Annie Devlin - by Steve Crow If your opponent plays a successful attack against you, then you may play up to two additional attacks during your next Attack Phase. Dodges will not avoid multiples attacks that you play. You may have up to five Master cards. Overview Annie can be a tricky Immortal to employ. To understand her and get best benefit out of her Persona ability and cards requires a bit of study. Game-mechanic questions further. Even if an attack does no damage, either inherently (Dirty Tricks, Improvised Weapon/Attack) or after modification (Dr. Sonny Jackson, Dr. Anne Lindsey), it is still "successful" and Annie's Persona ability kicks in, getting her two additional attacks. Annie's additional attacks are cumulative with most other ways to get multiple attacks. Thus, if she is successfully attacked and then plays Combination, she gets a fourth attack. Her secondary ability has occasionally been misconstrued. A dodge will work whether she makes one attack or multiple ones. However, a dodge will not protect against more than one attack. Essentially she has an inherent, continual Flashing Blade (CotW #37). Persona-Specific Cards Among her general Persona-specific cards, Annie has the "standard" Back Away, and the by-now standard Evade, and that's it. All of her non-Reserved cards are subtly different from the more familiar ones. Her Combination not only gives her an additional attack, but forces the opponent to play a separate defense against each of her attacks. This can prove costly, particularly when combined with anti-dodge in-play cards like Master's Advance and Lighthouse. Continuity lets her make free Power Blows, but only if her opponent does so. Still, she doesn't have to _successfully_ defend against the Power Blow. But this won't catch an opponent by surprise past the second time she uses it. It's more likely that if they're worried about her Power Blowing, they'll wait until her Continuity runs out. Her Duck is weaker than either Duncan/Connor/Nakano's, or Fasil's. Still, it gives her a large area of evasion, lets her dodge and counter-attack, and avoids those painful Head Shot-prone upper areas. Extra Shot only lets her make an additional attack if her opponent did not attack (you can't benefit from this on your first turn, if you go first). There are a number of ways to assure this, from Pedestrian/Delay-2 to Weapon Bind to a Darius'd Intimidate/Slan. The second attack can be further augmented with Lunge. Flashback is the standard Situation/Exert version that Duncan and Kern have. I must admit, I've never seen much use for it in Annie's hands. Perhaps if she needs to use Battle Rage and still Exert for something (a Power Block, perhaps?), this can benefit her. Trip, besides its Standing Defense removal capability, lets her do an extra point of damage on _any_ successful attack played that turn. Since she can potentially make three attacks without playing a Special (more, with Berkeley, Master Race and The Prize/Extra Attack), she only needs to hit once. That brings us to her Reserved cards. Her Battle Rage is a simple way to make multiple Power Blows. She'll still need a way to play more than one attack, of course. More on that below. Escape often seems to be an overlooked card. Unlike the Kurgan's Disguise, it doesn't impact Annie's ability to play Police cards. If she can get and keep down a couple of these, she can either go Situation-heavy, Plot-heavy, or even direct damage-heavy. Annie's Master's Attack is, quite frankly, a very cool card. The trick is being able to play it. While a block will restrict her first attack, it won't restrict her second or third attacks if she can use her Persona ability. She can usually play it via Extra Shot and Combination as well. If she plays it as the second attack of an Extra Shot, it can't be stopped normally by Master's Block. Evade will also let her play this. Her last Reserved card is Run Through. This version is also different, giving her multiple Hidden attacks. The timing on this can be tricky, but three Hidden attacks can be formidable. Generic Cards Dr. Sonny Jackson and Dr. Anne Lindsey are vital cards for Annie to use. Besides their inherent advantages, they also assure that Annie can make three attacks and take no damage. For those times when she must take damage, Watcher/Treatment is even more important. Adding in some Lost Loves might even be worth the effort. Healing has earned itself, perhaps deservedly, somewhat of a bad name. Still, when your primary Persona ability requires you typically (not always) take damage for it to kick in, it's pretty vital to have such cards. Due to her inherent Persona ability duplicating Flashing Blade, Flurry Strike is the best generic attack card Annie can use. Her Persona ability keeps a dodge from working against more than one attack, and the second and subsequent Flurry Strikes can't be blocked. Slashes can be hard to avoid, and become even harder with Annie's secondary Flashing Blade ability. Mix in an occasional Slash/Upper, doing two damage, and your opponent may have serious problems. Anti-dodge cards such as Master's Advance and Kiss Your Butts Goodbye can make avoiding her multiple attacks even more difficult. As noted above, Generic cards that give her even more attacks that are subsequently enhanced by her secondary Persona ability are useful. These include Berkeley Distributors, Master Race, and The Prize/Extra Attack. Since Annie is attack-dependent, Trenchcoat and Discipline/Attack help to assure that she can keep on attacking. Carl also helps to keep wary opponents from fleeing to Holy Ground. Annie's ability can enhance discarding. If she is successfully attacked, she can play a Disarm, see if it succeeds, and then play two regular attacks. Once