A Holiday Theme Deck

The holiday season means a vacation from school or work, amazing meals, Neopet-filled stockings, and more time to spend with family and friends...playing cards! With the Hannah and the Ice Caves expansion of the Neopets Trading Card Game, there are a lot of possibilities for bringing some holiday cheer into the game. Here is a holiday theme deck for you to enjoy. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

The Blinding Blizzard

Basic Neopets:

3 Green Aisha

3 Orange Aisha

3 Blue Bruce

1 Yellow Bruce

Experienced Neopets:

3 Snow Aisha

3 Snow Bruce

Heroes:

3 Taelia the Snow Faerie

Villains:

3 Snow Beast

Locations:

3 Lower Ice Caves

Fate:

3 Frostbite

Something Has Happened:

3 Gigantic Snowball

3 Snowball Flurry

Equipment:

3 Crystal Ball

3 Masila’s Cloak

3 Blue Scorchstone

Items:

3 Good Snowball

3 Heart of the Mountain

3 Snow Flame

3 Lemon Snow Puff

3 Snowberries

3 Strawberry Brucicle

3 Snow Paint Brush

3 Shivering Potion

3 Icy Snowball

Total Cards: 60

Starting things off are our icy friends, the Snow Aisha and Snow Bruce. They are not only incredibly cute, but they also pack quite a punch! These Snow Neopets cover three of the four arenas and offer the ability to tap their opponent’s Neopets under certain conditions! Two Snow Aishas will cover magic and intelligence nicely with a ten in each arena, and has the ability to choose a rival that will on untap on your opponent’s next turn if you lose a contest on your turn. The Snow Bruce has an 11 in agility, and when he loses a contest on your opponent’s turn, his rivals don’t untap on your opponent’s next turn! Since both of these cards are Light and Water, our faerie types have been decided. Their tapping ability is also something that will carry through to the rest of the deck.

What would a blizzard on the top of the mountain be without Taelia the Snow Faerie? She’ll warm you up quickly with a 17 in intelligence and a 23 in magic! Her ability goes well with our tapping theme. When you play her, you get to choose one of your opponent’s Neopets to stay tapped on your opponent’s next turn! With Taelia, you get brains, magic, and beauty.

Lurking on Terror Mountain is the Snow Beast. He’ll do a wonderful job terrorizing all that inhabit the strength arena. With a strength of 21, he’s a formidable foe. However, this isn’t even his strongest asset. When a Neopet moves out of the arena he’s in, that person rolls a die. On a 1 or 2, their Neopet is discarded! Board destruction is always fun, and your opponent should expect some losses in the blizzard. The Snow Beast will help! We also have a couple cards to help the Snow Beast achieve his goal of an opponent-free strength arena. Our next card will aid the Beast.

This holiday season, the Lower Ice Caves have been found! The snowy home of the Boris is a great Location to sit out the storm or wreak havoc on your opponent. At the end of each contest where this Location resides, each player moves each of his or her Neopets and Heroes in the contest to another arena of his or her choice. If you put this in strength, your opponent has a one in three shot of losing his Neopet every time he loses an attempt to get rid of the Snow Beast!

One of the hazards of visiting Terror Mountain is Frostbite. You can use this to your advantage with this new Fate card. You can use this curse to stop your opponent from tapping to move! This combined with the Snow Beast and Lower Ice Caves’ ability to move your opponent’s from the strength arena, your opponent won’t be able to return to the arena at all without trading in his or her pet! Talk about freezing out your opponent!

Next we’ll throw in a couple of Something Has Happened cards to slow down your opponent. They’ll have to watch out for the Gigantic Snowball careening down the mountain! This card allows you to choose one of your opponent’s Neopets and prevent it from untapping on his or her next turn! Similarly and in keeping with our theme of freezing opponents to keep them from untapping, we have Snowball Flurry. This snowball fight makes your opponent roll a die after untapping his or her Neopets. If they roll a 1, the pet becomes tapped! The best part of it is that they have to do this for each of their pets, not just one! You could knock out your opponent’s entire team for a full turn with one SHH card. Now THAT’s a snowball fight!

This holiday season, most of us have spent some time either in the battledome fighting for good or evil, or stalking the news page for more of the Hannah and the Ice Caves plot to consume. Our Equipment follows the lead of the war plot and battles. If you’re an avid plot reader, you’ll recognize the Crystal Ball that Masila used to see the frozen Boris. This will be working for our snowy friends with a 4 in magic and a 3 in intelligence, and will also let you tap the Neopet or Hero it’s attached to to look at the top card of each player’s deck.

Speaking of Masila, we’re borrowing her Cloak. With a 3 in agility and a 2 in magic, Masila’s Cloak is perfect for our chilly deck! The cloak also has an extra sneaky ability; when a Neopet or Hero with the cloak attached wins a contest against a Neopet, your opponent chooses one of his or her Neopets in another arena and moves it to this one! When you consider that a couple of your opponent’s pets probably have Frostbite and can’t move back to their optimal arena, this makes for much easier wins for you.

You also can’t fight the Thieves Guild or Bringer of Night without a Scorchstone to heal you. The Blue Scorchstone gives a 1 in magic and a 3 in intelligence. When your Neopet or hero loses a contest on your opponent’s turn, you can discard your Scorchstone to stop your opponent from banking or drawing for winning the contest! This could really rile up your opponent if it’s a close game.

This leaves us with Items. Obviously you can’t hang out in the snow without having a great snowball fight. You’re packing Good and Icy Snowballs, giving a +10 in agility (Good) and a +8 in Magic (Icy)! If you’re in a contest that is relatively close, just chuck a Snowball at your opponent and watch them fall!

Any good deck needs some 4 point bankable cards. We’ve included some nice icy treats to keep your bank points rising to the top. Lemon Snow Puffs, Snowberries, and Strawberry Brucicles will lead you to a sweet victory!

Your sweet victory won’t come quickly without your Experienced Neopets though. The Snow Paint Brush will help you get those Snow Aishas and Bruces into action more quickly. When you bank the Snow Paint Brush with a Neopet, you get to search your deck for an Experienced Neopet, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then you shuffle your deck. The downside is that your Neopets in the contest don’t untap on your next turn, but that’s not even too painful considering with all your different ways to take your opponents out of commission, they probably won’t be able to gain from it.

Finally we have a few options for digging yourself out of an avalanche of nasty problems. First, if you’re having trouble with a particular Experienced Neopet, bank a Heart of the Mountain. This lets us use choose one of your opponent’s Neopets and replace it with the top card of his or her Neopet stack! That should drag him back into the blizzard.

For those times when you’re in a closer contest and only behind by a couple of stat points, you can use a Snow Flame. When you use it in a contest, you get to pick one of your other Neopets. They get a +2 stat bonus until the end of the turn! With a bank point value of 3 and a +3 in magic, this card is always going to be useful.

Last but not least there’s the Shivering Potion. This card has only 2 bank points and not stat bonuses, but it’s still extremely powerful! If you play it in a contest and win, it’s rival Neopets don’t untap on your opponent’s next turn! Between this and all your other options for keeping your opponent tapped, it should be a slow game for your opponent and a nice quick one for you!

So there you have it. The Blinding Blizzard is a great deck to try out on your family and friends this holiday season. Keep in mind that with all the cards keeping your opponent tapped, you might get a frosty attitude from your opponent when you're through and you’ve fought your way out of the blizzard and into the win! I hope you’ve enjoyed this special holiday deck and take the extra time this season to build some great decks of your own.