INWO Card Combinations and Dirty Tricks

This file is an ever-growing set of cross-references among INWO cards, an attempt to chart the connections in Ralph's head.

The links on the card titles are links to the card as generated by Wendell Hicken's INWO Card List Generator.

These are the entries that have been updated in the last two weeks:

New York 1/6/98
State Lotteries 11/20/97
Blitzkrieg 10/28/97
Trading Card Games 9/16/97
OPEC 9/2/97
A.M.A. 8/29/97
Dinosaur Park 8/28/97

General Tips

5/4/97: Everything that you in a game will convey some implicit message about your intentions and probable acts. You should consider how your acts will be interpreted by other players, and how you want them to be interpreted. There are four general classes of relationships between the apparent meaning of your acts and the true meaning;
- You can be telling the truth. This is relatively easy to do, but lacks the advantage of surprise.
- You can appear to mean one thing but secretly mean another. (This is not necessarily good; it is possible to appear to be near enough to victory that other players combine to bring you donw, even though you are not nearly so near.) The way to detect this situation is to look for the slight anomalies that betray an ulterior motive.
- You can appear not to have any particular meaning at all. This is hard to do, and doubly hard to do while setting up a hidden plan. I find it very hard to do this--my opponents assume so strongly that anything I do is done with some reason in mind that if I do something they don't understand, they work extra-hard to look for a meaning.
- You can appear to mean more than one thing. The advantage of doing so is that other players will be somewhat distracted from your rea intention; the disadvantage is that they will assume the worst, so this doesn't help that much.
5/2/97: One way to build cunning and innovative decks is to ignore the special Goal of your Illuminati, and make strong use of your special power. For example, I have an amusing Discordian Society deck with a Straight Government theme that ignores Weird Groups and makes maximum use of its immunity to Straight and Government Groups.
5/2/97: In my opinion, almost every deck should either have the following cards or consciously choose to reject them:
- Two Plot cancelers
- One card to meddle with rival's resources
- One or two Disasters
- Some appropriate +10 boosters.
5/2/97: If a player attacks his own groups, he almost certainly has something special in mind. Figure out what he wants to get out of the attack; it will be a strong clue to his plans.

Illuminati

Adepts of Hermes: See also Flying Saucer
Bavarian Illuminati
Bermuda Triangle 2/7/97: Aaron Curtis's comments on the Bermuda Triangle describe an important part of Bermuda Triangle strategy.
Discordian Society: See also NWO: Military-Industrial Complex.; See also Supreme Court Nomination.
Gnomes of Zurich: When NWO: Chicken in Every Pot is in play, all banks count double for the Gnomes of Zurich.; See also NWO: Military-Industrial Complex.
Network, The: See also Eliza.
Servants of Cthulhu
Shangri-La 2/7/97: The INWO book suggests Noble Peace Prize and Martyrs as degenerate Shangri-La cards. I beg to differ; Nobel Peace Prize is not so very useful, since you can only use one. The true degenerate Shangri-La card is Kinder and Gentler. With Kinder and Gentler, you can reach into opponents' Power Structures and turn their best groups Peaceful.; Shangri-La can get 14 points of Peaceful Power in one fell swoop by using the Big Prawn to turn New York Peaceful and double its power at the same time.; See also Unmasked
Society of Assassins
UFOs

Groups

A.M.A. 8/29/97 The A.M.A. works well in a Blinded by Science deck, because its ability to attack and defend any Science group can cut acrossthe problems of having no common alignments that Science decks can run into. However, it can be difficult to decide whether to use their ability to make an attack or to save it for defense. I tend to like to save it for defense, because having it in your power structure as a potential defender tends to cause people not to try to attack you. Japan has a 12 or less to control the A.M.A.

Al Amarja

Al Gore

American Autoduel Association

Anti-Nuclear Activists

Antiwar Activists

Arms Dealers 2/18/97

The Arms Dealers work well in combination with the Cattle Mutilators to let you expose other players' plots. When you're going to hassle one player with the Arms Dealers, try to get other players to give you worthless plots to exchange.

See also NASA.

Bill Clinton 43/97

This is a little obvious, but should be noted anyway: Bill Clinton is awesome at taking over Government groups. There are almost 30 groups that Bill can take over on a 10 or less.

However, Bill is a little weak on defense, particularly against an an attack to Control, because his Resistance is pretty low. A deck that relies on Bill Clinton may like to have a Commitment to play on him.

See also NASA.

England 3/10/97

Emergency Powers can be particularly effective when played on England, because England then has two power-6 tokens.

Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow

F.B.I.

