There's a standard class of Bermuda Triangle deck that wholly ignores the Bermuda special goal and focuses on using one group with large bonuses to take a certain class of groups to slurp up groups and reorganize to leave open those control arrows. (See Aaron Curtis' comments on the Bermuda Triangle.) This is such a deck with a Government theme.
This deck works very well in a game without automatic takeovers.
Note: You could do a better job with this deck, I'm sure. It's not perfectly tuned.
Lead with Bill Clinton, who has a big roll to take over all your other groups. If that bounces, lead with one of your powerful Government groups, and hope to take Bill as soon as you can. The Pentagon might be a good choice because it has two common alignments with Bill.
Through the midgame, you should have the following goals for each turn:
These will each be discussed in more detail in turn.
Bill is a Government-grabbing powerhouse. When Bill Clinton attacks to control a Government group, he gets +4 for common alignments, plus another 8 for his special ability, for a total of +12. If the target is part of the United States as well, Bill gets another +3, for a total of +15. This high bonus lets Bill have a 10 or less to control almost all the Groups in your deck.
On each turn, then, you want to take over a group with Bill Clinton, and then use your Bermuda special ability to rearrange at the end of your turn so that that Bill's control arrows are free, so that you can repeat the trick on the next turn. You should make sure that Bill has at least one and preferably two control arrows free when you rearrange your groups.
Once you have several groups in your Power Structure, you can use other groups to make takeovers of their own, to grow even faster. However, it is more important to protect Bill than to make extra attacks and leave yourself vulnerable. Don't scare the other players too much; they'll gang up and pummel you.
The primary defense for Bill Clinton will be the many other Government Groups in your power structure that can defend him. My rule of thumb is to leave action tokens on about half of your groups for defense.
Many of the Plots in the deck are included specifically for Bill's sake. The Read My Lips will protect Bill completely from one attack. The Commitment is intended for him, since he has an unfortunately low Resistance. The Martial Laws and the Just Say No can often be saved for defense instead of being used on offense. And a Good Polls on Government Groups will allow you to mount a lot of defense as all of your Government Groups can defend each other.
You may wish to include a defense against Assasination, such as Talisman of Ahrimanes or Bodyguard.
NASA is a fine way to let Bill control two groups per turn, by giving him an extra action token after he's used the first. NASA is useful enough that it is well worth taking with an ATO.
If you have an extra action token for Bill, a let's Get Organized can be very useful, since it would give Bill an outgoing control arrow at the end of the card.
The Clipper Chip is almost a must for any Government-oriented deck. Take it over when you have three Government Groups or so, and don't worry about keeping it--it can't be destroyed, except by a Suicide Squad, and if you ever have no Government Groups, you will already be dead.
With Black Helicopters, all of Bill's attacks to control will be Privileged, which should make your attacks from hand even easier. (Isn't it heartwarming to know that our President has such a personal role in the takeover of our government by the United Nations New World Order?)
Having Bill win a Sweepstakes Prize is, honestly, overkill. On the other hand, it's free overkill, and it increases the power of is attacks to control.
The NWO: The Magic Goes Away is there to slow down your opponents. It won't slow down you much at all, as long as you have Bill.
You can easily play a Supreme Court Nomination on someone else's personality. If they're destroyed, fine--if not, then they're ripe for a takeover by Bill.
There are two ways to win with this deck, almost equally easy: the Basic Goal and Power for Its Own Sake. The Bermuda Special Goal is not a viable option; don't even consider it, unless some sort of miracle occurs.
With either Goal, you'll want to make a putsch to victory at the end. Here are some ways to go about it:
The Discordian Society can be annoying to a deck like this, because Discordia is damn near immune to everything in this deck. There's only one solution: outgrow them. Outgrow the hell out of them. Fortunately, typical Weird Discordia decks are a bit slow, and this deck is very fast, so that should not be a problem.
Two-player play is not a problem for this deck, nor is NWO: the Magic Goes away, since this deck is very good at making takeovers.
You might consider adding a New Federal Budget, but I would recommend against it. New Federal Budget is actually pretty useless, since even the least of your groups will have at least power 2 with the Clipper Chip.
One amusing variation on this theme is to make a Government-oriented deck with Government, Straight, Violent, Peaceful, Corporate (Tobacco Companies are good for such a deck), and Liberal alignments, and then bring out Lyndon LaRouche and a set of Dittoheads to achieve the Bermuda special goal. I've only tried this once, and it didn't actually work--but it was a noble effort, and came very close. If you do this, you should realize that you can move a Government group to be controlled by Lyndon Larouche for a sudden power boost.
Since this deck is such a fast deck, you can sacrifice some of your speed to slow everyone else down. NWO: Solidarity and NWO: The Magic Goes Away are good ways to do this.
Another variation would be to make Bill Clinton's bonus to control even more extreme, with some of the free Personality-boosters. Sweepstakes Prize would give an extra bonus to Bill's attacks to control; Messiah would improve Bill's Power and Resistance (and the Resistance boost in particular would be handy), but runs the risk that the card becomes useless if someone else becomes the Messiah.
The common alignment of Government provides a lot of defensive power for Bill against normal attacks. However, this does not apply well to Assassinations. (If you see someone else take over the Secret Service, do your damndest to control or destroy them as soon as you can.) I don't see many Assassinations in my games; if you think you're likely to encounter Assassinations, it would be a good thing to include a Bodyguard or Talisman of Ahrimanes.
In conclusion, let me leave you with this thought:
Most decks do not have theme songs. (All things considered, this is probably a good thing.) But this deck does have a theme song, from Schoolhouse Rock:
I'm just a Bill,Back to the Classic Decks.
Yes, I'm only a Bill,
And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill...
First posted: July 8, 1996
Last modified: September 4, 1997
Ralph Melton ralph@cs.cmu.edu