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 fourth 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 third was the Den of Wolves run the previous day, detailed here.

My Role: I was the Admiral of the Aegis, the last remaining military ship in the fleet. Yes, this is the Admiral William Adama role. I was SUPER excited to get this one since he's one of my favorite characters from the TV show.

My Ship: The Aegis crew had mostly prearranged to be together. I was the Admiral, my best friend Michelle was the Logistics Officer (the resource manager), and our friends Mike and Ben were the Flight Wing CO (fighter squadron commander) and Comms Officer (PR guy/Council liaison). Madeline (also on the Dione the day before) was the XO (my second in command). We also had our own personal member of Control, Paddy, who had been a co-WOLF with Madeline in my first run of DoW. I'll probably sing his praises later in my recap, but he did a phenomenal job making sure we didn't blow ourselves up.

My Game Plan: After the previous day's events, I had three real objectives:

1) Scan early, scan often. This way, I could prevent a WOLF from pulling the same tricks I did.

2) Make sure my crew enjoyed themselves. We agreed on some of the basic functions early on about who would be doing what, but I wrote on a post-it on my monitor that their enjoyment was a top priority, so I tried to check in with them during each Team Phase to make sure that they knew what they were doing AND that it was something that they wanted to do.

3) Make sure no one was in my Brig for more than a round and a half. This was (I think) the only objective that I totally missed the mark on.

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 few of the things I'll be recapping.

Aegis Immediately Wrecked: There were back to back WOLF attacks at the start of Rounds 1 and 2 where we experienced difficulties. Control did a really phenomenal job retconning some of damage since most of it was due to player error on the interface side. Otherwise, the Aegis would have literally been a floating scrap heap (22/24 stations damaged and every single NPC crew injured). Additionally, XO Madeline did a great job fixing positioning to make sure that the Aegis wasn't taking as much damage since we were still stuck with a little over half of our stations damaged.

Shepherd Captain Framed: Three minutes into the game, we detected a transmission from the Shepherd. I informed the Captain, who scanned and found a communicator in his own pocket. He was then (False Positively) detected to be a WOLF by the TAIL Profiler (a Universal Arbor civilian that could 'dream' about whether or not someone was a WOLF with 5/6 accuracy). We stormed the Shepherd, arrested him, and threw him in the Brig.

Icebreaker Engineer Implicated: When the Shepherd Captain first found the device, he informed me that only his crew and the Icebreaker Engineer had access to him up to that point. Upon hearing this, the TAIL profiler got a Correct WOLF hit on him. Our Comms Officer Ben had actually Brigged the Icebreaker Engineer right after the Shepherd Captain, but we had incomplete info at that point, and the President and I left him go, mostly because the Shepherd Captain tried to kill him in the Brig, which made us think that he was a WOLF even more. The Icebreaker Engineer was returned to the Brig at that point, more details later.

Citizen's Arrest on the Professor of Engineering: The beacon was taken to the Endeavor to be analyzed, but the Engineering Professor (another UA civilian) snuck on and analyzed the device. When the Endeavor tried to Citizen's Arrest him, he panicked and destroyed it. So he was also thrown in the Brig. I believe my exact quote upon his arrival was, "Sorry you're stuck here. I don't think you're a WOLF, but I can't let you go without the Council trying you."

Hauled Before Council: Once these three were in my Brig, I locked down the ship and only let my crew and the VP/President on to prevent the 1-2 known WOLFs from jailbreaking. For reasons to be disclosed later, the entire fleet outside of the Aegis thought that I was a WOLF, including the Council. The VP and the Comms Officer Ben, the two people in charge of liaising between the Council and the Aegis, were both in sick bay, which meant that they couldn't coordinate between us and the Fleet. After two turns, all three were still in my Brig, which violated my third objective. My almost exact quote to the Council at that point was, "If all three of these people are still in my Brig without trial at the end of the Round, I'm shooting the two that have been detected to be a WOLF." What the rest of the fleet heard was, "The Admiral is going to unilaterally execute the prisoners". I was summoned to Council, along with the Captain of the Shepherd for his tried. I explained the situation, told them exactly what I meant when I threatened to execute the prisoners, and then testified against the Captain of the Shepherd. (Turns out the guy had been framed and crucial evidence indicating that had never been passed on to me, so I thought he was guilty the rest of the game.) Situation defused! (Or so I thought).

First Assassination Attempt: Since the entire fleet thought I was a WOLF, the Refinery hatched an excellent plan to assassinate me. They refused to give my crew our fuel for the next jump unless I came to talk to them. After their attempt, I told the Captain, "I'm pretty sure you just tried to kill me. I get it. There have been a lot of crossed wires. Your council member should be able to clear things up. We both have jobs to do, so let's go do those. I won't tell anyone you tried to kill me." And I didn't. No one knew outside of me, their crew, and Control until the game was over.

Second Assassination Attempt: Back on the Aegis, the Professor of Engineering mind controlled one of my Marines into letting him and the Icebreaker Engineer escape. The Prof. fled on a shuttle to the Dione. The Icebreaker Engineer planted a beacon in my chambers before trying to assassinate me. He was gunned down by my Marines before he could.

The Fleet's Last Stand: At the start of Round 8, we were in bad shape. No one had resources, ships had taken a lot of damage, and there was still a lot of confusion. The fleet couldn't jump that turn because of damage to the fuel ship, so I decided that we would batten down the hatches, assume that the WOLF fleet was going to attack that turn, and the prep for a jump two minutes into Round 9. My crew did a phenomenal job spreading the word, so when a MASSIVE onslaught from the WOLF fleet happened, we managed to use the last of our defenses to repel them.