Fast Food Chains 6/3/97

Sean McGuire has a nice Fast Food Chains trick, based on the fact that the Plots you hide need not be your own:

Expose someone's Plots with the Cattle Mutilators (So that's where the Fast Food Chains get their meat!)
Hide two of their Plots with the Fast Food Chains.
Use Go Fish to seize the Plot you just hid. (The highly suspicious fish sandwich)

Federal Reserve

Feminists

Fidel Castro

Fiendish Fluoridators

Finland

Flat Earthers

Fnord Motor Company

France

Fraternal Orders

Fred Birch Society

Gay Activists 6/2/97

Terry Chilvers writes: "CFL-AIO/Gay Activists works well by extending the CFL's ability to destroy to include the more numerous Government targets."

General Disorder 2/21/97

General Disorder can be used as Disaster protection, by using him to aid Disasters against your Places, creating a Disaster that is more likely to devastate, but cannot destroy.

For more information about this, see Dirty Trick #6, With Friends Like These...

George Bush

Germany

Girlie Magazines

Goldfish Fanciers

Gordo Remora

Great Pyramid, The

See also Go Fish.

Illuminati University

Imelda Marcos

Intellectuals

International Cocaine Smugglers

International Communist Conspiracy

International Weather Organization

Lama Ramadingdong 2/14/97

Lama Ramadingdong is a precious group for a Green deck. He should not be brought out until you have a significant number of Green Groups in play, however, because any smart opponent will blast him if he's brought out when he's weak.

Local Police Departments

Lyndon LaRouche 3/29/97

A way to get Lyndon's alignments to count for Goals is to use the Dittoheads.

MI-5

Madison Avenue

See also Go Fish.

NASA 3/17/97

Glen Barnett points out:

Being able to give its token to a Government group you control makes this a very handy card - if you have several useful Government cards (e.g. Supreme Court, EPA, Post Office, Bank of England, a Big Prawned New York (and Bill Clinton--RLM)) it allows you a great deal of flexibility. NWO: Military-Industrial Complex extends this to Corporate groups (e.g. Phone Company, Liquor Companies, and Fnord Motor Company (and the Nuclear Power Companies--RLM)).

NATO

Nancy Reagan

Nephews of God

New York 1/6/98

Let me take a moment to state some obvious things about why New York is such a popular card:

Its printed power of 7 is higher than that of any other non-Illuminati group. Furthermore, since the power-booster cards only assign a power of 6, no other group can be assigned a power equal or greater than New York's--so no other group's power can be increased as much by a power-doubler as New York's.
Furthermore, all of the permanent power-doublers (Necronomicon, Cyborg Soldiers, and the Big Prawn) can apply to New York.

See also Shangri-La.

See also NASA.

Newt Gingrich

Ninjas 2/14/97

Rudi Gross's Lambs to the Slaughter is an excellent example of how to use the Ninjas' special ability to gain an action token when attacked to devastating effect.

Nuclear Power Companies

Nutrition Nazis See also Dinosaur Park.

OPEC

Dirty Trick #24: Mike Chiulli (ChiulliAXP@aol.com) has pointed out that you can use Murphy's Law to give OPEC an extremely high power. And since this high power is Printed Power, you could use a power- doubler like the Necronomicon or Cyborg Soldiers to dobule that power.

Offshore Banks

Ollie North

Orbit One

Pale People in Black

The Pollsters can have an ability to meddle with attacks that far exceeds their mere global power, because few attacks are made without some benefit from alignment bonuses. Since attackers tend to choose combinations that give them alignment bonuses, the Pollsters can often make a difference of 6 or more when interfering to aid the defense.

The Pollsters can be especially effective in conjunction with the Orbital Mind Control Lasers, or they can be used to nullify the efforts of another player who uses the OMCLs to enhance his attacks.

The Pollsters' influence is magnified by NWO: Fear and Loathing.

Post Office

See also NASA.

Prince Charles

Princess Di

Professional Sports

Psychiatrists

Punk Rockers

Pyramid Marketing Schemes

Recording Industry

Recycling Centers 4/3/97

Aaron Curtis' Deck of the Week #27, Invasion of the Gadget Snatchers, details many Illuminated uses of the Recycling Centers.

Telephone Psychics

Templars

Texas

Thule Group, The 4/3/97

Because the Thule Group is not aiding per se when it uses its power to increase an attack, its power can be used to boost attacks during NWO: Apathy.

The Recycling Centers can be used to recover one of the Group cards you use with the Thule Group.

Tobacco Companies

When NWO: Military-Industrial Complex is in play, the Tobacco Companies have a net +12 to take over any Government or Corporate Group.

Trading Card Games 9/16/97

The Trading Card Games' ability to be replaced with another card is by far their best use. This ability can be abused to good effect by using the Recycling Centers. Simply take over the Trading Card Games, replace the TCG's with another group, and use the Recycling Centers to salvage the Trading Card Games to repeat the exercise.

