Battle Star Galactica is not only one of my favorite board games (my 3rd actually) but is rated 18th on board game geek (which is a fantastic site for all board games the best informational site for anything in my opinion) with over 10,000 ratings which is quite impressive.
It's Designer is Corey Konieczka and is currently published by Fantasy Flight Games.
The addition of it's first expansion Pegasus and the last expansion Exodus made an already fantastic game astronomically better with a slew of other characters, crises, 3d base stars, and the advent of treachery cards, the Pegasus ship and a couple of area cards.
The game has all the feel of the show where you don't know who the Cylons are. You are all passed out loyalty cards at the start of the game after you pick characters. They say either you are a Cylon (and give you what your benefit is when you revile it), you are not a Cylon, or you are not a Cylon with added objectives to need to attain before the end of the game and revile or the humans loose something. The objective of the main game is for the human players to get to earth with out loosing any of the main resources (moral, population, fuel, or food) below zero. The Cylons win if any other the resources reach zero before the humans get to earth. There is a twist if there are 4 or 6 players there is a sympathetic Cylon which only wins the game if they meet a specific set of win conditions drawn randomly when they are reviled.
Each player takes a move and an action on there turn (after drawing their skill cards) and then they have a crisis drawn from a really nice big deck when using all the expansions. First in a crisis there are two cards put in from the destiny deck (a deck made up of two cards from each skill set and shuffled) and then players take turns starting to the left of the current player putting in cards face down to pass or make fail in the case of Cylons the crisis. The cards are then shuffled and we see if there is failure or success! Some of the mission cards have jump prep and once the fleet hits the end of the jump track the Admiral draws two destinations of the destination deck and picks one (a bad one if they are an unrevealed Cylon) which has a jump distance and possibly another effect.
At the half way distance of jumping to earth (full distance 8) there is a second loyalty phase where more loyalty cards are passed out and possibly more Cylons!
There is an element of bluffing which I really like and there is a really big feel of the show which was excellent too by the way see it if you haven't! The game is made with fantastic quality pieces as per most Fantasy Flight Games, and I have spent several hundred hours with over 15 different people playing this game. It a has even created a Tuesday night group after I close the store of different people just to play it. My favorite characters to play tend to be Dee, Boomer (unfortunately in the second loyalty phase she gets thrown in the brig and no one wants to let you out), and Helana Cain!
The two expansions also offer two different variants which add all sorts of other mechanics and fun with the Ionian Nebula, and New Caprica, which are both great fun although I would not want to do those every time.
Here is a record of my current plays with the game I played some before I started recording but here it is: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/plays/thing/37111?userid=312147
You should check it out! Here is a link: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111/battlestar-galactica
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