Now that a lot of people have had time to play Exodus, I'm wondering what the new "dream team" consists of for the humans... if you could have any combination of four or five human characters in a game, what would be the most effective group?

• PRESIDENT: Tory Foster
• ADMIRAL: Helena Cain
• CAG: Apollo
• SUPPORT: Chief

The fifth would be any other pilot (including Helo), any other support (Dee or Cally) or Ellen Tigh.

Persident - Laura Roslin. - (2nd crisis card ability)

Admiral - Helo (re-rolling nukes) or Cain (early jump)

CAG - Starbuck (Appolo's a better pilot, but Starbuck has non-pilot advantages)

Engineer - Cary (oop's, I didn't know that was loaded)

For the 5th I'd choose Kat or Lt.Gatea.

In general the team wants to maximise it's ability to draw green,purple & blue cards.

Whilst each player wants to select skills which are effective both for human & cylon use.

I like the Kat/Helen combo. Kat is best I think sitting on Peggi, jumping between guns and having Helen following her back and forth schluffing off big number cards to her. Then hitting that jump button 2 jumps early all the time.

I usually like a helo, Baltar/Tory, Apollo, chief, helen and Kat. We usually play 6 player games, and that set up usually makes me happy and warm.

napoleon.

napoleonWilson said:

I believe you mean Ellen (Tigh), not Helen.

Having both of them in the game does indeed have potential - for good or bad. If either of them is an unrevealed cylon and gets to jump at -3, bad things are almost guaranteed to happen. While Ellen cannot choose to automatically pass or fail the result, she can be Admiral for turn and decide the Destination.

napoleonWilson said:

If your playing with pegasus, I agree Kat is perhaps the best human character.

Without pegasus she drops to 5th or 6th place.

Wow, I disagree... Kat's draw is not particularly good and her OPG sucks, she is good at shooting down Cylon ships from Pegasus and killing Centurions once they get on board and that's about it. Sure, she can use her OPT to pass Crisis cards that involve a die roll, but imo she's just no comparison to some of the other characters.
I'm biased b/c I LOVE Ellen Tigh, but I really do think she's one of the strongest human characters. She can pass a needed card to someone else (give an XO to someone who doesn't draw green for example) and she's almost guaranteed to draw an XO every turn. If she already has one she can draw yellow instead and cycle the yellow cards more quickly so that Support the People and Preventative Policy are drawn as often as possible. And her OPG is great for getting humans out of a jam, or taking the title from a Cylon player at the most opportune time.
Xaos, I think our differing opinions on a number of threads are very interesting and our games must play out very differently... I wish I could do a game with your play group and you could do one with mine...

When it comes to Kat, I agree with Skowza. She's just not that good. I would definitely leave her off any team in a 6-player game, since her ability's only good on her turn. And although she's better in small games like 4s, the inclusion of CAG now pretty much demands that the first pilot chosen be out in a viper. So in my group Kat's without a home.

Now, I will admit that if one of the following three things is true on each of Kat's turns:

1. cylon ships are on the main board
2. the FTL track is at -3
3. there's a centurion in the armory

*and* she's holding a 5 or 6 in hand, she'll have a turn that rivals or exceeds the XO she didn't play. But if that's not true (say, if the fleet recently jumped), she frankly doesn't have much to do. So I consider Kat "bang or bust," and to me she's a luxury the fleet can rarely afford.

We love Kat.. It's true to play her takes some fore-thought and skill but with just alittle planning ahead she is mighty. Having a for sure die roll ESPECIALLY should she make it to admiral (jthe way the nukes work now) but even not being admiral the ability to kill boarding parties, use both peggi stations, jump without fear of pop loss, and die rolls for crisises makes her invaluable. We can jump 2 spaces early EVERY time safely. Talk about saving resources by dodging crisises.

Admittedly her OPG is pretty crummy,...it has saved the day b4 on NC when the cylon admiral wasted our nukes before galactica got back...Kat shot up and destroyed stuff...but out of hundreds of games one shining moment isnt a big deal. Her negative CAN be somewhat debilitating but with xo's or just some thinking ahead rarely does she get caught out of postiion.

lastly she is one of only 2 pilots, She and Apollo (who is the #2 and #1 pilots respectivly in our opinion) who get the all mighty green skill colour for the all important XO. (yeah FNG Flanders can get it too, but you wanna talk about a donkey character,..a pilot who gets ONE piloting, can change a die roll once a game but ONLY on his turn...and has 3 skill cards for 2 full rounds, somebody at FFG really must have hated him in the show) The importance of green in the skill set cannot be understated. Yes..Boomer can look at crisis and dump which is really great, and starbuck IF she starts in space gets 2 actions,.. but when you need pilots doing pilot "stuff" ie. shooting cylon stuff down, Apollo is your man, but when you want two pilots Kat is our girl.

napoleon.

