The Group cards:
- China
- Red Cross
- Ninjas
- Bjorne
- Intellectuals
- Pale People In Black*
- Joggers
- Local Police Departments
- The Thule Group*
- The Big Prawn (Resource)*
- Necronomicon (Resource)
- Screaming Meme (Resource)*
- Hitler's Brain (Resource)
The Plot cards:
- Power Grab (x2)
- Secrets Man Was Not Meant To Know (x2)
- Hoax
- Commitment (x2)
- Never Surrender
- Good Polls (x2)
- Peace In Our Time (NWO) (x2)
- Law And Order (NWO)
- A Thousand Points Of Light (NWO)
- Emergency Powers
- Nobel Peace Prize
- Charismatic Leader
- Grassroots Support
- The Weird Turn Pro
- Martyrs (x3)
- Albino Alligators
- Jihad
- Martial Law
- Kinder And Gentler (x6)
The Strategy:
Shangri-La wants to spread peace everywhere. You don't have to control the peaceful groups to win, just make sure they stay alive. So if you can make a group indestructible as well as peaceful, who cares where it goes? That's the point of this deck.Some of these groups are difficult to destroy, and the rest can't be at all for various reasons. Therefore, it's best to place the difficult ones right off your Illuminati, since they will be easier to destroy if someone takes them from you first. The fully indestructible ones can be further away, as you can let them move into other power structures without affecting your total towards your goal. Of course, each piece of the puzzle has a different sequence of cards to make it work:
- Give China a Commitment, Emergency Powers and The Big Prawn (to make them peaceful, duh!) and they're a 12 power peaceful group with a 23 versus an attack to control and a 47 versus an attack to destroy if a direct Illuminati puppet.
- Red Cross as an Illuminati puppet with a Commitment is a 2 power peaceful group with a 23 versus an attack to control and 32 versus an attack to destroy.
- Ninjas as an Illuminati puppet need a Kinder & Gentler, Nobel Peace Prize, and The Necronomicon to become a 12 power peaceful group with a 22 versus an attack to control and a 37 versus an attack to destroy.
- Bjorne is your last Illuminati puppet, and forget those nice big numbers. He just needs to control Intellectuals to be an untouchable 2 power peaceful. Okay, he can still be assassinated, but that's a small hole to worry about for 2 power. Concentrate on keeping China and Ninjas around.
- Intellectuals then get a Never Surrender, giving them a 26 versus an attack to control with a Kinder & Gentler. When they have a Screaming Meme and Charismatic Leader, you have 7 more peaceful power that's indestructible.
- Pale People In Black are already indestructible, no matter where they go. So just give them a Weird Turn Pro and a Kinder & Gentler for another 4.
- Joggers get a Kinder & Gentler for another 1. You've already used the Nobel Peace Prize on Ninjas, and it's better there because it doubles to 12. You could give Joggers another alignment and then boost it, but it's too much trouble to bother. Just take that indestructible 1 and run with it.
- Give Local Police Departments, again, a Kinder & Gentler. They have more alignments, though, so I chose Grassroots Support (although Citizenship Award is exactly the same effect) to boost them, play the Law And Order NWO, and take another indestructible 9.
- Okay, onto the rare and ultra-rare combo. Give The Thule Group Hitler's Brain and a Kinder & Gentler for another indestructible 1. Some people won't have these cards, and it has the same problem as Joggers of being a mere 1, but I've included this because it clearly fit the theme of the deck. You'd probably be better off leaving these two out of the Group deck and put in two more Kinder & Gentlers in the Plot deck to insure you draw them as early in the game as possible for the other groups.
Obviously, plenty of things can be done to stop your progress. The power boosters and Kinder And Gentler cards can all be Hoaxed or Backlashed, and the vital resources can be destroyed by various means. But you have a few cards to stop them from doing this to you, and as you can see, you have well over the necessary 30 in power, so even as your opponents slow you down you've got it pretty easy. If you actually got all of the above combinations, and the Peace In Our Time NWO in play, you total 59 peaceful power, 30 of which from groups that cannot be destroyed! Bide your time and build slowly, primarily with automatic takeovers (Power Grab when you can) since few of these groups work together naturally, and save the Illuminati actions to power the Kinder & Gentlers.
The only fully effective weapon against you is Upheavel! but your opponents will surely find that too high a cost to use repeatedly. The important thing is to not give them a chance to find a chink in your armor by making sure you put together each combination all at once (e.g. don't put out Intellectuals unless you can immediately give them the Screaming Meme.) It's important that you don't take over The Thule Group until you have Hitler's Brain, and don't do that unless you already control Red Cross and Bjorne, because you can't take control of any peaceful groups after you have Hitler's Brain (so this is yet another reason to actually not bother putting those two in the deck.)
Some players save themselves for a coup in one final turn. Don't bother! Use the Kinder & Gentlers as soon as you can, since you don't really care if your opponents see what you're up to, rather than risk having plots in your hand stolen or discarded. This will also free you to hold more defensive plots, like the Good Polls and +10 cards, which are primarily for Red Cross, China, and Ninjas. If these leave your control they're easier to destroy, and if you lose Intellectuals, Bjorne is a sitting duck, er, dinosaur.
Of course, a narrower approach to this deck would be to concentrate on the naturally indestructible groups (Pale People In Black, Joggers and Local Police Departments) and simply find more ways to boost their power, but I just like the idea of making as many groups as possible that can't be touched. It really frustrates opponents when they can't do anything but watch them lay there on the table, unstoppably spreading their peaceful vibes.