Deck by Doug Ingram
This deck was designed using the following rules:
There is certainly some room to play with duplicates in this deck, depending upon whether you choose this particular strategy or a variation. One major problem with this deck for others may well be the abundance of rare cards that I'm relying on (15 out of 45 above, but no Ultras at least). As usual, I will offer some advice at the end on possible deck modifications.
My top three would be CIA, Texas then Australia. CIA is nice for its global power. All three of these groups have a weakness, however, in that they are fairly commonly found in other decks. You may want to consider replacing one of your resources (Hitler's Brain is probably the first card I'd lose) with Xanadu.
You'll want to avoid leading the Church of Violentology. In fact, that card should only be reserved for an endgame play described below. Even if you draw one of your power-boost cards as one of your first three, you should still avoid leading anything other than the three I've suggested. Texas and Australia are very valuable places to have out, and you'll want them each hanging directly off of the UFO's for protection.
Thanks to all the sympathetic alignments, it will be easy to grow quickly. Be sure, of course, not to put yourself in a position where you are a target. If Cthulhu is in the game, use the Skull to help you look for Reverse Whammy (to avoid the "Sorry, Wrong Number" zap immediately followed by a few disasters/assassinations). Save your SMWNMTK and Hoax cards for disasters. If you play in a disaster-happy group, you should consider adding Early Warning to the deck. I haven't done this simply because I don't plan to play this deck without having all three huge coastal groups hanging right off of UFO's. If someone successfully plays "Sorry, Wrong Number" on you, Early Warning will only help you once in any case, even if you should be lucky enough to draw it.
Add Survivalists beneath Texas as quickly as possible for the extra disaster protection if Cthulhu is in the game. Otherwise, there are probably better groups to have out (and if the Society of Assassins is in the game, you don't want to offer them a target).
If Bill Clinton or one of the many other Govt personalities comes out early, they'll be easy pickings for you and you'll be well on your way to fulfilling "Up Against the Wall!". A good way to get rid of a nasty non-Govt personality would be to Nationalize them and then hit them with the CIA/SS combo. It's tough to have all the right cards at once, but it's worth keeping in mind.
If someone is playing a Liberal deck, you can always whack their key group with Newt, but if you do this, don't expect to hang on to Newt for long. In fact, you may want to consider pre-empting any such attacks by taking him out with the CIA yourself so you get credit for the dead Govt group. Try to kill two Liberal groups with Newt's direct or indirect help first if you can, just so the "Let Them Eat Cake" goal will be eventually viable.
Besides these ideas, the only guiding principle should be which of the two Control/Destroy goals you most want to go for. Don't worry about the power 50 goal yet, and keep all your NWO's in your hand (unless Smash the State comes out, in which case you really have to get rid of it by any means necessary...you may even consider extra Yellow NWO's just for this emergency, such as Law and Order).
Offensively, you have Alien Abduction and Bribery to help you grow, and you have plenty of cards that can hurt other players. Save your tokens for defense. You have a small number of groups, so losing one to destruction will really cripple you.
Defensively, you have a lot of help. The best thing you can do to help your cause is to get those power boost cards in play early. Always save an Illuminati token to protect against "Wrong Number", mainly to keep your Place defenses up against instant attacks.
Try to avoid using Jihad and Terrorist Nuke. You'll want to save them for a possible defense of Violentology later on. Same goes with Murphy's Law.
Sorry, Wrong Number and Senate Investigating Committee are good leader-killing cards. The alignment changers are more for the end game, for which there are three possibilities.
All three of the goal cards in your deck are potentially useful. The most obvious one at first glance is "Power for Its Own Sake". You should find yourself at 50 power fairly quickly with Clipper Chip helping your Government group and with the power boost cards in your deck. Either "Gun Control" or "Bigger Business" can easily push you over the top. Despite the apparent ease of this goal (or perhaps because of it), I like to leave this as a last resort. Too much power = big fat target.
Probably the easiestoals to satisfy will be the Destroy/Control. If you get one Government and/or one Liberal group destroyed, you can always turn one of your own groups the appropriate alignment with Liberal Agenda or Nationalization for an end-game play.
The easiest way to play an end-game is to use the Church of Violentology. Plunk this down as your auto-takeover, play a couple of power boosters on it, and then start attacking it with your non-Violent groups. Each failed attack lets you draw three plots (Hitler's Brain + Gun Lobby + Church of Violentology) and gets you closer to your goal. At this point, having NWO Apathy in play is immensely valuable in order to prevent other players from magnanimously helping your attacks. :) Other alternatives (and there are plenty) are discussed below.
Fiendish Fluoridators is always a nice addition to this deck, but it does suffer from the fact that the Assassins love it. Also, it doesn't have helpful alignments. You can fix this with either Ross Perot or Saturday Morning Cartoons, but once you start making that many changes, you may want to consider other alternative groups. Some that didn't make my final cut: Germany, Manuel Noriega, Margaret Thatcher, Mossad and Professional Sports. A notable Violent Government group left out: BATF, which has too big a bonus to directly attack (and fail) against the Church.
If you include Perot in your deck and plan on getting some alignments that way, you may want a couple of copies of Law and Order in your deck. I've tried working with Perot and the Fluoridators to make the Violentology gambit work for even more plot cards, but you end up with too few Violent groups in the deck for your goals and a weaker deck. One major omission from this deck is a complete lack of token replenishers (such as Seize the Time, Voodoo Economics, Reload and Red Scare). Upon further playtesting, these might become a higher priority. Your mileage may vary, etc.
I also leave out the Hand of Madness, although with KKK in the deck, it isn't too bad of an idea. You might consider swapping out Newt Gingrich with, say, BATF, swapping Let Them Eat Cake out with Hand of Madness, and then you'll have a good Assassins-killing deck (watch out Goldfish Fanciers!). A final variation might be to include Unmasked + Cthulhu in the plot deck. This can be good to pull out early in the game if someone else pulls out a well-defended Church of Violentology, spoiling your gambit. The main reason I don't choose Cthulhu as the original Illuminati is that it's better to have fewer bonuses if you're attacking the Church and Cthulhu doesn't have the goal card flexibility that you have with UFO's.
Another consideration might be to use this same gambit with a Fanatic Church deck and the Assassins. Aaron Curtis, with whom I exchanged lots of strategic ideas in developing this deck, says that while a Fanatic Church deck can work well, it probably doesn't go along with this particular gambit and Control/Destroy goals.