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Tournament Kit Cards, Part One
by Andrew Parks
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One of the new strategies that is being introduced in the Tournament Kit involves filling up your Halloweentown. The tendency with many decks built from the Premiere Set is to load your Characters up at two or three essential Locales in order to keep those Locales active if your opponent attacks, and also to make it easier to pull off combinations that require Characters to be at the same Locale (such as Jack & Sally, the Band Players, the Corpse Family, etc.)
When we began the design process for The Nightmare Before Christmas TCG, one of our early visions was to have players create a sprawling metropolis of their favorite Characters from the film. Our goal was to have players gradually populate their entire Halloweentown, moving Characters around the town throughout the game to keep the town active. This would, through gameplay, simulate a community of Characters moving into new areas of town in order to keep things active throughout the game.
When designing cards for the Tournament Kit, we created two cards whose purpose is to encourage players to play decks that helped recreate this initial vision. During playtesting, we soon discovered that these two cards were very good at bringing about our original ideas! Both cards (Everybody make a scene and Old Sparkly) give players strong bonuses for activating all of the Locales in their Halloweentown. Not only will players who use these cards play their Characters to a greater variety of Locales, but they will move key Characters around town as the Locales enter play.
Everybody make a scene is a Surprise that allows you to draw 1 card for every Active Locale in your Halloweentown with a Scare Threshold of 2 or higher (1 or higher if your Mayor is in play). Once your town is completely Active, you can draw 5 cards for a cost of 2 Pumpkin Points! And, unlike other draw card Surprises, Everybody make a scene doesn't rely on having a particular card combo in play (other than the Mayor if you are playing with the weenie Locales), so you don't have to rely on drawing particular cards to get it set up, and it's more difficult for your opponent to shut down.
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As with any good strategy in Nightmare, you've got to do more than draw cards. You've also got to get Scare Points out for a cheap cost. That's where Old Sparkly comes in! Once all 6 Locales in your Halloweentown are Active, you can play this 5-point Creation for only 1 Pumpkin Point! Of course, if you draw it early in the game, it will require a tough decision as to whether to hold onto it or save it for later. However, we have found that many players refuse to discard it no matter when they draw it, because they know how good it is once their Halloweentown is all set up!
Using Everybody make a scene and Old Sparkly also gets you another indirect reward: the option to use any one of your 6 Locales' Functions each turn since they're all active. Since you're setting everything up, your options when choosing a Function are much more varied, giving you needed options depending on the deck you're facing. There are some decks that won't be able to use these new cards effectively because those decks rely on activating big Locales such as Castle Finklestein or the Pumpkin Patch. However, for more versatile decks, these two cards are just what the doctor ordered!
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One of the other goals with the Tournament Kit was to create a type of strategy which involved an open-ended maximum of Scare Points. One of the things that a good Nightmare deckbuilder usually does is count up his "maximum points" to see what his deck is capable of achieving. No matter how well you play, you normally cannot exceed your "maximum points," so the goal has always been to acheive this maximum while hurting your opponent's total.
Two new cards (House of Cards and I think I've got it) work together to allow you to reach for higher scores than your deck could normally achieve based upon its maximum points total.
House of Cards is a new Creation which only costs 2 Pumpkin Points to play (the only Creation in the game with a Scare Number of 2). Although the House of Cards is only worth two Scare Points on its own, it can build up to an open-ended number of points by placing other cards beneath it, thus simulating your very own "house of cards"!
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In order to place cards beneath your House of Cards, you need to include a few copies of the new Surprise I think I've got it in your deck. First of all, this Surprise allows you to "Search 6" for House of Cards, which is a great way to get the ball rolling for this strategy as soon as possible.
Once House of Cards has been played, you need to play I think I've got it to attempt to place a card from your deck beneath the House of Cards. When you play I think I've got it, you draw the top card from your Main Deck, and if this card isn't a Surprise, it goes beneath your House of Cards, thereby augmenting its value by 2 Scare Points. Getting the first card beneath this Creation is important, since the House of Cards becomes immune to the Corpse Kid's vicious Fender Bender as soon as one card is stored beneath it.
There's a catch, of course. If the top card is a Surprise, not only does the card not get added to the House of Cards, but all the cards placed beneath the House get discarded! This simulates the collapse of the House of Cards, but you're not likely to appreciate that subtle flavor when it happens to you!
There are other dangers about using this strategy as well, because even if the card you draw from the top of your Main Deck isn't a Surprise, it might be a crucial card you might have wanted to play to your Halloweentown. So using House of Cards can be quite dangerous whether it succeeds or fails... unless you "cheat" of course! And who better to help you cheat but our two lovely Witches! One common strategy used with House of Cards is to play with the Big Witch and Little Witch, and then use the Premiere Surprise Mystic Cauldron (which allows you to peek at the top 6 cards in your Main Deck and replace them in any order) to set things up for the House of Cards. This helps you set the exact card to go off when you play I think I've got it, making sure it's a non-Surprise that you may not need to play this game.... such as a second copy of House of Cards, for example!
Of course, during the endgame, you may find yourself in a desperate situation where you have I think I've got it in your hand but not Mystic Cauldron, and in order to make a bid for victory you'll have to try your luck without the Witches' scrying skills. In such a case, you'll have to just draw blindly and hope things don't go tumbling down! Another potential danger is the use of Fire! by your opponent to blow up your House of Cards. However, a new card coming out in the Christmas Town Expansion entitled Sound the Alarms! will allow you to keep your carefully balanced House of Cards safe from wandering missiles!
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