yehosera

[yehosera]

I've been trying to your Earth/Wind deck out and I've had a lot of success with it (especially the latest version), but I always seem to have trouble versus lightning decks. Ramuh (from Opus 6) is particularly a pain in the ass as it usually trades for both a cactuar and a forward (Zidane from Opus 6 being a favorite target). Do you have any recommendations when fighting against that particular archetype?

Mono Lightning is one of the harder matchups by far. Zidane and WoL don’t stick to the board very often. It’s all about playing as early a Kam’La as possible. They cannot let him stick to the board, so it is very likely they have to discard good cards to remove him or he will stick. In the event that he sticks, call lightning and he should give you some traction, otherwise, that’s when to play Zidane/WoL to try and give you some traction. It’s hard for them to both answer Kam’La AND be able to answer a premium threat directly after. If the can answer both then well, it’s going to be a hard game xD

[yehosera]

Locals Report 09/08/18

This week I managed to go 5-0 with Earth/Wind at Dark Sphere London. The new cards really helped with the deck, however, it feels like it’s moving very far away from the Urianger style that I enjoyed about the colours before.

Earth/Wind v8

https://ffdecks.com/deck/6521347723231232

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Earth/Wind v8

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (20):

1 Cid Raines (1-192)

1 Maria (6-057)

1 Y'shtola (5-068)

1 Zidane (3-056)

2 Barbariccia (3-066)

3 Zidane (6-044)

3 Dadaluma (4-085)

2 Wol (5-075)

3 Cecil (5-086)

1 Hugh Yurg (6-077)

1 Kam'lanaut (5-148)

1 Nidhogg (6-130)

Monsters (3):

3 Cactuar (4-058)

Summons (10):

1 Asura (2-049)

3 Chaos, Walker of the Wheel (3-071)

3 Diabolos (5-062)

3 Hecatoncheir (1-117)

Backups (17):

1 Chaos (1-184)

3 Moogle (XI) (6-058)

3 Semih Lafihna (5-059)

1 Masked Woman (3-076)

2 Miner (5-082)

3 Star Sibyl (5-091)

1 Ajido-Marujido (6-064)

1 Minfilia (6-079)

1 Shantotto (1-107)

1 Tama (4-086)

Best Card: Zidane

Instrumental in the early game. Zidane is rapidly becoming the centre piece of the deck with Dadaluma as an afterthought.

Worst Card: Maria

No entry effect is simply too slow for this deck.

Tournament

Round 1 - Mono Water, Zidane engineered a situation whereby their hand was entirely summons while the field had 4 forwards on it. This allowed for my reactive cards to find their marks earlier on in the duel, with Diabolos and Masked Woman removing half of his field in a turn. In this matchup, the summons are the most important cards in the deck. Diabolos picking up 2 for 1s and Chaos, Walker of the Wheel forcing unfavourable forwards to be played. While Chaos, Walker of the Wheel does pose some risk with cards like Lenna and Leila being exceptionally powerful forwards, the vast majority of the cards are fairly static and easy to remove. It’s all about grinding out the Famfrits, then playing TCG.

Round 2 - Mono Ice, exceptionally easy matchup. Zidane is basically immovable. Especially when combined with WoL. If Zidane never dulls, then none of their summons can remove him. The key part of that game was my Nidhogg removing a Nidhogg from his field and his hand. Rendering him basically defenceless vs Dadaluma.

Round 3 - Ice/Water, Zidane. Did some filth, took some cards. The deck will run itself dry, so it’s all about surviving. Thaumaturge in the deck made out lasting the deck hard as I kept having to discard the cards I needed to hold onto to survive. However, eventually a Shantotto meant that there were simply not enough forwards in their deck to kill me before deck out.

Round 4 - Ice/Water, Hecaton and Zidane took care of the early turns. Then WoL presented a huge problem for him. As his deck did not play Kefka or Nidhogg and 2 Clouds of Darkness had been expired, there was a significant lack of ways to push the WoL off of the field. WoL net about 4 damage on it’s own with a Barbariccia. The trick to this matchup was to simply never dull any of my forwards, as his main removal options are Cid Raines, Glasya Lobalas, and Cloud of Darkness. By never dulling the forwards it means that he has to work extra hard to dull them first and then remove them. Dadaluma won the game in the end, he was placed onto a board with 2 Cactuar and cleaned up the remaining forwards in their deck.

Round 5 - Mono Ice, T1 Zidane, T2 Miner + Moogle, T3 WoL. Zidane with brave, no outs.

Standout Cards

Zidane, the shift in game dynamic having him on the board provides is insane. If the enemy is discarding their forwards for CP or rushing them out onto the field, you’ll need less of your premium removal and it’ll be live more often. The card definitely over performed and I’m very glad I made the last minute swap to include 3 of him.

Nidhogg, the moment you can smell weakness, the Hogg puts them out of business. The card is not without it’s risks due to how useless it is during the early phases, but the pay off is better than the other Dark targets for Kam’La.

Chaos, Walker of the Wheel, extra removal is always welcome. The downside isn’t too much of a downside, a lot of the time they simply play the most expensive forward, which lines up Diabolos to pick up a 2 for 1. Other times it forces a premium target for cards like Barbariccia and Nidhogg onto the field for easy pickings. Also, when setting up for Shantotto, the card helps thin out their hand of followup forwards, it’s just all round good.

Hecatoncheir, Wakka, Devout, Edward, Edward, Gestalian Empire Cid, Devout, Duke Larg, Duke Larg, Devout, Duke Larg. The cards Hecaton removed today, that’s on average 2 per round, no summon other than Diabolos is close to that level of usage per game.

Moogle (XI), a lot of self filtering towards the cards needed each turn to support Zidane was used today. I even added Moogle then used the effect to add Kam’La with Sibyl instead of just instantly getting the Kam’La to help set up for a Miner top deck to be good. It’s just a super powerful card.

Potential Changes

-1 Maria, -1 Zidane (3CP), +2 Rikku/+1 Serafie, +1 Shara OR -1 other card and +3 Balthier.

Changes From Last Time

-3 Leo, Leo as neat as it is, was not needed for the multi coloured effect. Leo is incredibly powerful and is always nearby when I’m playing the deck as it’s basically at the top of the list for potential inclusions. Once the deck feels more concrete to me, then Leo will likely sneak back into testing rotations in place of a tech card. Unfortunately as I trying to move away from Gilgamesh and the deck’s only off colour card was Cid Raines, I could not justify giving up WoL’s slots to Leos.

-2 Gilgamesh, beyond a gimmick with Leo, it was really nice having a haste forward in the deck. However, as I was climbing in Zidane count and WoL went back in, the 4CP slot was simply too saturated to include Gilgamesh. Hence he came out as there were simply too many 4CP forwards.

-3 Phoenix, without Leyak it was nearly impossible to cast the card nicely. So it was an easy cut.

+1 Maria, she was included to try and give me some stuff to do early game that has some reward for living. The deck just had better stuff to do than play her when she was drawn and her lack of the ability to immediately impact the board did not help. Very rarely did I have time to sit around doing nothing for a turn without suffering and I didn’t see a way in which she provided enough catchup to merit falling behind because of her.

+2 WoL, as I wasn’t doing enough Zidane stuff before, WoL came back in to help facilitate Zidane stuff. He did his job, I still don’t like the card, but it’s defo increasing win % so it was a nice include. I just really want to drift away from a 4CP.deck towards something faster, but if it’s working I should roll with it.

+3 Chaos, Walker of the Wheel, what better way to benefit from the game dynamic Zidane generates. I wanted additional removal and a way to punish people for discarding all of their forwards. It did exactly that, and the times they did have forwards to play removing the additional forwards was child’s play, it’s the perfect fatigue card.

+1 Hecatoncheir, the card was just too good to only be played as a 2 of and with the extra space in the deck I jumped at the chance to include the additional copy. Well worth the slot.

No draft stuff this time round as I’m fairly tired, more draft stuff next time.

TL;DR Zidane + WoL = GG Ice

[yehosera]

Team Clash Round 2

This time round as my teammate Jamie took Earth Wind, and Rob has a strong preference towards Water/Ice I was left with Fire and Lightning as my elements. I decided to take a Mono Fire deck as I only have a 1/3 chance of running into any decks playing Vayne and Genesis and that’s better odds than Fire normally has at avoiding it’s most hated cards.

Mono Fire v1

https://ffdecks.com/deck/4505067675713536

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: mono fire v1

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (23):

1 Cloud (1-009)

2 Cloud (3-008)

2 Guy (6-003)

2 Luneth (5-024)

3 Vivi (3-017)

3 Firion (6-019)

3 Tifa (1-189)

2 Zell (6-012)

3 Emperor Xande (2-007)

1 Tifa (2-011)

1 Zack (3-012)

Monsters (1):

1 Goblin (6-008)

Summons (8):

2 Belias, the Gigas (2-019)

3 Brynhildr (1-023)

1 Bahamut (4-016)

2 Phoenix (5-019)

Backups (18):

2 Evoker (1-011)

1 Black Mage (1-010)

1 Cannoneer (3-021)

1 Red Mage (1-003)

1 Scholar (4-008)

1 Black Waltz 2 (3-015)

1 Irvine (2-001)

3 Lebreau (1-030)

1 Selphie (6-013)

3 Zangan (1-188)

3 Vermilion Bird l'Cie Caetuna (6-010)

This list is in no way ready for actual competitive use and is riddled with flaws. It’s best use is as a baseline for playing Mono Fire.

Selling Points

Zack, is really potent vs other Fire decks and Lightning decks due to his ability to play another forward onto the field once he is removed.

Tifa, really potent vs Lightning decks as their best punish to a 4CP 8K forward is Al-Cid and she should have haste from Zangan.

Xande, the forward is simply massive. Some decks actually struggle with forwards that simply have the text massive. Xande does come with more upside than just massive, he helps some of the smaller burn cards find targets.

Evoker, Fire really needs backups to make it’s best cards playable: Zack, Xande, Tifa, Phoenix.

Vermillion Bird l’Cie Caetuna, having this card at 3 makes it extra likely that she lines up on the first forward played.

Mistakes

Firion, he doesn’t actually do much besides being massive. So his spots are better used for quicker cards like Zidane or even other huge forwards like Nidhogg even opus 1 Firion could be played in his spot. By extension, Guy is a mistake.

Zell, only having 2 was a mistake, 3 is definitely needed.

Goblin, I’m not actually sure why Goblin is in the deck. At the time, I probably had a really cool idea involving Goblin.

Bahamut, this card needs to be at more than 1, 4CP to clear the way for damage is a really nice effect in Fire.

Phoenix, maybe if Zidane goes in this card gets better, but the targets are just lacklustre at the moment.

Selphie, again being at 1 is a problem, Zell is just too important.

Skeleton

1 Cloud

2 Cloud

3 Vivi

3 Tifa

3 Zell

3 Xande

1 Tifa

1 Zack

2 Belias

3 Brynhildyr

2 Bahamut

X Evoker

X 2CP backups including Black Mage and Red Mage

1 Black Waltz 2

1 Irvine

3 Lebreau

2 Selphie

3 Zangan

3 Caetuna

That’s about 40/50 cards in the deck accounted for. How the rest of the slots get used up is entirely down to preference and what decks need countering for now.

Draft Stuff

Earth

Definitely in the running for the most powerful draft colour this set. Earth is home to the most powerful summons and a whole crew of powerful Common and Rare forwards. Earth’s weakness lies in it’s backups. Almost all of them are 2 CP backups with situational effects that will almost never be used. They’re nice, just none of them are on the same level as cards like Kazusa, almost none of them have useful entry effects and the ones that do are Legend or Hero rarity.

No matter what colours you’re playing if Ajido-Marujido comes up, she’s a powerful inclusion. When playing another colour with Fire, if Epitav crops up, it’s worth considering taking Epitav as Hugh Yurg is a powerful draft card being able to search Ward. Even with just Epitav and Hugh as the only Earth cards in the deck they’re a playable pair due to Epitav being playable with any CP and then providing the Earth CP to play Hugh Yurg. This can open the floodgates to an Earth splash in any deck to gain access to the coveted Titan and Cactuar summons.

