Unfathomable, Arkham Horror remake of Battlestar Galactica board game, gets an expansion three years later

Three years after it resurrected the Battlestar Galactica board game in the Lovecraftian universe of Arkham Horror, seabound social deduction game Unfathomable will receive its first expansion later in 2024.

Unfathomable relocates the hunt for treacherous traitors lurking among a crew from deep space to the deep Atlantic Ocean, swapping hidden Cylons for cultists about the SS Atlantica in 1913. The cultists are attempting to sink the ship to the ocean floor to appease their fish-monster gods, while the human players must try to survive long enough to complete the crossing.

Upcoming expansion Unfathomable: From the Abyss will add new shipmates on both sides of the battle. Emerging from the waves will be new horrors to join the existing monsters such as Deep Ones, with Cthulhu Mythos staple the Shoggoth, a Drowned Spirit and the kraken-like Grasping Tendril able to appear and threaten the human crew. The horrors are both deadlier in their unique powers and more difficult to dispatch, requiring the players to trigger particular effects along the game’s travel and ritual tracks to see them off.

On top of the monsters - represented by new miniatures - there’ll be extra mythos cards to add to the deck, including a number of cards that will push a marker along the new horror track and spawn the horrors, while other cards will see them appear immediately.

To balance the odds, eight new human characters will join the fray. The first two characters to be revealed are sleuth Antar Al-Fakahany, who can gather evidence before reaching helpful revelations, and ship’s cook Ida Lawrence, who can draw two skill cards after performing an action of the same type. Both characters are brand new additions to the wider Arkham Horror Files universe, having not previously appeared in the recurring roster of investigators in games such as Eldritch Horror or Mansions of Madness.

Joining the new characters are allies, who spawn from a new deck of ally cards whenever a passenger is rescued by a player. Allies offer helpful effects - from being able to repair the ship as a mechanic to potentially gain items as a gambler - before wandering off around the ship, requiring the players to keep track of them for the best advantage.

A new skill card type will also be added in boons, which act as positive supporting skills during checks, but are only drawn by specific ability effects.

From the Abyss will offer greater variety between games through new prelude cards, optional setup instructions that can be used to favour the humans - by playing during the “day” - help hybrids by setting the action at “night” or affect both sides with “twilight” starting states. Multiple cards of different types can be applied together, creating a modular combination of variants.

From the Abyss will arrive for Unfathomable this June, close to three years after the board game was released. With Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game long out-of-print, Sam wrote that the remake is “unlikely to be worth buying for anyone lucky enough to have a copy of Galactica [but] if you love both the theme and the genre, this is a solid pickup” in our Unfathomable review at the time.