The group I play with seem good enough at spotting when there's a Cylon that it's hard to do much against the Colonials without giving away that you're a Cylon. Because of this, we've found that it's nearly always best to reveal almost straight away.

Are we just rubbish at being sneaky Cylons, or are there just some groups that make it hard?

Now where is that cylon strategy page...

Ah, here it is http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=317

When all cylons reveal too early, then the humans can work together very well, and if they are good players, regardless of how good the cylons are, they will win. You need to make sure there is human dissent so the humans don't know who to trust. That alone can kill them. Even if you play the game with *no* cylon, as long as the humans think they are there, they will likely hurt each other. Play a card into a skill check just to raise suspicion, not necessarily to fail it (though failing it is good, obviously). "Don't be the only sabotuer, encourage incompetence in everyone."

If I am a cylon from the start, I never play against the fleet unless their is some major overriding circumstance (such as all the cylons are on the field and the fleet is nowhere close to jumping, lots of resources in the red, etc). I play the right cards to pass skill checks, but I play low value cards. IF I am going to throw a card against a check, I always throw a card that is for the check as well, and never a color that can come back to bite me (like throwing a blue when no one else draws blue). In the early game, you really do not want anyone to know you are a cylon.

The other day we played a game where I was Helo. The first half of the game I was human, in the sleeper phase I became a cylon. Knowing how great my once per game ability was, I did nothing, absolutely nothing, to tip my hand as a cylon. Then, when Morale was at two, our Admiral had to make a choice between a skill check or loss of 2 Morale. Needless to say, I used my ability to change his choice and the cylons won. Nobody had any idea I was the other cylon.

As a cylon, you really have to play your cards close to your chest. The article gives some great ideas, and alot of them are so subtle that the other players may not even realize you are doing them. Being too overt will hurt your chances of winning. The longer you can remain human, and not call attention to yourself, the stronger you can be, especially if you are the President or Admiral. If you have no extra abilities at your disposal, then it is time to start tipping your hand. After a few more games, you and your playgroup will start finding it harder to tell who is human and who is cylon.

And then the real fun begins.

Well, as an unrevealed Cylon, you should simply pick your battles.

Firstly, don't act early. You can make excuses about why you can't play skill cards, etc. Watch as the game progresses to see how the Cylons might win. If morale, or food or some other resource is getting low, start playing against those ones.

Secondly, there will come a time to use your reveal action, and/or your character's special abilities (like Boomer's Pass/Fail ability). Use it at a point where you cannot (or are unlikely to be) thrown in the brig. Then on your turn, reveal.

The article posted above also contains great advice.

Revealing early is pretty boring and I find that once the cylons are out, the human players join together and know pretty much exactly what to expect from turn to turn.

The hardest part is when the cylons reveal, if this occurs early in the game then it is easy to handle, however if resources are low and vipers are damaged later on in the game it can really hurt. So at the very least staying hidden until there is something to focus on is more worthwhile than revealing early and getting no say in the decisions of the fleet (to encourage slightly poorer choices and point fingers)

The cylon players need to also watch who else puts cards into skill checks. If a player with only yellow/green is the only other one to contribute, then dont put red cards into the skill check. It really helps to sabotage skill checks on your turn, and perhaps the player after you, more so than on other players turns.

Everyone here has pretty much said the same things I'm going to say but I'm going to throw in my two cents anyway.

Sabotaging skill checks and making decisions without the support of the table is the quickest way to get caught. My cylon strategy is the opposite of my human strategy. As a human, I try to take charge of the group and make sure everyone is helping in a productive way. For skill checks, I assume the cylons probably won’t sabotage early checks but won’t pull their weight as fake-humans either, so I always put in my highest value cards.

As a cylon, I throw in one low-value card of the colors in play so I can say I ‘helped’ and avoid suspicious looks. I also try to take as much of a backseat as possible; wait for someone else to direct traffic and jump on other players’ ideas, waiting for them to suggest something counter-productive (like fighting raiders when galactica is close to jumping).

