Political

Fantasy Flight Games is pleased to announce Exodus, the latest expansion for Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game! With three new options to add to your game, Exodus is a great way to expand on the accusations and mistrust that runs rampant in Battlestar Galactica.

You can choose to add any combination of the three new options included in Exodus. Crave more white-knuckle space dog-fighting? Incorporate the Cylon Fleet option. The Conflicted Loyalties option introduces new Loyalty Cards that will test even the most trustworthy allegiances. Finally, relive the emotional turmoil of the hit television series with the Ionian Nebula, which pits players against the various conflicting personalities aboard Galactica.

The Cylon Fleet option keeps the pressure intense by introducing the Cylon Fleet game board. This board makes sure that every Crisis Card drawn will result in some sort of enemy ship activity. Once the Cylon Pursuit Track reaches the end, the Cylon ships will transfer over to the main game board, surrounding Galactica. There’s little time for rest between assaults, so get out there and protect those civvies, fighter jockeys!

Alliances are put to the test in the Conflicted Loyalties option, where the new Final Five Loyalty Cards up the stakes and introduce penalties for revealing your fellow humans’ Loyalty Card. In addition, new Personal Goal Loyalty Cards present players with an incriminating task to undertake. If they don’t fulfill their goal, then they will cause Galactica to lose a resource at the end of the game. Will you raise suspicion by completing the damaging task, or will you lay low and hope your failures won’t condemn the rest of your crew?

Finally, with the Ionian Nebula option, familiar faces populate the fleet as allies, and can be encountered by visiting locations on Galactica. But beware! The Cylons can influence these non-player characters, compelling them to produce negative effects when encountered. Manage humanity’s conflicting personalities carefully... or infighting will leave you vulnerable!

Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game is an exciting game of mistrust, intrigue, and the struggle for survival. Based on the epic and widely-acclaimed Sci Fi Channel series, Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game puts players in the role of one of ten of their favorite characters from the show. Each playable character has their own abilities and weaknesses, and must all work together in order for humanity to have any hope of survival. However, one or more players in every game secretly side with the Cylons. Players must attempt to expose the traitor while fuel shortages, food contaminations, and political unrest threatens to tear the fleet apart.

After the Cylon attack on the Colonies, the battered remnants of the human race are on the run, constantly searching for the next signpost on the road to Earth. They face the threat of Cylon attack from without, and treachery and crisis from within. Humanity must work together if they are to have any hope of survival…but how can they, when any of them may, in fact, be a Cylon agent?

Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game is a semi-cooperative game for 3-6 players ages 10 and up that can be played in 2-3 hours. Players choose from pilots, political leaders, military leaders, or engineers to crew Galactica. They are also dealt a loyalty card at the start of the game to determine if they are a human or Cylon along with an assortment of skill cards based on their characters abilities. Players then can move and take actions either on Galactica, on Colonial 1, or in a Viper. They need to collect skill cards, fend off Cylon ships, and keep Galactica and the fleet jumping. Each turn also brings a Crisis Card, various tasks that players must overcome. Players need to play matching skill cards to fend off the problems; skill cards that don't match hinder the players success. Fate could be working against the crew, or there could be a traitorous Cylon! As players get closer and closer towards reaching their Earth, another round of loyalty cards are passed out and more Cylons may turn up. If players can keep their up their food stores, fuel levels, ship morale, and population, and they can keep Galactica in one piece long enough to make it to Earth, the Humans win the game. But if the Cylon players reveal themselves at the right moment and bring down Galactica, the Humans have lost.

Official Site, Rules & FAQ: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=18&esem=4
Unofficial FAQ for really tricky questions: http://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Battlestar_Galactica_FAQ

"Now the trumpet summons us again, not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle..."
– John F. Kennedy

In 1945, unlikely allies toppled Hitler's war machine, while humanity's most devastating weapons forced the Japanese Empire to its knees in a storm of fire. Where once there stood many great powers, there then stood only two. The world had scant months to sigh its collective relief before a new conflict threatened. Unlike the titanic struggles of the preceding decades, this conflict would be waged not primarily by soldiers and tanks, but by spies and politicians, scientists and intellectuals, artists and traitors. Twilight Struggle is a two-player game simulating the forty-five year dance of intrigue, prestige, and occasional flares of warfare between the Soviet Union and the United States. The entire world is the stage on which these two titans fight to make the world safe for their own ideologies and ways of life. The game begins amidst the ruins of Europe as the two new "superpowers" scramble over the wreckage of the Second World War, and ends in 1989, when only the United States remained standing.