Always Pick

Gigas

Titan

Cactuar

Adjido-Marujido

Always Pick if X

Warrior of Light, you don’t have many huge forwards

Machinist, no outs to Paul

Cait Sith, you don’t have one already

Mushussu, you don’t have one already

Almost no Earth card is unpickable, the worst and only almost unplayable card is Moogle Brothers. Other than that, just aim to get the Titan, Cactuar and Gigas.

TL;DR pt1 pick 10 fire cards to fill the blanks and it’ll make a decent deck

TL;DR pt2 Titan, Cactuar, Gigas

[yehosera]

Locals Report 02/08/18

This week introduced a league system at Dark Sphere. So while I had planned to play Mono Ice this week, I instead ended up playing Earth Wind. I’ll include the mono Ice deck at the end, but I’ll write more about it at a later date. I finished 4-1, a good start to the league.

https://ffdecks.com/deck/5105113379110912

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Earth Wind v5

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (21):

3 Leo (6-084)

1 Cid Raines (1-192)

1 Y'shtola (5-068)

1 Zidane (3-056)

2 Barbariccia (3-066)

3 Dadaluma (4-085)

2 Gilgamesh (3-103)

2 Zidane (6-044)

3 Cecil (5-086)

1 Hugh Yurg (6-077)

1 Kam'lanaut (5-148)

1 Nidhogg (6-130)

Monsters (3):

3 Cactuar (4-058)

Summons (9):

1 Asura (2-049)

2 Hecatoncheir (1-117)

3 Diabolos (5-062)

3 Phoenix (5-019)

Backups (17):

1 Chaos (1-184)

3 Moogle (XI) (6-058)

3 Semih Lafihna (5-059)

1 Masked Woman (3-076)

2 Miner (5-082)

1 Ajido-Marujido (6-064)

3 Star Sibyl (5-091)

1 Minfilia (6-079)

1 Shantotto (1-107)

1 Tama (4-086)

Best Card: Gilgamesh

I got lethal twice because of his haste, and won another game because of him + Leo.

Worst Card: Phoenix

I really like this card, but without Urianger, it’s just not quite as good.

Locals

Round 1 - Earth/Wind. This matchup is rather easy, my deck played Hecatoncheir and his did not. Both players drew very poorly at the start with a very low backup counter. However, I was able to use Minfilia’s ability to remove his Chaos, and a Hecatoncheir on a Star Sibyl. I got the coolest lethal, he had The Emperor and Dadaluma with Maria as a backup, meanwhile I had an 11,000 power Leo, a Dadaluma and a Zidane. So M1 I played Y’shtola to prevent any funny business, then attacked with the monster that was Leo, so he took the damage putting himself on 6 damage. Then I attacked with Dadaluma and he blocked with his Dadaluma, so I had to use my effect to deal 4k damage, then he was able to deal damage to some forwards. Then I attacked with Zidane and he blocked with The Emperor, so I cast Diabolos to set to 1k and untap backups, then just as he thought he was safe I used Star Sibyl to bring in Gilgamesh during the battle phase for the 7th point of damage.

Round 2 - Mono Ice. Poor guy didn’t understand what was happening. I got 5 backups, Leo and Gilgamesh then removed every forward. Also EX Burst 2x live Cecil in a row for the first time 8)

Round 3 - Earth Wind. The game was weird, I ended up using Hecaton on 2 Minfilia to protect my Chaos. A really complex turn involving Cid Raines and a Phoenix as a combat trick to buff Leo put me really far ahead, then the Nidhogg closed out the game. Basically Hecaton really helps in the mirror. Hecaton is the best card. Hecaton is love. Hecaton is life.

Round 4 - Mono Water Fusoya. I used Hecaton on his Fusoya. This matchup is all about sitting there doing a fat lot of nothing, play forwards to remove their forwards and preserve your life total. Eventually they run out of Famfrit and Dadaluma is safe. Once Dadaluma is safe, nothing that deck has can meaningfully interact with anything your deck has. I used Gilgamesh for a deck out lethal with the Haste modifier. Mono Water Fusoya has a lot of stuff, but will tire itself out eventually, the matchup is all about simply living long enough for them to run out.

Round 5 - Water/Ice Vikings. Legit, drew nothing all game and eventually died. The matchup is simple, play Dadaluma and remove their field until time ends. Nidhogg is the main card that can you trouble as the Dadalumas end up in the removed from play section and not the break zone. To avoid that, Zidane is really important as they have very few ways of handling the 4CP one.

Changes

Leo, as the deck was made to see how viable Leo + Gilgamesh is he had to go in. Why is it worth testing Leo and Gilgamesh? Gilgamesh provides a win condition with Leo, similar to Dadaluma + Cactuar, and gives the deck a haste forward. Leo in isolation is nice even without Gilgamesh, being 1 CP he’s a nice secondary threat to play in turns that Dadaluma or Zidane are played and with the help of Cactuars can reach silly power levels.

Cid Raines, as Chaos is in the deck, the best card printed can make a return. He’s actually at an incredibly nice spot right now, Viking decks are popular and he provides some punish for their most played cards. If Earth/Wind is playing Chaos Cid Rains should be played.

Gilgamesh, it’s always nice to have a Haste forward. The main reason is due to the threat he makes Leo become. The existence of Gilgamesh ups Leo from an annoyance to a near Zidane level of must remove. Essentially, the card is below average naturally in the deck, but thanks to Leo synergy he is playable. I don’t think I would play Leo without Gilgamesh, so the pair are similar to Delita Vanille, it just depends on if end game inevitability is better than the sustain Vaille provides.

Kam’Lanaught, as Gilgamesh is in the deck a Chaos is needed, so Kam’La comes back. He makes for some complicated early turns, as in opus 5 Star Sibyl always got and broke itself for Kam’La, but now Moogle (XI) exists so it’s hard to always make the right call between going turbo with Moogle and getting tempo with Kam’La. I’m sure one is always right (with some exceptions), but working it out is too complicated for me I need to practice more with the deck.

Nidhogg, felt nice. Better than Kefka as there’s no Leyak and more helpful towards my gameplan than The Emperor. Also really strong in the mirror, I can’t stress enough how annoying it is to lose a Dadaluma to the banished zone instead of the break zone. Miner and Tama don’t work and the 9k on the Hogg means sometimes Dadaluma cannot even revenge kill it.

Asura, I always like this card. Really good at extending your ceiling for a turn.

Phoenix, always useful in the archetype, but without Urianger it just really felt a bit underwhelming. Leo isn’t good enough for Phoenix to bring back, as Leo does not have an entry effect. So until Urianger makes his return to the deck, I don’t think Phoenix deserves a spot. 4CP Phoenix though would’ve been better. Without a Leyak, 7CP to remove a forward is simply too slow.

Chaos, helps Gilgamesh and Cid Raines.

Potential Edits

-3 Phoenix, +1 Hecatoncheir, +2 WoL/Phoenix

Hecatoncheir, I can’t sing enough praises for, so just remember it helps in every matchup currently.

WoL, I didn’t get much Zidane stuff going on, so WoL might help with that.

Phoenix, Leo is a good blocker and Cid Raines is an S+++ target for the card, so it’s worth trying before I write it off completely.

Draft Stuff

Wind

Wind has some of the strongest support cards in the set, and has Lezaford and Gullwings to help facilitate using the colour as a primary colour. I end up playing Wind in every draft as the colour is so under picked, however, even with premium picks the colour does not stand out very much compared to other colours using their mediocre picks. The legendary cards are okay, Zidane is amazing, but Maria is too easy to remove, however as Zidane is worth so much money you’ll never be passed a Zidane. Gullwings and Raptor allow the colour to have some meat in the common slot. Losing a Hero slot to Leon isn’t too bad as the other Hero rarity cards are exceptional. The main issues facing the colour in draft is it’s low overall power level and that it’s backups are easy pickups for people in other colours. Cid Haze and Cid (II) are good in every deck making being passed premium cards for your colour hard AND in cases where you are getting premium cards they’re not much better than mediocre cards in other colours.

Always Pick

Cid Haze, Paine, Rikku, Diablos

Always Pick if X

Cid (II), the draft is just starting so you can adjust

Zu, you have Lezaford

Geomancer, you have almost no ways of handling Paul

Wingvern, you don’t have one yet

Don’t pick Paul when possible, it’s so easy to be prepared for him.

Mono Ice

https://ffdecks.com/deck/6245960862662656

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Mono Ice v4

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (24):

3 Cid Raines (1-192)

2 Vayne (2-026)

3 Genesis (3-033)

3 Celes (4-038)

1 Setzer (4-036)

3 Locke (4-048)

1 The Emperor (5-036)

2 Kuja (6-027)

3 Rinoa (6-041)

3 Nidhogg (6-130)

Summons (9):

3 Glasya Labolas (5-032)

2 Zalera, the Death Seraph (3-037)

2 Hades (6-038)

1 Mateus, the Corrupt (5-044)

1 Shiva (3-032)

Backups (17):

3 Devout (1-048)

3 Duke Larg (1-057)

1 Mog (XIII-2) (1-196)

3 Time Mage (3-043)

2 Gestahlian Empire Cid (4-026)

1 Scholar (5-030)

1 Summoner (6-031)

3 Jihl Nabaat (1-193)

Not going to go into very much detail, but basically, 3x Nidhogg to always Nidhogg their first forward so you’re always the attacking player; Ice likes to attack so it’s an alright plan. Kuja needs to go to 3, that card is REALLY good. Summoner is useful, as once Mateus, the Corrupt in the breakzone your opponent can never block again without a plan and similarly Shiva can be used for lethal easily with the help of Summoner.

TL;DR pt1. Leo + Gil is good

TL;DR pt2. Gullwings are alright

TL;DR pt3. 3x Nidhogg > 3x Dadaluma

[yehosera]

Brotherhood Open 2018

Last Sunday, I took part in the annual Brotherhood Open in London. It was a 26 man event, with people traveling from around south England to take part. Once again, Alex did a fantastic job of running the Final Fantasy and Johnathan Southway recorded feature games that will appear later on in the week on his Youtube channel. 5 Rounds of Swiss, best of 1, then top 8 cut, best of 3. Standard stuff.

The Brotherhood - https://www.facebook.com/TheBrotherhoodGames/

I would seriously suggest checking out Brotherhood Games, in terms of value for your money, this place is unbeatable in every card game.

Team Chocobo - https://www.facebook.com/TeamChocobo/

As I don’t know when the videos are going up, just check in there a few times during the week.

Top 8 decks - https://ffdecks.com/tournament/the-brotherhood-open-2018-uk/6221148165505024

Earth Wind v3

https://ffdecks.com/deck/5980057877086208

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Earth Wind V3

As Seen In Tournament: The Brotherhood Open 2018 (UK)

Forwards (20):

2 Delita (4-087)

2 Y'shtola (5-068)

1 Zidane (3-056)

2 Barbariccia (3-066)

3 Dadaluma (4-085)

2 Vanille (1-093)

2 Wol (5-075)

2 Zidane (6-044)

3 Cecil (5-086)

1 Hugh Yurg (6-077)

Monsters (3):

3 Cactuar (4-058)

Summons (10):

3 Hecatoncheir (4-093)

3 Hecatoncheir (1-117)

3 Diabolos (5-062)

1 Titan (6-075)

Backups (17):

3 Moogle (XI) (6-058)

2 Semih Lafihna (5-059)

1 Thief (5-055)

1 White Mage (6-047)

1 Masked Woman (3-076)

2 Miner (5-082)

1 Ajido-Marujido (6-064)

3 Star Sibyl (5-091)

1 Minfilia (6-079)

1 Shantotto (1-107)

1 Tama (4-086)

Best Card: Hecatoncheir

I cast this card multiple times whenever possible. It was fantastic every time the card was cast. The only reason the deck was able to out-perform some of the other decks was because of this card.

Worst Card: Hecatoncheir

Without Enna Kros, my forwards aren’t actually that big, so the Hecatoncheir was almost never usable.

The Event

In the end, I finished top 8, losing on time in my top 8 match. The only thing to blame for the loss was me, as I wasn’t thinking properly about time, I forgot it’s 0, 1, 2, 3 and not 1, 2, 3, 4 so when the turn timer was on 2 during my turn, I thought I had another turn to catchup on damage and did not remove his last blocker before attacking. So yeah, big mistake, but a lesson learned; pay more attention!

