Aaron Curtis
The aliens have landed! Unfortunately for the unsuspecting earthlings, we're not friendly, and we won't rest until we've replaced or destroyed every national government on Earth. Then the colonization begins...
Lead with the Gun Lobby. It won't bounce. Why do you think we've been kidnapping redneck gun nuts for the last fifty years? They have money! In fact, the worse things get, the more they seem to have...
Note that almost all of your agents are in powerful Violent and Conservative places; they're just like the gun nuts, only their guns are bigger. Use your ATOs to bring out your non-Nation places (and NATO). Texas is prefered, being the only place which is both Conservative and Violent. NATO is prefered once you have some powerful places in play.
If possible, spend an Illuminati action to bring out a Resource each turn. The first should be your chief agent of intimidation, the Rogue Boomer. With the Boomer and NATO, you have a +9 to control any Nation. Combining this with a +8 alignment bonus means you should have little trouble controlling Nations from hand. Try to take only one per turn. Nations to control, in order of preference, are: Germany, Australia, Russia, Israel, Switzerland. The exception is England: only Government, Power 2/2, but their extra token is immensely useful if you can boost their power. If you get Emergency Power or Dictatorship in hand, ATO England as soon as possible.
The Crystal Skull should be taken as soon as possible, because you don't have a Forgery. The Clipper Chip is third choice, and should wait until you have at least two Government groups in play.
Around about the midgame, the so-called illuminated Earthlings will start to feel nervous about all this power you've acquired, especially with your Clipper Chip technology and Gun Control policy. Assure them that you don't want power for it's own sake. (side note: Although it would be fairly easy to win with PFIOS with this deck, it's significantly more fun the other way. Tell the other players that you don't have PFIOS in your deck, and make sure they believe you.)
You will be attacked, the superstitious fools. It is almost inevitable that some natural or unnatural disaster will come your way. You Alien technology should assure that even the worst disaster should only Nearly Miss the Beach Party, cancelling its effect completely. Even better, each and every attack will cause millions of concerned gun lovers to flow funds into your war chest. If they dare attack in a more direct fashion, the high power of your puppets, your several +10 cards, and, if necessary, Good Polls will serve well toward preventing success, and the Gun Lobby will contribute again and again.
You should draw your last group between your 5th and 7th turn, depending on whether you spend Illuminati tokens to draw groups or not. Once you have the Crystal Skull, you want to go through your plot deck as fast as possible by placing the two non-chosen plots on the bottom of your deck each time. For your endgame, you want to have lots of plots in hand, which means spending one turn doing nothing but looking defensive. If possible, play Good Polls the turn before your bid for victory.
Get your NWOs in play if you can. Then, start taking over the remaining Nations in your hand, spending only a single action token per attack. If your rivals stop you, try again with another group with two like alignments. If you start running low, play one of your own disasters on a place without an action token and no puppets. No Beer! is particularly useful against Texas, Germany or Australia. If the target is Violent, you want the attack to Devastate, not destroy. Draw a plot from gun Lobby, then play Beach Party to give the target a token. Once you take over a group, play Blitzkrieg to give it a token so it can attack, too. Now, you want to destroy your non-Violent and/or Huge groups, depending on what Goal you have. So, starting with Australia and Germany, play your disasters to wipe them out. Alternately, if World War Three is in play, you can make direct attacks to destroy from your non-Conservative Nations; the power will be tripled (but you get -4 for alignment) AND you get another action token and a plot for succeeding (plus another from the Gun Lobby)!
Naturally, your opponents will try to stop you. Let them, the first several times. Once they have exhausted themselves, you can play your disaster/Beach Party combo to reload, then use your Back to the Salt Mines to take over and/or destroy the remaining necessary groups. If they are too much for you, you can still play Ketchup is a Vegetable to sneak in a extra destroyed Government group and win with Up Against the Wall.
First posted: September 20, 1997
Last modified: September 20, 1997
Ralph Melton ralph@cs.cmu.edu