As you guessed,
sniper =
archer, and "sniping" = archery.
The fellowship is now called the "company", and the corresponding fellowship phase is now the "company phase". For now, at least, the rest of the phases remain the same, though a new phase called "engagement" has been created that takes place pretty much at the same time as skirmish phases. (Engagements take place between ships...which I promise I'll explain in more detail soon-ish.)
Flying characters automatically make the opposing sniping total -1, but otherwise the keyword is unbound and just used for spotting purposes. There are many new unbound keywords like
marine,
ODST,
SpecOps,
rebel,
ONI,
technician, and
civilian that merely break races down into sub-groups. As there are obviously a lot of Men in the game, I felt the best way to segment them into more distinct groups was to use unbound keywords like these.
Since there is no One Ring in this game, the Ring-bearer is replaced by the "Hero". There can normally be only one Hero in the company, and if the Hero is killed, that player loses, just like with LOTR TCG's Ring-bearer. There is no resistance in Halo TCG, and thus no way to become "corrupted", though I am considering implementing some kind of "stamina" or "spirit" or something in its place. For now, though, the only way for a player to win is to win the race down the sitepath or kill the opponent's Hero.
One rather unique keyword is
Spartan. There are actually four types of Spartans in the game:
Spartan I,
Spartan 1.1,
Spartan II (most common; Spartans like the main series protagonist,
the Master Chief), and
Spartan III. These can obviously each be referenced specifically ("...exert a Spartan II to....") or more generally as just ANY Spartan ("make a Spartan strength +2"), in which case Spartan Is, 1.1s, IIs,
or IIIs would all fit the bill.
Another semi-loaded keyword is
commander. Almost always, this will have the name of a specific ship listed afterwards (in the format of "
commander: UNSC Pillar of Autumn"). This merely ties in characters with a specific ship, setting up many cards that do something good (or sometimes bad) if a ship has its "matching commander" aboard...another idea inspired by Star Trek CCG.
Most loaded keywords carry over from LOTR TCG, like
damage +X,
defender +X,
enduring,
fierce,
lurker, and
muster. I'll make sure to explain any new loaded keywords I come up with, probably in a manner similiar to how Decipher brought new keywords into LOTR TCG by describing them on the cards themselves (
Frodo, Protected By Many and
Gollum, Skulker being good examples).
Obviously, no LOTR cultures will be used, and the only race you can expect the two to share is "Man". (Yeah, no Elves or Dwarves in space.
) Many new races like Elite, Prophet, and AI (artificial intelligence) will be brought in to replace the LOTR ones, as well as many new cultures including (but not limited to) [UNSC], [Covenant], [Flood], and [Sentinel]. Unlike LOTR TCG, many of these cultures work sort of like the
![[Gollum]](https://lotrtcgdb.com/forums/Smileys/classic/gollum.png "Gollum")
culture in that they have both Free Peoples
and Shadow cards. Obviously, just like with
, you can't combine them, but you can certainly have a deck with nothing but, say, [Covenant] cards for both your company AND your Shadow side.
Hmmm...that's all I can think of for now. I'm sure there will be plenty more later, but that's a good crash course, I think.
Topic: Halo TCG (Read 12843 times)
