Article II : The Mechanics of Deck CreationThe good stuff... How to crush your enemies and build decks that will strike fear into the hearts of enemies, children, and other life forms inconsequential to the masters of the Illuminati.
Psychology can play an important part of the game, and it should not be ignored. A deck that starts out strong will give everyone else a target before you can use that strength effectively. A deck that starts weak will be a tempting target for players with goals relating to destroying groups or taking out other players, the weakest member of a multi-player game will also sometimes find themselves being constantly "quot;bled"quot; by the others so that they never get a chance to be a threat (it is easier to attack a weak player, and if someone does not have the power to make a serious threat against a strong player they may choose to use thier action tokens to "quot;at least do something..."quot;)
A cthulhu player will often be the target of other players because her special victory condition is such that as the game progresses she becomes harder to stop; destroyed groups are out of play and you can't take a destroyed group away from its killer. Games with Cthulhu players tend to be more defensive than other games because most players will build tight structures (e.g. keep thier groups as close to thier illuminati as possible to gain the bonus for proximity to the illuminati) and that which protects against attacks to destroy also protects against attacks to control.
In each deck description I will give the basic philosophy of the deck, examples of cards used in it (primarily the groups and key plot cards) and notes on how to use the deck and interesting abilities of the deck. Once the full card list is posted I will update this with a full listing of the decks and all of the cards used in the decks I discuss.
This deck is best played with the Adepts. Thier bonus to get magic groups is important because few magic groups have any alignments, making it harder for anyone else to play magic groups when the adepts are in the game (you get the bonus to control them and they cannot use anything but global power to protect any magic groups they play). The adepts ability to put groups they fail to control out of thier hand back into thier hand means that you can be a little daring at the start of the game and take a few risks in attempts to control groups from your hand.
Resources are very important in the adepts magic deck, in addition to the application of Magic Artifacts to the special goal, the abilities of the resources can significantly increase the power of the groups in the deck. Among the useful non-Magic resources one should consider for such a deck is Warehouse 23 and the Flying Saucer. Flying Suacer, left unlinked, lets you pull an extra resource from your hand every turn (very important if you have a lot of resources, because otherwise you can only take out one per turn.) Warehouse 23 provides you with a place to hide your less useful Magic Artifacts which you may choose to reveal at any time and make a play to win, but it's most important ability is that when first played you can dig through your hand or group deck and play an additional resource immediately (like the Flying Saucer if you have it...) Death Mask and the Book of Kells are also very useful to a magic deck for reasons explained later.
An important group for this particular deck is W.I.T.C.H. The ability of WITCH to change a die roll after it happens coupled with something like the Book of Kells or another Magic group with the Death Mask is a combination that cannot be underestimated. This combination can be a serious spoiler for anyone's plans. Adding in the Rosicrucians for choosing just the right plot card for that turn and what appears at first glance to be a weak deck can become a serious power.
Stonehenge is the strongest magic card in pure power and the only one with usable global power. WITCH also has global power, but see above on reasons why not to use WITCH globally if you can help it. The Druids also have one point of global power, but thier ability to aid or defend any magic group is more important than thier raw power. The global power of Stonehenge is useful in getting a magic group involved in an attack, particularly if you link it to the Death Mask and have WITCH in play; with this four card combo you can decide after the die is rolled whether to use the stonehenge global (thus getting a magic group involved) and if that is not enough you can use WITCH to change the die roll an additional two places (thus a 9 or greater die roll is an automatic failure...) Because these magic effects are done after the die roll you can decide to use the power when it will actually have an effect and this makes the action tokens on these two groups more effective. Tossing in a harmonica virigins on the Death-Mask linked Stonehenge after the fact can cause a real mind-warp for someone.
