This got me thinking. Having gotten used to the idea of building and tweaking special decks of cards from playing Magic, I decided to apply this skill to Nuclear War. I had way too many cards in my Nuclear War set to deal with anyway, it being a stack of well over 300 cards. Not only that, I'm of the opinion that many of the new cards they added in the various expansions were a bit overly complicated. If you play with a totally complete set, there are so many different things going on that the clean, simple fun of blowing each other up tends to get bogged down, if for no other reason than having to constantly explain special rules to casual players. (It's not like I play Nuclear War every day, so when I do get a game going, the other players usually need to be refreshed on the rules.)
I decided therefore to slim my deck down. I set aside some of the more complex things like submarines and space platforms, left out a lot of the less interesting secrets and specials, scaled way back on the propaganda, and in general, restored to my deck the proper ratio of missiles & warheads to secrets & specials. This made for what I consider to be a much tighter and more enjoyable game set.
Additionally, I created a handy reference card, listing the dice equivalents for the spinner and the population card chart, thus allowing me to pack the whole set (deck, people, 2 dice, and said chart) into an easily-carried, 150-count plastic card collector's box. I also created another, very useful card: an anti-missile chart. There are so many missiles now that it's hard to keep track of them all, and since early anti-missiles don't list the missiles they can shoot down from subsequent expansions, it's a pain trying to figure out (without tipping your hand) what you can and cannot shoot down, particularly for the casual player. So I created a grid that lists all of the missiles and anti-missiles, and indicates what can shoot down what.
Anyway, here's a detailed list of the contents of my customized Nuclear War set:
Total cards: 160
33% Warheads
26% Delivery Systems
15% Secrets/Top Secrets
12% Specials
8% Propaganda
6% Anti-Missile Systems
Delivery Systems (42)
Polaris (5)
Minuteman (5)
Atlas (5)
Titan (5)
Scud (3)
B-70 bomber (5)
B-1 bomber (3)
Stealth bomber (3)
Saturn (3)
MX (2)
Cruise (2)
Delta Clipper (1)
Warheads (54)
10 megaton (20)
15 megaton (5)
20 megaton (15)
40 megaton (2)
50 megaton (7)
75 megaton (1)
100 megaton (3)
200 megaton (1)
Propaganda (12)
2 million (1)
5 million (4)
7 million (1)
10 million (3)
13 million (2)
25 million (1)
Secrets/Top Secrets (24)
Beatnik Pacifists
Moral Little Old Ladies
First on Moon
Mysterious Vaporization
SuperGerm
SuperVirus
Punk Rock Declared Illegal
Amplified TV Radiation
Protesting Environmentalists
Strange Probe From Venus
Boring President Gives Speech
Cloning Technique Discovered
Reactor Meltdown
Mysterious Food Poisoning Incident
Rearmament!
Klodzilla
Time Travel
Meteor Impact
Vaccine
Son of SuperGerm
Plutonium Fizzles
Time Warp
Exchange Students
Solar Flare
Specials (19)
SuperSerum
Civil Defense
Smart Bomb
Ultimate Leadership Bomb Shelter
Saboteur
Spies (4)
Mole Superspy
Mind Control
Propaganda Backfires
Radar Jamming Device
Black Box
UFO Technology
Dis-information
Super Fallout Shelters
Nuclear Winter
Doomsday Device
Anti-Missile Systems (9)
Anti-missile "P"
Anti-missile "A"
Anti-missile "S"
Jet interceptor
Sprint interceptor
Nike-Zeus interceptor
Stealth fighter
Patriot anti-missile
Decoy missile