Battlestar Galactica: Exodus Expansion - Tips & Strategies

Cylon brothers: Avoid the temptation to build massive assaults on the Fleet board without observing the human jump timers. Unlike in the past when our fleet had to scatter when sensors lost the Human refugees after they jumped, we now can track their movements and time our assaults with precision. Forcing the humans to jump away from an assault is no longer as critical as keeping a constant threat on them. At the least, you will occupy many of their leaders as you build your next assault.

If you are lucky enough to have a well placed sleeper among their limited pilots, reveal that advantage quickly. There is very little a Cylon pilot can do to hide his nature in space, and you will be forced to damage our fleet while maintaining your cover. The most damage you can do to the humans is to reveal and rid them of a vital role in their defense. Unlike the presidency or admiralty, your role cannot be replaced easily by the humans when you take your place to command the Cylon fleet.

Much like with Pegasus, some of the characters that come with the Exodus expansion are drastically imbalanced. Namely, Tory Foster is disgustingly powerful, while Samuel T. Anders is hilariously weak. Online playgroups often use the following errata to those characters:

— Tory Foster’s “Adaptable” ability may only be triggered once per turn, so that the President’s Office is no longer a preposterous card-drawing engine.

— Tory Foster’s “Amoral” drawback now reads “You must discard 2 Skill Cards in order to choose the second option on any Crisis Card.” This causes her drawback to make certain decisions harder, instead of taking them away.

— Samuel T. Anders’ “Star Player” ability is now Movement or Action: instead of just Action, so there’s a chance players might use it instead of always having a better use of their action.

— Samuel T. Anders’ “Longshot” ability now can be activated during any player’s turn instead of just his own, so that his once per game ability isn’t worse than Helo’s every-turn ability.

The “Personal Goals” mechanic is meant to make finding Cylons harder as it promotes humans taking sub-optimal actions, but the problem is that if you use it, it’s ALL downside for the humans, and Exodus already swings the balance of the game in favor of the Cylons. There are a couple of modifications some groups use to make personal Goals help humans as well:

First, all Personal Goals say “take another action” after you resolve them, so you aren’t losing out on a valuable action by taking one. Second, completed Personal Goals are kept next to a player’s character sheet, and during that player’s Receive Skills step (if they are human), they draw one additional Skill Card of any type for each Personal Goal they have completed. With this modification, Cylons can hide easier as humans are also making sub-optimal plays, but the humans actually get an eventual benefit from them.

The groups who use this modification usually have it so that Personal Goals also don’t cause the player to get another Loyalty Card is revealed before distance 6; this promotes goals being completed early and having more effect on the game, but allows players with completed goals to be verified as human. Your group can decide for themselves if the trade-off is worth it.