Sleeping Rough

by Tom Kassel
December 6, 1996

Sites:

3 X Fortress of Shadow
2 X Perpetual Motion Machine
1 X City Park (This collection is rather a surprise to me as I count up cards after the event. I was sure that the original version has just five Fortress of Shadow. I meant to add a few more as a contingency against the Mole Network but ended up with any one site more. It's possible someone seized one and forgot to return it (possibly Sandy in game 2) but I can't believe two were seized.)

Unaligned:

Art of War Hand size if very important to this deck. With a very low average playing cost per card, the more cards I can get my hands on the better. Orange Senshi Chamber does the most work, but an early Art of War can help a lot.

Magic:

5 X Pocket Demon One of my main sources of power.
2 X Killing Rain I don't use these site things so let's mess them up.
1 X Scroll of Incantation

Chi:

3 X Violet Meditation  Not quite so useful as Pocket Demon with less chi in the deck but still handy.
5 X Dark's Soft Whisper With swarms of foundation characters, there's almost always an opportunity to use these.
3 X The Fox Outfoxed A little steady income is nice when the Pocket/Violets fail to show up.

Ascended:

3 X The Pledged
2 X Student of the Bear
1 X Bad Colonel In case any big Architects soldiers show up.
5 X Mole Network
5 X Shadowy Mentor
1 X Bite of the Jellyfish Using all the copies of this card that I own.
1 X We Know Where You Live

Architects:

3 X DNA Mage More Magic for the Pocket Demons.
4 X Helix Rethread They fit the half-joking concept when I first built the deck, but now that it's proven to be serious tournament material they will (mostly) disappear. The Architect card I missed most was the Arcanotechnician and a Nerve Gas or two wouldn't hurt. As this deck is a heavy character controller, it's a little reluctant to smoke things it might use but sometimes you just need a stopper.

Dragons:

4 X Hacker He's here for the Mole Network but had even more fun with Alex's Dangerous Experiment deck.
1 X Gonzo Journalist With six factions in my deck I thought I might get to use his ability but I don't remember doing so.

Lotus:

5 X Sinister Priest
3 X Kun Kan With normally no more than one Feng Shui in play he has lots of scope to get nice and big as my victory pile grows.
1 X Shifting Loyalties In case anyone else is playing with Shadowy Mentors.
1 X Flood on the Mountain
5 X Tortured Memories
1 X Banish

Monarchs:

4 X Darkness Priestess More magic. They also generated lots of power when Alex's DE deck with Vivisectors and Arcanotechs was in the game.
1 X Lord Shi  Lots of one point characters in the deck so let's improve them all.
1 X Thunder Sword
1 X Claws of Darkness
1 X Spirit Pole This was included because I had misremembered the card, forgetting that states can only be played on cards you control. The idea that doesn't work was to recycle smoked Shadowy Mentors. I included the TS and CoD just to join in the recycling. I'll toss Spirit Pole and Thunder Sword but keep Claws of Darkness as it generates power.

Guiding Hand:

5 X Golden Candle Society
4 X Instrument of the Hand  I want chi so stick with the old standby Hand foundations.
1 X Virtuous Hood  I had to work hard to have the lowest power when he wanted to attack.
1 X Thunder on the Mountain
1 X Shattering Jade
1 X Heat of Battle One too many. The idea of a siteless deck is that they don't attack you so the opportunity cost is rather high.
1 X Shaolin Surprise One too few. Two hand resources is a bit of a problem, but switching my Shadowy mentors around can be awfully useful, as well as swiping anyone else's guns/tanks/etc.
1 X Rigorous Discipline Just for the odd laugh.
1 X Wind on the Mountain Maybe one too few, but again two Hand resources means it's only feasible a bit late in the game.
2 X Orange Senshi Chamber The star of the deck. I played the latter part of two games with a twelve card hand. In the final I managed to seize someone else's OSC before my own came into hand, but I'm not fussy. I must put a Jammer or two in to go the whole hog. Pity they don't have any power generating effects to fit the theme.

Notes:

Tom Kassel, winner of Flashpoint London, has just won Flashpoint Finchley IV too. He posted this report on Compuserve's news server but it hasn't propagated very well and so I am reposting it for him. He calls the deck "Sleeping Rough".
"I've finally managed to win one of the Queen's Head, Finchley tournaments so here's the deck I used. My Dragons were feeling a little stale so I thought I'd give my nearly siteless deck a try. It had done ok in a few games, so I made a few last minute changes (adding Hackers in case of first turn Mole Network and some Monarchs for good luck).
Actually I found the deck was over-configured for power generation. I frequently had a huge power pool, over thirty in one game. It was way too short of defence, Tortured Memories and Shaolin Surprise being the only events available. At one point I played a Scroll of Incantation looking for a Confucian Stability and found to my horror (and everyone else's amusement) that I had neglected to put in a single one.
One thing I like about the deck is the ability to play several powerful faction hosing cards without slowing the deck down appreciably. I don't expect to draw power every turn, so there are several opportunities to discard multiple cards, including any hosers which don't look like being useful in the current game.
The most amusing game was round two - a three player game with Alex's Dangerous Experiment deck and Sandy's Dragon/Monarch deck intended to run off a single location. We all played Pocket Demons and all got bugger all out of them. Alex's Vivisectors and Sandy's Ice Courtier made a real mess of my control abilities, leaving just the Kun Kans.
At one point, perhaps 40 minutes into the game, the players from the next table who had just finished their game wandered over for a look. There wasn't a single site in play on the table, though Alex and Sandy each had two in their victory piles. I looked a bit sick with nothing anywhere but eventually won on a tie break with 3 for victory and one on the table to Sandy's similar total, but I had the greater total cost cards in play. Both Alex and Sandy were in serious danger of running out of cards. Even with my twelve card hand, my 99 card deck was plenty big enough. Another nice feature of this deck is that it works really well in a two player game as well. With no sites to steal the opponent is forced to play five sites, giving my Pocket Demons/Violet Meds lots of scope. The alternative is to stall for a while building up characters that I can control. I win either way."

Last modified: January 16, 1998.
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