One weakness of such a Magic deck is that it is low in raw power and does not have many alignments. A magic deck needs several power boosters (black leather works well, and another if you have some cards to add alignments to groups.) A magic deck never really has pure power, but can bargain with others to get some additional groups. If you are playing in a game with 3-5 players this deck can turn you into a real power-broker; with your abilities you can make any one or two attempts to control or destroy fail every turn. Make sure the other players know this and make sure they are willing to pay to have you use your actions to assist them (or to stay out of an attack :)
This deck is interesting because if your opponents are unprepared for it there is almost nothing they can do to stop you. It becomes a race to see who can get to thier goal, and in a multi-player game it can be particularly nice. It is composed of seceral key Secret groups like the Cattle Mutilators, Rosicrucians, Templars, Fiendish Flouridators, Robot Sea Monsters, and The Men in Black along with any other secret groups you can put into it. Including Junk Mail in your deck is useful in case someone else pulls it out of thier deck (destroy it at once if it appears!) and to steal away other secret groups. Also include Tabloids if you can for similar reasons. I would not recommend playing either of these last two cards, just keep them in your hand and use their +10 for an attack to destroy if they ever come into play. If you put them into your power structure you risk having them stolen away from you (neither are Secret) and then used against your groups. Because of the high resistance of Secret groups in general and the relatively global power of Secret groups it is also nice to include the Bronze Head in your group hand to protect you from failed attempts to control your Secret groups.
Because several of these groups have rather low power, you will probably want to include several plot cards that boost power for the various alingments along with a couple of card to change alignments to give you more mutual support and more options for boosting power. A Cover-Up plot card or two is a must for a deck like this in case someone has an Exposed! card or manages to kill any of your secret groups. The additional plot cards depend on how you want to play your deck, but cards which aid attacks to destroy (along with Goal cards which make destroyed groups count or when playing the Servants of Cthulhu) and cards which attack other players plot deck are nice (Agent in Place, Auditor from Hell, Internet Worm, etc)
Besides being a nice deck to kill things with due to the bonuses of the Fiendish Flouridators, Robot Sea Monsters, and Men in Black, this group has another tactic to use based upon the special abilities of a couple of the groups:
This deck builds itself around a core of strong government and corporate cards. Adding in Wall Street and give it a couple of groups like Brazil, Hawaii, or China as puppets to give it additional action tokens. Add the Clipper Chip and Pentagon to your groups. This is a deck where most of the group cards are fairly interchangable. Add in four or five of your most powerful government cards and the ones whose special abilities appeal to you the most. Toss in your best corporate groups. Simmer gently for five to ten minutes, and then play.
The plot deck of this group is where things get interesting. You will want several copies of the Military-Industrial Complex NWO card sitting around as well as a couple NWO cards of the Blue and Red types (Chicken in Every Pot and Gun Control work well in this deck) for good measure. Toss in as many Tax Breaks and New Federal Budget cards as you have to give you back action tokens. Add in cards like Martial Law and [foo] This deck is more of a fun power deck with which to smash your enemies than a subtle deck. It works well in two player games and against opponents who try to be tricky, just steamroller them with raw power...
Start the groups for this deck off with several key Media or Media-enhancing groups: Big Media, Hollywood, Madison Avenue, California, TV Preachers, Subliminals, Empty Vee, and Recording Industry. Then add the keystone of the deck, a Media Personality (I have always used Bjarne and he fits well into this deck, but a Media Sensation card would work as well...) If you have an immortality serum it makes a nice addition to the deck to protect Bjarne from assaintions. Add Professional Sports to link to Bjarne. Pull in the Intellectuals (which will be linked to Bjarne using a Lets Get Really Organized card)
For the plot cards of this deck, add in a couple of Nobel Peace Prize cards (to link to Bjarne), a Media Connections card or two (link one to the Intellectuals to give Bjarne an additional action token), and a Messiah card (linked to Bjarne) Add in Celebrity Spokesman, Sweepstakes winner (both linked to Bjarne, of course :) and several fun cards that take Media action to power them. You should also load up on Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know and Hoax cards to nullify enemy plot cards because there are several such cards which can really ruin your day (Mass Murder and Censorship come to mind...) The remainder of your plot cards depends on what you want to do with this deck.
If you are lucky enough to get the cards you want you can have Bjarne boosted to the mid teens in power with several action tokens per turn. At this point you are pretty much unstoppable. Even without a key Media personality like Bjarne you have a deck with a lot of power and enough bonuses to grab any Media group that comes into play that no one else will play them.
This deck shows a few of the advantages a Media deck. The interesting thing about the Media attibute is that cards with that attribute work well together in boosting each others power, protecting each other, and the Media action tokens are used to power a lot of interesting plot cards and can be useful to bargain with in a multi-player game (for example, with a Media deck and some Sweeping Reforms or Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat cards you can pretty much decide which NWO cards will be in play at any given time.)