Swiss

Round 1 - Lightning/Wind, this game was recorded, so I don’t need to go into too much detail. Essentially a turn 2 Hugh Yurg got hit by a turn 2 Al-Cid. I then played a Vanille and the rest of the game is my opponent destroying 4-5 Vanilles and 4 Dadalumas. Zidane pressured all of the forwards out of his hand, so eventually my opponent just ran out of stuff to do and died.

Round 2 - Earth/Fire, this game I drew the nutty nuts with Hugh Yurg and 2 copies of Moogle (XI). So while I was powering through my deck, he was stuck on 1 backup the whole game.

Round 3 - Earth/Water/Wind, I got backup stuck and had no Hugh Yurg to save me. It’s worth noting, in all of the previous games I was backup stuck, however, Hugh Yurg was able to save me. This game was only remotely winnable because of Zidane. While I was stuck on 2 backups, he was on 4 with Yuna Rikku and Moogle (XI); it was going REALLY well for him. Due to the nature of Zidane, one answer to him is to play all of your forwards to remove the on attack efficiency, this prompted my opponent to play 3/4 forwards in a turn just to avoid the on attack effect. Once Zidane attacked and confirmed there were no more forwards in his hand, Shantotto was able to clean house. I ended up losing to deck out (as he has Rikku and I have no Rikku, no Archers and the deck self mills a lot). So while this game was a loss, it really showcased the power of Zidane and Shantotto as a catchup method.

Round 4 - Water/Wind Gullwings, on paper an unwindable matchup, however, thanks to Hecatoncheir it becomes a winnable one. Again, stuck on 2 backups while he was on 4/5. The main turning points were both copies of Zidane pressuring all of the forwards out of his hand, ensuring that assembling YRP was impossible, and Hecatoncheir removing 2 Minuws and a Maria. While the matchup is straight up unwindable if they assemble YRP and a copy of Y’shtola, the deck does have the tools needed to harass their cards and prevent them getting off the ground with ease.

Round 5 - Ice/Earth, I was behind all game until surprise surprise Zidane was played. Again, the Shantotto + Zidane dynamic came into play ruining all of his fun. This game Titan closed out, by picking up a 3 for 1. I attacked with Zidane, in response to the effect, he discarded his hand to use Hecatoncheir on my Zidane, this allowed me to cast Titan on a different forward he controlled. Thus removing the forward Titan targeted and pumping Zidane up to enough power to turn his own Hecaton against him.

Top 8

Round 1 - Mono Water, with the other 7 decks in top 8 having at least 1 water card in them, it was unsurprising to be playing vs a water deck. With the games taking over 70 minutes, I physically cannot remember the play by plays and each swing point during the match. Game 1 I was grossly unprepared for and basically didn’t know what I was doing. Thinking my usual gameplan would work was wrong. So for game 2 I adjusted, it’s just a fatigue matchup. 1st thing to do is make sure Cagnazzo does not net them more than 1 point of damage. That’s done by clearing away every forward that’s played except for the little things Dadaluma can always remove. 2nd is to resolve Hecatoncheir as much as possible. In game 2 I resolved 4 and in the game 3, I should have won, I once again resolved 4. This means the games take FOREVER, as every turn it’s about working out how you’re going to reach this eventual game plan of Hecatoning everything and living long enough to do it. The game dynamic shifts from remove his stuff and attack him to an awkward game of never discarding Hecatoncheir or Diabolos, never playing forwards until he has something he does not want to Famfrit away OR you have a Vanille on the field, and simply never casting Shantotto.

The Deck

Forwards

Delita, only really in the deck because of Vanille. If the 2CP Hecatoncheir leaves the deck, then so will Vanille and by extension Delita. I also would not play Vanille without Delita, so he really does live and die by the Vanille.

Y’shtola, I normally just play 1 of her. I don’t like using her action ability and she shouldn’t really die once played. I opted for 2 in this deck because of Zidane and Vanille, cards that are hard to remove synergise with more cards that are hard to remove, as such she made the cut for 2. Also, Titan on this bad girl sounds tasty.

Zidane, despite playing the 4CP Zidane, I just cannot see Earth Wind functioning without this copy. He also works a bit with Delita, I was able to play both and remove an Ashe from both the hand and the field. The things Zidane does for this deck are so great I would rather risk the name conflict than play without the 3CP Zidane. 1 of him is fine, he feels so powerful 2 sounds like a really good idea, but it’s not a great draw all of the time, it’s more about waiting until you NEED to remove something powerful from their hand. Useful tip, just remove the highest impact card, don’t bother doing things like removing a backup because it might make their next turn awkward (unless if the backup is important, Minwu etc) or removing a card that has the potential to remove Zidane (he’s not here to protect himself, he’s here to protect your mid-game), just try and remove as much gas from their hand as possible to help ease up the mid game pressure.

Barbariccia, was kinda uneventful, she can go back to 1. As nice as she is, I didn’t play vs other Dadaluma decks, making the effect not very powerful. I tried to use her as a combat trick with Star Sibyl once if my opponent blocked, however, they didn’t take the bait :(.

Dadaluma, powerful card etcetc. I don’t have much to say on him, other than, don’t over value the card sometimes Cecil is more useful.

Vanille, she was extremely useful. Even without Delita, being able to filter those useless 2CP Hecatoncheirs out of my deck was a godsend. Also, vs high levels of removal she’s just fantastic. She has synergy with Barbariccia and Cactuar in so far as blocking her is likely to get punished and she has some synergy with Diabolos and Titan, as if they remove her to avoid the cards being used as combat tricks she does come back. I liked the card a lot and would like to find a way to keep her in the deck.

WoL, kinda useless. I like 2 of him to have just enough mid game gas. Wouldn’t suggest dropping him down to 1 or up to 3. 2 Seemed just right.

Zidane, what a power card. The Shantotto synergy described earlier is out of this world. Sometimes he lets Moogle’s retrieve cost 0 CP, he is a definite contender for being a 3 of. Maybe over a Barbariccia. Having Titan or Diabolos in hand makes attacking with him vs just about anything beneficial and having a WoL to support the Genome gives people an exceptionally hard time. What makes Zidane so powerful is when he’s played as the 2nd threat onto the board. There’s little point playing him as the first piece of action (unless you’re desperate like I was quite a few times in the tournament), he shines as the thing that tips people over the edge. A card like Dadalume or Vanille takes a turn of setup to be ready to remove efficiently, once Zidane comes down as the world’s largest lightning rod, he suddenly ruins whatever they were setting up for leaving your other threats to go an extra turn unanswered or he goes unanswered. The added dynamic of simply not being able to save forwards until it’s beneficial to play them applies a LOT of hidden pressure. It’s not something that’s easy to notice during a game, but once you notice what it’s doing to their turns the card becomes abusable. Also, sometimes he gets Famfritted and you sit there contemplating life.

Cecil, fantastic, do not cut Cecil down to 2. It’s easy CP early game and soul crushing in the later stages.

Hugh Yurg, was more on a trial run than anything. I wanted to see if cutting down 1 copy of Semih would be okay if I played him over her. He was strong, REALLY powerful with Tama during the early phases. Where possible I’d like to keep him in the deck. As a turn 2 play he’s powerful and as action during stalemates he’s also powerful due to him filtering the deck by a bit, the EX burst is a nice little bonus. Not mandatory in the archetype, but a nice little addition in place of a tech card if you’re unsure what to tech vs. He could easily have been Psicom Enforcer for example, however, I didn’t believe I would see many monster decks so took something generically useful instead.

Monsters & Summons

Cactuar, it’s fine at 3 obviously, as one of the win conditions is assembling Dadaluma + 2x Cactuar. I did not miss Leyak in this deck.

Hecatoncheir, this 2CP letdown is an easy cut. Yes, it’s powerful with WoL some of the time, but I really hate giving my opponent the chance to react to my removal cards. In a deck that has at least 1 card that increases the power of my forwards Hecaton probably shines a bit brighter.

Hecatoncheir, this 3CP powerhouse is an easy auto include. I would play 6 of this card if I could.

Diabolos, again 3 of this card as it’s an easy +2 Wind CP during the early game that wins the game later on. In this deck as it does not have the safety net Urianger Phoenix and Leyak provides, knowing that if something spooky happens being able to untap all of my forwards inspires some confidence while deciding how many forwards to attack with. It’s basically picking up a lot of the slack that the Urianger portion left behind. Defensively it can untap your forwards like Leyak does and offensively it can be used as removal in place of Phoenix. Basically, this card’s REALLY important as it does everything.

Titan, has some really nice art.

Backups

Moogle (XI), best card in the deck because it searches Hecatoncheir. I want to try playing the card at 2, but that can wait.

Semih Lafihna, not much to say about her. REALLY good when you draw Star Sibyl.

Thief, I actually only drew this card once. So I’ll give it a fair chance as it does synergise with Zidane and he’s my new 2nd favourite card.

White Mage, was crap. I had it vs a Viking deck and never wanted to discard a card to use the effect or leave the CP open to use it. It’s just not worth the extra effort to use. I’ll try it again as maybe having an easily breakable Wind backup is worth the struggle, but I’d rather just have that 1 copy of Archer. Leila as a 4CP entry effect break a backup is actually really good, so I’m supposed to use the card vs Devout and Miner? But, Hecatoncheir already does that. So it’s not worth playing the White Mage.

Masked Woman, fantastic card, got a huge buff with Moogle (XI). Being able to search her when you need her instead of relying on luck to do so is a HUGE boon for the card. She’s very unlikely to be going anywhere and I would suggest every earth deck plays her at 1.

Miner, fine at 2. Same as always. I’ve actually started using the effect to retrieve Cecil a lot more. It’s really good with Moogle (XI) and Delita helps solve the issue I used to have with Miner. I always found it hard to use Miner’s effect and do something productive other than play the forward during that turn, however, Delita is cheap and is productive with Vanille on the field, so there is some potential for 3 Miner in this deck.

Ajido-Marujido, I’m still yet to use the cast a summon modifier. It’s just always better to get back more Hecatoncheir. That’s not to say the card is not amazing, I’m sure when I use that modifier it’ll be for effective lethal. Ajido does something the deck needs, it increases the summon count by 2. As such I find the card to be exceptionally powerful. I would REALLY like to add a copy of Asura to the deck to use the untap 5 modifier with her off of 4 backups. With 4 backups, tap 3 discard 1 play Adjido, add back Diabolos/Titan(or Phoenix if we’re getting into Urianger territory) and Asura, then use the leftover CP to play Asura to get back 5 backups and cast the huge summon.

Star Sibyl, is actually the lifeblood of the deck. With reaching high backup counts being integral to the deck’s longterm health, a lot of the burden falls onto Star Sibyl and Moogle (XI) to get there. Sibyl gets Moogle which gets more backups. The other reason is because the deck has a serious lack of proactive odd costed backups. They’re all better when saved except for Sibyl. Tama is better for Dadaluma stuff, Shantotto well it’s Shantotto, Ajido once you know what summons you need and when you need them, and Masked Woman requires a dull forward. As such, if you want to accelerate your backup growth the burden falls entirely onto Sibyl. A lot of the game is bumming around on 2/3 backups, then having a turn with Sibyl that propels you to 5 backups while impacting the board. A good example is on 3 backups, using Sibyl to get Moogle, using Moogle to get Masked Woman and using her to remove a forward. High ceiling turns like that are what makes Sibyl strong, not to mention that she adds to the ceiling of any later turn with the action ability. (Ceiling just means how much it’s possible to do during a turn)

Minfilia, was nice. Maybe needs to be a 2 of to see her earlier, but she’s a contender for being cut from the deck. She does say gain 2 copies of Dadaluma, so I’m hesitant to cut her so early, but she did not feel very impactful all of the time. Hence, I want to try 2 copies of her out to see if she can help promote a more aggressive playstyle knowing I have the safety of her adding 2 cards back to hand effect to keep giving me gas. Also, I’m seeing a LOT of Nidhoggs.

Shantotto, fine at 1, liked her a bit better at 2. Until the space is worked out properly she’s fine at 1.

Tama, good like always, especially with all of these new fancy Earth forwards to summon like Vanille and Hugh Yurg.

Potential Edits

-1 Y’shtola, -1 Barbariccia, -1 While Mage, +1 Zidane, +1 Asura, +1 Archer.

It’s also possible to remove the Vanille and co entirely, but that’s a whole new blog if that happens.

