Both Hafners Blazing

By Tony Hafner
February 22, 1997

Dragons

Resource Providers:

2 Friends of the Dragon
3 Hacker

Others:

3 Both Guns Blazing
2 Dirk Wisely's Gambit Tech
3 Ex-Commando
2 Johnny Tso

Monarchs

Resource Providers:

5 Darkness Priestess

Others:

1 Brain Fire
5 Claws of Darkness
2 Spirit Pole

Unaligned

Guns:

3 Fusion Rifle
2 Pump-Action Shotgun

Others:

2 Discerning Fire
5 Pocket Demon

Sites

Feng Shui:

2 Festival Circle
4 Fortress of Shadow
1 Ring of Gates
3 Turtle Beach

Summary

Dragons: 15
Monarchs: 13
Unaligned: 12
Feng Shui: 10
Total: 50

Notes:

First, the name: I don't normally name decks after myself, but once Jose started calling it this I left it at that. My name for it was "Hey- That's Not a Gun!" In its original version, it had somewhere around 13 weapons and not a gun among them. I have since made a number of changes.
This is primarily a dueling deck (at least that's what I designed it and tuned it for). However, it fares quite well in 3-player games, and does OK in 4-player. Tuning could probably improve it there. I tend to play with a small site structure. I almost never have more than 2 sites in play. (For Dennis' benefit, I'll clarify that when I say "in play" I am not including sites burned for victory.)
It's amazing how much power a character with 2+ Claws of Darkness can generate for you. The feng shui are mainly to keep them alive. Turtle Beach is quite effective in combination with the gun stuff for getting small characters through to a site. This makes the Dirk Wisely's Gambits work fairly often. Pocket Demons round out the
power generation. Also, everything is pretty cheap in here. The most expensive cards are the Ex-Commandos and Johnny Tsos at a cost of 3 power. I still find myself throwing them out more often than not because by the time I could play them I already have at least one character big enough to do the trick. However, if things go
badly in the beginning then either of these characters can make really vicious attacks in the endgame (I've paid 3 power for Johnny, dropped a Both Guns Blazing on him and slapped 8 weapons on top of that in one turn- for no additional power). That's pretty gross when it happens, but I tend to do most of my actual beating with my
foundation characters.
There are a lot of sites that turn in here, so I used to worry about Whirlpools. However, they are pretty darn small and a weenie with Fusion Rifles can make a mess of them pretty quickly. Also, I'm not shy about shooting my own sites when they become liabilities. In duels, this has a pretty good win ratio (don't ask me for numbers,
I don't watch that closely). In multiplayer games, I don't bother to try and track this at all.


Last modified: October 25, 1997.