Unboxing BSG: Starship Battles from Ares Games

Battlestar Galactica (or BSG) was one of my favourite TV shows growing up as a kid. When it returned to the small screen in 2004 I was pretty excited - I can still remember watching the Pilot whilst my nephew fell asleep on me (he was a pretty small toddler at the time). The combination of outstanding story lines, brilliant "WW2 gun camera" style space cinematography and deep characters made it a must-see each week for me.

Fast forward some years and the FFG Board Game came along and it was equally brilliant. I've played many games, lost more than I have won, and been excited to play it each and every time. 

Now we get a chance to scratch that BSG itch again with a new spaceship game (from Ares Games) that promises a lot! Best of all I've managed to get hold of a copy thanks to some friends that went along to Essen SPIEL last month..

The box.... it is just a box.

Lifting the lid we find... some amazing ships (more on this at the end), flight dials and stands

The flight dials are pretty cool and give a little heads up on the complexity of the game

Next up we find the rule book, scenario book and ship ID tokens

A quick look at the Index. I've got some early thoughts to share (in a later post) about the rules

Tokens and templates. I wondered why the Asteroids were on a thinner cardboard stock. Presume it is because of the movement mechanics?

The bottom layer is filled with movement cards, pilot and ship cards and upgrades. Not a single square piece of paper in sight...

And now what you have really been waiting for....

The Raider:
A surprisingly impressive paint job. I expected much less detail if I am being blunt.

Apollo's Viper:
Apollo's ship looks nicely battered and weathered. I didn't even see some of the detail till I took these photos and looked at it at 400% size on my screen.

A bit blurry... sorry.

Hardball's Viper:
Hardball's ship is much cleaner, but no less detailed.

Viper Comparison:
A top down view of the two ships to see the major differences.

Thinking about the components (excluding the ships) they are nicely printed, stored in some useful vac trays, with really high quality pieces. You can see why the game has a higher RRP than X-Wing.

The ships however are where the game truly shines, and shines brightly for that matter. They are absolutely fantastic. I don't mean that in a "oh these are mass produced so how high a quality can you expect" kind of way. I mean it in a "these are painted better than I would paint them" kind of way. By comparison they are as good, or better than ANY FFG X-Wing model. I guess I should have expected this high level of quality given their Wings of War aircraft, but I was still blown away.

Now for the rules.... stay tuned. I've read them once, didn't quite "get" them and watched a couple of the GENCON videos to help.