Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game and Variant: Book and Boardgame Match-Up

The Game (from Fantasy Flight Games): 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 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. --BoardGameGeek Description

The Book (by Robison Wells): Benson Fisher thought that a scholarship to Maxfield Academy would be the ticket out of his dead-end life. 

He was wrong. 

Now he’s trapped in a school that’s surrounded by a razor-wire fence. A school where video cameras monitor his every move. Where there are no adults. Where the kids have split into groups in order to survive.

Where breaking the rules equals death. 

But when Benson stumbles upon the school’s real secret, he realizes that playing by the rules could spell a fate worse than death, and that escape—his only real hope for survival—may be impossible. --Amazon Book Description

Do you enjoy being paranoid?  Putting these two together was too easy -- playing Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game and reading Variant spun the same gears in my head.

I've never seen an episode of Battlestar Galactica, but in five minutes, I was happily shooting people furtive glances and whispering, "I bet you're a Cylon."  For the first half of the game, there's no guarantee anyone is secretly working against the rest of the players.  Then the second half kicks in.  Is there one Cylon?  Two?  And is it the person sitting to my right?

The paranoia in Variant creeps up on you.  Maybe the rest of the students are just trying to survive, too.  Maybe it's okay to trust that person.  There are plenty of sympathetic characters hanging around Maxfield Academy.  As I read the first half of the book, suspicion tickled the back of my skull.  During the second half, I wondered if it was safe to even trust Benson Fisher, the main character.

Both of these have plenty to recommend them.  Battlestar Galactic: The Board Game is difficult and engaging, with nifty mechanics and painful decisions to make.  Variant has slick, seamless prose and a plot that feeds me plot point after plot point.  But I loved both of these for the reason they're similar.  It's all about being paranoid.  Trust no one.  And try not to blow up the space ship while you're at it.

*As a side note, I'm taking a break next Wednesday for the holidays.  Catch you all in January! 

New Game

I'm planning on trying out some new kinds of posts.  I still want to post once a week, but I've realized to keep the book & boardgame match-ups going at the current rate, I need to play three awesome new games each month and have a book to match it to.  Or, rather, thirty-six games a year.  Eek!

So, to a new game.  I love fantasy and science fiction.  I'm always frustrated when these genres are labeled as pure escapism, or are ridiculed for having plots and situations irrelevant to the real world.  A few years ago, watching a movie, I realized that the plot could be summarized to sound like a literary novel.  Thinking harder, most any plot involving character change can be rewritten this way.  Here's a movie description.  Can you guess what film it belongs to?

A young woman, accustomed to small-town life has only small-town ambitions of marriage with her local sweetheart, until she takes a new job.  At first, she's terrified, but slowly learns through her successes that she is a capable woman.  She gains the confidence to see her old life through new eyes and leaves her fiance to pursue her career.

And the answer is...

Bookshop Talk: Shades of Milk and Honey

My review of Mary Robinette Kowal's Shades of Milk and Honey is up at Bookshop Talk.  Fabulous, fun book -- come on over and check it out!

Why I Love Bookshop Talk

I know this post is ahead of schedule, but if I waited until Wednesday to tell you why I love Bookshop Talk, you might miss their awesome book giveaway.  There are a lot of book review sites out there, but this one has my undying adoration.  Here's why:


Positive Reviews Only.  I'm not interested in bad books.  I want good things to read.  Recommendations.  Someone might argue that this lacks "balance," but the reasons why someone loved a book can tell me if I'm going to hate it or love it, too.  Personally, I figure if I hate a book the best thing I can do is never mention it.  I heard about The Hunger Games a dozen times before I picked the book up -- probably more than half of those mentions were negative.  But the title lodged in my brain.  My curiosity peaked.  And I thank everyone who publicly derrided the book for spurring me towards it.  I loved it.

Content Table.  The end of every review contains a brief table outlining the language, violence, sensuality, and mature themes present in the book.  I adore this.  When I'm writing reviews, it's a wonderful safety net -- I don't have to spend the review giving caveats if the book isn't right for every audience.  As a reader, it empowers me to better select my next read.  

