rod03801:  OK.  I think I understand your question.  I think it's a disadvantage to clone.  That's the beauty of the game.  You can leave a piece exposed where normally you wouldn't. 

OTOH, if you have most of your home base covered, and you can put your opponent on the bar, he/she can't get that piece out becasue there will be no slots to land on (of few choices).  And your cloned piece can get out (assuming opponents home base has openings) and so the cloned piece is not a disadvantage to you.  

Another advantage to cloning might be to build up a wall in your opponents home base  thereby keeping him from getting all his pieces  home.  But the downside of that seems to be that  you still have a gauntlet of your own to navigate and every time you land on an opponents piece, you add another one of yours to the bar.  ;) 

So the biggest advantage I can see is only really available if you have your homebase covered so that an opponents piece on the bar has no place to go :)

does that make sense?  I should probably learn the exact terms of the board and pieces!  lol