INWO Deck -- General Disorder Rides Again

by Mad Chris

The Deck

A Society of Assassins Production

Starring

Featuring

Filmed in Glorious

Special Thanks

Original Story by

Screenplay by

Casting by

Produced by

Directed by

(k) 6AA Mad Chris Productions. All the characters and events in this deck are completely true, and any similarity to world events - secret or otherwise - is completely intentional.

Strategy

There are two ways to play this deck: either for an all out win, or for fun - taking a win if it floats your way. I recommend the latter, not least of all because this is the easiest way to win. The more you get into your role of raising General Disorder's Power & Resistance, the less seriously the other players will take you and the more chance you have of sneaking in a suprise win.

Act I, Scene I: The Birth of a Legend

Lead with General Disorder. If the General bounces, panic. Lead the Rosicrutians and get him out as quickly as possible. Although the deck can be played without him, he is the centre of the deck's action, and you should ensure that at all times you can do a good job of protecting him.

The Rosicrucians are your only Secret group, so be sure to 'tut' when someone plays a Secret group and they no longer count double for you. You don't need them to count double, so it's important to make it look like you wanted them to. Don't overdo it though!

Act I, Scene II: The Rise to Power

As quickly as possible, you should play the following cards on your hero:

At an appropriate time you are also looking to make him the Messiah, but this can wait until you've got several Churches already in play. When it comes to playing churches, play Conservative churches in preference to all other kinds (assuming you have a choice), followed by Fanatic churches.

Act I, Scene III: The Path to Glory

You should aim to lead Groups in roughly the following order, varying according to what you need in play to combat the other players:

The Dittoheads and the Orgone Grinder are a special case which we will discuss later.

The Rosicrucians should be brought out early as there are specific plots you will want at specific times, and the Rosicrucians are a direct line to them. The Nephews of God put you up to averaging 1.42 Groups per turn without you having to spend Action tokens. They're both Conservative and Fanatic, which is ideal for your deck, and don't give away what you are up to.

All the other Groups (except the Moral Minority) are there to boost General Disorder in some way. The Moral Minority is included because they are both Conservative and Fanatic, but are a minimal priority because just about every other group is more useful to you. Also, bringing them out late allows you to use the TV Preachers to take them over - and they are the only group which the TV Preacher's special ability is useful for!

Act II, Scene I: The Plan

Your basic trick is to use Sucked Dry & Cast Aside on the General, giving him x 4 Power for one Action. You make attacks to destroy groups in other people's power structures - ideally Liberal groups - and after the dust settles, the General returns to your power structure more or less intact.

If you have You Are What You Eat in your hand, you can also use attacks to destroy to take control of enemy groups. Make an attack to destroy using Sucked Dry and Cast Aside on the General. Afterwards, play You Are What You Eat. The destroyed Group joins your power structure where the General used to be, and you get him back at the end of the turn!

Act II, Scene II: The Plot Thickens

To help you get really carried away, you can use Truck Bomb in conjunction with Sucked Dry and Cast Aside to create truly deadly Instant attacks to destroy!

And if anyone destroys or devastates a place (including you with your Volcano), the General's special blend of Wierd Science allow you to do the same with Annual Convention - even if it's not your own turn.

These two cards in conjunction with Sucked Dry and Cast Aside allow you to perform truly devastating instant attacks to destroy organisations.

Act II, Scene III: The Heights of Power

Your maximum Power & Resistance using this deck is a Power 46, Resistance 38 General Disorder. This is achieved as follows:

Without the Sucked Dry and Cast Aside the math is:

Obviously, higher totals are possible if you add in the Church of Elvis, Recording Industry and you include Never Surrender and get General Disorder to be Fanatic. This is left as an exercise to the psychotic student.

Note that the +10 cards in the deck are NOT for use with General Disorder. The bulk of the deck is a blend of Conservative churches, Fanatic churches and Conservative Fanatic groups. The three types of +10 are intended to be used with these groups, and specifically in the endgame (see below).

Act III, Scene I: Under Attack

There are three ways you will come under attack:

1. Attempts to take General Disorder away from you.
2. Attempts to kill General Disorder permanently.
3. Attempts to undo the General's power
The first method can be protected against by using Read My Lips - or by playing Sucked Dry and Cast Aside on him in his own defense. However, even if you lose control of him, The South American Nazis, backed by your Fanatical Global Power should take him back with ease.

