The last time, in fact the only time, I got Battlestar Galactica (BSG) the boardgame to the table was back in 2017.

So it was long overdue a return to the table.

The driving force for getting BSG to the table this time was a request by Colin on the Fenland Gamer discord server that he’d like to try the game.

I have a copy, it’s on my big game challenge, so I setup an event to play BSG along with the Pegasus expansion.

In the run up to last Saturday (our chosen day of play) I sleeved the cards in the game, and purchased a 3ft by 3ft starfield art neoprene playmat.

Obviously I wanted to protect my copy of BSG (you should Google how much this out of print game goes for), and these were the measures I’ve put in place to do that. The playmat will also be used with Xia and Star Wars Outer Rim. The starfield pattern will be a great back drop to those games, plus protect the game boards.

Whilst setting up before the others arrived I got distracted by a full English breakfast for my lunch. But still I had the majority of the setup done before players started arriving.

I had been expecting seven of us in total to be playing. Which would mean we would be playing with the Cylon Leader variant of the game. However as with all things in life, stuff happens, and seven became five.

The plan for this game with the Pegasus expansion was never to use the New Caprica part of the expansion. I may play a game of BSG with it at some future point in time. However the majority of the games will be with just the Pegasus side of things. Which doesn’t add too much more to the game overhead wise. You get more of everything else. More choice.

So which characters did we choose? We went with the following:

• Colin – ‘Chief’ Galen Tyrol
• Marcin – Gaius Baltar (President) cylon
• Syringa – Karl ’Helo’ Agathon cylon
• Diego – Kara ’Starbuck’ Thrace / Lee ’Apollo’ Adama
• Me – Helena Cain (Admiral)

Setup complete it was time to try and get Galactica to Kobold and throw a cylon or two into the airlock.

Galactica was soon surrounded by cylon basestars, raiders, and heavy raiders, whilst avoiding ever escalating crisis.

Apparently wanting to use my characters once per game ability of doing a blind jump (as long as the distance travelled is six or less) to escape an early cylon attack marked me out as a cylon!

Gaius wasn’t using his Quorum cards, so I instigated an election and had Helo installed as President instead.

Gaius took this loss of power badly and plotted away to regain it.

In the meantime as revenge Gaius tried to unsuccessfully remove Cain as Admiral. Whilst Cain returned the favour of failing to force Gaius out of the airlock.

However once the second loyalty cards had been dealt out, Gaius used his once per game ability to look at every players loyalty. He knew who the cylons were.

With that knowledge Gaius advised Cain to throw Starbuck out the airlock. To be fair Starbuck had been acting suspiciously. The vote did not go well for Starbuck, who took a walk in to space without a space suit.

Sadly Starbuck was not a cylon, and moral took a hit onboard Galactica.

Apollo stepped up to try and fill the shoes left by Starbuck.

After Apollo got Cain thrown in the brig. Helo took over command of the fleet.

But Helo had a short spell in command before Apollo wrestled command away from him. Followed by grabbing the Presidency. Were we seeing the start of a new dictatorship.

A missed guided dictatorship that still had cylons sabotaging things. And to cap to things off cylons had boarded Galactica wrecking havoc.

Eventually Helo and Gaius (just confirming what Cain had been telling them ever since being tricked into killing Starbuck) revealed themselves as cylons to finish off the downfall of Galactica.

It was close, Galactica only had to make its final jump to Kobold to win. But the cylons managed to ware down the ships resources to secure a cylon victory.

We had a blast. Lots of banter.

I really mustn’t leave it so long between plays.

However before it does get back to the table Xia and The Thing need some loving.

The expected call about the job never happened. So I assumed I hadn’t got it. Best prepare for the worst. It did take the shine off such a great afternoons gaming.