(Note: The Cards FAQ says that this trick is illegal. However, Marc Gabriele asked Lynette about the idea a couple of months ago, and received confirmation that it's legal. (He showed me the print-out of her message when he played the deck. It was typical Lynette style, which is admittedly easy to fake--it said, "Yes." But I don't think Marc would forge a message.))

Even without this trick, canny rivals will be leery of the possibilities for which the Trading Card Games might be used, and will try to destroy the relatively vulnerable Trading Card Games as soon as possible. Because of this, you will usually want to replace the TCGs with another group as soon as you take them over.

Dirty Trick #25 (due to Christian Wedge): The Recycling Centers can be hard to bring into play without ATOs. If you can take over the Trading Card Games and keep them until they get an action token, you can replace them with the Recycling Centers, and then use the Recycling Centers' action token to recover the Trading Card Games.

Trekkies

Triliberal Commission

Underground Newspapers

Vladimir Zhirinovsky

Resources

Angel's Feather

Ark of the Covenant

Big Prawn, The

See also Shangri-La.

Bigfoot

Black Helicopters

Blivit

Book of Kells

Plots

18 1/2 Minute Gap

A Brief Attack of Conscience

Agent In Place

Air Magic

Albino Alligators

Alien Abduction

Alternate Goals

An Offer You Can't Refuse

Anarchists Unite!

And STAY Dead!

And STAY Dead! allows you to permanently kill a group that has been discarded, but not Destroyed. This can be handy in conjunction with Upheaval!

Angst

Annual Convention

Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Overdoing

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Assertiveness Training

Atomic Monster

Auditor From Hell, The

Back to the Drawing Board

Back to the Salt Mines 2/14/97

Back to the Salt Mines can also be used with non-Instant Disasters, like Giant Kudzu, Epidemic, and Drought. Back to the Salt Mines, combined with Flesh-Eating Bacteria, forms a power-30 Disaster that can be reused if it destroys its target.

Big Sellout, The 2/21/97

Big Sellout is one of very few ways to give an extra action token to your Illuminati.

Bimbo at Eleven

Bite the Wax Tadpole

Blitzkrieg 10/28/97

Blitzkrieg can be useful in the early game, by giving you an extra action token on a newly-taken group that can be used to move that group closer to your Illuminati.

Blitzkrieg can also be extremely useful in a Spawning Behemoth deck. For example, if you are playing a classic Network deck in which every group gives a further bonus to take over Computer Groups, Blitzkrieg is a great way to swarm to victory, because it lets newly acquired groups use their mighty bonuses to take other groups.

By contrast, Blitzkrieg is not nearly so useful in a Big Slurp deck, because the extra token that it gives you is usually not on the group with which you make all of your takeovers.

Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat

Bodyguard

Botched Contact

Bribery 2/21/97

Bribery is actually slightly less useful than Murphy's Law, for the following reasons:

Murphy's Law can be applied to any attack to make it a failure; Bribery cannot make an arbitrary attack a success.
Murphy's Law is typically used on other people's turns to thwart other people's attacks; Bribery is typically used on your own turns to facilitate your attacks. Therefore, Bribery is more likely to leave you denuded of Illuminati actions for everyone else's turn.

Brushfire War

See also Go Fish.

Forgery

Frankenfood 3/29/97

Frankenfood is most often used for two purposes:

To make places Fanatic for the Society of Assassins
To add arbitrary alignments to places for the Bermuda Triangle.

It could also be used for Discordia or Shangri-La, but Jake Day or Kinder and Gentler are harder to eliminate. However, if you have a strong Science theme, Frankenfood can be worthwhile.

If you use Frankenfood to win, a Hubble Trouble during your bid for victory can prevent meddling Science groups from removing your Frankenfood.

Freaking The Mundanes

Full Moon 2/18/97

Full Moon is the most effective of the Reloads, because it allows you to reload all of your Fanatic Groups. Since it can also reload other players' Fanatic groups, a player with a Fanatic deck who has no Illuminati action can sometimes convince another player with an Illuminati action to load up all of the Fanatic's player's groups (with a Full Moon provided by the Fanatic player, of course).

Fundie Money

Gang War

George the Janitor

Giant Kudzu

See also Shangri-La.

Lab Explosion

Let the Sunshine In

Let's Get Organized

Let's Get REALLY Organized

Let's You and Him Fight

Liberal Agenda

Logic Bomb

March On Washington

Market Manipulation

See also Shangri-La.

Media Connections 2/7/97

This card doesn't have to be played with your own groups. You can play it on someone else's Power Structure and then use Censorship or Madison Avenue to take it away.

Meek Shall Inherit, The

Messiah

Meteor Strike

Metric System

Miracle Diet Plan

Mistaken Identity

See the comments on Bribery for a comparison and contrast of Murphy's Law and Bribery.

See also Go Fish.

No Beer!

