Had some friends over Friday night and pulled out the BSG board game. Once again, we had to call it shortly after the Sleeper Phase as it was getting late and a couple of the players had to head home. One of these days I'll actually be able to play through to completion.
We six players, including myself, only one of whom had played before. (That time being my previous attempt at playing the game in person, so they hadn't played a full game yet.) We were doing the base game, but I forgot six players meant needing a Sympathizer card. Oh well, I hate that mechanic any. (Side note: what are the no-sympthizer rules? I know it's reduced resources, but I don't recall which ones and the amount.)
We spent the first two jump cycles under attack. We jumped away manually from the starting attack (which got beefed up with another attack card along the way) and lost 3 population, but we had 3 civvies that were one raider activation from destruction when we jumped, so it seemed worth the risk. Of course, the crisis immediately following that was another attack card.
Amazingly, through those two jump cycles, Galactica never took any damage, though we had damaged Vipers galore and lost 3 civilian ships. After that, and until we called the game, we didn't get attacked again and spent a couple rotations around the board XOing President Baltar to work the Quorum after the Chief got all the Vipers fixed.
Speaking of Baltar, his player decided to play Baltar as Baltar, even if it wasn't the most tactically sound choice. On the very first turn, we passed a crisis that let him look at someone's loyalty card. He picked Apollo, who we learned once the game was over, was Cylon from the beginning. He promptly declared him human. Later on he had a chance to look at one of Admiral Adama's loyalty cards and declared him a Cylon. Both times he lied about the contents of the cards, even though in the end he turned out to be human. He was just miffed at Adama for some perceived slight earlier in the game. On crisis checks he rarely helpled out unless there was a direct impact on him, in which case he promptly led the way with an IC and tons of cards. It was interesting, to say the least.
Everyone had a lot of fun, barring the one player playing the Chief. While half the players hadn't seen the show, the others still got into the groove of things, while he just wasn't interested at all. But he's not a big board game player anyway.
The Baltar player in particular hoped we could get another game together this weekend before he had to head back home out of state, but it unfortunately didn't happen.