Draft Stuff

Ice

Ice is under drafted in this set in most pods. It doesn’t have many forwards and it’s backups are all awkward. The strength of Ice currently is that nobody is picking Locke. Celes is a no-brainer she’s a 2CP potential 8,000 power forward, however, the Locke is a bit underwhelming as a sometimes 2CP 7,000 power forward. Due to this, Locke is under picked which makes him powerful. By having 4+ copies of Locke in your deck and a few Celes he should always be a 2CP 7,000 power forward which makes the card insane. The other issue is that the colour holds the 2nd most powerful summons in the set, so it’s a popular splash colour and it holds Kazusa which, due to the nature of draft, is playable in every deck. This means your summons are in medium contention and your most impactful backup is always in high contention. Kurasame, one of the better forwards is a Hero making him an unlikely pull and the reward for pulling ice legends isn’t very much. Outside of Locke and Celes, Shocktrooper and Snow are the only ice forwards below hero rarity and they both suck. Make no mistake, Shocktrooper is terrible because it cannot attack, there will always be crappy cards littering the field in a draft game so it’s useless and Snow has no other XIII cards in the set to help him.

Always pick

Kazusa

Hades

Celes

Doomtrain

Militesi Coeurl

Locke

The rest is all kinda bad other than the backups. 3CP summoner is exceptionally powerful, but without the summons people won’t be looking for her, the Ysayle is a more desirably pickup to most people, so take that when possible.

TL;DR 3CP Hecaton = heaven, 2CP Hecaton = hell. Locke + Celes are good draft picks

[yehosera]

France and Germany

As many of you know, I went to France for their nationals in Paris and to Germany for a draft + regional in Volkmarsen. A big thank you to Noah for letting me stay at his place in Paris and congraduations on the 2nd place finish, another big thank you to Tim as without him in Germany I would have been completely lost, finally one more thank you to the Rüger brothers (Patta and Dennis) for letting me stay with them after Volkmarsen and being all round amazing hosts.

As the regional and national event were in Opus 5, it’s not very useful for me to write a lot about the decks I played, instead I’ll talk about how they transition into Opus 6. I can, however, talk a bit about drafting as the draft was an Opus 6 draft.

French Nationals

I took my trusty Urianger deck to a 3rd place finish, securing myself a spot at Euroes later on this year in London. Having to play the Last Chance Qualifier and the swiss portion of the main event was extremely tiring, especially with a deck like Urianger. Next time I will build a simpler more auto-pilot deck for the last chance qualifier as, generally, the quality of player you play vs in the last chance qualifier is lower than that in the main event.

Cid Raines and Co. Paris Edition

https://ffdecks.com/deck/5665704254636032

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: French nationals 3rd Place Cid Raines & Co.

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (16):

1 Cid Raines (1-192)

3 Urianger (5-163)

1 Paine (2-063)

1 Y'shtola (5-068)

1 Zidane (3-056)

1 Barbariccia (3-066)

3 Dadaluma (4-085)

3 Cecil (5-086)

1 Kefka (4-147)

1 Kam'lanaut (5-148)

Monsters (5):

3 Cactuar (4-058)

2 Leyak (5-071)

Summons (11):

1 Asura (2-049)

3 Diabolos (5-062)

2 Exodus, the Judge-Sal (3-112)

2 Phoenix (3-020)

3 Phoenix (5-019)

Backups (18):

1 Chaos (1-184)

3 Archer (1-088)

2 Rikku (1-089)

3 Semih Lafihna (5-059)

1 Masked Woman (3-076)

2 Miner (5-082)

3 Star Sibyl (5-091)

2 Shantotto (1-107)

1 Tama (4-086)

For Opus 6, the following changes are good places to start with the deck.

-1 Paine, -1 Kefka, -1 Semih Lafihna, -1 Shantotto, -2 Archer, +1 Leo, +1 Nidhogg, +1 Hugh Yurg, +3 Moogle (XI).

Paine, while very useful in the deck, is not mandatory. The only other non-mandatory forwards left are Y’shtola and Barbariccia, with Paine being the least impactful she can go away for now. The only reason to put her back in, is if you are struggling to reach 5 backups, in which case she can come back in as a pretend backup.

Kefka, the saddest card to draw in the entire deck, but mandatory because Kam’La needed an additional target. With Nidhogg now in the deck though, he gives a nice target for Kam’La that is more impactful when played than Kefka. Don’t worry too much about the huge CP cost, as there will always be more than enough situational cards to use as fodder in your hand to cast Nidhogg.

Semih Lafihna, very powerful card, however, Hugh Yurg can search her and is an exceptional Tama target during the early game. 3 Moogle (XI) are going into the deck, so the number of cards you can start the game on doesn’t change.

Shantotto, it’s fine at 1. Not much is trying to deal 7 points of damage in the first 5 turns at the moment so it’s okay to drop her down a notch. Also, with Moogle (XI) you’ll have an additional way to search for her if you’re ever in a pinch.

Archer, not dropped to 0 yet, as there are some Minwus floating around, making it a nice search target in certain matchups. Only 1, maybe 2, is needed as Asura and Miner can recycle the Archer in matchups that are very Archer reliant.

Leo, a nice way to supplement not having access to multicoloured CP early on. Also, the deck wants a big boy to summon with Phoenix. Initially Kefka made it into the deck simply because he was kinda big and Phoenix could summon him, so Leo is a nice include to fill that hole the deck wasn’t able to fill in Opus 5.

Nidhogg, basically covered in the Kefka section. It’s huge, does good things, has 9,000 power. Taking into account all of the effects, it comes down to a 1CP 9,000 power forward (starts at 9CP, -2CP for discard, removing a forward -4CP, saving a card on the removal effect -2CP).

Hugh Yurg, has good Tama synergy during the early game. Also is part of the deck’s new nut draw.

Moogle (XI). Moogle + Moogle + Hugh Yurg/Semih/Star Sibyl = 4 backups. I’ll explain with Hugh Yurg as that’s the best opening. T1 Moogle. T2 Hugh search Semih, play Semih. T3 Moogle S, search Star Sibyl, play Sibyl search Moogle, attack or do w.e with Hugh. T4 Moogle S, search Miner, play Miner add back Moogle. 4 Backups, 1 forward, Moogle S ability and Star Sibyl are available. You’ll have to try REALLY hard to lose with an opening like that.

Volkmarsen Mono Lightning Al-Cid (Raines) & Co.

https://ffdecks.com/deck/4921895996620800

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Volkmarsen Mono Lightning Al-Cid (Raines) & Co

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (23):

3 Rygdea (1-211)

3 Illua (5-099)

3 Onion Knight (1-125)

3 Al-Cid (2-097)

2 Amon (2-098)

3 Zemus (5-108)

3 Orlandeau (4-101)

3 Edea (2-099)

Monsters (2):

2 Twilight Odin (5-101)

Summons (8):

2 Ramuh (4-116)

2 Exodus, the Judge-Sal (3-112)

3 Odin (1-123)

1 Raiden (4-114)

Backups (17):

1 Alphinaud (5-162)

3 Black Mage (2-108)

3 Red Mage (1-121)

1 Scholar (5-102)

1 Cid of Clan Gully (5-103)

1 Gramis (2-106)

3 Louisoix (5-120)

3 Lulu (1-150)

1 Seymour (1-137)

1st of all, the backups might not be exactly what I played for the event. However, they’re as close as I’ll get without seeing my decklist.

How this style with Orlandeau transitions into Opus 6 is slightly different to how most of my Opus 6 mono lightning decks look, however, it’s still a force to be reckoned with.

-1 Rygdea, -2 Amon, -1 Zemus, -2 Ramuh, -1 Raiden, -1 Gramis, -1 Louisoix, -1 Seymour, +1 Seifer, +3 Estinien, +3 Ramuh, +3 Edea.

Rygdea, while very powerful, it’s one of the more expendable parts of the Goon Squad. It just means you have to be extra hesitant to discard the 1st copy for CP before seeing the 2nd.

Amon, an exceptional card. However, it’s not a Dragoon. Amon is a supporting card, and as the deck is making space for Orlandeau, the supporting cards are the first to get the axe.

Zemus, similar to Amon, it’s a supporting card and thus gets axed first. These and the Rygdea can go back in if Orlandeau is cut.

Ramuh, was really just there to kill annoying monsters, as the new Ramuh kills monsters and does so much more, it’s not really needed.

Raiden, really just there to blow out Wind/Earth decks. As there’s so much Water around these days, it’s not worth worrying too much about Wind/Earth as they shouldn’t be worrying about you.

Gramis, powerful card, it’s just the space is needed in the backups and Cid of Clan Gully fetches a better card.

Louisoix, the 3rd Louisoix is weaker than the 3rd Edea, so he had to go.

Seymour, not really needed these days. Too many of the 3CP forwards are fast (have entry effects) and with access to so many copies of Edea AND Orlandeau, it’s not like the deck is lacking in removal.

All of the backups that were removed for Edea are up for debate. Whichever backups aren’t working out for you, swap them around and keep fiddling until you get to somewhere that’s comfortable. Other considerations are Summoner (1-138) and Cannoneer (5-114).

Seifer, searches Edea, has EX Burst written on it’s text and is an Al-Cid target. It’s just all round good for the deck. I would prefer 2 copies of the card, but everything else is as low as the numbers can go making him a 1 of instead of a 2 of.

Estinien, as I’m trying to save space, surely a 5CP card can be cut down to make room for a more playable early game card? He’s a lot like Diabolos. If the card is at 2, the moment you’re forced to discard a copy for CP in the early game, the next one will seem so far away. It’s best to just have 3 so that at the start of the game you don’t have to think too hard about discarding him. Unlike Rygdea, if you save an Estinien from turn 1 until he becomes playable, you’ll be playing down 1 card so long it’s not worth it. In contrast, if you save a Rygdea until he becomes playable, it shouldn’t take very long before Onion Knight or Al-Cid or Black Mage turn up to make the card live. This is what dictated if Rygdea or Estinien should be 2 ofs or 3 ofs in the deck.

Ramuh, a lot of power is in this card. The flexibility is massive. It’s easy CP early game, however, once both players start to hit 4/5 damage, the card becomes a tide turner like Shiva was in Opus 3/4. Being removal early and a win condition late game, the card is far too powerful to simply be a 2 of.

Edea, what synergises with removal? More removal. Having 3 more Edea activations be it through Death or Devouting her back onto the field, it pushes the number of forwards Mono Lightning can remove per game from around 9/10 on a good game, to absurd numbers. Pre Edea, it was expected that Al-Cid kills 1, some combination of Goons removes another, Seymour 1, Odins 2/3, Edeas 2, Orlandeau 1/2. Now with this new backup Edea, 3 more are guaranteed to be removed in a fatigue type game. In the past, simply playing forwards and waiting for them to stop destroying your forwards was an option, not anymore. Increasing the density of draws that say “remove a forward“ is what makes the new Edea so powerful, and as such is a worthy include at 3.

Draft

Instead of doing 1 giant thing, covering each colour in draft etc. I’m going to write a bit now about how I personally like to draft, then a bit at the end of the next few blogs covering an element in a bit of detail. In draft, all I really look for is removal and 3CP forwards. 3 CP forwards are easy to squeeze out in turns and tend to have okay bodies. So a large density of removal cards and fast forwards are what I look for. Opus 6 is a blessing for this style, as every colour has removal options. In addition, every colour has Evokers. So drafting just about every colour is a viable strategy. I finished 2nd at the draft event losing only 1 game and 1 match playing minimum 5 colour decks over 3 pods. That’s not to say sticking to 2 colours and splashing a 3rd is unviable, it’s actually still incredibly powerful to do that, I’m just thrilled playing as many colours as you want is a strong thing to do.

Pick Priority

Removal

Game ending forwards

Entry Effects

Versatile Backups

Forwards that protect themselves

3 CP forwards

Static backups

Static forwards

Try not to double down on the removal monsters in the set, as you should never have 2 on the field at once.

I don’t mean cards like Garland that are GG if they stick around and deal 7 points of damage, I mean forwards that set up lethal. Examples, the obvious Nidhogg, once this bad boy is played and removes 4CP worth of forward, the game’s basically ended most of the time. Ultimecia, as she allows you to generate a board state whereby you don’t have to do anything and can still end the game through her effect. Ewen. Hugh Yurg, while not exactly ending the game then and there, if he searches Ward and Ward gets played next turn, the game is almost over as that kind of card quality is hard to beat in draft.