Sorry, yeah Ellen not Helen...For the longest I thought her name was Helen in the show because the way Col. Tigh said it always sounded like Helen to me.

(Sorry in advance for the jank formatting. I'm using bullets for quotes--FFG forum, you know the deal.)

• We love Kat.. It's true to play her takes some fore-thought and skill but with just a little planning ahead she is mighty.

I see it differently. In my estimation it’s luck, not skill, that's the primary variable influencing Kat's value. There are four locations she uses well (the two Pegasus guns, FTL, armory). Which one she ought to use on any given round should always be pretty obvious to even an unskilled player. The problem is that she’ll often experience turns when none of them are useful.

• Having a for sure die roll ESPECIALLY should she make it to admiral (the way the nukes work now) but even not being admiral the ability to kill boarding parties, use both peggi stations, jump without fear of pop loss, and die rolls for crisises makes her invaluable.

Nukes work the same way they always did unless you roll an 8. I guess it’s possible she inherits admiral, then draws one of the ultra-rare 6’s, then lucks into a square full of cylon ships on her turn, but it doesn’t sound likely. Not to mention the pain of tossing away, say, a State of Emergency without getting its ability.

• We can jump 2 spaces early EVERY time safely. Talk about saving resources by dodging crisises.

But that’s just it. You can’t jump 2 spaces early unless, coincidentally, the jump track is always at exactly -3 every single time Kat’s turn rolls around. What are the chances of that? If you assume random distribution, Kat’s turn should coincide with a -3 on the jump track 1 out of every 5 turns. Put another way, she will pull off a -3 population jump, on average, once per game.

By comparison, Felix Gaeta’s (admittedly less eye-popping) ability is a more reliable way of preventing population loss from FTL, not to mention its being attached to a character with a better OPG, card set, and drawback.

I mean, if you actually play Kat in games and say she regularly does huge things, then I believe you. But I’ve tried her too many times and had action phases come and go without her ability amounting to anything (her drawback and crappy card set, on the other hand, I always felt). I’ve heard the legends, of course, of Kat running ship to ship as a one-woman wrecking crew, devouring Armory centurions as light lunches between miracle FTL jumps, but I've just never seen it in action. How often is there a centurion in Armory? How often is the fleet at exactly -3 on your turn? Obviously the guns are the most common use for Kat, but even then there are often turns with no ships. Not to mention, I'm not sure you count her dropping a 5 on Main Batteries in the Kat win column, considering any other pilot could accomplish much the same thing with a simple Maximum Firepower (a card that, unlike Kat, works as part of an XO).

So I’m sorry to dissent, and doubly sorry for the upcoming unbearably corny pun, but to me: Kat is a paper tiger.

I like puns;)

napoleonWilson said:

Whew. I was afraid I lost all credibility with that one.

I think one aspect of Kat's ability that people are missing is Raptors. Yes, there are a lot of turns where the jump track is not at -3, or there are no ships for Kat to shoot. On these turns Kat should be launching scouts without fear of failure. Also, if you get low on fuel, with the new exodus card "scout for fuel", Kat can get fuel back without a chance to fail.

Granted Kat is a card sink, and if you are launching scouts and using another card to make sure you pass this leaves you handicapped for skill checks, but that's where Ellen Tigh comes in to feed her cards. Personally i think the Kat/Ellen combo is extremely good.

If someone is playing Kain, then Kat can also help out by scouting the destination deck for Kain's blind jump ability.

As with any game, characters have times when they are awesome and times when they are pretty useless. With Kat i think there is something she can be doing to help the team on every one of her turns, even if it's not a game changing move.

For those who don't want to play Kat ...

Another good combo is Roslin and Ellen Tigh. Since they're both political leaders you have to be playing in a game that has enough players to allow for that.

Just like Kat, Roslin is a card sink as well since she has to discard two card when using a location, but if you have ellen feeding her cards, then Roslin is in a much better position to use locations like the president's office.

It does suck a little for the person playing ellen since she'll usually end her move on the president's office location (which she can't use since Roslin will be president), butthe cards she draws allows her to XO people and consolidate power as her actions.

