Board Games for 12: Pit, Battlestar Galactica

12 players generally means "split into three groups of four", unless you like party games, which many of us (at Friday night dinner) don't. But I still wanted something quick and slightly strategic to bond the group, so Pit is the natural choice.

I usually play Pit with two standard decks of playing cards, but I had acquired the actual game at some point so I decided to use it. Unfortunately, the actual game only plays for up to seven, so that meant Team Pit: pairs of players divide the cards and then not only have to trade but periodically coordinate. It works fine. it worked fine.

After that we played six-team Battlestar Galactica, a game I hadn't played yet (neither had half of the other people). My partner left before the game started, so it was 11 of us.

Battlestar Galactica is a good game for those that like that sort of game. I don't like that sort of game, but I didn't hate playing. I thought it was ok. The other cooperative games I've played were Shadows Over Camelot (several times) and Pandemic (once). They were, also, both ok.

It's a cooperative game with hidden traitors, where the traitors don't have to stay hidden long, unlike SoC where the traitor needs to stay unrevealed to cause the most havoc. It's also a dice rolling, card picking game. The danger of cooperative games with random elements where you "play against the board" is that it can feel like the game is playing you more than you're playing at all. And that's the way it felt here.

It didn't feel like what we did mattered very much; if we drew nasty cards, we were going to lose. If we drew nice cards (or nasty cards that simply didn't apply to our particular situation), we were going to win. Whoopde do. In our game, we drew nice cards and sailed along, and then some nasty ones, finally, when the traitors started revealing (including me). By then it was 3 hours after the game started, we were nowhere near ending, and we decided in favor of the traitors.

With ten other players deciding what to do on their turn, I fell asleep a few times. I had to wake up once in a while to toss in a skill card.

For those of you who like random elements and dice rolling, and some theme and hidden traitors, you'll probably like the game, as you pray that certain cards are not drawn at just the wrong moments.