If you fear that sooner or later they are going to try and take him away from you, it is time to play the Dittoheads. It is worth saving them until you think they are necessary, however, as it is awkward to have to keep getting them out every time you use Sucked Dry and Cast Aside.

The second method is more tricky. Your Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know should be saved for defense against just this kind of attack, and Sudden European Vacation can also be just what the doctor ordered to help protect from a card being used to knock out the General.

If you know that your group uses Paralyse cards, then you can resort to linking him to the Orgone Grinder. This gives him the Power 6 that the New Blood would normally give him, but takes away his Alignments and hence his vulnerability. You can always unlink him on your turn, if you intend to use Sucked Dry and Cast Aside (if he is linked to the Orgone Grinder when he gets sucked, it will be destroyed).

Similarly, if they undo your New Blood, you may be forced to use the Orgone Grinder as a life support machine. It is most useful as a backup.

Act III, Scene II: Going Psycho

The primary use of the Rewriting History is to convert a destroyed non-Liberal group into a Liberal group for the purpose of Let Them Eat Cake. However, it can also be used to make the General a Fanatic, thus giving him Global Power equal to his regular power. Simply wait until he's dead once again, then play the Rewriting History with your Illuminati action to make him Fanatic. When he comes back, he'll be permanently Fanatic, because the wording on General Disorder allows him to keep all changes, for good or bad.

Act III, Scene III: The Finale

Obviously, you are intended to use Let Them Eat Cake to win, but if this isn't possible, give up on the path of destruction, get the General to control the Dittoheads and/or be linked to the Orgone grinder and take control of the largest chunk of enemy Power Structure you can lay your hands on. If your opponents have let you get set up, it'll prove particularly hard to stop you.

The Crusades, Jihads and Slush Funds mean that despite the image you should have fostered in the early stages of the game, the rest of your groups aren't just there to boost General Disorder. In fact, by the time the end game comes up, you should find you can get +20s with at least one of your groups, and possibly more than one. Since up until this point you've been focussed on the General, most people are likely to have not paid attention to what the rest of your power structure is capable, and you can use this to bring the General's forced in for final victory.

Epilogue

A word of warning about The South American Nazis: although you do give the General +3 Power whilst he is controlled by them, you should be careful about when you do this. If he is not controlled by your Illuminati, it is obviously that much easier to take him, or to take both him and the Nazis, which could be disastrous.

As a general rule, if you have Sudden European Vacaction or any other defense, it's probably safe to have him controlled by the Nazis. But keep a control arrow open on your Society of Assassins whenever possible.

The General's ability to spend his Action to give +10 to a Disaster, which can then only devastate, is mostly useless to you. But if someone tries to destroy Vatican City, or if you are up against a Disaster-rich Cthulhu, you can always use this ability to thwart any attempt to destroy using Disasters by insuring that they can only devastate!

The INWOs included give you a good range of response, from the defensive (Solidarity) to the offensive (World Hunger). Both of your Yellow NWOs (Law & Order and End of the World) are most useful to you in the endgame, to boost the bulk of your power structure, but if you need to use them earlier you should feel free.

You should try and use your variety of NWOs to remain in control of the pace of the game: if when you first attack someone you can play Australian Rules first, you can encourage other players to throw in "just a little power" so they can get plot cards. This will make the player being picked on more likely to believe that they are being picked on by everyone at the table and less likely to take retribution out on you specifically (especially if you later on point out that so-and-so did throw in power against them in that attack earlier in the game...). The more you are able to manipulate the psychology of the players you are playing with, the more success you will have - and the NWOs are a good tool for this.

Changes in the Video Version

You can't build this deck without at the very least General Disorder, some Sucked Dry and Cast Asides and the Society of Assassins. Let Them Eat Cake and the South American Nazis are also fairly central. There is room for change with other cards:

A fairly general Group replacement is the Recording Industry, which gives General Disorder an extra +1 Power. If you are in need of additional Groups to plug gaps, put in some reasonably decent Conservative groups - the Republicans are not bad in this role.

If you have a lot of Plots to replace, you might like to consider including Unmasked (assuming you have one) and a Servants of Cthulhu.

Lastly, I encourage your to play with the deck design - extemporise! Think wildly! Play with the cards you enjoy playing with, because the only thing better than winning is having fun - and the only thing better than having fun is having fun and STILL winning!

Mad Chris.

(With thanks to Aaron Curtis for the Rewriting History schtick, and to whoever suggested using You Are What You Eat on top of the General Disorder/Sucked Dry and Cast Aside schtick).

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