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Locales
Mayor-mobile (Starting Locale)
Castle Finklestein
Sewing Hut
The Courtyard
Town Hall
Tree Circle
Halloween Characters
Behemoth
Big Witch
Clown
Corpse Kid (X2)
Devil
Dr. Finklestein, Desperate Lover (X2)
Hanging Tree
Harlequin Demon
Jack Skellington, Explorer of Realms
Monster Under the Bed
Monster Under the Stairs
Oogie, Voracious Villian (X3)
Reaper
Sally, Restless Spirit (X2)
Siamese Shadow
The Mayor, Excitable Politician (X3)
Undersea Gal (X2)
Vampire Baron (X2)
Vampire Count (X2)
Vampire Lord
Vampire Prince
Wolf Shadow
Wolfman
Surprises
I'm the Boogie Man! (X3)
This Is Halloween! (X4)
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 That's no typo, there are no creations in this deck! The idea of this deck
is to play as many 2-point or 3-point characters as possible, using This Is
Halloween! to play them at a discount. The deck will pretty consistently
score in the high 40's or the low 50's in points, with a maximum of 59
(which is in reach on a really good draw).
This deck will start out very slow. Don't panic. On the first turn, you
want to drop a 2-point character into the Mayor-mobile. Ideally this would
be Sally (who can move away for free) or the Mayor (who needs to be there
anyway). Otherwise, you're going to need to use your Pumpkin King function
to move the Character at some point. Your first goal should be to activate one of
your draw+points locales: Tree Circle, Town Hall, or The Courtyard. After
one of these is active, start using it and populating your other locales.
You'll want to start using either the Sewing Hut or Castle Finklestein by
turn 7 or 8, so keep that in mind when you're playing characters. Try not
to discard too many non-spare copies of characters, as the deck does not
cycle and you'll never see them again. When you draw copies of This Is
Halloween!, save them for the later turns, you at least want to have one
each for the last four turns of the game. Feel free to use I'm the Boogie
Man! to mess with your opponent and draw cards as needed: your characters
are immune.
Once turn 7 or 8 rolls around, you'll want to start using your big-point
locales in conjunction with This Is Halloween! to start playing 4-5
characters per turn. The key to this is the Mayor, whom you can take into
your hand to draw 2 cards. With This Is Halloween! in play, the Mayor only
costs 1 pumpkin point to play again, so essentially you can spend one point
to draw 2 cards as many times as you have pumpkin points. So during these
last 4 or 5 turns, you'll want to activate a locale for 5 points, play This
Is Halloween!, use the Corpse Kid to get that pumpkin point back, and then
play lots of characters, drawing cards with the Mayor as needed. When
deciding whether to play more characters or draw more cards with the Mayor,
keep in mind that you'll want to play This Is Halloween! again on your next
turn, so try to make sure you have another in your hand.
Here are some tips to maximize your point total in the end game. Remember,
every pumpkin point that you can get is worth either 2 more cards in your
hand or two more points on the table, so make an effort to get as many
points as possible during those last few turns. Use the Corpse Kid to add
a point when you play This Is Halloween!. Remember to move around Sally
and Dr. Finklestein to get an extra card in your hand. Try putting the
Monster Under the Bed at the Sewing Hut to get an extra point from him. If
you draw an extra Mayor into your hand, you can take the first one into
your hand and then have Oogie eat the spare to net you a point. Likewise,
you can eat your spare Sally, Dr. Finklestein, Corpse Kid, or Undersea Gal
with Oogie to net you a point, so try to keep Oogie close to those
characters.
Finally, one last tip. Aside from the Mayor, the Undersea Gal is the most
important character in this deck. It often happens that one of your copies
of This Is Halloween! is hiding at the bottom of your deck, so remember
that you can discard the Undersea Gal to fetch a copy from the discard pile
during those last few crucial turns. Lately I've found that I needed to
use this trick in many of my games, so keep it in mind. If you end up
having all the copies of This Is Halloween! you need, the Undersea Gal
might also be useful in getting out your fourth Vampire, if he was somehow
discarded.
As I said earlier, this deck should consistently get you between 47 and 53
points. Furthermore it is not very vulnerable to character destruction
strategies:
- Immune to I'm the Boogie Man!, Clown, Holly Jolly Roger, and Scared Stiff
- Will often have a spare to discard from hand to Reaper and We Did It!
- Sound of Rolling Dice will still work sometimes
Even if they do manage to blast one of your characters, you'll have more.
The main weakness of this deck is hand destruction, because if they manage
to knock out a few of your copies of This Is Halloween!, you'll be hurting
later on. In addition, if they have a deck that can keep moving the Mayor
out of the Mayor-mobile, that's really annoying too.
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