So, you've seen the card list for the deck that won the 1999 Doomtown World Championship at Gen Con in Milwaukee. Here's what Andrew had to say about its design, and strategies for playing: When playing this deck, I normally start with no Dudes, although it does contain several Dudes that I might put into play later. This has great shock value against a player who has never seen this strategy before. Playing Sweetrock, you should be able to win lowball, which, with no Dudes to pay for, leaves you with 24 ghost rock in your Vault. This should allow you to play enough Control-Point Deeds to exceed the other player's total Influence very early in the game. The supporting Actions and Events disable or kill the other player's Dudes, so that he or she cannot take control of these Deeds. This strategy often does not work immediately. You might draw no Deeds in your opening Play hand, or your first lowball hand may have no Events. In this case, you need to wait to see what the other player does. If the other player does nothing much, then you hope that you'll have better luck on the second round. If the other player forces your hand by playing some Control Points, then you have to play one of the Dudes in your deck to keep the game going. Note that you can only have one non-Sweetrock Dude in play. You will often have tough choices to make, and one of them is whether to allow the Ghost Infestation to take effect or not: you will recall that a Sweetrock player can discard one of his or her six lowball cards before they are revealed. The Fear level now begins at 5 and was played at this level at Gen Con. This means that you need 6 Control Points to win, and this isn't easy, even with Sweetrock's bonus points for big Strikes. This is one of the reasons that the deck only contains one Ghost Infestation; if there were two or more, then you might be forced to play one. This deck has been evolving ever since I first built it for the 1998 World Championship. The original idea came out of discussions in London about a no-Personas strategy for the Dune trading card game and whether the same id, might be used to win multiplayer Doomtown games. got to wondering whether the same idea might work in one-on-one games, and decided that it was worth a try didn't quite go all the way, though; I started with How; Findley, used Lions to whittle down the opposition, and played big Strikes during Heavy Rain. Other Events included Christmas Day, The Fair, and Full Moon, with lots of Bluff and Ace in the Hole cards to make sure tl they appeared. I didn't have all of the cards that I'd ha: liked to have; for example, I only had two Dragon's NE Even so, the deck was good enough to qualify and was only beaten by the two finalists, "Killer" Kerry Breitem and Ken "Spuds" Kurpiel. These were the days of Rolling Thunder; and the game was changing fast. I kept expecting the shifting sands to make the deck obsolete but was able to retune as each episode appeared. These were the major changes: Episode 6: The Maze Rats were clearly a major problem as they were immune to Heavy Rain. My answer was I substitute lots of in-town Deeds for many of the Strike while adding Stampede and Night Haunts to the mix. Episode 7: This contained the first of the Event hosers: The Den of Eastern Delights and Apache Devil Dance. These made it hard to rely upon recycled Mountain Lion to win in the long haul but still left the possibility of a quick win. The Texas Ranger's Outfit ability was another threat to Stampede/Heavy Rain, but at this stage the Outfit was very weak in other respects. Episode 8: Another Event hoser, Drinks on the Housi and an unkillable Dude, The Ghost, made things start look black. I experimented with the new Event, Drougt, but it clearly wasn't very good. Episode 9: Two major new cards made things look rosy again: Los Diablos Stampede and Seductress. Los Diablos put an end to starting Howard, as four of these went straight into the deck. I reviewed the handful of Dudes the deck at this stage and added the excellent Experienced Captain Sims. The Flock looked interesting but innocuous at this stage. Pine Box: There had been awful rumors of major changes to Sweetrock, but while the changes were nasty, they were mainly designed to cripple the "nothing but the best strategy of hiring the fastest guns in town. The other significant change was to the Mountain Lion: it now aced itself This was a sensible change but had little effect; I was no longer expecting to go through the deck a second time. At this point the deck started to get more exposure as I used it in some tournaments in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, and won a Madman's Secret tournament with it. Folks like John, Pat and Joe immediately saw