Entry Effects. Be they on backups or forwards are good, as it means your cards always do something instead of needing to sit around and wait for a situation to be good. Remember backups can be played using anything, so Kazusa, Al-Cid, Ninja for example are powerful cards no matter what colours you’re playing.

By versatile, I mean your overall backup lineup needs to be versatile, not each one. Cid (XI) while versatile, I would not pick because the effect while always useful isn’t actually THAT useful. For the same effective CP, I would rather play Geomancer to prevent Paul some % of the time, or a Machinist that prevent Ewen some % of the time.

Anything that they have to jump through hoops to remove is nice. The 0CP activation monsters I count as forwards with protection effects.

3CP forwards are easy to play multiple copies of at once, so they’re really good in decks that have a large number of removal cards and just need slightly stable bodies to attack with.

Backups that don’t have entry effects, or break abilities that are useful too often. Evokers. Don’t jump to pick them, pick the Evokers to try and help reach minimum 3 of each colour backup in the deck.

Forwards that don’t have entry abilities and don’t protect themselves.

Fire

Always Pick Cards

Zell, Selphie, Soldier, Bahamut (but only if you’re certain you’re playing Fire as at least 1/3 of the deck, this card is so bad but so good at the same time)

Always Pick If You Have X

Ward -> Hugh Yurg

Vermillion Bird L’Cie Caetuna -> Bahamut x2+

Montblanc -> 1+ FFTA2 forward

Ruby Dragon -> no other Ruby Dragons yet

The rest of the cards is all kinda meh. There’s some cool stuff with Kiros and Warrior is huge. Otherwise there’s not much to talk about.

Bahamut Syndrome

As ideally you want just 1 copy of the card in your deck (as you’ll never want to cast it more than once), it’s nice to keep passing away the card in draft, however, a lot of people will do the same. So, it’s possible to end up hoarding Bahamuts. It makes the card a really weird double edged sword, because some games you’ll win because you’ve drawn 4 Bahamuts and other will be unwinnable because you’ve drawn 4 Bahamuts. So as tempting as it is to simply pick 3-4 of the card, really try to stick to 1 copy unless if Caetuna is pulled. Then, go for 2 of the card…or like 7.

TL;DR Pt1 Moogle (XI) is God

TL;DR Pt2 Removal synergises with more removal

TL;DR Pt3 Zell Selphie Solider and around 8 Bahamuts

Extra special shout out to Matt Okimoto for sending me to Paris!

Check out Meta Potion (if for some reason you don’t already) and their new game Post Haste: http://metapotion.com/meta-potion-games/

[yehosera]

Locals Report 26/07/18

I took a bit of a break from TCG after Paris and Germany, write ups for those events to come soon! However, the Paris one isn’t particularly relevant as it was an opus 5 tournament. Also, I feel like I’ve already written a book about Urianger. This time I took an Earth Wind decks to locals at Dark Sphere and went 4-1.

Earth/Wind v2

https://ffdecks.com/deck/6256027326480384

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Locals Deck 26/07/18

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (18):

2 Delita (4-087)

3 Dadaluma (4-085)

2 Wol (5-075)

2 Vanille (1-093)

3 Cecil (5-086)

2 Y'shtola (5-068)

1 Zidane (3-056)

1 Barbariccia (3-066)

2 Zidane (6-044)

Monsters (3):

3 Cactuar (4-058)

Summons (11):

3 Hecatoncheir (4-093)

3 Hecatoncheir (1-117)

2 Titan (6-075)

3 Diabolos (5-062)

Backups (18):

2 Archer (1-088)

3 Moogle (XI) (6-058)

3 Semih Lafihna (5-059)

1 Masked Woman (3-076)

2 Miner (5-082)

1 Ajido-Marujido (6-064)

3 Star Sibyl (5-091)

1 Minfilia (6-079)

1 Tama (4-086)

1 Shantotto (1-107)

A more traditional Earth Wind approach (compared to my usual Urianger). Fall behind early and try to stabilise with Vanille Delita or Dadaluma Cactuar. Zidane create a lot of board tension and removes the potential threats to Dadaluma and Vanille, supported by WoL and Titan the Genome demands instant answers or will push through frequently.

Best Card: WoL

I drew a record low number of backups, so unsurprisingly the deck’s best forward simulator card was my favourite this time round.

Worst Card: Titan

No backups makes Titan a sad panda. Also, Dadaluma kinda just cleaned house, so the 2 for 1 potential never really came up (as they always had only 1 forward). In the one game it might’ve helped, the initial proc from Cagnazzo did so much my forwards were too weak even with Titan’s assistance to remove Cagnazzo in response to Scholar.

Cool Opus 6 Cards

Zidane, being hard to remove and demanding an instant answer. This card is powerful with WoL on the field or Dadaluma to clear the way. It’s another high pressure 4cp forward that needs to be dealt with. If you pack enough of them into a deck, the opponent will EVENTUALLY crumble if enough of them are played back to back.

Titan, I was trying this card out as a means of supporting the weaker forwards that people tend to block as a primary removal method (Y’shtola and Zidane). However, Diabolos kinda just did the job better.

Minfilia, an exceptional addition to the deck. Has the text “add 2 more Dadaluma to your deck”. The more cards that say “add more Dadaluma to your deck” the better.

Ajido-Marujido, I’ve never used the cast a summon modifier. Simply adding 2 more Diabolos to my deck is enough. Sometimes 3 just isn’t enough.

Moogle (XI), assembles Cactuar x2 Dadaluma or fetches the missing part of Vanille Delita. Exceptionally powerful card, it’s thanks to this little Moogle that the deck is able to be freed from the shackles of Kam’Lanaught Kefka. Well, Kam’La is powerful, it’s just Kefka. I despised drawing that card, but no better dark card exists for the archetype. But now, Moogle (XI) provides a use for Star Sibyl independent of Kam’La. It also is a huge buff to Miner and Minfilia, being able to retrieve Moogle lets Moogle retrieve more for you, a win-win.

Matchups

Round 1, Earth Water. I actually thought I was going to get clobbered. The game started with the guy playing 2 Vikings early on. Then casting Famfrit/Leviathan on every forward I played until the duo had put me to 5 damage. Eventually I was able to stabilise, but it was scary to think I was just 1 more bounce effect from losing. Zidane really put in work post Dadaluma to stop them ever being able to save threats.

Round 2, Ice Earth. I opened very few backups. He opened a load of backups. However, as the game progressed he was forced to use his backups to stay ahead, while I caught up on backups. He made a crucial mistake when it came to blocking, and lost his WoL for free. This actually won me the game, as it meant that by blocking he was only on 2 damage so could not play Cecil on my Y’shtola which was preventing a recovery Shantotto from being played. WoL stood out this game, going basically unchecked during the early game, dealing 2+ damage a turn.

Round 3, Mono Water. I slipped up and T1 played a forward, then got Famfrit. I’m not used to this card being played a lot so this was a solid reminded to respect the card. Despite this, the game went on a long time, until the eventual Cagnazzo for 5 dropped all my forwards to 3k, and due to Wakka, Cagnazzo was outside of Titan range. Dadaluma is kinda the key for winning that matchup. The number of Vikings that Dadaluma put to rest was criminal.

Round 4, Mono Ice. I made a huge mistake and drew no backups once again. However, this deck’s forward simulator game is crazy. T1 Vanille, T2 WoL, T3 pass, T4 Delita Vanille to remove Genesis. T6/7 Dadaluma. This type of draw just can’t be punished by an Ice deck. His list had Kurasame and Duke Larg, making Celes a 10,000 power forward! Without Enna Kros, normally the deck simply would not be able to punch past it without the support of summons, however, Delita gaining a bonus 2,000 power from WoL targeting him twice meant that not even a 10,000 power forward was enough of a road block. An 11,000 power Orphan would’ve done the trick though.

Round 5, Earth Fire. I saw this player use Jecht Shot earlier in the tournament. Thus making this the best deck at the event. The player hadn’t played for a few months and didn’t know the new synergies too well. So his deck was like a draft deck, just a bunch of good stand alone cards.

Potential edits:

-2 Titan +2 Barbariccia.

TL;DR Titan’s a bit lacklustre in constructed in a deck so heavily focused on removal already.

[yehosera]

Locals Report 21/06/18

Once again I decided to update my Urianger deck a bit and take it to locals. This time at Dark Sphere I went 5-0 milling out 3 of my opponents.

Urianger 21/06/18

https://ffdecks.com/deck/5109345951940608

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Locals Deck 21/06/18

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (13):

1 Kam'lanaut (5-148)

1 Kefka (4-147)

3 Dadaluma (4-085)

1 Cecil (5-086)

1 Cid Raines (1-192)

3 Urianger (5-163)

1 Paine (2-063)

1 Y'shtola (5-068)

1 Zidane (3-056)

Monsters (6):

3 Cactuar (4-058)

3 Leyak (5-071)

Summons (13):

2 Phoenix (3-020)

3 Phoenix (5-019)

3 Exodus, the Judge-Sal (3-112)

2 Asura (2-049)

3 Diabolos (5-062)

Backups (18):

1 Chaos (1-184)

1 Rydia (3-096)

2 Miner (5-082)

1 Minfilia (5-160)

3 Star Sibyl (5-091)

2 Shantotto (1-107)

1 Tama (4-086)

2 Rikku (1-089)

3 Semih Lafihna (5-059)

1 Thief (5-055)

1 Echo (5-053)

The 2 Asura were actually meant to be additional copies of Cecil to help vs Ice, however, I couldn’t get hold of any additional copies of Cecil. The Asura though was fine, maybe could be dropped to a 1 of.

Best Card: Urianger

Worst Card: Rydia

Recent Additions

Asura. As mentioned, Asura was meant to be additional copies of Cecil. However, Asura was a fine addition. Because of Asura being in the deck, I no longer felt so compelled to run 3 Archers. This is because Asura gets back Rikku in the unlikely event that she does get shot down by Archer, so I don’t need Archer as a counter measure to opposing Archers. The untap all backups modifier I used once, I think only an additional copy of Phoenix or Exodus would have prevented by death in that position, so Asura does have it’s uses in the deck. Although likely as a one of and not as a 2 of.

Diabolos, I can’t remember if this was at 2 or 3 before. I think as most of my lists had the card at 2 it was at 2 in the last rendition, however, 3 has been very nice. Being able to discard the first for CP and have 2 left is a big bonus. Wind CP during the early game is kind of scarce. There is some wind CP, however, it’s mostly backups and early forwards that can provide the Wind CP cards that you do not want to discard early on for CP. This makes Diabolos a prime +2 Wind CP card from turns 1-3, but the card is still needed during the mid-late game, hence why 3 is needed.

Rydia, while nice in the late game, the deck already has a lot of good late game backups. Originally she was included to up the number of odd costed backups, however, an Evoker that promotes using a vital summon as CP is just not needed. I do however want to replace her for another odd costed backup.

Thief, as Archer isn’t needed, a nice easy to break Wind backup is needed. It could be a 2nd Echo, but the Thief did fine. I used the effect twice which is more than most backups would get used.

Echo, nice against Ice and costs effectively 1 CP. The Fairy adds a little bit of consistency if you get stuck on backups during the early game, as the check top and draw modifiers allow you to dig 2 cards closer to another backup.

Changes: -1 Asura, -1 Exodus, the Judge-Sal, -1 Rydia, +2 Cecil +1 Masked Woman/Brother/Nono/Botanist.

Masked Woman helps vs Ice decks and other decks that play early forwards (maybe during opus 6 if Tifa makes a return with Fire decks then she’d be really helpful).

Brother helps as he essentially says play 2 backups, due to Paine adding Rikku. There might be some argument for an additional Paine in that case (the Starter Paine, not an additional Opus 2 Paine), as a cheap forward that allows for surprise additional mills when players think they have calculated how many turns they have left to live.

Nono allows for double mills on every attack. The Moogle is only really helpful while already winning as attacking in this deck is an oddity.

Botanist. Add more Dadaluma.

Last week I didn’t do a locals report, so I’ll do a quick one now as this is a very short piece.