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Anders does kind of suck, but if someone really wants to play him, then once again Ellen can step up to the plate and feed anders cards, giving him more cards to discard and redraw with his ability (which is a good place for Ellen to ditch her treachery cards).

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So far all my combos involve ellen, but if you don't have anyone that wants to play ellen, then another good combo is Tory and Adama or Kain. Really Tory and any character that draws leadership (green) is good, but i picked adama and kain because they draw the most leadership cards

Tory sits in the president's office while everyone XOs her, she draws a ton of Quarum cards and a ton of skill cards. She'll fill up her hand fast, so eventually you'll skip a turn or two of XO-ing just so she can use up some of her hand on crisis cards.

The only problem with this combo is that you have to hope and pray that Tory is not the cylon, because if she is, it will be BAD news with people XOing her and hand full of Quarum cards that could land the humans in brig or worse. You could potentially end up with all the human players in the brig and a player that you know is the Cylon, unrevealed, as the president with a ton of skill cards and basically no way for the humans to get out of the brig. ... but just hope that doesn't happen : )

President - Tori: Lets you play quorum cards and keep your skill card count high.

Admiral - Cain: Blind Jump is amazing if you are human, and her split draw is nice and versatile.

CAG - Starbuck: 2 actions in space is very good, plus her split draw for engineering in a pinch

Extra - Gaeta: FTL reroll is nice and with this group there will usually be a strategic planning to add. His split draw is also useful, plus his engineering.

Extra - Cally: Nice mix of skill cards, her Quick Fix is very useful, and her OPG is great if you know who the cylon is for sure.

Of course, all of this goes out the window once you get a cylon or two in there

We've always found that one of the best human teams is Ellen, Apollo, Cain-Helo, and Dee (believe it or not) or Roslin.
Ellen can feed cards to Roslin or XOs to people that don't have them.
Apollo is just a solid character with his great draw and ability to get an extra action or OPG himself into a viper and take that action if needed.
Using Cain's OPG right at the beginning then executing her and replacing her with Helo for his re-roll, a little more color versatility, and having a proven human player can be really nice.
Roslin is a character that I won't play personally, but some other people seem to do well with her, and you can't complain about getting to look at 2 Crisis cards. Dee is a character that doesn't seem to get a lot of love on the forums but I like her better than Chief, so I'm gonna put him down a bit. His hand limit sucks. I know a lot of the time it won't matter, but when it does, it sucks . His OPT is only situationally useful (this may change with Exodus, but with Pegasus I rarely see him repair something that needs to be used immediately) and although it is nice to be able to fix FTL and immediately jump or fix the Armory and immediately take out some centurions, I'd rather have almost any other character around. His OPG is probably the weakest of all the characters and again is very situational. He reminds me a lot of Zarek - can be useful in certain circumstances but not top tier by any stretch. I'd much rather have Dee who can sit in Communications and get XOed to move mass civies while the radiers chase them slowly all over the board; you don't even need to worry about killing raiders most of the time if she is in the game (again, this will probably change as soon as we start playing Exodus and you can't just jump away from all your problems). Her OPG is just as good as Chief's most of the time, and her weakness isn't much of a weakness.

Wow, great thread. My groups don't try to power-group our picks, which is a nice liberating feeling ("I feel like Cally today."), so it's intriguing seeing that a lot of you apparently are trying to combo your skills.

$0.02:

First, why do some of you prefer Apollo to Starbuck? Granted it is nice to be able to jump into a Viper at a moment's notice, but when piloting, my groups tend to prefer having the extra action. Is there something about the CAG rules that work better for him than her?

Second, regarding Anders, wouldn't it have been nice if FFG had ignored rook Anders and instead used Resistance Anders? Someone actually posted a very usable fan-made Anders onto BGG long ago:

boardgamegeek.com/file/download/3hrr974gd9/BSGalternatecharactersheetsv3.5_%28Low_Rez%29.doc

While I'm linking to things on BGG, I can't help but to show you the Puppy Planet location:

cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic434745_t.jpg

Keithustus said:

I don't think most play groups "combo" their skills. The rules require an even split of character types. And players in my group, each chose what will let them dictate most control of the game, given the sequence of their choice. The group as a whole does not choose each player's character, each player chooses the character that gives them the strongest control of the human fleet.

e.g. If someone has already chosen a strong CAG & Admiral, choosing Laura guarentees me control of a strong president.

