Cylons Wear Hats... Mostly

The game of the week, chosen by Pablo "No Nickname" H., was Battlestar Galactica (no expansion).

I like BSG. It has a certain feel - a combination of gritty, "let's make the hard decisions" resource management and paranoia that you don't quite get from any other game. Shadows Over Camelot wasn't bad, but got a little tiresome, and Panic Station had too many thematic problems for me to enjoy. I haven't played "The Resistance", the other candidate for the tinfoil hat prize for paranoia in gaming, but I suspect that it would be less engaging without the opportunity to push little models of Vipers around and making pyew-pyew-pyew noises while blowing up Cylon Raiders.

Well, what to say about this session except it featured a undeserved brigging of Shemp (as Apollo), the destruction of Caprica One by terrorists, an early suspicion and subsequent brigging of Bharmer (as Chief Tyrol) and a Academy Award (tm)-worthy performance by Pablo (as trouble-maker President Zarek), who turned out to be the second, very deep cover Cylon operative, unsuspected by anyone until the very end. It also featured one of the highest Raider kill counts by a single pilot (Easy's Starbuck) I've seen in the game -- somewhere upwards of 20+ --  and a very above moral reproach but ultimately futile tenure as Admiral by me as Karl Agathon.

The suspicion thrown on Shemp's behaviour by an early (and, if I recall correctly, misread) play led to him being brigged at a fairly critical time. With him being unable to get out without the firm support of the other human players, it was difficult, and then when it became apparent that Pablo was the other cylon, we couldn't brig him because the Admiral's quarters were damaged - and Tyrol had already "gone cylon", so repair cards were few.

It was an interesting dynamic. We had Bharmer pegged as a cylon early (and brigged early), but in the mid-game, none of the humans were sure who the cylon was until certain potentially Cylon-game-winning strategies were ignored both by me and Shemp, at which time it was difficult to get him out. By the time we recovered, resources were in the low reds, and there was no escaping.

We fell to a morale loss at distance 6. To my credit as the admiral, we had only lost one civilian ship to enemy fire and Galactica was never in serious danger from Cylon ship-based attacks. No, we lost this one because we couldn't identify and brig the second cylon, and Pablo's machinations caused us to lose several key morale-based crises. We were high on population, mid-range on fuel, low on food and critical on morale when we lost. I was generally happy with my performance as admiral, less so with my ability to figure out who the cylon was and act on it decisively.

The difficulty of this game varies dramatically depending on whether there are zero, one or two cylons from the initial loyalty deal to the sleeper phase, and in this case, there were two right from the start, making it the most difficult it can be in a five-player game.

This game may not be the most balanced and it is a little long; but for the dramatic experience it's one of the better ones.

Also, Cylons wear hats. It's a fact.

Boring Old Record Keeping

The record keeper blew the dust off the ledger and laid open the cracking spine. The pages waterfalled like October leaves.

Brushing a gnarled hand over the pages, he made some very boring notations in a spidery hand:

The March 1st and March 29th sessions were cancelled due to lack of attendees. The February 2nd session was also cancelled (I'm noting that in case anyone has to forensically reconstruct their play list at BGG for the year, as I had to go back and correct some notations).

On April 5th we played two sessions of 7 Wonders (victors unremembered), followed by a session of Panic Station (Agent Easy was original bug(?), David and Shemp joined them, bugs were victors.). On April 12, we played Risk Legacy (curiously, I can't remember whether Shemp or Agent East won; it was one of them - I think it was Shemp, which would make it two for two for him), Beowulf (strangely, once again, I can't remember the victor, though I think I was up there) and Jungle Speed (Kozure won).

Last week, April 19th, there was only Shemp and I. We played Dragon Dice with my son Daigoro. I don't have a lot of time for commentary on the game except to say it was actually "deeper" as a playing experience than I was expected - there's some difficult and interesting play choices to be made, and there's enough chrome to keep it interesting. Still not sure about long term replay-ability apart from the customization aspect of it, but willing to play again. We had to call it for time (Daigoro had to head to bed), but Shemp was well on his way to victory.

We finished the evening with two games of Jungle Wars - Deep Dwarves (Shemp) vs. Mountain Vargath (Me) and Sand Goblins (Shemp) vs. Jungle Elves. (Me). I won both games, more from my greater experience with the game than through any stellar play. Shemp was starting to pick up on the flow by the end.

Another kick at the can (Dominion x2, Panic Station, King of Tokyo)

The Wags group welcomed this week a new player, ececec. Unfortunately I arrived late and missed the two opening games of Dominion (with various expansions thrown in). All I know is that ececec beat Kozure bay single point in the last game.

We set up Panic Station. Ececec wanted to give it a try and I think we all wanted to give it another shot as well. Since last week's game, I realized a few things... First, the game DOES have a backstory that makes sense of a few of the game's odd mechanics. Apparently, the aliens are immune to traditional bullets so the players are searching for bullets specially developed by the decimated inhabitants of the ship to combat the aliens. Secondly, the androids are linked to the human's psychi so that's why they both get infected simultaneously. Whatever.

This session was not like the earlier sessions. Shemp was the infected one, but he decided to lay low for a while. So much so that I literally had no idea who I couldn't trust and just one turn before I thought I could win the game for the humans no one else was infected (and as far as I could tell, no attempts had been made either). I started looking around the table in case the host card has been accidentally left out of the game.

