Trashdome - Galactica VS Twilight Imperium 3rd

WELCOME TO TRASHDOME!

This is part of a series of bloody matches to the death. Show support for your favorite game so it will do better in the fight. You can support it by writing why you think its the better game and more importantly by betting (i.e. voting for) it. Please make it clear for when I check the bets later. You have until Friday when I tally the bets and declare the winner. I will reserve my bet for any tie-breakers.

Although you should be familiar with both games, there is no rule that says you have to have played both of them. The only rule in Trashdome is this;

Two games enter! One game leaves!

Shit, this is hard, played both one time and enjoyed both tremendously. The thing about Galactica is that I couldn't care less about the theme. I don't like the series and while it may seem strange because the game is based on the theme and captures it well.

so, my vote goes to TI3

TI3 is a great game that does require a lot of time and player input/effort to ensure it is a great game. The empire building and diplomacy is pretty good and it has great theme, but I don't like the slightly euro-izing of it with the VPs and how the role selection is done - by the sound of it I think I would have enjoyed TI2 a bit more.

BSG is a great game that does play in a reasonable time and which is friendlier to get players (new or not) to buy into. It does a great job of capturing the theme which in turn creates excellent tension, suspicions, and trash-talkin. Even though I've never played an rpg in my life, the character choice and accompanying gameplay with it seems to add another level of enjoyment & fun to the game ('this is me, those are mine, this who I am, that is what I do') - it provides credible player immersion in the game similar to Arkham Horror. And it is a game that attracts players from different gaming genres - at our small club we have minis players and rpgers joining in to a BSG boardgame.

Vote BSG.

TI3

BSG is a tedious game that failed to impress me.

Twilight Imperium is the king of all AT.

BSG

TI3 is a tedious game that failed to impress me.

Battlestar Galactica is the king of all AT.

Battlestar Galactica

The most amazing thing about this game is that people who have never seen the TV show still get it. The mechanics and the theme are so strong that the broad concepts of betrayal, suspicion, and survival totally make sense to people with no exposure to the show.

TI:3 remains unplayed by me, but it'd have to be pretty amazing to pass up BSG.

TI3 laves me cold, cold, cold in the distant reaches of space. BSG has tons of character, drama, narrative, and some of the best player interaction to be found in our hobby.

Vote: BSG.

I have played a lot of Battlestar Galactica in the last 10 months. Too much. It's a very good game, but I'm quite burned out on it right now. So burned out that I'm not even remotely interested in the expansion at this time. Even my game is burned out, a couple of the green cards are now marked thanks to some dude who really needed to trim his fingernails. The game was good enough to get me interested in the series, but the finale to season three was so bad that I decided to skip season four. That finale also contributed to my burnout on the game.

I bought Twilight Imperium a couple of months ago, picking up both 3rd edition and Shattered Empires for a total of $90, including shipping. It looks potentially great, though I need to recruit new players, because most of my current crowd is just barely able to endure a long game of Arkham Horror. I suspect that TI3 offers so much more than BSG that it will have much greater replay value. It certainly seems to offer a lot more variety in terms of strategy than BSG, which has gotten very samey.

Vote: Twilight Imperium.

I am a Cylon, therefore my vote is for BSG.

I love both, but TI3 is the king of all AT games, I've been playing it since first edition and can't see it being replaced by anything but the next version of itself.

Battle star is a great newcomer but can't hold up against TI3.

TWILIGHT IMPERIUM 3RD EDITION

This is not even close. Sure BSG is all cult of the new and it is fun but TI3 IS Ameritrash!

Vote:
TI3 as it bitchslaps BSG and calls it a toaster.

-M

Now, it may very well be that I need Malloc and some others to play TI3 with me...I may take on a different appreciation for the game. In the 3 times I've played it, I found it .... droopy. Exact opposite of what I intended. But it very well could be the people I played it with.

By contrast, BSG was great the 3 times that I've played it. Of course, I love both iterations of BSG. I still have a cassette of the music from the 70s TV show, a handheld video game from the 70s on BSG, and other crap.

VOTE BSG

Vote: Twilight Imperium!

Another battle between two great games, but this time it's a little less clear cut who the victor should be.

Wait...maybe it isn't. TI3 is no doubt a great game, but it's also one you've got to put 30-40 hours into before you start really getting the most out of it. There's nothing wrong with that (other than the fact that it is a borderline lifestyle game), but you can play 10 or more games of BSG in that same amount of time and get the most out of it after the second game.

TI3 is also a great game that synthesizes a lot of older gameplay ideas into something new. BSG brings forward a lot of NEW gameplay ideas and creates new ways to play. There is a much greater sense of emergent gameplay in BSG, and it is by far the more innovative, daring, and progressive design.

AND it's just more fun.

Boosh. BSG for the win.

BSG is a great game because it's a difficult psychological war. Cylons sabotage the humans not only be being unhelpful, but also by persuading them to make less than helpful moves. Humans need to keep focused on doing the best thing to survive, figure out fast who the cylons are, and deflect suspicion and criticism more effectively than the cylons do. All this adds up to what I consider to be an extremely diffcult metagame that offers many avenues for misdirection and for manipulating ambiguity. That allows for "immersion" at its deepest, and "trash talk" at its finest. This game reaches into the back of my brain.

VOTE: Battlestar Galactica