While moving stuff around in my apartment, I uncovered my Highlander: The Card Game stuff, and some of the articles that I freelanced for Thunder Castle Games and their magazine Castle News. The Spring 1997 issue was the last issue I was paid to write for them. Anyway, I was looking through everything and decided that it might be time to play a few games with my wife.
We had a good time playing through a few games. It made for a nice night of gaming.
Here’s the basic idea:
Highlander: The Card Game is designed to simulate a duel between two Immortals: yourself and your opponent. During the course of play, both players will play attacks and defenses as if they were fighting with swords. Other cards will represent the tricks, tactics, schemes, and plots you utilize to win. It may be helpful to think of the game as a series of encounters with your opponent, through the centuries, rather than a single brief duel. While these rules will give you the basic framework for the game, the cards you play will often let you do things the rules say you cannot.
Your deck of cards is your Endurance. After you have drawn all cards from your Endurance, you Exhaust. Exhaustion means a loss of Ability, but not necessarily the end of the game.
Both players are able to take a certain amount of damage before losing the duel. This amount is known as your Ability. Both players start the game with an Ability of 15. During the game, if you take damage, your Ability will be reduced equal to the amount of the damage done to you. You may only hold as many cards in your hand as your current Ability. Your Ability not only represents your ‘score’, but also your luck, skill, and knowledge. As you lose Ability, you will find yourself with fewer cards, and thus, fewer options, in your hand.
Your goal is to reduce your opponent to an Ability of zero, or cut off your opponent’s head via a Head Shot. When a player begins their Attack Phase at zero Ability, their opponent wins the game.
A successful Head Shot will end the game quickly. A Head Shot is a modified upper attack. If your opponent cannot defend against the attack, their head is taken, and the game ends immediately.
Stay tuned. I plan on archiving some information about the Highlander CCG here for safe keeping. Mainly because although Stealth Dave did a great job of archiving and lot of the information on his various websites, I haven’t been able to contact him through any sources. So I’m going to archive it here too, for safe keeping and ease of access.
Don’t lose your head!
