by Jumping, and while the fleet starts with 8 fuel, it averages to 4 jumps to make it to Kobol. Barren Planet is 2 range and 2 Fuel, and is the most common result. It is quite possible for the Admiral to select the non-fuel gaining locations, and work towards loosing fuel through Crisis' such as (Missing Pilot? The one where you can loose fuel or loose population and morale). Cylon attacks can also hit fuel, but that's very much a craps shoot, so I wouldn't depend on that as a Cylon.

Although I must admit that my opinion is more theortical. After the game (Cylons won), I sat down and examined all the cards, and the rules to look at weaknesses and exploits. I saw that it was easy to loose or use fuel, but with a Cylon Admiral, the Fleet can never see these, and the Admiral can play the 'epic bad luck' card, or accuse someone who used a Scouting card of shuffling the refueling locations to the bottom of the jump deck.

...

You know, I'm half tempted to ask for a game of nBSG here on the boards to see how our theories work out. We'd need an impartial GM to setup the board and handle the cards (Loyalty, Crisis, Locations, etc), while people like you and me are players.

Anyone else up for that?

Play by post games never turn out the same as in-person games - unlike in-person games, it's extremely easy to count cards and hand sizes and figure out what everyone has been putting into skill checks.

Hrm. True. And PbP looses the personal interaction and the rapidfire accusations of "CYLON!". I'll have to withdraw the suggestion then. Ah well.

A shame as that would be a pretty neat way for some of us to try the game before we start the rigours process of pursuading our gaming groups to buy said boardgame.

(In otherwords if you do ever go for that I'm up for giving it a go!)

Out of deference to OmegaChief's desire, I decided to try and set out how to convert the nBSG game into a PbP game. Forgive the lack of formal rule writing here - I'm typing this on an empty stomach while waiting for class to start.

1) Setup.
Go get an impartial person with a physical copy of the game. This person is the GM. Make sure all the players know the rules, even if they themselves don't have a copy of the game at hand. The impartial person will setup the board as per the normal rules, and is responsible for the shuffling and drawing of cards from their respective decks, as well as dice rolls where applicable.

Instead of having people select their character one at a time, have each player contact the GM with a list of their Top (# of players) selections for their character. So, for example, if there were five people playing the game and I was one of them, I would message the GM with my list of... say... 1) William Adama, 2) Baltar, 3) Zarek, 4) Tigh, 5) Helo. The GM, being impartial, will look at these lists, and give everyone their highest prefrence that isn't already taken. Ties can be resolved randomly. Once everyone has their character, and is reminded of what cards they draw, as their abilities/drawback, the GM will randomly message all players with their Loyalty Cards.

The rest of the setup goes as normal, with the initial placement of characters and portions of the Fleet/Cylons as per the normal rules. The GM may have to create pictures, or otherwise come up with a neutral refrence for all players as to the current postions of all pieces.

2)Playing the Game.
Playing the game proceeds as normal, except the GM messages each player what cards they draw, as well as their effects. All players know what cards people draw, but the secrecy rules need to have an honour system appended to them to prevent players from privately messaging each other secrets. Everything should respect the secrecy rules, and 'public conversations' should take place in just that - the public.

When it comes time for the skill checks, each player publicly announces in some vague (or specificly 0/zero) description of the number of cards they are adding to the check. Thus, I as Adama would say I am throwing in a couple cards to represent that I am adding 3 cards to the skill check. Each player takes their turn order as per the normal rules, while at the same time messaging the GM to indicate specifics. to continnue the example, I would say to the GM that I am adding 3 cards - one Exective Orders (5) and 2 Repair (1) to the skill check. This vaugeness in what the public knows should prevent other players from Card Counting, as DPDarkPrimus expressed his concern over. Of course, the exception to this is the Public Investigation card, which forces all this out into the open.

((Yes, I know Adama can't draw Engineering Cards normally, but he can through the Science Lab. And it's for the example.))

The GM then tallies the relative totals for the Skill Check, and reveals the cards played, including those from the Destiny Deck, without revealing who gave out what card, or how many. Then the GM deals with the consequenses of success or failure, consulting with the Admiral/President/Current Player as the Crisis demands.

There. Basic idea. Any help in fleshing this idea out?