HIGHLANDER Card of The Week #1 Week of 5 November 1995 Copyright 1995, Jeff Barnes (barnejd@wkuvx1.wku.edu) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- HEAD SHOT Event "There can be only one! Play this card in conjunction with an Upper Attack. If it succeeds it takes your opponent's head. This counts as a Power Blow." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chicago, November 1995... "There can be only one!" As I dive under Taylor's blow, those haunting words echo in my head once again. I first heard them spoken by my doomed mentor, Hassan al Rahul, over two centuries ago. They were repeated by a thousand thousand voices I've encountered since. And now they come from Taylor. My blade springs to my hand, almost as if it had a life of its own. Had I the time, I might well sigh. It comes so naturally for me now. So much blood. So much death. Will there ever be an end to it? "There can be only one," the voices repeat insistently. Taylor smiles in that unnerving way he has. He has become a predator, "the lion" that Hassan said he would be. He strikes again, his speed the swiftness of a serpent. My blade meets his. I launch a counter which he in turn foils. He steps back. Why? Not for lack of breath, certainly. The duel has just begun. Nor can it be because he believes himself overmatched. Taylor's arrogance has ever been his defining characteristic. Why, then? Could it be the remembrance of friendship lost? Then the respite ends, and there is no more time to consider the question. He stops his circling, and his blade slices at me once again. I parry and return the blow. He sidesteps. And so the dealy dance contines. Then I see it. The flaw in his defenses. His recovery from my parry is slow, just a split second too slow. A minor flaw. But a fatal one. The silence is thick as he continues his circling. A pause. Our eyes meet. He rushes toward me. He strikes. Swords meet. I push his blow aside. I strike. Then, silence returns, punctuated only by the collapse of a body, and the sound of a head -- Taylor's head -- falling to the pavement below. And in the Quickening which follows, I weep for my friend... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- There can be only one, and the HEAD SHOT is often what determines who that one shall be. With a little luck, one well-aimed swipe can win the game, taking the victory and your foe's head. There are many strategies which can work in conjunction with the Head Shot. The first and most obvious is to use the Head Shot in conjunction with a hidden attack. However, there are several ways around this. As many have noted, the mere fact of a head shot indicates the attack is to the upper area. If the initial block should fail, your opponent can always exert for another defense. Dodges, of course, avoid the Head Shot entirely. Holy Ground: Temporary Escape also allows your foe to escape the situation. Another thing to keep in mind is that the Head Shot is a power blow; if you should fail to take the other's head, he or she will get a hidden attack the next turn. What strategies work best with a Head Shot, then? I have won several duels by employing a Jump to dodge the opponent's lower blow, followed by a Head Shot. It also is neccessary to note that upper attacks to the corners in conjunction with a Head Shot tend to work better, since fewer defenses work against those attacks. One way to ensure the potency of a Head Shot is to use a Gypsy the turn previous to the Head Shot. Determining what defenses your foe has will then allow you to exhaust these defenses, opening them up for the Head Shot (provided, of course, that they do not draw a valid defense in the meantime). If they do not have a defense for your upper blow that will deliver the Head Shot, the duel may just be over. Other cards may maximize the chance of a clean Head Shot if played the turn before it. Intereference may just cause them to discard the one useful defense they had. Watcher: Discard Dodge may get rid of it as well. Finally, Segur allows you to push those nasty avoidance cards he might need further down in his endurance. In short, the Head Shot is perhaps the most useful and used card in the game for a "battle deck"; it is, of course, less useful in an "avoidance," "sniper," or "discard" deck. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Highlander is a protected trademark of Gaumont Television, used under license by Thunder Castle Games. The card text is copyright 1995 by Thunder Castle Games. All rights reserved. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------