Shadow on the Moon - The Nightmare Before Christmas TCG

It's that time of year, the Halloween season, which means its time to get a bit festive. The game I'm looking at though is very weird. The Nightmare Before Christmas TCG. In the game, you take 12 rounds (the twelve days of Christmas, ha ha) to build your own Halloweentown and make your own Christmas-themed creations in time for the holidays. In the end, you tally up the values of your characters and creations, and the highest number wins.

This was weird. Whether you're a Tim Burton fan or not, there is only so far you can go when basing cards off of the film. Ideas were going to run out very quickly. The second set (yes, this actually got two sets) expanded the scope by introducing Christmas characters and locales, but this only gave the game one good final breath before expiring. Which is a shame because I do like the design of the game, I just also knew it was doomed. Anyways, enough ranting. Here's the card.

How many people have the "This is Halloween" song playing in their head?

This is a Surprise card. They're the Trainers of this card universe, except the game developers already came up with an idea to limit the number you can play. This card is also not typical of Surprise cards, since this one attaches to a character, and is therefore a confusing choice to start things off, but I'm sticking with it.

So, what does it do? Characters in the game have only one number on them, a scare number. Everything including how much it costs, when different location effects activate, and how many points you get at the end are determined by this one number. This lowers an opposing character's scare by 1, making them less scary. This makes it harder for your opponent to trigger locales, and it takes away 1 point for your opponent in the end game. I like to think that you are casting a shadow over the opposing character.