This deck was my attempt at building a Conservative Church-oriented Society of Assassins deck. (I drew inspiration from The Right Wing Revolution.)
I had read an assertion on the INWOmailing list that Conservative decks were far more effective than Liberal decks. This ran counter to my intuition, so I decided to try it out. This deck works pretty well, but in the course of evolution, it has moved farther and farther away from using the Society's special power or special goal. After trying it, I still believe that it is easier to make a strong Liberal deck than a strong Conservative one.
I picked the name 'Bible Beltane' for the deck because 'Bible Belt' seemed to fit the conservative church theme and the alliterative subtheme of the Fiendish Fluoridators, Moral Minority, and Religious Reich, and because of the gimmick of the Reformed Church of Satan mentioned below.
A weakness of this deck is that it tries to have too many themes: it tries to be Conservative, Straight, Church, and Fanatic all at once, and the combination doesn't wholly work.
In particular, it seems intuitive to make a deck that is both Conservative and Straight. When you look at the cards, though, all the Conservative and Straight groups are wimpy little squirts with power 1 or 2. Many of them are personalities, too, which makes them doubly unappealing. So that combination doesn't work as well as one might hope.
Conservative and Fanatic or Conservative and Violent also seem to be combinations with potential--but again, most of the cards with those combinations turn out to be fairly puny, with a few exceptions.
Another weakness of this deck is that many of its groups do not have outgoing control arrows on the end opposite to the incoming control arrow. It's not uncommon to run into arrow conflicts.
This deck is a couple of cards short of 45 cards.
There's no really obvious lead for this deck. If you get your Dictatorship in the first few cards, you might use the Vatican, if you get the Messiah, you might use Ross Perot. The Republicans are another good choice.
This deck does not have a Goal: Power For Its Own Sake in it, because enough people have suspected me of having PFIOS that I refuse on principle to have one.
The Dictatorship is for the Vatican, to boost its power and make it not count for Shangri-La. Besides, I like the idea of making the Vatican into a religious dictatorship.
If you use the Frankenfood to make Texas Fanatic, it can have up to 8 points of global power.
Newt Gingrich is the scourge of Liberal groups, with a huge bonus to destroy them. This can be a lot of fun. If France is out, destroy France first, because it provides excellent defense for a Liberal deck. NWO: World Hunger is also a way to annoy Liberal groups a lot.
The Messiah will boost the power and resistance of one of your personalities by 12, if you get all your churches out. This is unlikely, but a bonus of 8 or 10 is much easier.
NWO: Law and Order is a very nice NWO for you, because it increases the power of almost all your groups.
If you have Ross Perot in play, you can ATO the Reformed Church of Satan and make them a puppet of Ross Perot, turning them Conservative and Straight. (They're fine churchgoing citizens...) This gives your power structure near-complete immunity to Straight groups.
Many of the groups in this deck have high resistances. I often save the Moral Minority for a low-cost bid for victory at the end.
Pizza For The Secret Meeting is also useful for a bid for victory. It's often the case that there is one Secret group in play more powerful than the Fiendish Fluoridators, but not two. You can play your Pizza on that group, and let your Fiendish Fluoridators count double for one turn.
Back to Ralph's INWO page.
Back to Ralph's Home page.
Last modified: July 9, 1996
Ralph Melton ralph@cs.cmu.edu