The ultimate cylon strategy early on is to get one of the two title cards into your grubby little metallic mitts. Convince the table that since you know you’re human, you should probably have a title. If nobody agrees, drop it. Recently, I was cylon-Helo and human-Tigh managed to get both titles. I tried to call an election but he out-voted me. I argued that one player shouldn’t have all that power since as a cylon, he would be too powerful. Other players agreed but it was too late.

By chance though, a crisis card let me throw him in the brig. I became the admiral and although he protested and accused me of being a cylon, he had no support! I apologized and explained myself then later on used EO on him to convince him to break out of jail. Then I threw down piloting cards to cancel the check! The beauty of it though was that everyone suspected Starbuck so I used the Admiral’s quarters and threw her in the brig too!

It was glorious… Most fun I’ve ever had as a cylon.

Foil skill checks with colors that could have come from anybody, and don't use anything else to raise suspicion on yourself. The human players will figure out there's a cylon, and possibly figure out what colors he's been playing into skill checks, but if you did it right then they can't narrow it down very far.

For example, don't throw negative pilotting cards if you are the only pilot... but if Lee, Starbuck, and Helo are all being played then feel free to use your reds negatively. They won't know who it was.

In this fashion, you are actively hurting the humans without drawing attention to yourself. You are also causing paranoia and it will be hard for the humans to trust any of the pilots (or whatever skill you used).

I think the best way to foil skill checks is one of the ways discussed in that article. Which is, on skill checks that don't matter (for example, ones that the negative won't hurt the humans too badly, and the 'pass' is a no effect) "help" the humans by putting a lot of helping cards in. Then, for the rest of the round, you have very little or no cards to help for the actual bad crisis cards. You can't be too obvious about it, but then again, running out of cards seems to happen to normal players in our group a lot anyway, so it shouldn't look too suspicious unless you over do it.

I'm going to have to agree that unrevealed Cylons are just stronger than revealed Cylons. There are so many ways to hurt the humans in subtle ways that people don't notice. The nearly obvious ones that work for a while are, as president, drawing Quarom Cards and convincing people that none of the ones you drew were useful, and drawing another. Or, play a "release cylon mugshots." Make sure everyone knows before hand that you aren't going to tell them what you saw. You can also scout to bury really good locations and crises. As long as you play by the secrecy rules in the rulebook, it can be really hard to find a Cylon who is being subtle, even if they are doing some of the more obvious subtle things.

A really fun thing to do, as a Cylon, is to play in as many negative cards as the person to your right played, of types that they could have played (and a positive card on top of that to further muck with things). If you do it right, people will start getting suspicious. After a bit of that, get him thrown in the brig, and miraculously, the negative cards will go way down (throw in one if he does, none otherwise). Pulling that off can be great fun.... unless he turns out to be your Cylon ally

Generally, don't put in all negative cards (as someone else said). Making people suspicious is better than hurting the crisis. If they're suspicious enough, they'll throw in WAY too many cards on crises that seem bad to make sure they overcome the Cylon player, and then be forced to not even try on crises they get when they have no relevent cards anymore. That's the best way I've seen to make humans fail the crises - set them up to convince themselves not to even try, so they can save the cards for the "important" crises in case the Cylons throw negative.

Another fun thing to do to raise suspicion is to, every time someone draws a card they can't normally draw, throw in that card into the next crisis it is negative for. After doing that a couple times, point this out. It works great for Cylon Tyrol if someone else decides to draw Engineering cards, but can easily backfire if you don't do it right. Remember, you can't say "I threw in those Engineering cards" or "I'm throwing in Engineering cards" due to the secrecy rules, so make sure there's a chance for them to have gotten rid of their card in a challenge where engineering was positive

I don't know, but I think I would throw in 1 or 2 bad cards as soon as everyone puts at least 1 card into a skill check and a card that most or everyone has is a bad card. Bonus points if it actually does some immediate damage, but the main purpose of that move would be to raise suspicion and get the humans to toss eachother into the brig.