her opponent is disarmed and can no longer attack, though, her Persona ability is useless. Still, if she can get multiple attacks through other means (particularly Combination), her secondary Persona ability means a disarmed opponent who tries to dodge will be in serious trouble after a turn or two. And there's always Parrying Blade. It's no worse than Yung Dol Kim's as far as protection goes. And since she's likely to have more attacks than average, her chance of having the right attack to block at the right time is greater. Location Cards Interestingly, Annie doesn't really lend herself particularly well to any given Location. Laundry Room and Lighthouse, for instance, require that she be successfully attacked. If Annie's opponent successfully attacks her, then they probably won't have to worry about the "penalty" of missing an attack. Since Annie has no inherent protection against direct damage, Spiritual Center is probably a good default choice for her. Watcher Regional HQ, if she combines it with cards like Watcher/Fair Fight and Greenfield Hobby, could also prove useful, giving her more cards to draw upon and a better chance of having three attacks and damage-prevention at any given moment. Annie does have Duck and Evade, meaning she is a bit more versatile in the Dead End Alley than many Personas: certainly more than her WC compatriots. She will probably still want Reconnaissance so she can play Back Away against those multi-area attacks, though. Mountain Cave can let her unleash a barrage of Hidden attacks. At the very least, if she can't stop her opponent's Hidden attack(s) in the Mountain Cave, she will get multiple hidden attacks in return. Against Connor, of course, this strategy is useless. As always, the use of other Locations is possible, but will have to be specifically tailored to a particular strategy that you choose for Annie. How to Win Doctors Lindsey and Jackson are essential to Annie's success. You have to be able to let yourself successfully be hit and yet not take any damage. These cards are remarkably useful for doing this. You'll want a fair number of attacks so you can take advantage of Annie's Persona ability. Six of these should be Flurry Strikes. You want to encourage your opponent to attack you. Cards like Louise Marcus (CotW #9) are not particularly helpful, and often actually help the opponent by allowing them to cycle cards. The best incentive to force attacking is Annie's Extra Shot. Combine it with Lunge, and they'll soon realize that if they attack you, at least they'll be able to play _some_ defenses from their hand against you. Disarming can prove useful, but only if Annie let herself be hit. As noted above, let yourself be hit, play a Disarm, see if it works, and then unleash two follow-up attacks (preferably augmented with Lunge and Iron Will). Since Annie currently has no anti-direct damage cards, or ways to turn such damage to her benefit, Police/Counter Damage, Greenfield Hobby, and Spiritual Center are all necessary cards. Escape can prove a useful bulwark in protecting Annie's Situations, particularly Plot-type ones. It's also a good defense against Bedsoe and Precinct. Unholy Alliance is always useful. Head Hunter/ME, when supported by other methods of multi-attacking, can quickly drain off an opponent's dodges. It's a bit expensive, Exertion-wise, but Annie's Battle Rage will potentially let her pull off multiple Head Shots in conjunction with Destruction/ME1. And The Darkness, although it won't last too long, will let Annie unleash a barrage of Hidden attacks in conjunction with her Run Through. How to Defeat Avoid attacking Annie. However, with the new rule modifiers and alterations, and Annie's Extra Shot, this may prove difficult and/or painful. If you're going to attack, make your attacks worth it. Dirty Trick/Shove can keep Annie from counter-attacking. Unblockable Head Shots mean that Annie has to dodge, since otherwise letting the attack succeed will mean the end of the game for her. Flurry Strikes and the Kurgan's ability can also strain the damage-prevention cards Annie no doubt has in her hand. If you're Amanda, you may have to play a cautious game. Since you only do one damage with most of your attacks, Annie can defend against one of your attacks, let the other hit, and then go for a three-attack combo. This can prove excessive even for the dodge-heavy Amanda. If you use most Slashes, you may have similar problems. Dirty Trick/Kick, Pummel, and Improvised Weapon/Attack are also attacks that Annie may very well let herself be hit by so she can get multiple attacks (although with Kick, she'll only get two attacks rather than three). Basically, be very careful about attacking Annie unless you have three or more defenses, or unless you can make your attack a powerful one. Concerning Annie's Nemesis, Compromise, this absolutely shuts down her Persona ability. However, since Annie currently isn't a popular choice, you may not see much opportunity to use this Nemesis. The fact that there is currently no Quickening that duplicates her ability means that Watcher Database and to a great degree Watcher's Chronicle are pretty much useless. Overall Overall, Steve gives Annie a qualified _4_. I think she has potential, and the current fluctuating attack/non- attack environment makes it hard to determine exactly what impact her Persona ability has on the game. Her power does mean she is dependent on generic damage- prevention cards a bit more than I prefer. Still, the cards for her are there. And oddly, her ability is the most reliable and damaging of those Persona with inherent multi-attack abilities. Amanda does only one damage per attack, Kim needs to keep those Frenzies out in the post- ME2 environment, and Kern