INWO Variant: Uncontrolled Groups
When building your decks, add an extra 5 cards (usually groups). Once you have delcared your Illuminati's and lead puppets, take 5 cards at random out of your group deck. One of these is flipped over immediately, and put in the "uncontrolled group" area of the table. The remaining 4 groups from each player are shuffled together, and placed in the "uncontrolled deck" pile.
At the start of each players' turn (except everyone's first turn), add a new card from the uncontrolled deck to the uncontrolled area. Groups in that area may be attacked by anyone, but any group destroyed while uncontrolled does not count towards goals for any purposes.
Uncontrolled groups may not be attacked in the first round. This is to allow everyone else to interfere (if they wish) in any attacks on uncontrolled groups, and not give the first players a bigger advantage over the others.
Groups that are normally "discarded" also go into the uncontrolled area. That includes groups you attack to control from your hand and fail (except for Hermes), Upheavaled groups, and so on. [Peter Gleeson]
(One comment - groups in the Uncontrolled Area are considered "in-play" except for Shangri-La's goal.)