Article I : Card types and Misc. bits

by Jim McCoy (mccoy@io.com)

While it may seem a bit strange to start with a collection of miscellaneous bits as the first article, I am going to do so anyway. The reason for this is that some of these tips may not be obvious to you until after you play a few games, and an understanding of how they work is important for the discussion in later articles on how to create your killer deck.

Use the Attributes Luke!

Cards have both alignments and attributes. The alignments have an obvious importance in determining whether or not a card can use its power in attacks or to defend other groups against attack. The attributes are a new feature to INWO and if properly used they can provide a secondary means of interlocking your groups to provide mutual support and protection. The advantages that attributes have for this purpose is that they will often work in strange ways to protect and attack that is outside the standard alignment scheme.

There are several ways to make attirbutes work in your favor. Many group cards give particular bonuses to attempts to control groups with particular attributes; Computer and Media attributes are among the most common of the attributes which provide this sort of mutual support. Because these attribute bonuses cross alignments the successful use of attributes can be particularly important to Bermuda decks and decks built around a non-alignment theme. On the other hand, there are several groups and plot cards which confer immunity against or bonuses to control or destroy groups of certain attributes (particularly Media) so if you go overboard on a particular attribute you should be careful to not play that particular deck too often or you will become roadkill.

Attributes also help in the endgame, where you are attempting to make a move to win the game and everyone else knows it. Cards with attributes but no alignments are very useful in winning the game. When you make a move to win everyone else will muster whatever they can against you, groups without alignments are harder for other players to interfere with and if the attributes work out correctly you can get some nice bonuses in your attempt to control the group.

Groups vs. Plots

"Beginners concentrate on groups, experts know that plot cards are the key to success"

The group cards in INWO are interesting and are the basic power structure of an INWO deck, but after playing a few games you will soon come to realize that in actual game play plots are where most of the action is. A group can only act once per turn, but you can play as many plot cards as you have in your hand in a single turn and can use plot cards to invalidate the action of several groups or to completely change the mechanics of the game in the middle of another persons turn.

The limit on the number of group cards you will be able to draw makes groups with special abilities related to drawing group cards, like the Fraternal Orders and Nephews of God, non-trivial cards. Contrary to what one might think, some of the best built decks contain from 10-14 groups, with the remaining 30-35 cards being choice plot cards with enough duplication of important plot cards to make picking the best cards in your deck more probable. The recommendation of 20 groups that is in the rules is way too high; if you have 20 groups you will never see a third of your groups even in a long game. Unless the groups you have selected are fairly interchangable you need to be prepared to not draw the groups you want.

You will probably only get 5 draws from your group deck in addition to the seven cards at start up. That is a total of 12 groups cards to work with, you will probably never hit your ideal mix of group cards if you have 20 group cards in your deck, but if you only have 10-15 you are more likely to get the key group cards in your deck into play. When deciding if you have selected the right mixture of group cards, try picking out the worst 8 groups and see what your power structure looks like if it only consists of these cards. This is a bit of a worst-case scenario, but you need to be prepared for any possible combination of draws if you want to build a really strong deck. This is where "plot strength" comes in.

Certain groups convey advantages in drawing from your plot deck, these can be some very powerfull groups is used correctly. The Rosicrucians are a common card and have a powerful ability in letting you draw the card you want from your plot deck. The Crystal Skull is worthwhile in any deck. Other groups will give you the ability to draw from the bottom of your plot deck or to hold more than five plot cards and are worth including in your deck for this reason alone. Crop Circles can be a great card to have copies of scattered in your deck, coupled with the Rosicrucians or group with similar plot card effects you can use the groups special action to snag a Crop Circles and then trade in action tokens for the chance to draw out two or three cards that work well together and might be used for making a play to win the game or to dig out that important group card which you think is buried at the bottom of your group deck.

Real power comes from plot cards. Plot cards can give large bonuses to attacks, change alignments, permenently increase power, make major changes to the game mechanics, or even invalidate other plot cards. Unfortunately it is difficult to give tips on the best selection of plot cards because there are so many different ways to use plot cards in your deck. In general, you should add plot cards that support your groups, pick a few that raise power for groups of particular alignments which you have in your groups, and pick a few that change alignments (just in case you need them or to give you more options on which cards whose power you can raise with the previously mentioned cards.) Provide your plot deck with depth and variety, duplicate plot cards are almost always useful. If you do not have a group or resource that gives you special powers regarding draws from your plot deck you should try to add duplication of key plot cards to your deck.

Goal cards and New World Order cards are particularly important and can be key plot cards in your deck. A goal card played at the right time can win the game for you. Proper use of goal cards gives you several options to win the game and keeps your opponents guessing as to what your goals really are. The New World Order cards can make the game much more interesting. These cards change play for everyone and some of them can be particularly nasty, for example the Solidarity card will double resistance of all groups: this makes it almost impossible for people to steal groups and people are much more hesitant about taking groups out of thier hand except for automatic takeovers, the game usually becomes much more nasty as it is easier for people to destroy groups than to control them.

[caveat: among the playtesters I am probably the furthest into the "choose a few key groups and put the rest into plots" camp, having played decks with as few as nine group cards in them and even won with a few...]

This is a Test of the Emergency Broadcasting System...

Disasters are a particularly interesting set of plot cards. It is possible to even create a deck built around disaster cards (an example of such a deck will be given in the "Jim's Killer Decks" section.) Disasters do have limitations though, they are very hard to use effectively against places that are tucked in close to the illuminati. In such cases you will need to be able to bring additional modifiers to bear (groups/resources with bonuses for disasters or a "Combined Disaster" plot card.) A disaster is often best used to pick off places that are one or two groups removed from the protection of the illuminati; it is almost impossible to have a disaster destroy a place close to the illuminati in the power structure because of the proximity bonus they have, at best you can usually only devastate it on a lucky roll of the dice. One additional bonus that disasters have is that they strip the action token from a place. Thus it can be useful to either play a disaster against a place early in an opponents turn to prevent them from using the power of the place to attack groups. It can also help to play a disaster against a place that has an action token in your turn to weaken a place in preparation for an attack to control or destroy.

If you have a place that is important for your power structure you need to keep it close to your illuminati. This is particularly important for Japan and California (two of the most commonly played Places because of thier power and bonuses for Computer and Media attributes respectively) because several disasters have additional power against these locations. Places that do not have the "Huge" attribute are also more vulnerable to disasters. On the other hand, it can be a very satisfying thing to take out hard to destroy places like China with a combined disaster play...

Endgame, How to Survive a Play to Win

One good tip for making a play to win the game is to have a few cards available with no alignments, preferably ones whose attributes help your speical goals. These cards are better used in the endgame because they give the other players less ability to interfere with your attempt to take them over (only global power can interfere). If you have a secret group with low resistance this is also a good choice. Winning by taking groups from another player (as the move to make the win) is difficult because everyone will try to interfere and it will usually end up costing you more action tokens than pulling a group form your own hand. This method is not recommended unless your opponents do not have many cards with action tokens on them in play or you have the ability to make your final attack a priviledged attack.

In a multi-player game winning can be a tricky proposition. The most secure win is probably to take a group or two and then play a Goal card that pushes you several groups over the number you need to win. If your play to win only reaches the exact number needed to win it is much easier for those you are playing against to block your move, but it is much harder for them to take out more than one group when it is not thier turn.