Nice People.  The people who run Bookshop Talk are super nice.  And they happily take reviews from anyone who has a book they want to gush about (guidelines are here).

Cool Contests. They're having another one, and the deadline's Wednesday!  You can read about it here, but in short, if you write a reviews, you're entered to win any book on their site, or a book by any author they've interviewed on their site -- your pick.  It's a long, long list.  I first learned about Bookshop Talk during their last contest.  I won a book.  I've continued to submit reviews ever since.

The contest is open until 11:59 on November 30th.  Head on over and check it out!

The Android's Dream and Rummikub: Book & Board Game Match-Up

The Book (by John Scalzi): A human diplomat creates an interstellar incident when he kills an alien diplomat in a most…unusual…way. To avoid war, Earth's government must find an equally unusual object: A type of sheep ("The Android's Dream"), used in the alien race's coronation ceremony.

To find the sheep, the government turns to Harry Creek, ex-cop, war hero and hacker extraordinaire, who with the help of Brian Javna, a childhood friend turned artificial intelligence, scours the earth looking for the rare creature. And they find it, in the unknowing form of Robin Baker, pet store owner, whose genes contain traces of the sheep DNA.

But there are others with plans for the sheep as well: Mercenaries employed by the military. Adherents of a secret religion based on the writings of a 21st century science fiction author. And alien races, eager to start a revolution on their home world and a war on Earth.

To keep our planet from being enslaved, Harry will have to pull off the greatest diplomatic coup in history, a grand gambit that will take him from the halls of power to the lava-strewn battlefields of alien worlds. There's only one chance to get it right, to save the life of Robin Baker -- and to protect the future of humanity. --Amazon Book Description

The Game (published by numerous companies): Rummikub is played with a set of 106 elegant tiles that are as durable as they are easy to handle. Like Rummy, players build melds of run of the same colors - Red 7, Red 8 and Red 9 - or sets of the same numbers - Blue 8, Red 8 and Black 8. If you're looking for a fast action game where the outcome is undecided until the last play and has a never-ending variety of strategies and play situations, you'll love Rummikub! --Amazon Product Description 

The book starts with the line: "Dirk Moeller didn’t know if he could fart his way into a major diplomatic incident. But he was ready to find out."

Anyone who's not laughing has probably already clicked away.  We'll continue.  The book reads like a spy thriller, with delightfully wry prose pulling us through twists in politics and gunshots.  Of course, there's also abundant science fiction -- both innovative tidbits and imaginative play with the genre's history.  Along with fascinating alien cultures.  What I loved about this book was the reversals.  At one moment, the good guys were impossibly stuck, then a lawyer or an AI does something clever.  The bad guys retaliate by turning their sucess into a trap, and so on.  The novel reads like a gigantic, ever-changing puzzle.

And "ever-changing puzzle" fits Rummikub perfectly.  The rules are simple, but one tile can devastatingly change future moves.  The sets are held in common and can be reorganized in any way, so long as all sets are legal when a player's turn ends.  Usually playing a tile isn't as easy as adding it to the end of a run.  Today, I only won a game because I saw a move rearranging some twenty pieces.  I imagine most people reading this blog have played Rummikub, so I'll be short, but it's that brain-twisting puzzle-piecing that matches these two.  In The Android's Dream, the final play is a delightfully ingenious one I didn't see coming.

As a side note, the content in this book is a notch up from what I usually blog about -- a good fistful of swearing, plus some things that are mentioned in exposition, but not dramatized.  I don't want to give spoilers, but if you'd like more detail, feel free to contact me.

Snot & Stuff

My family hasn't been feeling great.  Just in case the written word is contagious, I'm delaying today's post until next week.  Instead, here's the first episode of the Standard Action web series.  It's hilarious.  In a very nerdy way.  If D&D scares you, now's a good time to use expeditious retreat.