3.  MAJOR HEROES
 
By Alex Brown

Major Heroes are the backbone of the Huntik Trading Card Game. They are the big players in the Huntik world, doing battle for all the stakes, and how you go about building your deck depends on what sort of Major Heroes you want to play.  There are three types of Major Heroes to think about: those based on size, those based on abilities and the Legendary Heroes. Whichever path you choose, you can be sure that there are plenty of options available to build an interesting and powerful deck!

Size

The first place you will notice the benefits of Major Heroes is in their size. The base line DEF statistic of a Minor Hero comes in at around 3DEF. Major Heroes can range from anything as small as 1DEF all the way up to 8DEF. When your DEF is high, you can shrug off attacks from smaller heroes or even multiple heroes; this means you can hold down a zone and prevent enemy heroes from moving forward. It also means you can advance and KO opposing heroes without risk most of the time. Being able to do both of these things can be quite advantageous, and if you can go back to my article on card advantage, size is one of the key ways of establishing it.
 
The key issue with size is making sure that you can deal with your opponent’s biggest Heroes. With the first couple of sets, having access to 6ATK was a must so you could deal with Caliban. When you play the starter deck, Janus Knight is key to the Evil deck because he is the only Hero who can take on Caliban by himself. With the Regional Championships having just past, the stakes have been raised again with Shauna and Wind and its 8DEF! Caliban is still big enough to be able to take it on, but not much else can.

You have to make sure when you build your deck that you can deal with the biggest threats. Have a plan for both Caliban and Shauna and Wind and make sure you
don’t play your answer until you know for sure whether your opponent can trump you or not!

Unique Abilities

You can only play one Major Hero a turn, which is why they have some very powerful abilities.  They are the main characters in the Huntik world, so it makes sense that they are bigger and better than Minor Heroes! If you are looking to build a deck of cards that is more powerful than the sum of its parts, you want to start with a few Major Heroes with unique abilities.

A great place to start would be the range of Major Heroes that search out specific Action cards at the start of rounds 3 and 5. Santiago can give you access to the game-breaking Slamcannon, while Rassimov can turn combat in your favor with Darkvoid. You could even go as far as building a deck around a Major Hero like Zhalia Moon and her search card Shadowpoint, as well as Spidertouch, also linked to Zhalia. This means you probably want to play these different versions of Zhalia, as well as mulliganning, to reach the sort of hand that gives you a lot of synergies between the cards.
 
There are plenty of undersized Major Heroes from the first set that have abilities that are exceptionally powerful. Fan Dancer might be small, but she lets you play an extra Major Hero every turn! The ability to take control of opposing heroes can also turn a game very quickly in your favor, so cards like Dendras more than make up for their small attributes with the ability to win games all by themselves! Don’t be too quick to judge a Major Hero when you think it is undersized; these cards are deliberately made smaller in stature because if they were to survive multiple turns they could really wreck havoc!

Legendary Heroes

No article about Major Heroes would be complete without a section on the biggest and baddest Major Heroes, the Legendary Heroes! Each of the Legendary Heroes is unique: Behemoth is able to beat any defending heroes without being KO’d in return, Araknos can take control of all of your opponent’s heroes, while Tao is unblockable.  Of course you could also introduce the powerful Overlos with its 10ATK and 10DEF, but you have to have all the Legendary Titans first.

Major Heroes define the Huntik Trading Card Game. Every deck should include some Major Heroes; between 7 and 12 is the right amount depending on whether you have cards that allow you to play multiple Major Heroes in one turn. What you need to know is that you must play Major Heroes; they are too good to ignore. Whether you play them for size, abilities or their legendary status, you will find that Major Heroes dominate the game.