it as a big threat and posted some warnings on the mailing list. Fortunately, these were drowned out by the more extensive discussion of Chris Foley's "Flock Fondue" deck (a Lion/Diablos deck built around the Flock). This did not start out Dudeless, though, and relied upon key Dudes like Avarice to pull out the winning strike. I secretly chuckled at the thought of how this would fare when its Dudes were the only ones on the firing line. What worried me much more was Pat's idea of using the Sioux as the foundation for a deck with no starting Dudes: heresy! After some feverish testing, I put all three of my copies of Billy Iron Horse into my deck; I wanted to be sure of playing him before the Sioux did. In the course of this rebuild, I ditched all of the insurance cards like Bluff, Ace in the Hole, and Snake Eyes, as they had to go to make room for the extra Dudes. Even so, the players in New Jersey may have the measure of this deck, and I was fortunate that few of them came to Gen Con. The West Coast players who I did confront are familiar with the concept, but might not have seen this particular mix before. And surprise is an important advantage when playing this deck; you want to keep the opposition guessing as to what will leap out and bite next. Mouth of Hell. For such a large set, this had surprisingly little effect. The Ghost Infestation was the only significant card, and I only added it after seeing Tom Kessel use it to such good effect in his "Boomtown" deck in London. Burr Offering posed a possible problem but almost immediately became mired in controversy and was banned from play; Origins. I didn't play in the main event there, and it was won by a different Sweetrock deck: Mike Nickoloff's "Sweetrock Shooter." I did play this deck in the Kansas City-format tournament at Origins, though. The small chance of being caught with an illegal Draw hand was worth ignoring. It did quite well, but was beaten by the reigning champion, Kerry Breitenstein, who was also playing a Sweetrock cheater. He started with lots of Influence Dudes, and I could not wear them down fast enough. I now saw Sweetrock as the major threat to this deck, and when Chris asked why I wasn't starting with Sandra, I acted upon his suggestion by replacing the two extra Billys with Sandra and Mortimer. This paid off well at Gen Con, because I met the L.A. Sweetrock players again and again. I started with both Sandra and Mortimer in this case and usually won the pull for at least one of them. It's not clear what the future holds. The Reaping of Soul set contains interesting cards, like the Experienced Lord Grimely's Manor and Knicknevin, an Event, but these seem marginal. It's the rumored cards for future sets that will be more significant. On the one hand, Eye of the Storm sounds like another potent Event hoser, while on the other hand, Scrye magazine talks of a card that will remove all Dudes from play! Gomorra is not getting any safer for ordinary mortals and could be a ghost town for some time to come.... Andrew Davidson's "Ghost Town" Deck Outfit: Sweetrock (old Home) Starting Dudes: None Actions: 3 Bad Tequila 4 Rumors 3 Seductress Deeds: 3 1st Bank of Gomorra, The 1 Courthouse, The 4 Dragon's Nest Strike I Fu Leng's Laundry and Tailoring I Intelligence Shop, The I Knot Mine 2 Lord Grimely's Manor 1 Smiley's Shaft 1 Stuffed to the Gills Strike 1 Sweetrock Smoking Lounge 1 Tent City I Town Hall Dudes: 1 Alfred Barkum Sr. 1 Avarice 1 Basil Whateley 1 Billy Iron Horse 1 Captain Sim Yut- San 1 Mortimer Jones 1 Sandra Harris Events: 1 Eureka! 2 Fair Comes to Town, The 1 Full Moon 1 Ghost Infestation 4 Heavy Rain 4 It Was a Mountain Lion 4 Los Diablos Stampede Frank Bustamante's "You Want Some" Deck Outfit: Agency Starting Dudes: vary; Johnny Quaid and Stone Man whenever possible Actions: 2 Ace in the Hole 1 Arson 4 Kidnapping 2 Massacre at High Noon 2 No Funny Stuff 3 Pistol Whip 1 Run Outta Town 1 Sauce for the Gander 2 Swapped Decks 2 Throw Down Deeds: 1 California Queen 1 Dentist's Office, The 1 Gilded Feather, The 1 Golden Mare Hotel 1 Graveyard 1 Side Pocket Billiard Hall, The 1 Surmyside Hotel Dudes: 1 Alice Chamberlain 1 Angus McFadden 1 Benjamin Dean 1 Ghost, The 1 Hank Gallagher 1 Cassidy Green 1 Charlie Landers 1 Desmond Quentin 1 Johnny Quaid 1 Josef Nicolai Rocescu 1 Silas Peacock 1 Sister Mary Jebediah 1 Stone Man 1 Tombstone Frank 1 William- Badson 1 Xiong "Wendy" Cheng Events: 2 Founder's Day 3 Labor Dispute 2 Major Earthquake Items: 1 Holdout Knife 1 Stoker's Sabre Back to The DoomTown Epitath Issue 3 Table of Contents Back to The DoomTown Epitath List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Alderac Entertainment Group This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com