Nobel Peace Prize

See also Shangri-La.

Nuclear Accident

Oil Spill 2/21/97

Two things to note:

When NWO: Global Warming is in play, every Green Group has Power >= 3, and so will gain an action token, even if the Oil Spill only devastates.
An Oil Spill can be a good way to regain action tokens for Green groups as soon as a NWO: World Hunger leaves play.

Opportunity Knocks

Pizza for the Secret Meeting 3/17/97

Pizza for the Secret Meeting is a very versatile card. Here are some of its many uses:

Play it to temporarily prevent a Secret group from counting double for the Society of Assassins.
Play it as the Society of Assassins to let your Secret groups count double by eliminating the secrecy of a more powerful Secret group.
Use it to allow a non-Secret group to attack a Secret group.
Use it to defend a Secret group from attack by eliminating the Secrecy of the attacking group.
Use it on a Secret group that's attacking a non-Secret group in order to allow other groups to aid the attack.

Privileged Attack

Pulitzer Prize

Purge

Rain of Frogs

Goals

Blinded by Science
Corporate Masters, The: See also NWO: Military-Industrial Complex.
Criminal Overlords 2/7/97: Manuel Noriega is the group with the least Resistance that qualifies for Criminal Overlords.
Earth First
Fratricide
Hail Eris!
Hand of Madness, The
Kill For Peace!
Let Them Eat Cake!
Population Reduction 3/10/97: England is the least powerful Huge Place. However, you may wish to think twice about including it in a Population Reduction deck, because many will interpret it as a sign of Population Reduction.
Power For Its Own Sake
Power To The People
Up Against The Wall! 4/21/97: Up Against the Wall! is relatively unusal among Destroy X/Control Y Goals in that X and Y are not opposite alignments. This means that, for example, you can build a Government Violent deck (with NWO: Gun Control) and destroy your own groups to ensure that no one can take them away from you.; It is also easier to count on Government groups being in play for you to destroy than it is for most other alignments, and it is easier to destroy them without raising suspicion, because they are likely to be some of the groups that most obviously need to be destroyed.

New World Orders

A Thousand Points of Light
Antitrust Legislation 2/18/97: NWO: Antitrust Legislation makes it impossible for the Day Care Centers or the Dittoheads to be owned by a Corporate group.
Apathy 2/18/97: Common trick: get lots of people to chip into an attack, then play NWO: Apathy to all the action tokens that aided the offense. his can be particularly effective with the use of Church of Violentology to lure people into using lots of action tokens in an attack.
Australian Rules 5/4/97: To state the semi-obvious: The best type of deck (and the best type of situation) in which to use Australian Rules is one in which it's easy for you to attack others, but hard for them to attack you. A heavily-defended Discordian Society or Shangri-La deck can use Australian Rules to incite other players to attack each other while the well-defended player edges towards victory.; See also Spear of Longinus.
Bigger Business
Chicken In Every Pot: See also Gnomes of Zurich.
Don't Forget To Smash The State
End of the World
Energy Crisis
Fear and Loathing 3/29/97: NWO: Fear and Loathing can be an excellent NWO for a weenie monochromatic deck in which almost all groups share a single alignment, because it magnifies the bonuses for taking over groups from your hand.; The Orbital Mind Control Lasers are particularly potent when NWO: Fear and Loathing is in play.; See also Pollsters.
Global Warming: See also Loch Ness Monster.; See also Oil Spill.
Gun Control: See also Goal: Up Against the Wall.
Interesting Times
Law and Order
Magic Goes Away, The
Military-Industrial Complex 3/29/97: Military-Industrial Complex can be very useful for Discordia, since it extends Discordia's immunity to include Corporate Groups.; NWO: MIC also will eliminate any Monopoly or Metric System in play.; Rob the Radii points out that it increases the effectiveness of Anarchists Unite!.; It extends the powers of Bill Clinton, Saddam Hussein, the Supreme Court, Congressional Wives, NASA, Libertarians, Lyndon LaRouche, Tobacco Companies, and others to work for Corporate groups as well as Government groups.; It does the same for the Plots Ketchup Is A Vegetable and Whistle Blowers.; It allows a Clipper Chip to boost the power of all your Corporate Groups, even for the purpose of Goals for the Gnomes of Zurich and for Goal: Corporate Masters.
Peace In Our Time
Political Correctness
Solidarity
Tax Reform 2/20/97: In a game with many players, NWO: Tax Reform and the I.R.S. will make you Target Number One. A good way to defuse this problem is this: make clear that if players help you, you'll give them the plots you tax back. Therefore, by helping you, they get an extra plot from their deck each turn. All of you profit.
Visualize Whirled Peas
Watermelons
World Hunger: See also Oil Spill.
World War Three

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Last modified: March 17, 1997

Ralph Melton ralph@cs.cmu.edu