You are being watched. In today’s society, this is pretty much inevitable. It’s easy to get paranoid about this sort of thing, but I say that if somebody is watching, you might as well put on a show.

Today’s showy proposal for Golden Age technology comes in the form of a rather innocuous ongoing plot twist by the name of Hidden Surveillance. Hidden Surveillance is a cheeky little ongoing plot twist that, much like the Spanish Inquisition, is at its most powerful when your opponent is not expecting it. For those of you already considering playing it at the PC in New York, I apologize.

The edge that Hidden Surveillance gives you in a regular deck is small enough that it’s somewhat hard to quantify in many games. The good thing is that small edges are often enough in otherwise close games. A group of MIT students managed to “break” the game of blackjack by working out a card counting system that gave them a one percent edge against the house. If you exploit a one percent edge enough, it can be plenty profitable. Forty thousand dollars profitable? Let’s hope so.

First, let’s get a quick rundown on the effect of Hidden Surveillance. It stops your opponent from flipping plot twists or locations in his or her resource row on the turn that the opponent plays them there. Conveniently, this is an ongoing effect. Why so convenient? Well, the effects of an ongoing plot twist after the word “ongoing” begin to work just as soon as you flip them face up. If you flip this when you have priority at the end of your opponent’s resource step, then he or she cannot respond to it by flipping up the resource just played because your Hidden Surveillance will already be active.

On its own, this is a pretty marginal effect, and one can see why the card has been overlooked thus far. However, in combination with any of the Doom deck staples, it becomes part of a very powerful control setup. Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius is the lynchpin of a Doom control deck, stopping opponents from playing plot twists from hand. It is frequently put together with Latverian Embassy in an attempt to really put the hurtage on a player’s ability to play plot twists.

Now that is certainly a perfectly reasonable plan, but to me, a scheme of more diabolical genius is the systematic obliteration of your opponent’s best-laid plans through a combination of Hidden Surveillance and Purple Man. Let your opponent play cards in the resource row, and then flip the Hidden Surveillance such that it is safe to start stealing them with the man in the pretty colored threads.

With this setup, there is a very limited set of plot twists that opponents can ever hope to employ over the course of a game while Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius is in play. If he wasn’t a target before, he really will be with this setup. Conveniently, your opponent won’t have a great many plot twists to use to help stun him, so with any luck, a solid defense has every potential to maintain him as the thorn of choice for “other sides” everywhere.

I would suggest that Hidden Surveillance is at its best in a deck like Evil Medical School, where you can replace a worthless face-up plot twist with Purple Man and steal one of your opponent’s every single turn. This way there isn’t the potential for those naughty Titans to start pulling tricks using Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal, Sharpshooter to KO cards in the resource row so that they can be played again later in spite of Latverian Embassy. Against decks like Fantastic Fun, there is even the potential to steal things like A Child Named Valeria, which could cause all sorts of trouble if played against them (yes, that’s right, read it again—it does things if you control Dr. Doom, as well).

Tune in soon for more Golden Age ’nology from the other side of the Atlantic.

All the best,

Tim “No, I’m Not Watching You, I’m Watching the Watchmen” Willoughby

timwilloughby (at) hotmail (dot) com