The Bitter Cynical Sellout Discordia Deck

by Ralph Melton

The hippies of the 60's are driving BMWs today. Former tokers are now claiming that they didn't inhale. All that's left of the High Weirdness of the past is a sullen distrust of government that serves as a resistance to government bullshit--but not a disinclination to use that bureaucracy for one's own ends. It's... the Bitter Cynical Sellout Discordia Deck!

This deck illustrates one of my personal principles of deck design: you can build interesting, unusual decks by ignoring an Illuminati's special goal and focusing on using their special ability to the hilt. This deck does that with the Discordian Society by using a Straight and Government theme. Doing so provides some interesting and distinctive opportunities.

Illuminati

Group Cards

Plot Cards

Beginning

Bill Clinton is a good lead, because he has a compelling bonus to take over your many Straight Government groups.

If Bill Clinton bounces, or you don't feel like leading him, other good leads would be the Tobacco Companies (for their bonus to control Government groups and Corporate groups) or the Fraternal Orders for their ability to draw more Groups.

Midgame

This deck can be played pretty opportunistically. Do what seems appropriate; you know what's suitable for your group better than I do, and this deck doesn't have any hugely subtle combinations.

In general, on each turn you should make an ATO of a group that is useful to you (like NASA) or hard to take over (such as your non-Government groups), and an attack to control one of your Government groups from Bill Clinton.

A good rule of thumb is to keep about half of your action tokens for defense--but Discordia's immunity and Australia's bonus against destruction may allow you to be a bit lighter on defense. Although this is not quite a monochromatic deck, it does have enough common alignments and enough power to be very robust to non-Instant attacks.

Giving Bill Clinton the Black Helicopters will make his attacks to control Privileged, which will be handy. Once you have a substantial number of Government groups, bringing out a Clipper Chip will boost your power.

Here are a few of the combinations you might keep in mind:

Endgame

There are two Goals that best suit selling-out BMW-driving ex-hippies: The Corporate Masters and Power for Its Own Sake.

Power for Its Own Sake is fairly easy to accomplish, particularly with your yellow NWOs, your Power Boosters, and your Clipper Chip.

The Corporate Masters is somewhat more difficult; the Tobacco Companies will count double for that Goal without modification, but the Fast Food Chains must have their power improved to qualify. This can be done in many ways: NWO: Law and Order, NWO: Military-Industrial Complex and a Clipper Chip, or a Grassroots Support will all make the Fast Food Chains count double.

Potential problems

You don't have to worry about another player with the same groups as much as you usually might; most decks that have the same groups will have mostly Straight and Government groups. You may taunt them.

Another Discordian player would usually be a problem for a Discordia deck, but this deck has less problems than most. You won't be contending for groups with a normal Discordia deck. Furthermore, most of their attacks to control will be at a penalty for opposite alignments, and you probably have more raw power you can throw into the fray than a typical Discordia deck, so you can defend yourself.

On the other hand, another Discordia will typically have a +5 for rivalry and a +4 for an opposite alignment if she makes an attack to destroy. More significantly, you will have a hard time overcoming their immunity if you need to take them down a peg. That's why you have the Deprogrammers--although they're normally fairly useless, they can attack a rival Discordia's Weird group, at a net +13 for an attack to destroy.

Variants and Substitutions

The cards in this deck are fairly loose; substitute freely. It has every group that is both Straight and Government except for MI-5; MI-5 could be useful as a deterrent to plot-meddling, but I decided to go with the Fast Food Chains because they could count double with the Corporate Masters.

The Big Sellout is primarily there because it fit so well with the 'sellout' theme of the deck. But because it was in there, I made the groups deck bigger than usual, and therefore I put in the Fraternal Orders to help you get to your valuable groups. If you took out the Big Sellout, you could probably trim down the groups deck a bit.

This deck was built before INWO SubGenius; some of the things you might add to the deck would be Official, All-Inclusive, Divine Excuse to protect your three personalities, and Citizens for Normalcy for the perversity of using them in a Discordia deck.

Roleplaying

This deck is a natural for a jaded and cynical style of roleplaying. You don't trust or believe the Straight and Government establishment--but you don't respect the goddamn Weird hippie-freaks either. Have fun with it.


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First posted: August 19, 1998
Last modified: Wed Aug 19 18:30:51 EDT 1998

Ralph Melton ralph@cs.cmu.edu