relies on the vagaries of an Exertion. Annie doesn't need to worry about playing either Flashing Blade or a multi-attack Special to get those attacks. I think once the attack-oriented changes in the rules are re-evaluated, she'll rank a point of two higher. What Our Other Raters Say: Jeff - Annie has the unfortunate stigma of being one of the few Personas that actively encourage cheese, lock, and stall due to her anti-attack nature. Attacking Annie with less than three Dodges (or two Dodges and blocks that cover a lot of grids) is somewhat stupid... unless you're going for her head. Annie tends to be too powerless against non-attack decks to really be competitive currently, IMHO, and probably doesn't pack enough defenses and Alertness to be really successful against Head Shot decks, making her a bit unviable (though very surprising) in tournament play. Her cards also fail to support her main attack theme (though Extra Shot is kind of nice). Hank - As part of Watcher's Chronicles, Annie was designed to be a swordfighter at heart... but whatever strengths she had have been eclipsed by the releases of The Gathering and the Duncan & Methos Collections. I've tried to play her before, but I always think of someone else who can do better... Alan - Abstain Prodipto - Abstain Allen - Annie Devlin is hampered by the fact that half of her ability only works if she is damaged, and even then only if damaged by an attack (editor's note: actually, her Persona ability is only indirectly related to taking damage - whether an attack is "successful" is the trigger). While other Immortals may use all the damage prevention Annie has access to, they may do so without having to use it up merely to let their power kick in. To make up for this you need to make the part of her power that does work do so as well as possible. Master's Advance can work well for her here. People tend to overlook her Escape, but you can use it to help keep Master's Advance and Scotland the Brave in play. Combination is her best attack card. Use it to concentrate on _one_ corner. Master Swordsman is a great help in this tactic. Extra Shot can work well with Weapon Bind, but in general I prefer Combination. Unfortunately, whenever you build an Annie deck you are happy with you can almost always toss in 6 Flashing Blades and ask, 'what if I were immortal X?' Bruce - Annie has a fairly mediocre set of cards and a power that is weak when used and unusable against non- attack decks. The real problem is that you just can't put together a good deck for Annie. Like most of the WC personas, she is weak defensively but her offense just doesn't make up for it. She is inferior to several other Personas when attempting to make multiple attacks, especially when you consider the conditional nature of her power. I have not seen a competitive Annie deck since Fast Talk was made Signature. Stealth Dave - Annie probably has the best spread of cards from the Watcher's Chronicles. Her unique Combination ensures that she can make multiple attacks even when her opponent doesn't attack, and Extra Shot penalizes them for not attacking. Unfortunately, the best way to stop Annie is to not attack, making non- attack decks even more popular. Still, a lot of fun to play; _if_ your opponent unsheathes his sword. Jonathan - Annie's been a favorite of mine since she first debuted in WC. The biggest criticism of her is that she's too reactive a Persona, but she can be downright nasty against attack decks. She s got a built-in Flashing Blade, one of the best cards to utilize in a multi-attack arsenal, and can dish out a world of hurt to her opponent if they attack her successfully. She doesn't need to clog her deck (or her hand) with a tremendous number of defenses, because she'll probably want to take some non- painful attacks (Slashes, select Dirty Tricks, Amanda attacks, Leg Sweep, etc.). She can utilize healing and damage prevention cards to negate the effects of those attacks, while still being able to execute her strategy, be it Flurry strikes, Slashes, or other difficult-to- defend attacks. However, all these plans are wasted if her opponent isn't attacking. With the new trend toward attack decks, Annie will become stronger and better able to execute her game-plan at the major tournament level. She has little use for her ability in first-blood (unless her opponent foolishly plays a non-damage attack) but should be able to dish out a significant amount of punishment throughout the game. She can utilize cards such as Berkeley to make multiple attacks if her opponent fails to cooperate with her plans. Overall, becoming more powerful with the growing trend toward attack decks, Annie Devlin will show up more and more as people realize her potential. Charles - With the built in Flashing Blade, Annie is one of the better multi-attack Immortals in the game. With Prize/Extra Attack and Berkeley, she can grind away at her opponent's defenses with ease. To make matters worse, if her opponent plays an attack, she can choose to take the attack and play up to 2 additional attacks. On the Battlefield, she is a force to be reckoned with since it allows her to cycle defenses even when not being attacked. The downside to her Persona is that she loses all of her combat oriented power when she goes to First Blood. Her extra attacks are generated by Special cards and her Persona power, and taking a hit in first blood is not a viable means of generating extra attacks. Ratings Overall: Steve 4 Jeff 4 Hank 5 Alan N/A Prodipto N/A Allen 5 Bruce 1 Sdave 5 Charles 6 Jonathan 7 Average: 4.63 Highlander is a protected trademark of Gaumont Television, used under license by Thunder Castle Games. The card text is copyright 1997 by Thunder Castle Games. All rights reserved.