Spoiler Alert: The fleet got wrecked, and it was partially my fault

Game Background: Den of Wolves is a Megagame that's 8 hours straight of 45 player Battlestar Galactica. It's modeled after one of my favorite episodes of television of all time, 33. Most of the players are part of the Fleet of survivors, spread out across a number of ships. The ships and roles are specialized, so no two players are responsible for exact same thing. For example: the First Officer on the Quellon distributes water to the Fleet, the Captain of the Refinery makes sure the fuel ship runs smoothly, and Political Press Reporter reports on the Council's discussions.

My Past Megagames: This was my third ever megagame. My first was a previous run of Den of Wolves (also online), and my second was the OWL League's first season (fantasy Quidditch).

My Role: I knew coming into the game that I was the Engineer on the Dione. My job was to make sure that we acquired and used all of the resources to keep the ship running. We were a luxury cruiser that housed the Council, a democratic body made up of the President and a Councilor from each group of planets left in the fleet. Since our homeworlds had been destroyed, each councilor represented 1-2 ships.

My Ship: The Dione had a crew of four: Captain Cody was someone I'd met during OWL league and super enjoyed playing with, Councilor Madeline had been an excellent WOLF in my previous run of Den of Wolves, and First Officer David was a new face. Additionally, the Council met on the ship each day, so we had a LOT of people coming and going. Because retaining the Council was one of our objectives, we made early plans to upgrade security and ensure luxury accommodations for the councilors. The current President and Vice President also came from FAS planets, so we were in a position of relative power in the Council, and retaining it was part of our objectives.

The Twist: At the very start of the game, I was pulled aside and told that I was a WOLF sleeper agent, the equivalent of a Cylon. My goal was no longer to help ensure the safety of the fleet and the prominence of the FAS. I now wanted to destroy the remnants of humanity.

My Game Plan: I pretty consistently did the same three things the entire game. WOLF agents have a variety of options to cause chaos within the fleet, but I found a formula early on that worked, so I stuck to it.

Engineer: I came to the conclusion that best thing I could do at the beginning was play my non-WOLF role to the best of its ability and stay hidden until it made sense to reveal. So, 80% of what I did was making sure that the Dione had all of the resources that it needed while staying on friendly terms with the rest of the fleet. For reasons that I'll get into later, this proved to be a really great strategy, so I was doing this up until the end of the game.

WOLF Beacons: The human fleet has a pursuit track that numerically represents how close the WOLF fleet is to finding their location. I planted signal devices on the ships in the fleet to speed up the pursuit track and bring the WOLF ships in faster. When a WOLF attack happens, the entire fleet is locked down until it's resolved. This means that no one can leave their ships, resource deliveries grind to a halt, and a lot of things get damaged (preventing stations on ships from being used). By the end of the game, I'd planted a beacon on nine of the thirteen ships in the fleet (one each round).

Rabble Rouser: In my experience in games like this, if everyone is pointing fingers at each other during the game instead of uniting towards a common goal, "good" has no shot of winning. I intentionally stirred things up, increasing the tension between factions and keeping the fleet from uniting against the WOLF threat.

The Overarching Story: Keep in mind that this is entirely based on my point of view and what I heard through the grapevine. I did not directly participate in a number of the things I'll be recapping.

Council Team Shakeup: Right off the bat, three of the Councilors (from the Quellon, Refinery, and Icebreaker, hereafter referred to as Team Shakeup) came into the Council with a number of plans to shake things up (hence the name). They stripped our ship of its shuttle, saying that we didn't produce any resources and other ships needed it more. They pushed for immediate reelection, stating that current administration had been chosen during a different time and didn't represent the fleet's best interests. In general, they were looking to change the status quo (due to their ship's VCs) before really figuring out what it was, which frustrated a number of people. We on the Dione could not let these actions stand! We liked the administration and needed our shuttle. Council Madeline fought hard against them but was ultimately overruled on the shuttle. It gave me plenty of ammunition to rabble rouse while I was out in the fleet finding resources.

Universal Arbor: New to Den of Wolves this weekend was the Universal Arbor, a group of 3 "Civilians" that weren't part of a ship but were working together. The Engineering Professor could train Engineers and do Engineer functions himself. The Celebrity Host could give a morale boost by focusing on a ship. The TAIL Profiler could check a player to see if they were a WOLF with 5/6 chance of being correct (XCOM players take note). They were also trying to convert the fleet to their religion based around the worship of nature. The Dione consistently had trouble with food throughout the game and suffered major Morale losses because of it. However, we had these mystery morale boosts that we couldn't identify the source of, until the UA came up to us during the third round, preaching the good word. It turns out that they'd been behind the moral boosts. Captain Leaf, First Officer Pomegranate, and I (LJuniper) converted to revel in the word of the Arbor. This was how we learned about the TAIL Profiler's prophetic dreams, something that remained a secret during most of the game. After sharing our "suspicions" of Team Shakeup, he decided to look into it.

CHAOS, Part One: Somewhere around the fourth round, the game started derailing. First, the only science ship in the fleet disappeared into space after a jump, never to be heard from again. We waited for a while but eventually accepted that it was never coming back. Second, the TAIL profiler had detected the Quellan Councilor as WOLF, and the Refinery Councilor was implicated as well. The Admiral stormed the Council to make a double arrest and send 2/3 of Team Shakeup to the Brig. Because the fleet was unaware of the TAIL Profiler's dreams, a number of ships thought that the President and Admiral were overreaching their power, likely fueled by WOLF operatives. This was what set off the major conflict. One one side was the established government (Star Alpha, Aegis, and Dione). On the other was Team Shakeup. The rest of the fleet was basically stuck in the middle. By this point, the pursuit track had jumped up a bunch because of my beacons, so the fleet was under siege by the WOLF armada. The first ship (the Refinery, I believe) had detected one of my early beacons and traced the parts back to the FAS, so accusations were flying. In about an hour, the fleet was tearing itself apart and was missing one of the only things that could help restore order, the Science ship.

