Board Game Analysis: Battlestar Galactica
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For our Advanced Game Design course we have been assigned to groups and given the task of playing and analysing board games. In total we will analyse three board games, for this week’s assignment we have chosen Battlestar Galactica the Board Game.  Character Cards:
Each player starts with choosing a character card based on a character from the TV-series, each character has two positive abilities, of which one is an action that can be used only once per game, and one negative trait. Each character also has a set number and types of skill cards that they are to pick up when it is their turn, these are correlated to which category the character belongs to.
The personal traits can affect the other systems in many ways, for instance that there is one character that has to choose the first option of a crisis card if it is their turn and another character that can steal “miracle tokens” from other players, allowing them to use their once-per-game-abilities more than once and preventing the other player(s) from using theirs.
There are four categories of characters: pilots, politicians, military and support, the first three players must choose one of the first three categories and may not choose from the same one as there has to be at least one of each in the game. The rest of the players may choose freely which type of character they will play. The highest ranked player in each category receives a title of President, Admiral or CAG which gives them the responsibility of making certain tough decisions during the game – for instance there may appear a crisis where the president has to choose between either executing another player or losing all their skill cards, which might make the game more difficult to win.
Loyalty Cards:
Each player is then given a loyalty card stating that they are either human or Cylon, the loyalty card is to be kept secret from the other players. This loyalty system dictates whether you are playing to win or “lose” and urges the players to team up with each other. The Cylon players may at any time choose to reveal their identity and use an ability that is stated on their card, for instance to send another player to the brig.
When the game is half-way through, when the Galactica has reached 4 distances, each player is given a second loyalty card. This means that there may be two or three Cylon players in total adding to the tension and build-up of the game. The loyalty system divides the players into teams, but unknowing of which player has which loyalty the players are occasionally forced to work together to reach their goals.
Skill Cards:
There are five types of skill cards: Politics, Tactics, Leadership, Piloting and Engineering, what kind of cards each player can pick up and use is stated on their character card. There are a few exceptions where players may pick up cards of other colours than their own though. These cards are spent to perform actions when it is a player’s turn and to pass(/not pass if you are Cylon) skill checks.
Crisis Cards:
At the end of each turn, with exception from revealed Cylons and players in the brig/sickbay, there a crisis will occur. The current player will draw a crisis card which may have a choice for one of the leaders to make, a choice of two evils and/or skill check or a regular skill check. Some crisis cards have symbols on them that can activate for instance jump preparation or enemy ships when they are drawn.
Resources:
One of the lose criteria is to deplete one of the resources which are food, fuel, morale and population, they can be both gained and lost by for instance performing skill checks. There are also resources in shape of space ships, both humans and Cylons have a few different types of ships that have varying damage and hitpoints.
The human ships can only be controlled by a pilot character, either by them launching themselves into one or by going to the control room and sending them out from the reserves. The ships can either be waiting in the reserve area, in the damaged aircrafts area or be completely destroyed and taken out of the game.
Enemy ships are either activated by certain crisis cards or by a revealed Cylon player using their turn to build and activate ships.
Locations:
There are a number of locations on the board, each has their own action that players currently in them can choose to activate upon their turn. For instance a player in the brig might initiate a skill check so that they can be freed. Human players can only move between locations on human ships while revealed Cylons only can move to locations on Cylon ships.
Skill Checks:
A skill check is prompted either by a crisis or by a player triggering a location, this means that the players will need to spend skill cards of the corresponding colours to pass it. All cards are placed face down, together with two random cards from a destiny deck (2 skill cards of each type) to make it possible for Cylon players to sabotage and keep their identity secret. Cards of the wrong colours will count as negative points and the players must reach a certain amount of points to pass the skill check.
Destination Deck:
A set of cards used by the Admiral when the Galactica has performed a jump, the Admiral draws two cards and chooses which one to use and the Galactica will move the number of distances that is stated on the card, in order for the players to win they must reach 8 distances and perform another jump.
Jump Preparation:
To win the game the Galactica needs to perform jumps to evade the Cylons, in order to do this the players need to move a token five times on the jump preparation field of the board. The jump preparation is activated by symbols on certain crisis cards. Boarding Party:
One type of enemy ship drops of a boarding party, if they move four times and reach the “humans die”-square, the game is lost.
A typical round: The current player picks up the amount of skill cards that is stated on their character card, then they may choose to move to a location and/or perform an action or play a skill card. When the player’s turn is up or they feel that there is nothing that they can do, they will draw a crisis card.