I went X-1 with an Ice/Fire deck. My loss was to Warriors of Light. Stupid deck cannot lose to Ice/Fire.

https://ffdecks.com/deck/5700678055886848

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Locals Deck 14/06/18

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (25):

2 Kam'lanaut (5-148)

1 Cloud (1-009)

3 Vivi (3-017)

1 Firion (1-021)

3 Sabin (4-021)

2 Cid Raines (1-192)

1 Kuja (3-030)

3 Locke (4-048)

1 Serah (1-195)

3 Celes (4-038)

3 Genesis (3-033)

2 Vayne (2-026)

Summons (9):

1 Zodiark, Keeper of Precepts (3-147)

3 Belias, the Gigas (2-019)

1 Bahamut (4-016)

1 Phoenix (5-019)

1 Mateus, the Corrupt (5-044)

2 Glasya Labolas (5-032)

Backups (16):

1 Chaos (1-184)

1 Red Mage (1-003)

3 Sage (2-005)

1 Black Waltz 2 (3-015)

1 Irvine (2-001)

2 Kazusa (3-026)

3 Duke Larg (1-057)

2 Gestahlian Empire Cid (4-026)

1 Mog (XIII-2) (1-196)

1 Devout (1-048)

Essentially the aim is to go all in with Sage + Kazusa for lots of early pressure. I cursed Kam’La’s existence in this deck. The dark cards make it REALLY hard to go all in with Sages. The idea behind it is solid, and works, so with some edits it could make a really strong deck.

Best Card: Sage

Worst Card: Kam’Lanaut

As a starting point, remove all the dark cards for Setzar, Zalera, Gadot and a 3rd Kazusa. Then work from there on what you dislike. Use the backup lineup from Milan and the forward/summon lineup from Paris as what the deck should be converging towards.

TL;DR The Urianger deck is at a place I’m happy with finally.

[yehosera]

UK Nationals 2018

In this event I placed 17th, narrowly missing out on the top 16 cut. However, despite that, I was genuinely impressed that this deck managed to go X-2. The event was another fantastic 2 day event run by Square Enix. Day 2 had a team draft and gunslinger vs Masahiko Morita (he has an amazing signature, defo get him to sign foil Jihl Nabaats opus 1 with a silver pen if you get the chance!). Day 1 was 7 rounds of swiss, best of 1 and day 2 top 16 best of 3.

What Deity Do I Thank For Letting This Go X-2

https://ffdecks.com/deck/5723262336106496

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: What Deity Do I Thank For Letting This Go X-2

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (23):

1 The Emperor (2-147)

3 Famed Mimic Gogo (3-142)

2 Knight (3-139)

1 Viking (4-133)

2 Porom (5-135)

1 Cloud of Darkness (5-126)

2 Lenna (3-144)

3 Paine (1-199)

1 Paine (2-063)

2 Ranger (3-053)

2 Y'shtola (5-068)

1 Zidane (3-056)

2 Trey (3-064)

Monsters (2):

2 Tonberries (4-132)

Summons (8):

3 Famfrit, the Darkening Cloud (3-123)

3 Chaos, Walker of the Wheel (3-071)

2 Diabolos (5-062)

Backups (17):

3 Gladiator (4-126)

3 Brahne (4-134)

3 Yuna (1-176)

2 Arc (2-050)

2 Rikku (1-089)

1 Brother (1-197)

3 Maria (1-083)

As after any loss, the first thing I should look to is what I could’ve done differently rather than blame my tie breaker luck. In my losses, I didn’t notice many actual mistakes, most of what I was doing wrong was stylistic errors. This deck relies on stockpiling removal as there’s so little of it in the deck. During the earlier rounds, before I understood this aspect of the deck, I was using Chaos, Walker of the Wheel to push damage through instead of holding onto that card until time ended. Taking what I learned from nationals into account I can now draw conclusions as to what it is that makes this deck weak and how to improve it.

Forwards

The issue with the forwards, is that a lot of them have the same text “big”.

Ranger, Knight, Trey, Lenna.

Some of them have cannot be targeted by abilities in their text, but realistically they’re just big. This is simply too many cards that are just big. This meant that when I started to fall behind on board, I could not look to my forwards to save me. If the opposing forwards were simply bigger, then there was basically nothing my forwards could do about it. Both of my losses were to decks with bigger forwards, Mono Water with Refia and Mono Earth with Psicom Wardens.

Can’t Play Brigade

Zidane, Y’Shtola, Porom, Emperor.

These were instrumental in most of my wins. The Emperor really went above and beyond. Having so many forwards that disrupt what my opponent was able to do was super strong for generating game over situations several turns before the game was actually over. Those cards I would play again in Water/Wind without a doubt.

The Rest

Viking, Paines, Cloud of Darkness, Famed Mimic Gogo

Viking was more of a side effect of playing standard units, he has no place without Brahne and Gladiator. Paine I would probably play again in Water/Wind, seems a bit above average. Cloud of Darkness I feel is a staple in the archetype, simply because it gives a way for the colour to snowball a lead. Famed Mimic Gogo, until people calm down with their discard decks, Gogo is needed as he proves a way to defend yourself early on in the game for only 1 CP. Gogo was definitely one of the standout cards in the deck.

Summons

Famfrit, the Darkening Cloud is very important for removing the first forward that they play. The strength of the deck comes from being able to seize initiative early. Famfrit combined with Yuna tends to make it as such that your opponent cannot take control of the board efficiently because their first threat is so easy to remove. The downside to this card is how prevalent Thaumaturge is. As long as cheap forwards exist, the Famfrit will struggle vs Ice to pickup anything of any value. I would suggest pairing this card with a colour that can handle smaller forwards with ease, Fire or Lightning for example.

Diabolos, the only combat trick in the deck (when writing this, I forgot there were 2 copies of Tonberries, which shows how useful they were). As this deck has a low removal count, the battle phase is where this deck needs to be gaining advantage. The lack of combat tricks, however, makes this hard sometimes, because of this, it is important not to use Diabolos for CP whenever possible. Due to Diabolos making up 100% of the deck’s battle tricks and 25% of the deck’s removal keeping that card in hand is really important. One of the mistakes I was making during early rounds was using Diabolos for CP. In a fatigue deck it’s okay to use Diabolos as CP due to the abundance of removal options, however, this is not fatigue and does not have the luxury of multiple efficient ways to remove cards thus increasing the value Diabolos has.

Chaos, Walker of the Wheel. This card is the centre piece of the deck. The sacrifice of having multiple flexible Water summons and Yuna (1-177) is so that this card can be played. The strength of this card is not just that it is an Odin for 4 less CP, but that it is easy to play multiple in one turn. Initially I was using the card to push damage, however, it is more efficient to save up multiple and swing the board in one massive push. This is because the deck does not have a constant stream of removal, so removing 1 a forward just to push a damage is not good. At that rate, you’ll only deal about 5 damage before running out of removal options. It is best to go as wide as possible onto the board, then try to blow the opponent out in 1 turn with multiple instances of Chaos, Walker of the Wheel or Famfrit, the Darkening Cloud.

Monsters

2 Tonberries, just to have a couple more combat tricks. I think I played this card once. It was okay. Could easily go down to 1. Leyak might have a place in the deck instead.

Backups

Maria and Arc were very good, they’re part of the reason the deck is even functional. The point of those cards is to try and make Knight the largest forward on the board, so you’re free to attack every turn with it. Games where Maria was missing, made the deck feel terrible. Games where Arc was missing, didn’t matter too much, but the games where I had Arc the deck felt very strong. Maria is mandatory, Arc is more snowbally. If there’s space, I would consider a 3rd Arc, Maria however, she cannot be dropped to 2 in this kind of Water/Wind deck.

Yuna. The whole point of the deck was to try and abuse early forwards with Yuna and Famfrit. She’s pretty key in this deck. By playing Yuna, you gain 2 turns of not taking damage and reach a higher backup count. She also makes Chaos, Walker of the Wheel potentially the best removal card in the game. Her remove from the game effect has a lot of uses in a variety of matchups. The most frequent is vs Setzar, he misses his Dull + Freeze effect and vs most Earth decks, Miner loops can be interrupted by removing the Miners from play.

Rikku, she’s only really in the deck for Paine. Deckout is not something that comes up frequently at all with this list. You don’t really even need her down as part of the ideal 5 backups. However, it seems silly to not have at least 1 copy of this card for EX Paine to search to help smooth out the early backups.

Gladiator is exceptional in this deck. Not only is it a breakable, but it allows for Knights and Rangers to keep on fighting. As the deck relies a lot on the battle phase to remove the opposing forwards and has only 23 of it’s own, the ability to revive forwards is very useful as they’re likely to be dying frequently.

Brahne is only at 3 to fill space. As there’s only 2 Knights and a Lenna without a Knight is a bit sad, so getting a Knight early for CP is useful. Also, there aren’t very many 3CP backups in the colours that the deck wants. I tried King Tycoon, however, pulling Lenna out of the deck too early isn’t helpful at all. Basically Tycoon is a better EX Burst, but Brahne is better when played generally. Normally I would advocate for 1 Tycoon, just to have variation in backup names, but there are so many named backups that have to be on the field, you just can’t afford to expire 2 slots on searchers.

Brother, fetches Paine, fetches Yuna/Rikku. It’s just a strong generic search card for the archetype.

Summary

The deck is not a bad deck, it’s just not the best deck. In terms of edits, there aren’t very many to consider without changing archetype. The Famed Mimic Gogos aren’t mandatory, they’re more an answer to so many Ice decks existing in the format, same with the 2nd Trey. Those 4 cards could be extra Knights for more raw muscle, Larsa for Dadaluma decks or some extra removal forwards.

TL;DR No Cid Raines, no win.

[yehosera]

Regional Decks

I played in 2 regionals over the weekend, both were rather small, 14 and 16 I think players. I took an Urianger mill deck to both of those events. The list shown is the list I took to the 2nd event, the first event was the same list however; -1 Cid Raines -1 Moogle, +1 Diabolos, +1 Barbariccia.

Cid Raines & Co. Urianger Edition

https://ffdecks.com/deck/5880717850443776

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Cid Raines & Co. Urianger Edition

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (15):

1 Kam'lanaut (5-148)

1 Kefka (4-147)

3 Dadaluma (4-085)

1 Cid Raines (1-192)

3 Urianger (5-163)

1 Paine (2-063)

2 Y'shtola (5-068)

1 Zidane (3-056)

1 Barbariccia (3-066)

1 Moogle (4-069)

Monsters (6):

3 Cactuar (4-058)

3 Leyak (5-071)

Summons (10):

3 Phoenix (3-020)

2 Phoenix (5-019)

3 Exodus, the Judge-Sal (3-112)

2 Diabolos (5-062)

Backups (19):

1 Chaos (1-184)

2 Miner (5-082)

1 Minfilia (5-160)

3 Star Sibyl (5-091)

2 Shantotto (1-107)

1 Tama (4-086)

3 Archer (1-088)

1 Miounne (5-067)

2 Rikku (1-089)

3 Semih Lafihna (5-059)

The general gameplan is to secure the board early with Kam’La, then give up on board. Kam’La early on gives you access to your rainbow (by searching Chaos) and requires the opponent to do something about it. As the win condition is fatigue, exhausting their hand early on with a spooky card like Kam’La is preferable. After giving up on the board, Shantotto + Miounne can be used to reset the board the first two times. Beyond that, it’s all about using the summons and Dadaluma to keep the opponent off of the board. Then you Archer away their backups and Rikku their deck.

Key Cards

Kam’La in every matchup is vital for searching Chaos and providing an early body. Don’t get too hung up on defending your Kam’La, as long as his existence on the board is buying you time to setup backups he’s doing a pretty sweet job.

Dadaluma, it’s not vital to keep Dadaluma in hand, but just seeing one anywhere other than damage is pretty nice. Miner + Tama mean that instead of 3 you have 7 Dadaluma. Dada is really important for breaking 3+ forwards in a turn with Leyak, just be mindful of how your opponent can outplay Dadaluma, e.g. if you get attacked and tap down Cactuar in response to Leyak, they can Odin your Dadaluma and you’ll only get one proc instead of 2.

