-
Yeah...you read the Title right. Four players, and none of us had ever played BSG before, and we were playing a variant. Risky? I didn't think so. In advance I had come to the geek quite a bit. I had read session reports, watched videos, read the rule book twice, and read many, many reviews. So I thought "No big deal. This'll be a cinch. I'll just teach everyone how to play." Well, so much for that. So let me detail aspects of this session and highlight some ways you can avoid my mistakes.
First of all, here is the variant: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/486613/ultra-short-game-vari...
Setup:
Problem
There are pictures in the rule book for this and even consulting them liberally the setup still took me a good 10 minutes. Card placement gave me the biggest problem. It felt like forever and didn't look so great when I was done.
Solution
I hadn't set up a game completely before. Why didn't I just set it up once to see how everything looked? Because I'm an overconfident fool. So if you're a first timer playing with first timers set this game up at least once by yourself before playing it, maybe a couple of times and take a good hard look at the layout.
Rules Explanation:
Problem
The game began rather clumsily thanks to my poor explanation of the rules. I had looked up the .pdf "Battlestar Galactica in six easy steps" but had decided I didn't like it's explanation and would do my own.
Solution
I still don't like the six easy steps explanation. But it would have been better than what I did. I think I'm going to make my own document and use that. Just a matter of preference here. I'm not trying to be a troll or anything.
Playing a Variant:
Problem
Not really so much a problem as some minor misunderstandings. In fact the variant was the saving grace of this session. The main reason? It is so concise, around 2 hours. While I felt it was a little rushed, the rest of the group loved that the game didn't take forever like I had warned them it could. The one area of this variant to look out for is the distance of destinations when jumping. Make sure all players know the affects of a destination's distance.
Solution
I highly recommend this variant, even for first timers. It was fast, and contained all the elements that make this game fun. I am in agreement that changing the sympathizer rules in the base game is a must. While this variant does change the base sympathizer rules I'm interested in still looking for other options. I think Cameron, this variant's creator, has made variants to handle it so I'm going to take a closer look at those.
Mid Game:
Problem
The game really started getting into a rhythm here. I became the Sympathizer determined by highest role (See Variant Rules). I had started as a human and was now a lame duck cylon. The other cylon hadn't revealed yet and come to find out hadn't got their "You are a Cylon" card in the sleeper phase. It was Boomer, so they started that round in the brig. They couldn't convince anyone to let them out and Baltar looked at their loyalty cards with his special skill. So, Boomer was stuck revealing in the brig and because we didn't know what we were doing we didn't give boomer a Super Crisis card. The problems at this stage of the game was figuring out revealed cylon actions and understanding FTL jumping.
Solution
The back of the rule book contains a quick reference guide. But you're on your own when remembering what you need to know for an early FTL jump or what revealed cylons do on their turn. Not extremely complicated stuff but confusing for first timers. I think I might make a quick reference guide to consult for these things. Keeping it short and putting page references for help.
End Game:
Problem
The variant ends differently than the base game. Because of the destination chosen we weren't sure if the Humans had run out of fuel or had won the game. We gave it to the humans and called it a game. (Mind you the humans just happened to be the wives of the cylons.) The humans cheered, the cylons grumbled, but there were smiles on faces and congratulations all around.
Solution
A better understanding of the rules, once again, would've helped here. It would've definitively decided a winner. Though in truth, no one really cared since we all had a good time.
Conclusion:
Right off I should let you know we played this game wrong. We didn't get all the rules right. That being said everyone felt the game was well balanced. It came down to the last card and a roll of the die. That's good for no one knowing what they were doing, which usually unbalances a game. That speaks to the game's and the variant's good design. As I said before, the variant saved this game from disaster. If we had played this game the way we were playing it for more than two hours none of us would probably want to play it again. So if all players are newbies I recommend playing the Ultra Short variant, unless you're really, really good with rules, I mean like "Photographic memory" good. This way even if you're going slow and looking up rules, the game can be finished relatively quickly.
Session Verdict:
My rating for this session: Ribs. Extremely messy, but undeniably satisfying.
Edits: Corrections, Variant Link
-
Matt Downey
United States
Alexandria
Virginia
-
You still get a super crisis if you reveal from the brig.
-
Patrick R
Canada
Fredericton
New Brunswick
-
bubbybebay wrote: So, Boomer was stuck revealing in the brig and therefore no Super Crisis cards for the cylons.
I think you may have played this wrong. Revealing in the brig prevents you from playing your special Cylon action (pg 29 of the manual), but it doesn't prevent you from receiving a Super Crisis card as far as I can tell.
As soon as you reveal, the manual dictates that 5 things happen. #3 is to resurrect in the Resurrection Ship and #4 is to receive your Super Crisis card. In other words, by the time you receive your super crisis card, you are no longer in the brig and the text from that space no longer applies to you.
-
-
Nice report, certainly useful for newbies who might want to try the same thing. You may want to include a link to the variant you used though (I think it's this one).
As for your question about who won the game... based on what you wrote, I'm guessing you lost fuel, but were able to gain one back thanks to the variant's rule for drawing a 3-distance destination? According to the rule book, the humans lose if a resource is at 0 or less at the end of a player's turn, so if gaining back that 1 fuel put it back above 0, the humans are still alive. You did it right. And, of course, the wives are always right...
-
cc the calm
Austria
Austria
-
bubbybebay wrote:
Rules Explanation:
Problem
The game began rather clumsily thanks to my poor explanation of the rules. I had looked up the .pdf "Battlestar Galactica in six easy steps" but had decided I didn't like it's explanation and would do my own.
Solution
I still don't like the six easy steps explanation. But it would have been better than what I did. I think I'm going to make my own document and use that. Just a matter of preference here. I'm not trying to be a troll or anything.
Solution: Use the "six easy steps explanation" anyways. I used it for every introduction game and it saved me precious gaming time. Of course there is room for improvement, but it´s up to you to add information to it. I´m not trying to be a troll either 
-
-
Thx for this session report. I'm aiming to do the exact same thing; play the USV with other newbies; so glad to hear it took two hours indeed.
If we're four, I'll use the "Another Sympathizer Variant" of the same author, with the tweak suggested by Hav0k to have a 50/50 chance of the Sympathizer being cylon/human. That'll definitely be more fun for the sympathizer than the default rules.
-
|
|
Posted Tue Jan 31, 2012 5:04 pm