If the card consists of a skill check, two cards from the destiny deck is placed on the board and players have the option of playing cards that will affect the skill check, for instance adding an additional colour as a positive, before the player to the left of the current player starting to place cards on the pile.
Here players have the opportunity to either help or sabotage for the team or a player that they might be suspecting is Cylon or human (depending on their own loyalty). When all players that wish to/can, has spent their cards, the sum on them is totalled. The skill check is then either passed or failed and the players will have to take the consequences. When that is completed the player to the left will start their turn.
What is the best and the worst parts of the game?
After playing the game a few times we came to the conclusion that the best and worst sides to the game are closely linked. We felt that the best part of the game was the build up towards a climax at the end, while the worst part was the anti-climax that was the end of the game. As the game progresses and the inevitable doom comes nearer and nearer the game felt as if it was building up towards a dramatic end with lots of tension and excitement. In the end however, it culminated into practically nothing more than an “oh, we lost”, there was no real sense of winning either (something interesting to consider is the fact that every time we played the humans lost). At one time those playing humans got a card with a choice of dying by losing 1 morale or one fuel, at that point there was no possibility for them to regroup and win, although the “teams” were neck and neck.
As said previously, the build-up was the best part; the human players would try their best to survive, while the Cylon players would try to sabotage and make the other players lose. There was a tension created by the enemies constantly closing in, increasing in numbers and the resources depleting at an increasing speed. Knowing that someone is an infiltrator but not whom and that there is not really anything you can do about it, as well as being the infiltrator trying not to be discovered while doing as much damage as possible was also a big part of this.
What is the most interesting system?
Our group was a bit divided when we discussed what was the most interesting system of the game; one member who had played the game a lot before felt that it was the loyalty system, while the players who had never played before did not feel as if it was something we had really used when playing.
Some of us, myself included, felt that the most interesting thing was the social interaction that the game created, the loyalty system was though a part of this. Why we felt that this was so interesting was that it was very very subtle and different from other games we had played. It was a major part of the game although it did not create a witch hunt or create extreme paranoia, the game forced the opposing sides to work together while trying to evade/sabotaging for the others.
Unlike other games, e.g. the game where someone is a police and another is a murderer that blinks at its victims, the game did not focus on trying to find out who was the Cylon, even though it felt as if it composed a major part of the gameplay.
What is the target group?
I would think that the main target group of the game is the fan-base of the TV-series, as a way of getting more money out of the brand. The box states that the game is for player of 13+ years old, I do however believe that the target group is somewhat older due to the complex systems and the political drama of the TV-series.
Although a thirteen year old might be old enough to comprehend and play the game I feel that the game is probably aimed towards an agegroup of 15-20 years old, both male and female Sci-Fi and Battlestar Galactica fans.
It is an enjoyable game that we had a lot of fun playing, so I think that the game could be appreciated by a large group of people. The game is however very much based on the TV-series and I fear that it might scare away players who have not watched it and might not understand and appreciate the game enough to truly enjoy it. Had not one of our group members watched the TV-series, we would probably not have understood the game as much as we did and I do not think that we would have been able to experience the complexity and depth it offers, therefore I come to the conclusion that the target group is fans of the Battlestar Galactica TV-series.
Conclusions:
What most of us felt was the most interesting thing about the game is how the many small elements creates the great complexity that the game consists of. Especially the subtlety of the loyalty system, there was no individual part of the game that overpowered the others and it felt as if everything was meant to be together. When playing it felt different from many other games in this regard, the beautiful subtlety that composes the game felt very refreshing to us and was a major contributor to why we enjoyed the game so much.
Some parts felt a bit redundant though, as if they had put it in the game and found something for it to do just because it was in the TV-series, although it did not at all add to the gameplay. The boarding party is the most prominent example of this, as it seems very ineffective and played almost no part in the game. Only two or three times did we use them in the game and they never made it further than one or two steps even if we mostly just let them be, that is what made it feel as if it was there only to give the ships that drops them off a reason of being there, other than they exist in the TV-series. This is strange however, since them moving four times is one of the loose conditions.
The ending was, as said earlier, a bit of a let-down, the build-up promised so much but it did not deliver. It is something that could have profited by more playtesting and balancing to make the ending feel as dramatic and climactic as it was expected to be.
We enjoyed playing the game even though most of us had never watched the TV-series, but I do not believe we would have had the same experience if not one of the group members new both the show and the game very well. I believe that it is very much adapted to the TV-series and that it might alienate potential players that are not fans of Sci-Fi or the series, which might otherwise have really enjoyed the game. It could be considered a strong point though, that it is very much targeted at a specific audience.
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