Urianger, similar to Dadaluma just needs to be somewhere. Vs decks that can kill your Urianger with ease, play Y’shtola before playing the Uri. If Uri is your only Scion and dies in response to his effect, you won’t get any monsters back, so capitalise on how impossible Y’shtola is to remove from the board and always resolve the effect.

Paine is important as she gives you an early forward and access to the win condition. Also, by playing 1 Paine, you get to cut corners by playing only 2 Rikku.

The monsters are all super good cards. Just be careful of overusing the Leyak early, as you will deck yourself out. Prioritise searching Cactuar with Kefka and getting Cactuar back early on with Urianger. Once you get 2 Cactuars on the field, then start looking for Leyaks.

Phoenix keeps you alive in a pinch. It’s worth noting that 7 CP Phoenix can bring back Zidane/Y’shtola for disruption during their turn. For example, if a summon is cast, you can Phoenix back Y’shtola and negate the summon, or if they search for a combo piece, you can Phoenix back Zidane and take it away from them.

Mulligan Guide

Any hand with Semih + Star Sibyl is super premium. Try not to keep Chaos hands where possible, while Chaos is an amazing card, having it in your hand really lowers the value of Kam’La and by extension lowers the value of Star Sibyl. Double Wind backup hands aren’t very strong, usually it’s best to mulligan those hands. This is because, there is not that much Wind CP in the deck, you’ll usually have to discard one of the backups to play the other one, or do a discard 1 play 1 of the backups, then next turn tap + discard a non-wind card to play the next wind backup. This is inefficient and slow AND leaves you with only wind backups. There’s a significant lack of odd costed backups, so ideally keep two that can be played turn 1, OR play 1 then on the following play Zidane/Y’shtola. This makes backup + backup + zidane/y’shtola a decent hand to keep and will give you plenty of time to draw into additional backups.

Semih + Star Sibyl

3x backup

2x backup + Zidane/Y’shtola

1x backup + Kam’La

Those are the kinds of hands you should be looking at keeping.

Priority Guide

I’m actually going to do a reverse priority guide as well, to show cards you should be discarding.

In this deck Early is: the period between 1-4 backups. While you’re trying to set up.

In this deck Mid is: the period between 4-5 backups, while the opponent’s hand is still full. Mid is essentially the part where you have to grind their handsize down to ~2 at the end of their turn instead of 5. This is the part where survival is the most important thing.

In this deck Late is: 5 backups, their handsize should be 2-3 at the end of their turn. A period on time where you feel safe that you shouldn’t die.

KEEP

Early: Semih, Miner, Star Sibyl, Shantotto, Cactuar, Paine, Zidane, Kam’La

Mid: Shantotto, Tama, Rikku, Exodus, Barbariccia, Moogle, Dadaluma

Late: Miounne, Miner, Phoenix, Phoenix, Exodus, Leyak, Urianger, Dadaluma

DISCARD

Early: Miounne, Phoenix, Diabolos, Leyak, Cid Raines, Urianger, Y’Shtola

Mid: Archer, Semih, Minfilia, Cid Raines, Urianger

Late: Archer, Semih, Minfilia, Star Sibyl, Cactuar, Paine, Cid Raines, Moogle

Potential Edits

Cid Raines and Moogle can come out. It’s nice to have Cid Raines in the toolbox when looking for Phoenix targets, however, it’s not needed. Moogle is nice to have, however, self fatigue is a REALLY big concern, so I probably want to replace Moogle with a card that draws only 1 card instead of 2.

Setzar can go in, and a copy of Orlandeau/Barbariccia/Calbrena can go in. Setzar is good as it’s an extra Dadaluma and stalls the game for a bit. It’s also another 5 CP card to summon with Star Sibyl so you can get more from the effect than usual. Orlandeau/Barb give some mid-game board control which is nice. Calbrena I don’t like in a fatigue style, as by the time you’re able to spare the CP to animate and attack with Calbrena, the game should be won anyway. However, the deck does need a sink for Earth CP.

Less in depth than usual, however, I feel like just about everyone has their own ideas about Urianger decks by this time, so a super in depth article on them isn’t too needed. I view the deck as a fatigue deck and that’s why the list looks like it does.

TL;DR Cid Raines is good enough as the only Ice card.

[yehosera]

How to master the Cid

I got an interesting question asking me how I went about practicing from my friend Marko in Germany. I figured this was a topic of interest for many people and decided to respond in the form of a blog post instead!

No EX Bursts

While EX Bursts are part of the game, some % of the time they'll invalidate a game. For example, if I'm testing how well mono water can do with a forward turn 1 vs a mono lightning player who does not have Al-Cid or Seymour, if the first damage is an Odin that destroys my Mira we're not going to learn very much from that game. A good general rule is, if you're ahead don't use the EX Bursts.

Have A Goal

There should be an objective, a reason behind practicing...and that shouldn't be winning! A good example is "how good is The Emperor vs Urianger Mill". This means instead of grinding 20 games of mono ice vs a mill deck, whenever the ice player feels like Emp is a good card to play, turn a dead card in their hand into The Emperor. While this will naturally skew their win % upwards, it'll provide an answer to the question thus informing your future deck building. Swallow your pride in practice games for the sake of getting better!

Dead Draw Roulette

In a tight game, sometimes a player will draw dead. In those cases, simply put them on the bottom and redraw 2 cards. This will keep the game going and provide you with a taste of what it's like when players draw good cards turn after turn. By extending a long game both players get the chance to experience super late game decisions (most practice games get cut short as shown by the next point), while seeing just how much your deck can handle.

Knowing When To Give Up

If a player misses a few backup drops and falls behind, then it's not worth continuing the game. They'll just be playing from behind all game with a really low chance of winning. It's not always worth just conceding, as learning how to play from behind is an important skill. However, during the early stages of testing it's all about learning how powerful a deck can be so conceding is fine. Another example of when to give up is when the other deck has an insurmountable amount of advantage, it's best to just chalk it up as a win and move on rather than rely on luck to win.

Open Handed

In matchups that are difficult, both players should play open handed. In hard matchups it's easy to assume there's a lot of scary cards in the opposing hand, by playing open handed it'll provide insight as to what the average hands look like during the course of a game. A deck like mono ice it's easy to assume their hand is always filled with good cards like Genesis, Vayne, Orphan etc. By playing open handed it's possible to break down the iron curtain and begin to understand what's actually going on in their hand. This will make matchups less scary and let you know what cards they struggle with.

Tag Team Testing

Playing in a pair while discussing each play. This is tedious, however, if both players have an open mind and explain their reasoning it'll let both players explore alternative points of views on how a deck is supposed to be played. This is really beneficial when trying to learn a deck after you think you've gotten the list right.

Headphones In Silence

Sometimes just grinding out a matchup in silence with headphones on is the best. Silence + headphones means you don't have to listen to eachothers salt.

Summary

Have a goal. Test specifics. Rewind plays. Undo EX Bursts. Redraw. Discuss. The most important thing is to not be hung up on winning each game, a win in testing means nothing compared to learning how to play a matchup.

TL;DR Grind in silence for hours.

[yehosera]

Fire/Lightning v1

Normally at this point of the week I’d have a locals report, filled with how my terrible choices have led me to failure on a weekly basis. This time, I could not attend locals! So instead I’ve got a deck where most of the backups wear really cool hats.

Fire/Lightning

https://ffdecks.com/deck/5125793864744960

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Fire/Lightning v1

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (25):

2 Zidane (3-154)

3 Vivi (3-017)

3 Firion (1-021)

3 Rygdea (1-211)

3 Onion Knight (1-125)

3 Illua (5-099)

3 Al-Cid (2-097)

2 Amon (2-098)

3 Zemus (5-108)

Summons (9):

3 Belias, the Gigas (2-019)

3 Phoenix (5-019)

3 Odin (1-123)

Backups (16):

1 Red Mage (1-003)

1 Selphie (2-009)

1 Black Waltz 2 (3-015)

1 Irvine (2-001)

3 Tellah (5-015)

3 Black Mage (2-108)

3 Red Mage (1-121)

1 Cid of Clan Gully (5-103)

1 Gramis (2-106)

1 Seymour (1-137)

Backups

Almost all of them have an entry removal effect. Stockpile those during the early game and remove their first forward while developing your backups. Selphie and Red Mage (the fire ones) are a bit weak in this deck, however, there’s not much else by way of 2 CP Red backups I like, so they’re the go to ones for now.

Summons

Belias, the Gigas is just good, however, can go down to 2. You don’t really want to cast this card, so it’s slow could go to more removal (Ramuh for example). Odin is primarily in there to handle Dadaluma and other road blocks that stop you from dealing damage. It’s all about clearing the way for the little forwards, so Odin is helpful with that regard. Phoenix is the big bad endgame boss. The gameplan is to use your removal backups to reach 5 backups, then when they think they’ve stabilised, blow them out of the water with Phoenix + Shoel.

Forwards

A lot of burn forwards. Illua is the most important forward, she’s the forward you start and end the game with. You should be opening up with Illua off of 1 backup to start applying pressure. Don’t be scared to play off of 1-2 for a while, with Illua and Zidane as high quality drops off of 1 backup, then Amon and Zemus as quality plays off of 2. It’s all about building a board while you’re on a low backup count, THEN using the burn backups to preserve the board while reaching a high enough backup count to cast your Summons nicely.

Priority Cards

Early: Illua, Zidane, Burn Backups

Mid: Al-Cid + friends, burn forwards, Odin

Late: Illua, Phoenix, Amon

Any opening hand of 1 backup + Illua/Zidane should be an easy keep (assuming the backup isn’t a burn backup). Try not to leave your cards open to removal/trade them off. The point of having such a large burn roster is to clear the way for your forwards. If you are trading off your forwards, then burning their forwards, what’s the point of the burn? You have to be burning as a way of clearing the path for your forwards, otherwise you’re just playing a slow deck.

Short blog post, but that’s because I’ve got another, more interesting one lined up for tomorrow!

TL;DR Phoenix + Illua = probably lethal

[yehosera]

Spring Cup Cologne Top 8 and 4th place Water/Wind deck

Spring Cup Cologne was a bit smaller in size than the other Crystal Cups I’ve attended. I believe it was around 60 players total. However, don’t let the smaller player count fool you into thinking that the event was any worse than the other Crystal Cups. The event was fantastic, it took place inside an Expo, so I got to see all kinds of fantastic cosplays between rounds, my biggest regret is not finding out when the cosplay competitions and Hearthstone tournaments took place so I could watch. The event had 7 rounds of Swiss at Best of 1, this was better than most tournaments as it gave a redemption round to people who had lost a game during swiss; swiss normally stops when there’s only 1 player with the score X-0 left, however, the extra round gives people at X - 2 a chance to win an additional round and still top. Top 8 was best of 3. The event was not streamed due to bad WiFi at the venue. The competitors and the staff were amazingly friendly, it was another fantastic Crystal Cup.

Water/Wind Where’s Cid Raines? & Co.

https://ffdecks.com/deck/5122789971329024

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Water/Wind Top 8 + 4th place Spring Cup Cologne

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (19):

2 Famed Mimic Gogo (3-142)

3 Porom (5-135)

2 Cloud of Darkness (5-126)

2 Gau (4-123)

3 Paine (1-199)

1 Paine (2-063)

2 Y’shtola (5-068)

1 Zidane (3-056)

3 Barbariccia (3-066)

Monsters (4):

1 Green Dragon (4-124)

2 Tonberries (4-132)

1 Leyak (5-071)

Summons (11):

2 Bismarck (5-133)

3 Cuchulainn, the Impure (2-133)

3 Valefor (1-198)

3 Diabolos (5-062)

Backups (16):

1 Artemicion (3-122)

1 Eiko (3-126)

3 Yuna (1-177)

1 Tonbetty (4-131)

3 Archer (1-088)

1 Oracle (3-070)

3 Rikku (1-089)

1 Brother (1-197)

2 Maria (1-083)

This deck is different to the usual Water/Wind decks people play as it is both not very Wind heavy and is very summon heavy. There’s a low forward count and a low monster count and a low backup count as a result of the additional summons. The deck has a poor matchup vs most Ice centric decks, however, has a strong anything else matchup as most other colours cannot apply enough pressure to force the Water/Wind player’s hand early enough.

Round 1 - Mono Earth. Both players drew poorly, I played a Yuna T1 then T2 discarded and ended kinda poorly. He, however, had a Yang that did about 5 damage before I could handle it. After taking a beating, I amassed enough cards to clear his forwards while developing 3 of my own. From then on in it’s easy.

