By Steve Hatherley
At the start of 2011 we decided to start playing INWO without cancelling. We removed all the cancelling cards (plots and groups - although in the NPCs case we just crossed out its ability and treated it as a vanilla Power 4 group).
In the time since, we haven’t used cancelling - and frankly, I haven’t missed it. Plans are still thwarted, but they’re thwarted through guile and tactics, not simply by having a Hoax in hand. And with the NPCs out of the game, decisions become a lot easier because I know I haven’t got to worry about whether or not my actions will be cancelled. As a result the game speeds up and becomes more fun.
I don’t know anyone who thinks that having their plots or actions cancelled is fun. And if I haven’t got a canceller in hand, I haven’t got to worry about keeping resources back to power it - so I’m more aggressive.
Since then we’ve also removed immunity, as it nevery did anything useful apart from create isolationist decks. We’d rather play with decks that interact with each other.
INWO becomes simpler without cancelling and immunity - they create more rules and timing headaches than anything else.
Overall I’m finding that INWO without cancelling and immunity is more fun than INWO with cancelling and immunity.
Affected cards
Removing Cancelling from INWO affects these groups
- Nuclear Power Companies (a power 4 Corporate group is still useful, so we have just crossed out the ability)
- EPA
- Supreme Court (as with the NPCs, we’ve just crossed out the ability).
- Saddam Hussein
- Elvis (although we’ve just crossed that bit of his ability out)
- Dan Quayle
And these plots
- Are we having fun yet?
- Computer Security
- Hoax
- Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know
- 18.5 Minute Gap
- (And probably something from SubGenius.)
Removing Immunity from INWO affects these groups
- Discordian Society
- Goldfish Fanciers
- Vatican City (we’ve just crossed out the ability as Vatican City as Shangri-La is very font of it
- Prince Charles???
- And probably something from SubGenius.
New card ideas
- Instead of cancelling, the power could be changed to “Remove an action token from a Government group. This is an action for the Supreme Court.” This is a similar power, but isn’t as confusing.
- If you’re using the duplicates variant, I suggest that a use for a duplicate group or resource card is to remove an action token from that group or resource.