Sam Kington
The theme of this deck is simple: nasty NWOs. What with Apathy, Don't Forget to Smash the State, End of the World, Energy Crisis, The Magic Goes Away, and of course World Hunger, you can cripple most decks while boosting your own. As Discordia you'll be immune to most high-powered groups, and there are plenty of cancellers and +10s to get you out of a nasty situation.
If the Society of Assassins is playing, lead with the Clone Arrangers just to annoy them (unless you can make a deal, that is). Otherwise, go for the Loan Sharks, or possibly the Fraternal Orders to ensure you get the Clone Arrangers fast. Vladimir Zhirinovsky is another good one, just so you can start slurping Communist groups.
ATO the high-Resistance groups like Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Fraternal Orders or the KKK. Get the Gun Lobby out fairly soon: if you can get away with it, make a few destined-to-fail attacks on one of your groups to draw more plots. The Nephews of God are useful too, for their plot-drawing powers.
Whatever you do, don't take over the Day Care Centers - they're for later. Also, don't bring out more than one Criminal/Violent group, just to reassure people that you're not going for Criminal Overlords. Fnord.
By this time, you should have a few nasty NWOs up your sleeve. Use them if someone is looking threatening and you'd get brownie points for doing so; alternatively, make deals to trade them or play/not play them at particular times. Most of your nuisance potential comes from your Plot deck - point this out if your rivals want to tear you apart. When in doubt, don't slurp your Communist groups too fast so you don't look threatening; if you're actually attacked, those Secrets and +10s should do nicely. If someone takes a few groups off you, you should normally be able to use a Sorry, Wrong Number and appropriate NWOs to take him out of the game: make sure people know this.
ATO a Criminal/Violent group, either the Clone Arrangers or the Loan Sharks. Then take over the Day Care Centers with a Criminal/Violent group; your rivals will spot what you're up to, but so what? Day Care Centers have no alignments or attributes, so aiding their defence is going to be a problem. If they plow lots of global power, or cancel the action, try with something else; use those +10s you've been storing up.
If someone else is playing a Criminal deck, there could be problems. OTOH, you're going for relatively uncommon groups, and ignoring the obvious targets like New York. Similarly, a standard Violent group will be going for the CIA, FBI and so on - and you're immune to them. Another Discordia won't be too much of a problem either - you don't have a single Weird group in your deck.
Nevermore can hurt you, but not much - you don't have *that* many duplicates of your NWOs. Put them back on the top of your plot deck to power Secrets.
There aren't a lot of groups that can be substituted here, mainly because so many will suffer from your NWOs. You could make for a faster game by removing the Clone Arrangers - you don't *need* them, and if someone gets them out first you'll have problems taking them back (no other Secret groups). Alternatively, pack a few Pizza for the Secret Meeting, pepper the Society of Assassins with them and watch your rivals tear each other apart.
First posted: October 3, 1997
Last modified: October 3, 1997
Ralph Melton ralph@cs.cmu.edu