Highlander: the Card Game

Basic Deck Construction Guide

Choosing a theme for the deck

The theme of the deck is, simply, the personality you are going to be using, or a method of accomplishing damage to your opponent. People will talk about their Amanda deck, or their Slan deck, or Xavier deck; they may have a Plot deck, an Attack deck, a Discard deck; or, even, a Xavier/Plot deck, a Nefertiri/Discard deck, etc. The theme of the deck is just a good way for you to categorize quickly what you hope your deck can do. You may not have a lot of choice in what kind of deck you want to create: limited numbers of cards will always limit the choices available to you. But that’s why it is a ‘trading’ card game: trade for the cards you need for your decks. The easiest and most basic type of deck is the Attack deck: this just means that the deck will be doing the majority of its damage with attacks. Most Highlander decks are attack decks. Other decks employ a larger number of Special cards than attack decks, depending on Plots, Events and Situations to deal damage to the opponent. For our basic deck, we will create an Attack deck, to be used by a generic Immortal.

Choosing the cards for the deck

Highlander decks must have at least 50 cards, with no more than 6 of any card with the same title. Certain cards also have restrictions printed on them. There is no real limit to the number of cards you can have in a deck, but as with most card games, more does not necessarily mean better. For a beginning deck, 65-80 cards is a decent range to fall in, depending on what strategy your deck will use. In general, attack decks are usually a little larger than other decks. There are 15 cards that are required in every deck: the 9 basic attacks and the 6 basic blocks. The rest of the deck can be whatever you want. A useful ratio to consider for an attack deck is having about 20-30% of the deck devoted to attacks, and 20-30% devoted to blocks. The rest of the deck should be Special cards, or extra attacks/blocks. After attack and blocks, a standard part of most decks is some type of Event/Situation counter cards: the Police. Having these cards in your deck is a must. Without them, you are at the mercy of certain cards. Keep in mind that there are cards that you can play any time during your turn, and cards that have to be played with other cards or against other cards. I dislike cards that stay in my hand: I like to have cards that I can play without depending on my opponent.

Putting the deck together

Now, on to the fun part: gather your cards together and we’ll construct a fairly simple deck, from commons and uncommons. Firstly, we need attacks. If you plan on using a lot of Head Shots, then be sure you have enough upper attacks to go with them. There is also strategy involved in picking what attacks to use: I like concentrating on one side, to try and run my opponent out of blocks on one side. Also, the Thrust is a great attack, except that it can be blocked by a wide variety of blocks. For our beginner’s deck, we’ll go with something simple: 3 Upper Right, 3 Middle Right, 3 Lower Right, 2 Thrust, 3 Lower Center, 2 Lower Right, 2 Lower Left, 2 Middle Left, 2 Upper Left. That’s 22 attacks. Remember that attacks and defenses also follow the 6 card limit: you cannot stack your deck with 1 2 Upper Lefts, or 8 Lower Right attacks. Now, for blocks, you have to be prepared for every eventuality. You can never be sure what attacks your opponent will be making, so be sure to have blocks that cover all areas. 2 Left Guards, 2 Right Guards, 2 Lower Right, 2 Lower Left, 2 Upper Right, 2 Upper Left, 2 Lower Center, 2 Upper Center. This gives us 1 6 Blocks. You may want to put in extra Head Shot protecting blocks, if you are worried about them. Now, being a generic immortal means you can choose some interesting cards from the other Immortals. For now, we want some Dodges and Back Aways. I’d put about 6-8 of them in the deck. Make sure that you follow the deck construction rules; you CAN have 1 Duncan Dodge and 1 Duncan Back Away, but you CANNOT have 2 Duncan Back Aways. Now we pick some special cards to make the deck a little more rounded. Event/Situation Countering is our first stop: 2 Police: Remove Situation, 3 Police: Counter Event. That should help. Use them wisely, though. Many times, players will use their Police cards at the first opportune moment, instead of waiting to use them against a worse card. Most folks also play with a couple of objects: 1 Extra Weapon, 1 Quality Blade, The Extra Weapon will help against those using Disarms, and the Quality Blade gives you extra Ability. Neither are great cards, but they can be played at any time. If you have them, I suggest using a few Street Punks and a couple of Holy Grounds. A few Staminas are good, too. 3 Street Punks, 2 Holy Ground: Temp escape, 3 Stamina. Watchers are also useful cards, they can help you out when you are hurt, and others can be nasty to your opponent. 2 Watcher: Discard Dodge, 2 Watcher: Treatment.

We’ll also put in a few other Immortal cards, to give our attacks a little extra wallop. 2 Power Blows, 2 Extra Shots, And, finally, some Head Shots, whose use is apparent: 3 Head Shots That’s 26 Special cards. For now, we’ll leave the deck the way it is: 64 cards total.

Playing the deck

As an attack deck, you want to be sure you are playing attacks every turn. Use the Head Shots with the Upper Attacks when you can: sometimes, early on, you might get lucky. If you can get your opponent down in Ability, you’ll have a better chance with Head Shots. Power Blows and Extra Shots are useful, too, but don’t use them with Upper Attacks: you need those for Head Shots. Use the Police: Remove Situation cards to get rid of cards that prevent you from attacking: the Pedestrian, etc, or to get rid of your opponent’s Master’s Advice. The Holy Ground cards are last ditch defenses: use them when you cannot possibly avoid attacks another way. The general idea with an attack deck is to play at least two cards a turn: an attack and a special. Usually, you’ll also be playing a block, but some decks are light on attacks, heavy on specials. If possible, play the deck against different kinds of decks, and keep track of what worked in the deck and what didn’t.

Tuning the deck

Firstly, keep in mind that there is no such thing as ‘The Unbeatable Deck’ Highlander is fairly balanced: even the best Immortals can have an off day. Never get discouraged if your deck doesn’t win all the time. It won’t. If you play against a wide variety of decks, you can usually tune the deck depending on how it worked (or didn’t work). Resist the urge to tailor a deck that will beat ONE other deck. Unless you are playing against that one deck all the time, it doesn’t make much sense. A well- rounded deck should be able to handle most other decks. It may not win against all of them, though. Resist the urge to toss a rare card into the deck, unless it really enhances the deck. Highlander is filled with less than useful rare cards. My general rule of thumb is to go with cards that have a good effect for you, or a bad effect for your opponent: avoid cards like Angry Mob and Charlie that hurt both of you. If you do have a number of Immortal specific cards for one Immortal, but don’t have the Persona card, don’t panic: just play as if you had the Persona. The text of all the Personae cards is easy to get. For casual play, no one should have a problem with a set up like this.