I then committed a grave error. I ended my turn in the hive, with all the gas cans I needed, but without any actions left to actually burn the hive. In swoops Shemp. I deflect the infection with a gas can, but then have only two left. Over in the other corner of the map, ececec does a heat scan and it's revealed that I am still human. He then trades a gas can with my android. On his turn, Kozure does the same. My turn again, oops! Let's move the critters and sure enough 4 of them come into the hive (1 in 4 chance of that happening!) and my human is pulverized. We then spend a few rounds coordinating a run by Kozure and Ececec to get my gas cans and burn the hive while avoiding the swarms and Shemp. A well placed grenade thinned the swarm nicely, and Kozure succeeded in putting the hive to the torch.

Again, I had fun,despite the somewhat clunky rules and thematic oddness/ blandness. It does keep you guessing, and it's pretty challenging for both the humans and the infected. I think it would play better with more players, and I look forward to trying it again.

We then finished with a session of Kings of Tokyo. Ececec picked up on it quickly, and luckily didn't seem too bothered when he was eliminated mid game. Kozure's mekadragon, equipped with those damned Wings and Acid breath destroyed us all.

It's just about a perfect game for what it is.

Cans of Gas Stave off Alien Infection + I Have the Stupid (Panic Station x 2, High Society x 2)

Last week (November 17th) we played Panic Station, twice, plus one other game. Evidently that other game stands out so well in my mind that I've completely forgotten what it was . I'm sure Agent Easy will be along shortly to correct the record. [edit: Agent Easy recalled that it was High Society]

[edit - added "High Society"]

High Society

This is always a fun, quick game. The first game, Agent Easy and I came very close in terms of points but he had slightly more money remaining.

The second game was tight - Agent Easy and Pablo were tied for points and for most money remaining, so it came down to highest purchased item value.

Such a clever little game.

Panic Station

What to say about panic station? Traitor mechanic, exploration, high-tech weapons and equipment, explosives, sci-fi setting... what's not to like?

Execution, it seems.

I wanted to like this one, I really did, but the weird "why is this done this way?" moments started to pile up about half-way through the game and never really went away.

First up, why can't humans use guns? The "in-game" explanation is that they're carrying the flamethrower, so they don't have the "room". OK, fine. They have the flamethrower to purge the alien nest. Sure, I can buy that. But... why do they have to find or trade for the fuel to actually use it INSIDE the facility they're supposed to be purging?

OK, only androids can use guns. I can also accept that, if you assume that the androids have built-in weapons that cannot be detached. But the upgrades are detachable - indeed, they START detached... once again, INSIDE the facility they've been sent to clear out.

Also, equipment teleports back and forth between team members of the same colour, but not between team members of other colours. In addition, if the human gets infected, the same-colour android gets infected as well, and vice versa. Say what?

If a human/android goes down, all their equipment disappears. Huhn? It's possible to lose the game because you can't possibly get enough fuel cans because your team mates got eaten by a parasite and apparently their equipment evaporates when your vital signs disappear?

Too many shaky "plot-points" that might have been 'hand-waved' with better background story writing, or better yet, avoided altogether with better rules writing.

Also, once again, the future is white ... except for one human who may or may not be Asian (Raven). They couldn't fit in a single visible minority? [edit: judging by surname "Ramirez" would seem to be Hispanic, so not entirely WASP] To top it off, all the androids look identical and are the stereotypical bald female hottie with silvery no-iris eyes.

The art is lazy. Actually, I take that back, the equipment art and the station location art is fine. The humans, androids and parasites are lazy. Compare:

Picture of "Alien Parasite":



with picture of "Japanese beetle Larvae":



You're using barely modified images of insect larvae as your evil swarming Alien/Body-Snatcher-esque take-over creature? Did someone on the production team have a bad phobia-generating incident on their lawn?

Okay. Deep breath.

I'm giving this one at least more try before I pass final judgment because people seem so crazy about it on BGG and usually the chattering masses aren't completely wrong, at least at BGG.

So far, though, not very impressed.

Now, to be fair, I screwed up the first game because I (and no one else) forgot the vitally important (but thematically none-too-intuitive) rule that people can avoid being infected by trading a gas can (... wait, what?) so I thought everyone was infected when in fact only three people were infected. I tried to make the case for ending the game early when in fact there was at least one viable human left.

In the end, the infected still won, but the experience was somewhat tainted.

Not to be outdone by my stupid mistake in the first game, I then nearly made the exact same mistake in the second game, fortunately it was spotted and corrected before it did too much damage.

UNfortunately, a strange (though probably not entirely unusual) combination of card trading around mid-game utterly confused both Shemp and Agent Easy making it look like I thought I was uninfected when I was, or was infected when I wasn't (I was actually infected), so a long period passed where Shemp and Agent Easy thought I was playing very stupidly, when in actuality I was really doing the only logical thing, which was to stay away and keep my infected guys out of danger (and being forced to trade back the stolen gas cans) because I had no infection cards left.

Not so! (This time.)

What had happened is that I had tried repeatedly to infect Pablo, only to be given a gas can each time, with the net effect that I had taken all of his gas cans. By reasoning out loud, Agent East figured out what had happened, but this clued Shemp in at the same time. Fortunately for humanity, some canny play by Pablo and Shemp allowed the humans enough time to search for more gas cans and win the game by burning the nest. Cleanse it with FIRE!

Humans 1, Aliens 1.

Now if I could just remember what the other game we played was, I could close down this blog entry in peace. [yeah, it was High Society]