For this group pull out five or six of your best personalities. Add in an Immortality Serum or two, Cable TV, Recording Industry, Empty Vee, Clone Arrangers, and the Vampires. The goal of this deck is to pull out personalities that boost the power of Cable TV and using Cable TV as your "quot;big stick"quot; group. The arrangement of personalities you do choose depends on which miscellaneous groups you will add to your deck and which groups and alignments you think your opponents will be using.
For plot cards you will want cards that protect against assassinations and a couple of your own assassinations (to use the clone arrangers :) You will probably have a nice selection of alignements and attributes to use for powering just about any type of plot card. Many personalities give you special abilities or resistances against particular alignments or attributes, so you will often find it useful to load up your groups deck with as many personalities as you think will be useful and then pull out the ones whose special abilities fit the groups which your opponenets have played.
(Inspired by a deck Monica Stephens played in the playtest)
Start off with the IRS. Have two copies in your groups deck just in case. Add the NSA and the Phone Company. Throw in Cattle Mutilators, Templars, Rosicrucians, and maybe a Crystal Skull. Post Office would work in here if you want to mess around with thier groups as well. Toss in a copy of the Lawyers for your own protection. If you are not using the Gnomes as your Illuminati consider adding the Conspiracy Theorists. Adding the Liquor Companies can be nice if you really, really don't want someone to ever get a chance to draw anything useful from thier plot deck... The truly evil (like me :) will add in a Soulburner just for laughs. Toss in Las Vegas if you have a Computer Virus or Murphys Law card in your plot deck. Wargamers can be added to the group deck if you don't have the Templars (or just for kicks if you think you might need another group to burn exposed enemy plot cards.)
Most of this decks tricks are in its plot deck. For starters throw in The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Lawyers and a copy of And Stay Dead or two. If the lawyers get put into play kill them at once. Have a copy or two of Media Blitz in your plots in case someone manages to destroy your IRS card. Load up as many copies of Tax Reforms as you can beg, borrow, or steal. Add a Cover-Up, and a couple of Mothers March and March on Washington cards. Throw in a chunk of voodoo economics, Internet worms, and other plot killers (Secrets Man was Not Meant to Know, 18 1/2 minute Gap, Stealing the Plans, etc) and then have fun. Don't worry about adding cards for attack or power boosters to your plot deck, you will get enough of those cards from enemy plot decks. A Privatization might be useful if you suspect someone is going to play Discordia (to get rid of the IRS Government attribute.) An Offer You Can't Refuse works well after you have pulled out all of your groups that you need.
Play the Tax Reforms as soon as you get one into your hand. When you start taxing people a card each you look through the cards you get, pick out the ones you want to keep (if any), and add discard the remainder to the top of your deck. Then play your voodoo economics card and turn thier plot cards into action tokens. Use the NSA to peek at which plot card they are going to be getting, if it looks like they will be getting a good card use the Liquor Companies action at the appropriate time to deny them the card draw and then grab it yourself on your next turn as "quot;tax."quot;
Use the Phone Company to scout out opponenet plot decks and find one worth exposing. Then use the Cattle Mutilators to expose thier plot hand and the Templars to force them to discard exposed plots (then play a Stealing the Plans to grab the plot you just forced them to discard.) If you have Las Vegas in your deck, after you tax everyone and before you play a Voodoo Economics card go after someone with Las Vegas for three plot cards. If you lose they get the top of your deck (which you know, because you just discarded to the top) and if you win you get another three action tokens from the Voodoo Economics card.
I have not had a chance to play this one against the local players, but I am offering this description of the deck in the hopes that one of them will be able to come up with a suitable counter for this deck. If not our next game could get to be very interesting...
The groups in this deck are fairly simple: Germany, Wall Street, Brazil, China, Hawaii, Clipper Chip, Orbital Mind Control Lasers, NASA, England, Midas Mill, and Perpetual Motion Machine.
For the plots, add in as many New Federal Budgets and Tax Breaks as you can find. Throw in Stock Splits and Martial Law cards as well. Add in a few Privatization cards. A Dictatorship or two also works well along with a couple of Voodoo Economics. The remainder of your plot cards can be made up of whatever you think you will need to win. You will have plenty of action tokens to power cards and the OMCLs to give you action tokens of the right alignment if you need them. Toss in several Hoax, Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know, and 18 1/2 Minute Gap cards to pretect yourself against disaster cards and action token stripping cards.
