This game is genius. Work together to solve crises and guide the fleet to Kobol, but some among you are Cylons - could be anyone! Infiltrating Cylons can sabotage crises, make bad decisions as the President or Admiral, nuke civilian ships, fly civilian ships into Raiders, jump the fleet early to leave civilian ships behind to dieeeee, accuse others of being Cylons to cause political infighting, etc. Revealed Cylons can take command of the Raiders and base ships swarming Galactica.
Expansions give you Pegasus, Cylon Leaders, and other cool crap.
I'll do a bigger post once I hit the game this weekend. So far have played a few times, outcomes so far:
1. Humans work together to fight through three jumps. Morale drops due to various decisions; President Baltar promises inspirational speeches to justify use of Morale as a dump resource. Baltar is a Cylon, kills fleet on third jump by making a presidential call to sacrifice morale to save fuel when morale is only at 1. Cylons win due to human morale failure.
2. Humans get swarmed at the beginning, civilian ships die en masse. Emergency jump to get away from Cylon swarm costs even more population. Humans pull together and struggle heroically through two more jumps with population dropping to 3 and then 1. Admiral Adama chooses to jump fleet to a location that causes a drop in 1 population; Adama revealed as a Cylon; Cylons win due to human extinction.
3. No signs of Cylon activity for most of game. One Cylon identified after an un-subtle crisis sabotage and thrown in the brig, forced to suicide and retreat to Resurrection Ship, then starts doing minor damage to Galactica with sabotage. Galactica cornered by base ships at third jump but in good shape, no real worries except for a damaged armory due to Cylon sabotage. Prospects seem good until second Cylon reveals in a flurry of sabotage, taking out weapons control, the hangar deck and FTL control; base ships destroy Galactica 1 turn later with a volley of nukes that does enough damage to push Galactica over the 6-damage-token limit. From ready to dead in five minutes!
4. Political infighting. President Baltar (secretly a Cylon) spends most of the game playing a deep cover game as a loyal human, but begins to panic as Cylon ships fail to turn up. (Little does Baltar know that the meek player handling Boomer is using her scout power to put all the Cylon Attack crisis cards on the bottom of the deck.) Without Cylon ship pressure it falls to sabotage and political means to destroy Humanity, but Cylon Baltar doesn't want to move until he knows who the other Cylon is, and the other Cylon doesn't seem to want to move either. The Admiral pulls a military coup and seizes the Presidency, Lee goes against his father to restore the Presidency to civilian control, and a hotly contested election puts Cylon Baltar back in power. Cylon Baltar then brigs the Admiral, Boomer gets brigged due to her character disadvantage, and Cylon Baltar has a chance to brig someone else to put all the humans in the brig and steer Galactica to its death.
But he's paralyzed. Is Lee the other Cylon, trying to aid him? Is Boomer? Is Tyrol? Could it be the Admiral himself?
He guesses that Boomer is the other Cylon and frees her from the brig. He's wrong. Galactica makes its final jump to Kobol without a single Cylon ship arriving. Humans win, riding on Boomer's insane luck and good use of scouting.
Game #5 coming up.