Conversly if I'm choosing early and I make a weak choice (e.g. Saul Tigh) I'd expect a player with a later choice to take the admiralty away from me with either Cain or Gatea. Either way I would be inclined to avoid choosing Tigh in the first place.

Keithustus said:

When we first started I didn't care for Apollo at all; his random discard weakness can really hurt sometimes, and his 2 red cards don't help much in skill checks. With Pegasus the red cards are even more useless sometimes since you don't need pilots as long as Pegasus isn't damaged. No one ever played him... that eventually changed for reasons that I won't go into, but here are the reasons I prefer him to Starbuck:
His draw is probably the best in the game; anything you want except blue cards.
He is high in the list of succession for both Pres and Admiral - maybe not high enough to get the title when someone loses it in a 5+ player game, but he is a shoe-in for one of the titles in 4 player once a Cylon reveals.
His OPG isn't nearly as strong as Starbuck's but it allows him to use his OPT ability and get an extra action for free. It seems like his extra action happens more frequently than Starbuck's since we end up jumping before her turn much of the time and she just goes back to the hanger deck.
This is the part that is really important to me: he is the only character in the game who can get an action on another player's turn without being given that action by the active player. Very useful for the humans but even more so if he is a Cylon - even if someone checks his loyalty card or if humans figure out he is a Cylon, there is a good chance he can make a brig or airlock attempt fail with his hand full of red cards, and there is a decent chance that he can jump into a Viper on an attack that comes out on another player's turn and then reveal with his action, causing one of the setup Vipers to be removed from the board. With the right reveal ability all hell breaks loose - if the jump track isn't in a position where FTL can be used, a single attack card can put Cylon ships on the board, Lee can remove a viper and send someone to sickbay or the brig or damage Galactica twice (hopefully sending someone to sickbay or damaging FTL) and a situation that looked just fine for the humans 1 turn earlier can now be a complete disaster.
Not that Starbuck isn't one of my favorite characters to play, but for me she just doesn't compare to Lee most of the time, especially since her OPG is so strong that if Cylon Kara chooses not to use it when it would be appropriate the humans immediately know where her loyalties lie.

I agree with most everything Skowza has said, and I also consider Apollo the best pilot. I consider his card set the best in the game by a fair margin. He's right behind the yellows and greens (respectively) for president and admiral title and does a fine job of each, so he's a great stopgap if a high-profile cylon sets the fleet back.

As for the comparison to Starbuck, I think he comes out on top. She needs to start her turn in space to take advantage of her OPT, which is a major problem. The jump track has 5 spaces and there are 5 players in most games, so assuming you're scouting and using FTL appropriately, the chances are pretty high that between one turn and the next, the fleet will have jumped and she'll be back in Galactica with one action.

It is worth mentioning, however, that Exodus removes all maps so removes the opportunity for Apollo to pop out in a viper during a cylon attack. Furthermore, many if not most of the CAG chooses cards force the CAG to discard, which obviously hurts Apollo moreso than other characters. Still, his OPG gets way stronger with Exodus, since unmanned viper actions now matter (to escort civvies), and the zero cost piloting action's a good way to self-trigger the OPT, especially if you're a cylon trying to beat a hasty getaway, like Skowza was discussing.

Skowza said:

Yep, Appolo has everything you want except blue cards.

However the cylon fleet option in exodus makes every blue card the humans can get vital.

And while Appolo is hands down the best human pilot. Playing exodus I have several times seen Starbuck as the only human pilot, block the cylon fleet. Starbuck is a 100% adaquate pilot, while Appolo is 200% adaquate, you don't need that extra 100%. You do need the extra blue card draw.

We are mostly playing three player games and there is a fair chance that Apollo might end up as President or Admiral. Being President is actually not good (as sitting on Colonial One prevents him from launching in a viper as a reaction to an appearing fleet), but as Admiral he is quiet powerfull, if needed he can nuke the just arrived basestar with his free action for launching from Galactica, that's rather nice.

Venlesh said:

It's not good (for the humans) for any character to have multiple jobs. When a large cylon fleet arrives, you can only use your next action for one purpose.

So one player can't simultanoiusly:

a) Pilot a viper (as CAG)

b) Fire a nuke (as admiral)

and c) Play a quorum card (as president)

And the human fleet might need all 3 things to be done in that round.

As a cylon it's obviosly superb to have multiple jobs. You can botch them all up and even claim you were doing your best