In game play, start off adding the action groups (Brazil, China, and Hawaii) to Wall Street. Once you get Germany in play try to make it Corporate. Then move the groups on Wall Street to Germany. Germany becomes your action token bank and your power group. With a Dictatorship, Privatization, and the Midas Mill thrown onto it it has a 6/6 power, gets four action tokens a turn, can save these action tokens, and can use all of them in a single attack [after one turn it is 16/16, after two it is 32/32...] The Perpetual Motion Machine can be linked to it to give it an extra token every turn, or can be linked to NASA to give you two tokens that you can spread to any government group you want. With the Clipper Chip in play your government groups become powerful enough to threaten anyone you want and you can use Germany to pick and choose which groups you will take from opponents hands. If constructed properly and in a sneaky manner you might be able to pull off a win by destroying everyone else in play. Once Super-Germany is built up over a turn or two (like putting it together, and then playing a Sieze the Time card) you are pretty much unstoppable.
While I stated in the quick description that this is a deck best in multi-player games, it is really best in three and four player games. In a five player game you will spend all of your built up action tokens defending yourself from everyone else's attacks. In a three or four player game it is much easier for you to get the jump on action tokens and then smother your opponents before they ahve a chance to get together and counter-attack you.
Groups consist of the CFL-AIO, Black Activists, Triliberal Commision, Lady Di, Feminists, France, Hollywood, Secular Humanists, Big Media, Clipper Chip, and Bill Clinton. Others cards with good general power may be thrown in at your option. For plot cards select several Liberal Agenda cards, Benefit Concerts, Pledge Drives, and Self-Esteem cards. Add in some Nationalizations (make your Liberal groups Government as well to get the additional boost the Clipper Chip gives) some Fundie Money cards and some general power boosters for alignments other than Liberal. Include several copies of the Political Correctness NWO card (you always want one of these in play) as well as duplicates for the Power to the People goal card. An Eat the Rich card, Whispering Campaign card and Ketchup is a Vegetable also work well; you will have media action tokens available, so take advantage of them in selecting your plot cards. Good Polls works well for defense.
In play go hunting for Conservative Groups and kill them. Try to take out any Media groups that show up to make the Political Correctness NWO cards last longer. If a Media group shows up and you want to kill it, consider making it Conservative with Fundie Money first to help with your Goal. Even if you can't kill enough Conservative groups to meet the Power to the People goal you will have a ton of power sitting around and you might even have a Power For Its Own Sake goal card in your hand as well...
The groups of this deck are all disaster oriented. Start out with the International Weather Organization, Cycle Gangs, Dinosaur Park, and Robot Sea Monsters. Throw in Semiconscious Liberation Army if you are playing Bermuda. Add to the groups deck the following resources: Flying Saucer, Warehouse 23, Earthquake Projector, Loch Ness Monster, and Weather Satellite. For plot cards pick out as many good disaster cards as you have, throw in any Combined Disasters, Corruption, and Annual Convention cards you have. The Solidarity NWO card works well for your own defense, and add in cards to change alignments and boost power. Hat Trick, Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know, Second Bullet and Rewriting History cards are also good selections. Add in any Goal cards you have that pertain to destroying groups of a particular alignment (Hand of Madness and Power to the People work well.) Then sit back and have fun.
This deck is devastating against any Place cards except perhaps for Space cards. Even then it packas a nasty punch. Just having out the core four groups and the three resources gives you at least a +22 bonus to your disaster power and that goes up another 8-10 against a coastal place or with a natural event disaster card. Japan and California are dead meat against such a deck and you can take out as many places as you have Disaster cards without spending a single action token. Any deck that has the power to take out China with a +10 Illuminati proximity bonus and can only fail by rolling an 11 or 12 will definitely cause some people a lot of distress. To get your resources out quickly play Warehouse 23 if you have it in your initial draw as your first automatic takeover and use it's additional gadget takeover bonus to draw out the Flying Saucer. If you only have the Saucer then play it and forget the Warehouse for the start-up. With only 9 group cards the odds are very high that you will get the ones you want in your initial draw.
Be sure to act very meek for a while and pretend that you didn;'t get the cards you wanted and "quot;only have this lousy Robot Sea Monster card to play right now."quot; Then open up with four or five disasters in a single turn to get people's attention. If you are playing Cthulhu remember to draw a bonus plot card for every Place you destroy, maybe it will be another disaster...
Coming Next: Special Strategies and Tactics for various Illuminati Groups.