Twilight Struggle inherits its fundamental systems from the card-driven classics We the People and Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage. It is a quick-playing, low-complexity game in that tradition. The game map is a world map of the period, whereon players move units and exert influence in attempts to gain allies and control for their superpower. As with GMT's other card-driven games, decision-making is a challenge; how to best use one's cards and units given consistently limited resources?

Twilight Struggle's Event cards add detail and flavor to the game. They cover a vast array of historical happenings, from the Arab-Israeli conflicts of 1948 and 1967, to Vietnam and the U.S. peace movement, to the Cuban Missile Crisis and other such incidents that brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Subsystems capture the prestige-laden Space Race as well as nuclear tensions, with the possibility of game-ending nuclear war.

A deluxe edition, published in 2009 includes the following changes from the basic game:

Mounted map with revised graphics
Two double-thick counter sheets with 260 counters
Deck of 110 event cards (increased from 103)
Revised rules and player aid cards
Revised at start setup and text change for card #98 Aldrich Ames

Upgrade kit for the owners of the previous version includes the following:

Mounted Map with revised graphics
New card decks
Updated Rules & Charts

There are also the deluxe mounted map and deluxe euro-style countersheet upgrades.

Components:

228 full colour counters (260 in the 2009 Deluxe edition)
22"x34" full colour cardboard map (mounted map with revised graphics in the 2009 Deluxe edition)
103 event cards (110 in the 2009 Deluxe edition)
2 six-sided dice
1 24-page rulebook
2 full colour player aid cards

TIME SCALE: approx. 3-5 years per turn
MAP SCALE: Point-to-point system
UNIT SCALE: Influence markers
NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 1 - 2

DESIGNER: Ananda Gupta & Jason Matthews
MAP, CARD, & COUNTER ART: Mark Simonitch

"The way to have Power is to take it" - William "Boss" Tweed

Tammany Hall is a game of backstabbing, corruption, temporary alliances, and taking power at all costs. If you want to rule New York, you are going to need to play the city's growing immigrant populations against one another. Help the immigrant groups who owe you political favors, call in those favors to slander your rivals, and win elections.

In Tammany Hall, players help immigrants settle in New York, collect political favors from those immigrant groups, send ward bosses into Manhattan to secure votes, and slander political opponents. An election is held at the end of every fourth year, and the player who uses his power base best will be elected mayor. The Mayor's grip on the city is tenuous at best. After every election, the Mayor must pay off his political rivals by placing them in offices that they can wield to try to take control of the city. Every player is your friend, every player is your enemy.

Tammany Hall was the political machine that dominated New York City politics by organizing the immigrant populations. While the organization's influence spanned from its founding in the 1790s to its collapse in the 1960s, this game is set in lower Manhattan roughly between 1850 and 1870 – the era of Boss Tweed.

Modern Society is a game about our time, the world we live in. It covers aspects from Equality to Organic Food, from War in Iraq to Torture Scandal, to Youth Culture, Women's Priesthood and beyond. Those are but few aspects the players wrestle with as they try to convince the deep rows of the people behind their own agenda.

The players all live in the same society and seek influential power to leave their mark on the surrounding world. The people's opinions, what they feel and think, is determined by four societal values – militarism, economy, human values & green values.

The players have game cards which become ”hot topics” in the society once they are played. They will become the issues the imaginary townsfolk talk in coffee tables, what they read from the news and what shapes their view on the world. These issues then shape the four values, but also bring points through them. This means that the more militaristic the society is the more militaristic influence points you get from cards like 'Raise in Defence Budget' or 'War on Terrorism'. With these points you then push through laws that focus on that value. Only these law cards that the players have pushed through with their political influence they get victory points. And as each value has limited amount of laws there is a race who stands as the best advocate for each value.

Most cards have special abilities that makes them stronger with certain other cards (i.e. Feminism with Equality) or for example prevent certain points to be scored (i.e. Torture Scandal on militarism points or UN in Crisis on Human value points).

As the game proceeds the players try to sell their world view to the masses. But whether the well-being of the people is trampled as the players thirst for power and whether that society is still worth defending for? That is what the players decide all over again during each game they play the Modern Society.