Signal Detected: It turns out that the reason that the attack was so big was because the Icebreaker Engineer's beacon intercepted my scans and knew our possible jump locations AND a convoy from the Dione had gone down to the planet we were near and launched a massive signal beacon to the WOLF team. The Aegis detected the transmission during battle and saw that the Dione Engineer and Vice President were the ones that had gone down to the planet.

Possible Martial Law: Heading into Round 9, we knew that a) we were going to jump almost immediately, b) there was a WOLF in the Dione Engineer/VP, and c) there was probably another WOLF on the Dione. During team time, we discussed jumping without the Dione and informing the ships with Counselors that we trusted not to go back to Council. We were SO CLOSE to doing it when we came to our senses and remembered that our job was to uphold the will of the Council, not abandon it to the WOLFs. 

EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE: All of these events happened in the span of twoish minutes: We pulled the President aside, told them about the VP and Engineer, and were informed about the death of the Dione Engineer on the planet. We received permission from the President to arrest the VP, which we then did. He was the 5th person thrown in the Brig. At the same time, we sent our NPC Engineer to repair the Refinery jump core and get fuel for the Aegis. We also took information about the beacon over to the Endeavor for them to study. Finally we jumped!

Last Two Briggings: The Endeavor managed to decode the WOLF codebook and found that their keyword was Vision, which the President's Spiritual Advisor (the final UA civilian) had said a BUNCH. So we once again barged into Council and arrested the President's Advisor with his permission, he was the 6th person thrown into the Brig. The News team informed me that their Ace Reporter had also said the codeword a lot, so we were in the process of throwing them in the Brig when the game ended. All in all, there were 6-7 people Brigged during the game, and the Brig was occupied roughly 4.5 of the 9 Rounds.

The Endgame: At this point, Control stopped the game and said that the fleet would likely recover. Due to the last jump and the Endeavor's excellent reverse engineering of the WOLF beacons, the jump track went down TWICE in the last round. We had plans in place to wreck the ships even more to make one last jump. The Endeavor decoded the WOLF codeword, and Comms Officer Ben suspected a WOLF in Council while I suspected one on the Dione. Ultimately, Control believed that the Fleet had narrowed down the remaining WOLF members, reduced the pursuit track, and developed enough defensive technology that we would be able to recover. Fleet saved!

WOLF One: Was the Icebreaker Engineer, who was killed in action and returned as the good Captain of the Venture halfway through the game. Cody did a great job of causing chaos in the fleet before intercepting possible jump coordinates and beaming them to the WOLF destroyers.

WOLF Two: Ultimately, it turns out that a lot of the suspicion against me/the Aegis were because the Vice President was a WOLF, which I found quite disappointing because I thought he was good even though he was in my Brig with a TAIL hit on him at the end of the game. The first half, he'd sewn a lot of discord by telling everyone that he kept trying to work with the Aegis but I refused to see him. I estimate that 60% of the disconnect was due to him, and he did an excellent job with shenanigans before ultimately summoning a shitton of WOLF ships to help destroy us in the final battle. By the end of the game, he was solidly locked down in the Brig and would remain there until the TAIL profiler got enough views of the same direction to be certain of his alignment.

WOLF Three: This was the Dione Councilor, who was on our list of ~7 remaining WOLF candidates. Our ship felt confident that the remaining WOLF was in the Dione, Quellon, or a Council Member, and a number of those people were semi-cleared through their behavior. My understanding from Comms Officer Ben was that they were a cause of a lot of the Council-related chaos, and they helped convince the Dione to send down the exploration party that sent off the beacon.

Universal Arbor: Though I only touched on their involvement at a few points this game, I wanted to give a special shoutout (water your roots) because they took a very different tact on Saturday than the Friday group did that was also very fun to witness. They were MUCH more aggressive, which had its positives and negatives. They definitely rose to higher prominence, with the Celebrity Host becoming the President's Spiritual Advisor. However, they were universally distrusted, and numerous people tried to assassinate them during the game. A huge part of it was because the TAIL profiler got five positive hits on other players in the game, two of which were correct and three of which hit the (1/6) false positive ratio. One was on my XO Madeline, but I outright dismissed it because she was clearly good.

Endeavor: I also wanted to shoutout the Endeavor for their excellent scientific advancements. They're a huge part of why the fleet made it out alive. They identified the codeword that the WOLF players were given to identify themselves to each other and reverse engineered the WOLF beacon to pull them off our track.

My Overall Feelings:

The Best: I loved working with my team so much! Each of them did an excellent job and were very self empowered, which made my job easy because I could basically just do whatever I wanted. I never had to worry about the mechanics of the game or ship functionality because I could count on Michelle to keep the ship running, Mike to man the pilot ships on the combat map, Ben to be the face of the military to the fleet, and Madeline to handle any unexpected bumps that happened along the road.

The Good: The fleet recovered beautifully from some early setbacks, particularly getting wrecked by the WOLF fleet and very disconnected communication. By round 5, we'd found our rhythm and were communicating well when it came to defense and jump planning.

The Bad: There were a few people stuck in the Brig for a while, in limbo until the Council held a trial. If this sounds familiar, that's because it is. Fortunately, this group had a bit more to do between mind control and a damaged brig, but I still felt bad for so many of them being stuck in there for so long.

No Ugly this time!

Recommendation: I still 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

If you're interested, you can listen to a podcast episode featuring Steph (Friday's Admiral) and I being interviewed by Matty with the Megagame Coalition here.

Water your roots.