A FEW WORDS ON THE MISSING LINK EXPANSION
This page contains a short FAQ on the MLE set. You will not find any card ruling, clarification or errata. If some question does not find its answer here, feel free to use the Egroups Highlander mailing lists to ask your questions (check the Links page) and other players will get the official answer as well. If you want a private reply, you can also send them to the MLE team by email (use the address below).
What is the Missing Link Expansion ?
The Missing Link Expansion is a virtual (under electronic form) and unofficial (designed by players and for players) expansion for the Highlander CCG from Thunder Castle Games. It is distributed freely for any player who wishes to have new cards and new strategies at hand, and mostly in order to keep the game alive after more than one year of waiting for the official Ramirez Edition.
As a matter of fact, the MLE tries to be the link between the Four Horsemen expansion and the expected Ramirez Edition.This set also tried to be a link between multiple Highlander universes : from Highlander The Movie to Highlander IV Endgame, Highlander The Series and The Raven.
This set contains more than 250 cards of different rarities from Common to Ultra Rares (1 per box and even 1 per Case). It is distributed in virtual booster packs. Each pack is composed of jpeg pictures selected randomly from the card rarity list thanks to the Virtual Packs Generator.
What is the Virtual Packs Generator ?
This a web software designed to build random packs of Highlander cards from a list of cards with different rarities (from common to ultra-rares) and distribute them freely at a selected rate.
Currently, the MLE rate is 10 booster packs per week and per person. Once you have reached this number, you won't be allowed to access the VPG until the time limit of one week has been reseted.
This limit and the booster packs system are not designed to frustrate players or to limit them in their deck building exercise, but on the contrary to slowly give them access to all card pictures and have them make efforts in deck building as if they had bought ten "real" weekly boosters from their retailer.
Once downloaded, each card can obviously be used in multiples in your decks. Players are also free to exchange their pictures with friends and other players. The main purpose of this system is to give each card its chance in your decks and to prevent overpowered cards and immortals to overshadow basic cards and Persona for all players.
How may I get a complete collection ?
The MLE contains currently 62 Commons, 88 Uncommons, 101 Rares, 10 basic One-Per-Box Premiums and 2 One-Per-Case Ultra-rares Premiums. You can check the complete rarity list in the List page.
So if you want to collect all these jpeg pictures, you can firstly download your 10 packs per week. You should be able to get all commons in a couple of weeks and all the uncommons in less than two months. Getting all Rares and Premiums will be much harder. Statistically, it should take about three or four months to gain access to all rares pictures and one year for Premiums.
It is obviously an incredibly long time. Way too much for any Highlander player. That's why it will be necessary to trade your pictures for those that have been downloaded by other players. You can email copies of your pictures to other players and trade them for some card pix you do not have. You can even use the basic Egroups Highlander swaps list to post your trade lists and make trade offers. This would be a huge reward for the MLE team to see the Virtual cards traded like "real" cards.
But, please do not post any picture in a newsgroup or mailing list. You can use some of them (mostly commons and uncommons) in your HomePage or MLE strategy/trade page but do not display your whole collection on your web site. Keep in mind that as soon as everybody can see and download a picture, it becomes a worthless card in the VPG database.
Some Missing Link Expansion cards are or will be released. These promo cards cannot be downloaded in booster packs and will be delivered freely under certain circumstances. Check out the promo plan.
How can I get "real" MLE cards ?
The MLE team do not want to sell a "real" printed version of these cards in order to avoid any confusion. We are NOT trying to make money with this project, so we won't sell a printed version of our cards, even at a very low cost. So unless you can get this service from another player (see the Wanna Help ? page), you will need a decent printer (preferably a color printer, but b&w is far enough).
Each jpeg should
have approximately the size of a real Highlander card so you should be
able to print them "as is". Yet on some systems, or with some printing
tools, cards may not have this specific size. In this case, you'll have
to fix the following size for each card :
Height : 8.5 cm
(3.5 inch) and/or
Width : 6 cm (2.36
inch) and/or
Resolution : 150
dpi
If you have access to tools like MS Word, Paintshop 6, Adobe Pagemaker or Photodeluxe, you can even print up to nine cards per sheet of paper (A4, or Legal US paper).
Check out Colin Fijal's short printing guide for more informations.
The MLE1 team was mainly composed of a few active players who initiated the process and fed it with cards texts, Highlander pictures and new rules concepts.
Adam Crites < GKOA@aol.com >
The current MLE2 team is/will be slightly bigger and include more contributors and playtesters. Feel free to send your own text files with card ideas or more Highlander pictures for jpeg card building. YOU can be a part of the MLE project. YOU can make the Highlander CCG live again in your area and all over the world...
In case of problem
with these pages and software, feel free to request the help of the MLE
team. The Virtual Packs Generator is currently Netscape 4+ and Microsoft
IE 4+ compliant if Javascript and Cookies are enabled. If you are using
another browser on which this software does not work, or if you have disabled
Javascript and/or Cookies and do not want to use them, then you can still
email the MLE team in order to request a weekly post containing the URL
of the random pix contained by your Virtual Booster Packs.