by Darrin Bright
Tired of trying to get that Fratricide deck to work? Try this one instead. The Subgenius goal Arise looks great if you can convince your opponents to eliminate you, but usually what happens is whoever is in the lead gets picked on and cut down to the point where he's no longer a threat, and then people lose interest and start after whoever was the next strongest player. Few people get incensed enough to go through the trouble to eliminate a player entirely. Well, instead of goading your opponents into wiping you out, you're going to do all the work for them.
Lead with Madison Avenue. If it bounces try Divine Mail Order or Reverend Ivan Stang. It doesn't matter too much what you lead with anyway, the killer combo in this deck will work as long as you're able to bring out the Center For Disease Control. Worry about that later, though. Once Madison Avenue is out, bring out Divine Mail Order and start burning up tokens for plot draws. Put China on Divine Mail Order and reload it with Rev. Ivan Stang. Save all your tokens for plot draws, and don't get involved in any attacks, even if you're the one defending. Sure, it sounds a little counter-productive, but don't worry about it just yet. If your opponents destroy your groups, this will save you the trouble of doing it for them.
Now start looking for Arise! If you get multiple copies, hold onto them in case your rivals discover and do away with one. If you don't have it yet, put out the Druids and go digging for it with Crop Circles. Crop Circles is particularly effective with Divine Mail Order. Once you've got Arise and you've got a CDC in hand, you're ready for showtime.
Bring out the CDC with your ATO and then bring out the Holy Grail with an Illuminati action token. Pick a place controlled by a rival and put the name of this place under the Holy Grail. This is your insurance policy for success, more or less. If none of your rivals have any places, give them one by moving China to Rev. Stang and moving him and China with a Sudden European Vacation.
The CDC is now ready for destruction by our hapless rival, but you need to make sure the rest of your groups go with it. First things first, you need to reorganize. You can do this by moving the groups individually by spending their tokens, you can use the Elders of Zion special ability, or you can use Antitrust Legislation.
Now you need a place to move them. The obvious choice is the CDC, but they don't have a control arrow. Give them one with Let's Get Organized and you're ready for biological warfare. Or, if Let's Get Organized isn't handy, the Yetis can be controlled by any group that doesn't have control arrows, so move the Yetis over to the CDC and hang everything else off of the Yetis. Or if the Druids are protecting the CDC, move everything over to the Druids, who have a control arrow ready and waiting.
Now launch an attack on the place protected by the Holy Grail with the CDC and use biological warfare. The attack will fail, the CDC will be destroyed by the rival you attacked, and all your groups will be destroyed along with it or sent back to your hand. Arise! and claim victory.
Look out for Interesting Times because it stops this deck cold. There's a couple ways to deal with it. Get rid of it with Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat. You could also hold onto Global Warming or a plot-canceler like Secrets or Tape Runs Out. Science Alarmists might also be a problem if the owner knows what you're up to. Otherwise play up the harmlessness of the CDC, or use AWHFY to shut them down. In the unlikely event that the only place in play is immune to you (owned by Discordia or Shangri-La has the Vatican in play), then AWHFY will also be a great help here.
Ralph had a chance to playtest this deck a bit, and suggested putting in the NPCs or the Citizens for Normalcy for more cancel power. I generally stay away from the NPCs unless I've got a really good reason to include them because they are impossible to hold on to, but as Ralph pointed out, there's no need to defend them. Citizens for Normalcy might work out rather well with the UFOs extra token.
First posted: June 19, 1998
Last modified: Wed Jun 24 11:32:25 EDT 1998
Ralph Melton ralph@cs.cmu.edu