Deep WOLF Brainstorm: At this point, the game was shut down for a short schedule break. I went for a walk and meditated because the non-stop adrenaline had me a bit keyed up. At this point, I believed that there were three WOLF agents in the Fleet and that I was the only one still hidden. Word had gone around that the Endeavor's absence was due to a WOLF agent on board, and I believe the positive check on the Quellan Ambassador. That meant I was on my own. In Werewolf, there's a thing called the Deep Wolf. In bigger, longer werewolf games with lots of special powers, one of the wolves needs to blend in and make it to the end for the ultimate wolf victory. If all of them are drawing to themselves or get caught up in claim wars, the wolves won't have anyone left at the end to reach parity. It was at this point that I realized that I had to be the Deep WOLF, so I decided to double down on my three part strategy from above to ensure WOLF attacks while remaining undercover long enough to ensure the destruction of the fleet.

CHAOS, Part 2: What happened next was a series of unfortunate events. Within the same round, two pieces of evidence came to light that the President was a WOLF. The first was the TAIL profiler's dream that the President was trying to uproot the Arbor Tree, the equivalent of a WOLF hit. The second was that the Icebreaker believed the President was a WOLF based on their actions and the Refinery beacon being made of FAS parts, so they decided to frame him. They planted evidence on their beacon that directly implicated the President. Tensions between Team Shakeup and the established government reached an all time high, with a number of other ships in the fleet being forced to take sides. A well timed beacon placement in the Dione bridge ensured that WOLF destroyers were waiting for us when we jumped next, damaging a large number of ships.

Final Nail in the Coffins: By this point, the fleet was genuinely tearing itself apart. Team Shakeup had expanded to include the food ship and had a trade blockade against the established government. They were planning to split the fleet in half and jump to a new destination by themselves, without military support or the engineering ship. Many ships were so damaged that it was going to be a while before they could jump again. Finally at the end of the round, the Admiral had been given enough proof implicating the President that she was forced to arrest him.

The Endgame: At this point, Control stopped the game and declared the WOLF team victorious. If any ships were able to survive, the fleet would be so fractured (both physically and politically) that it would be really hard to recover. I was still well hidden and would have outed myself for maximum impact. The fleet's pursuit track was the highest that several people had ever seen because the WOLF team was able to prevent the fleet from jumping enough while summoning their destroyers to attack.

WOLF One: The first WOLF to out themselves was the Science Officer on the Endeavor (the missing science ship). She had done a great job setting slightly skewed research priorities early on (including planting an eavesdropping device in the Dione council chambers) before sacrificing herself to remove the only science ship from the game, as well as a key figure from the Aegis (military ship) that was in charge of fleet relations. This put the fleet at a huge disadvantage when it came to WOLF detection and evasion. It also helped heighten the tension by overworking the Aegis and preventing them from liaising with the fleet as much as they could have otherwise.

WOLF Two: The second WOLF identified was in fact the Quellan Councilor. He made a ruckus in council, distracting the fleet from being able to focus on the WOLF threat. Because he never broke character and insisted that he was human to the end, the divide between Team Shakeup and the established government was irreparably widened. The humans were never able to come back together.

WOLF Three: This was obviously me. I hustled for resources, planted beacons, and sewed discord.

The President: He was definitely framed, something I figured out pretty on when fingers were being pointed at him, mostly because I was the one that had done the things he was implicated of doing.

My Overall Feelings:

The Best: I had so much fun being a WOLF. I was super jazzed when Kurt told me, and the experience did not disappoint. I loved being hidden at the end still despite causing a lot of problems. I loved my dear Captain Leaf and fellow Dione members being shocked that I was a WOLF when I revealed. This was one of my top 10 gaming experiences ever.

The Good: I made some great friends during this game that I'm still in contact with. Special shoutout to Captain Cody and the entire crew of the Lucas (the engineering/water ship), who were a joy to play with both here and in the other two megagames from GenCon. I learned a lot about the WOLF threat that I was able to capitalize on the next day as the Admiral of the Aegis. I also experienced the ship interface for the first time and learned how the game mechanically worked, something I was not exposed to during my previous run as Press. The United Arbor team was super fun to work with as well, and I loved the new mechanics introduced by them.

The Bad: There were a few people stuck in the Brig for a while, in limbo until the Council held a trial. Because this took several rounds, the players were there with nothing to do for hours. This was a huge piece of feedback they gave that I'll come back to in my future report of Saturday's Den of Wolves game.

The Ugly: Unbeknownst to me until after the game was over, the tensions between Team Shakeup and the established government had affected a number of players outside of the bounds of the game. A few were consistently met with such hostility that they might not be returning to play megagames again, which is a huge shame. During the post-game chat, it was brought up that, even though we are roleplaying life or death situations, it's important to remember that the fleet ultimately needs to work together to survive, something I didn't pay enough attention to on Saturday until the halftime break.

Recommendation: I highly recommend this to anyone that is ok with a bit of social deduction in their megagame. The entire thing is dripping with theme, and time flies by so quickly because you're constantly working on something. Each time I've played Den of Wolves, it's been 8 hours of non-stop adrenaline, and I've come out of it feeling elated. I will play in every Den of Wolves run that I possibly can.

This Play: 5/5 stars

Den of Wolves: 5/5 stars

--Theme: 5/5 stars

--Interface: 4/5 stars

--Rules: 4/5 stars

--Player Autonomy: 5/5 stars