Overview

In the Highlander style each of your hedgehogs will start with 1 random weapon, 1 random utility and 1 kamikaze. In this style, if a hog dies during a turn the current hog will receive the dead hog's weapons. So in this style one hog will rise out of the ashes of the lesser hogs bodies, and reign supreme.

Scheme rules

• Unlimited attacks
• Per-hog ammo
• Only health crates drop
• Crate drops: Every 5 turns
• Mines: 4
• Mine timer: 3 seconds
• Barrels: 2
• Turn time: 45

Everything else is left at default values.

Weapons/utilities not included: See the weapon scheme named “Highlander”

Note that in Highlander, the Freezer is considered an utility.

Customization

Highlander can be highly configured with schemes.

Custom game settings

Highlander will allow for most settings in the game schemes to be changed without problems. Just edit the game scheme and it should work as expected.

A few settings, however, will be ignored by Highlander, Highlander always forces its own default values for these:

• Health crate probability (always 100%)
• Random team order (always enabled)
• Per-hog ammo (always enabled)
• Unlimited attacks (always enabled)
• Shared ammo (always disabled)

Custom weapon schemes

Weapon schemes work a bit different in Highlander and configuration does not work as you would expect.

In the weapon scheme editor, only the “Weapon set” tab is used, the other tabs are ignored. The number of “bullets” for each weapon stands for the probability each hog starts off with 1 of these weapons. The infinity symbol is a special case: If it is used, all hedgehogs start with exactly 1 ammo of this, additional to the random weapon and utility they already get.

Resurrector, Time Box and Switch Hedgehog are never available in Highlander.

The default weapon scheme for Highlander is called “Highlander” and has an equal probabilty for most weapons and utilities, except kamikaze, which all hedgehogs get.

Loyal Highlander

Loyal Highlander is a simple rule change for Highlander.

Normally, you gain weapons for any hedgehog you kill, even your own.
With Loyal Highlander enabled, you will only get weapons from enemies. Killing your own or allied hedgehogs doesn't give you anything.

To enable this, write “loyal=true” in the script parameter.

No Multi-Use / Multi-Use

Normally, if you kill a hedgehog who owns a weapon which you have already collected (no matter if you used it in this turn or not), you will not get it again. This rule is called “No Multi-Use” and is used by default.

This behaviour can be changed by adding multiuse=true to the script parameter. This enables Multi-Use mode.

In Multi-Use mode, if you kill a hedgehog who owns a weapon which you already own, but have used it up in the current turn, you will get the weapon again.

Example:
You have a ballgun. You use it, and miss. Now you have no ballgun. In the same turn you use a bazooka to kill a hog who also owns a ballgun.
Depending on the rules, this is what happens:

• No Multi-Use: You will not get another ballgun, since you already got it before.
• Multi-Use: You will get another ballgun.

Jargon

• Vamplander: A game of Highlander with the vampirism game modifier enabled
• Super hog: The most powerful hog, usually with at least 4 sets of weapons

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Appendix

Strategies

Targeting Hogs

In Highlander you want to target the weak hogs, and the hogs with the most weapons. At the beginning of the game you want to hurt a hog or two, but not so badly since someone else can easily pick up the kill. Part of Highlander is deciding who to hurt, and how badly to hurt them. Keep track of what hogs have what weapons so you know who you want to target. If someone is near death then you want to hit them with everything you've got, so you get their stuff. When you get towards late game you want to hurt the hogs with more weapons. But you have to make sure you don't make it too easy for someone else to pick up your kill. Don't hurt him too badly unless your sure YOU can get the kill.

If you kill your own hog you still get his weapons. So if one of your hogs is on the low health side, it would not be a bad idea to kill it and pick up some more weapons.

Due to the fact that the mode deliberately has no health crates or vampirism for balance, even a very powerful hog can be worn down through repeated attacks. Avoid powerful hogs being anywhere near other hogs on the end of turn. Teleportation is a very effective retreat tool.

When to target your own hogs:

1. When you have a super hog that needs a better transportation utility. And the hog your killing has one.
2. When its low on health, and if you don't kill it, someone else will.
3. When that hog has a weapon that will be a good combo with a weapon you already have. E.g. that hog has teleportation, and you have baseball bat. You can teleport to hogs close to water than bat them in. Of course you don't want to make a habit out of this, as killing too many of your own hogs will result in failure.

Running through all your options before you choose what to do marks a good Highlander player. You could target this weak hog, or you could use the same weapon to knock this stronger hog into the water. Or even kill your hog.

Suicide/kamikaze

If the hog you are currently using has nearly no health or you just think someone will kill it next turn, it could be a good idea to kill yourself rather than let an opponent get your weapons. All hogs have the kamikaze weapon to do this. For example, you might be trapped in a pit, and someone keeps dropping stuff in to damage you. You don't want him to get your weapons, you you try to hit him with kamikaze. (If you could knock him in the pit that would be ironically awesome.)

Reasons to use Kamikaze:

1. Almost dead hogs could use it to prevent other people from stealing its weapons
2. To get rid of a hog that nobody wants to kill/you don't want to use, to give yourself more turns with your more powerful hogs.
3. When you can kill like 3 other hogs, or a hog a lot more powerful than the kamikaze hog, and it cancels out what you lost.
4. When the hog is trapped. You still want to aim for another hog through a wall or something.

Trivia

• Normally, you have to wait for a hog to fully drown until you get a weapon. But if you play in the themes Underwater or Compost, hedgehogs drown and disappear instantly because of 100% water opacity, thus giving you the weapons much faster
• The idea of Highlander came from a chess variant, where, after taking a particular Chess piece you become able to do those same moves. This idea was then adapted for Hedgewars: you steal the weapons of the hogs you kill.
• The name “Highlander” is a cultural reference to the movie written by Gregory Widen, where a Scottish highlander is destined to fight other immortals, beheading them and taking their power.
• Highlander first premiered as part of a script pack that was available from Hedgewars' downloadable content page, in 0.9.16. The mode proved popular online and was thus further refined for official release with 0.9.17.
• Highlander's tagline “Not all hogs are created equal” is a play on words based off a phrase in the Declaration of independence ("All men are created equal").