Round 2 - 3 Colour Knights. I drew very well during the early game, and a copy of Zidane was able to take his only Lightning backup out of his hand early. I don’t think it’s actually possible to lose this matchup if you just take your time and pressure them with 1/2 forwards. The deck lacks any decent removal for cards like Porom, Zidane etc. Meanwhile, your removal options for all of their forwards are amazing. It’s just attrition, eventually they’ll have to expend their hand removing the creepy forwards in your deck or playing their big forwards, and once they do it’s smooth sailing.

Round 3 - Mono Ice. I opened Yuna + Rikku. He opened 2 copies of Thaumaturge. Normally the game would be over at that point, however, thanks to a Valefor + Barbariccia turn clearing both Thaumaturge and a Locke, the game was still going. Eventually I made a big mistake, and tapped down all of my CP to play a Tonberry and Valefor, however, that Valefor got countered by Runic and left me dead on board. If I didn’t play the Tonberry, I would’ve had enough CP to use Eiko to get back Valefor and try again. However, I still think the game was a loss even if I had done that.

Round 4 - Urianger Mill. Very easy matchup. Archer his Rikku and mill him out. You have Poroms to negate his Archers as well, if that ever comes up. In addition, the deck has very limited ways of removing Y’Shtola from the field.

Round 5 - Fire/Ice. At first I thought it was mono Ice, then he played a Tellah. It was an experience playing vs somebody playing one of my decks! The two edits he had made cause me by surprise, I lost a card to Mateus, the Corrupt and a copy of Aloeidai start causing havoc for me. After a very close game, I decked him out while I had 0 cards in deck.

Round 6 - Fire/Lightning. During the early phases he was doing all kinds of unfair things with Al-Cids to me. It’s during games like this that Famed Mimic Gogo really shines at stemming the bleeding, in addition, his deck had very limited ways of removing Y’Shtola. In the end, he ran out of steam and started drawing multiple backups before I finally managed to defeat him.

Round 7 - Water/Wind Perfect Mirror. He drew YRP.

Top 8

Round 1 - Water/Wind Perfect Mirror. He Archered my YRP. He drew YRP.

Overall this meant that I placed in the top 8, and my friend ended up placing 4th in the end using the same deck. I also ended up placing 2nd in the draft tournament, but that’s another story.

Forwards

There’s a running theme of gaining advantage or clearing the opponent’s forwards present in almost every forward. Forwards are a very precious resource in this deck compared to most other decks. It’s simply not possible to win most games if you’re forced to use high value cards like Barbariccia for CP.

Paine, that’s kinda the whole reason to play Wind + Water, playing a Paine and untapping 3 backups while drawing a card.

EX Paine. This card actually has a very integral role during the early phases, and could be bumped up to 2. During the early game, this card not only lets you find an additional backup, but provides a forward to start attacking the opponent with early on. Searching Yuna/Rikku to get the ball rolling is a powerful enough effect, but most people simply don’t block her. This deck punishes people that block with it’s huge summon count AND the regular Paine is one of the stronger cards in the deck. By attacking with this EX Paine, you generate a lose lose situation for the opponent, whereby blocking not only allows for a regular Paine to be played, but also opens up the forward that blocked to the removal options the deck has access to. The importance of attacking every turn of the game cannot be stressed enough, so having a forward to help smoothen out the early game AND present many downsides if blocked is a huge boon.

Porom, serves a similar purpose to EX Paine. The White Mage can be played early to help dig for missing parts of YRP (Yuna, Rikku, Paine) to smoothen out the early game and presents a cheap forward to attack with. Thanks to Paine and Porom’s ability to search for backups, the deck can get away with the low backup count.

Gau, is another forward that exists to gain advantage. Essentially, all of Gau’s functions are for allowing the player to be reckless whilst attacking. In the event that their forwards are blocked, Gau can bring back Tonberries to punish blockers. If the opponent lets all of the attacks hit, Leyak can be revived to give all of the forwards Brave. His existence to not only provide an additional body, but also allow for senseless attacks to take place makes him one of the strongest cards in the deck.

Zidane, is similar to gaining advantage as it disrupts the opponent. By disrupting them, they become less efficient, so you have gained advantage in a sense. In general, I always try to take the highest quality card from their hand. E.g. vs mono Ice, their hand has Orphan + Locke. While the Locke is a scary card, I really don’t want to have to munch my way through 3 copies of Orphan, so I take the Orphan. Then if a copy of Orphan is claimed by Rikku, suddenly their deck has a lot less overall power in it. Basically, always take the highest quality card as the fallback plan for this deck is fatigue.

Cloud of Darkness, she could easily have gone to 1. She is essentially a win more card. If you have lots of cards, make your opponent have less cards. If you don’t have lots of cards, she’s got a large body? Realistically though, every game she resolves for 8,000 damage, the game is won.

Barbariccia, now this is probably the 3rd best card in the deck (Paine being 1st and Valefor being 2nd). She’s essentially the activator for all of the removal cards in the deck. I cannot stress how important it is to NOT discard copies of her whenever possible. Every card in the deck, that deals damage or reduces power, works with her (except for Diabolos).

Y’shtola, cannot be killed very easily, which makes her safe to attack with every turn. Very similar in function to Ashe.

Famed Mimic Gogo, as one of the weaknesses this deck has is people trying to murder you before you’re ready to remove every forward they play until time ends, Gogo finds his place as a way of stopping the bleeding. During games where you are being aggro’d early, Gogo can help by blocking multiple forwards, and on complex boards he’s a safe attacker. People are very uninterested in blocking Gogo due to how prevalent power reduction is in the deck. If Gogo gets blocked, and a power reduction card is used on their forward, suddenly Power Hit can come knocking for another forward. VS fast deck, he stems bleeding, VS slow decks he can attack safely.

Before moving onto the other parts of the deck I cannot stress enough, you have far less forwards than the average deck has. Your deck has a billion removal options for their forwards, don’t block to trade off your forwards. If you trade off forwards, you’ll just run out of forwards and lose. If you don’t deal damage, you’ll just deck yourself out. Water/Wind has a clock to beat and that clock is itself. Take damage, deal damage, attack for the sake of it and then swing the board with a huge removal combo.

Monsters

Leyak, because it facilitates attacking and lets you cast summons during their turn with ease.

Green Dragon, just so that Gau can sometimes bring back some muscle to hit with.

Tonberries, provides when played a way of clearing their forwards in conjunction with other cards in the deck. Then, once it’s on the field, Tonberries makes people sad to block, so try to use it only when it’s absolutely mandatory to use the Tonberries and keep it sticking around as a threat for as long as possible.

Summons

Valefor. A whole blog post could be dedicated to this card and it’s infinite uses. Stockpile 3, win the game. Stockpile 1 and a Diabolos and you’ll probably win. This + Barb + Bismarck to return Barb and play her again will clear any 2 forwards. The possibilities are basically endless. Valefor is your lifeblood, it’s what enables the crazy clear 3 forwards in a turn plays. There will literally be games that I have no business winning, then 1 Valefor will get EX Burst and I’ll suddenly be able to clear 2+ forwards during their turn. Correct timing on Valefor is half of what makes this deck so hard.

Diabolos, could go to 2. However, the card sometimes is just so gamebreaking I feel like 3 is needed. Leyak makes the card super broken.

Cuchulain, the Impure. Realistically, the deck could play 2 of this and 3x Bismarck, however, this card has EX Burst written in the top right corner. It’s the ultimate in block punishing, and provides a good way to spend 3 CP before Valefor untaps all of your backups again. Off of 5 backups, Cuchu + Valefor should remove a forward, draw a card, untap your backups and set the other forwards up to be removed as well, with Barb/Cuchu/Diabolos/Bismarck. Point is, this card is Valefor’s best friend.

Bismarck, really REALLY good with Barbariccia. As it rounds down, Barb + Bismarck can clear any unboosted forward. The returning your own character effect is really good with any of your entry effect cards to avoid enemy battle tricks and can be used with Gau to get another Leyak in dire situations.

Backups

Yuna, really really important card. Makes Valefor cost -3 CP and the card sucks if it actually costs 2CP. Makes Cuchu and Bismarck super easy to squeeze into turns, but most importantly she makes Paine amazing.

Rikku, makes Paine amazing. Rikku also is what allows the deck to function as a fatigue deck. Some games attacking is really hard, so it’s just about clearing their forwards. As they remove every forward you play, and you remove every forward they play, it’s kind of a stalemate, except your removal isn’t infinite AND you’ll deck yourself faster than most other decks. By using Rikku during those attrition based games, the aim is not to mill them out (although that happens a lot of the time), the aim is to destroy the cards in their deck, so you don’t have to use removal on them. What this means is to prioritise having 1/2 forwards on the board and using the deck destruction effect as much as possible. It’ll apply a lot of pressure to decks like Mono Lightning to lose cards from their deck without the downside of opening your cards up to being removed. Imagine at any point in the game, an Edea is milled, that’s one whole less Edea for them to use, so that’s one more forward they have to awkwardly work out how to remove.

Archer, the counterpart to Rikku in allowing the deck to always win in a fatigue war. Once the stalemate is reached, Archer can remove important backups that they simply will not have time to replay. By doing this, you lower their overall power available on the board. For example, killing a Tellah vs Fire/Ice. It’s very unlikely that they will have time to replay the Tellah, and as such they’re just simply playing without their best backup. Once again, destroying their deck’s power level. In really close games, most decks are not as efficient as Wind/Water, so will struggle to even find a way to replace the backup efficiently. This lets you destroy their hand as they have 1 less CP available to them from their backups each turn. Rikku breaks their deck, Archer breaks their hand, and your forwards break their field. Exhaust them of all resource this way…if they’re playing a removal based deck! If they’re not, it’s probably best to just try to deal 7 points of damage.

Oracle, helpful vs Ice and has some nice uses in close games giving all of your forwards Brave.

Maria, as the forwards in the deck are weak, it’s nice to pump them up to respectable numbers. Also, there’s a lot of deal 7,000 damage cards, so by pushing them up to 8,000 it makes some decks have a harder time clearing away your forwards.

Brother, gets EX Paine to get Yuna/Rikku if you’re missing one. It’s just there for that, to help smoothen out the early turns when the deck is most vulnerable.

Artemicion, lets you get rid of bad cards for backups early game. The deck needs a couple of Water backups that aren’t Yuna, and as the Moogle helps with early consistency it’s a fine addition.

Eiko, getting back Valefor is so gamebreakinig it seems silly not to have Eiko in the deck.

Tonbetty, could easily be cut for another Brother or another water backup, like Scholar. It wasn’t too useful.

This deck was one of the most fun decks I’ve played in a long time, having such flexibility in it’s options. A huge thank you to Pre Temp and Ban from Ban’s Final Fantasy Corner (https://www.facebook.com/Banffcorner/?ref=br_rs) for helping me with how to build and play Water/Wind. I hope to see fatigue style Water/Wind do well in the future, instead of clapstick Wind/Water decks (big vanilla forwards). I’m also looking forward to playing the deck a lot more in the future as it’s so fun to play!

TL;DR No Cid Raines, no trophies.

[yehosera]

Earth Decks!

This blog will go over two Earth decks. Earth is a colour I usually avoid, but due to it’s recent strength it is not a colour I intend on ignoring. What better way to learn about a colour than to build and play some decks involving said colour!

5 Forwards

Earth has a grand total of 5 premium forwards.

Dadaluma

Raubahn

Ingus

WoL

Cecil

The foundations of any mono Earth + splash another colour should start with looking at how these 5 forwards can be put to use in conjunction with the other colour.

Dadaluma, provides the groundwork for Earth in any deck that can utilise ping damage easily on the Dadaluma. Strong supporting cards, like Miner and Tama, allow the Dadaluma to rip holes into established boards in matchups where the opponent simply cannot handle multiple instances of Dadaluma.

Raubahn, essentially says kill any problem forward. Cards like The Emperor or Kam’La that other colours might struggle to remove, Raubahn provides an easy answer to. Synergy cards like Ingus propel the removal card from a simple removal card to a forward that can straight up remove another forward on entry and stick around to fight more.

Ingus, makes your dudes bigger. Earth isn’t a very good archetype if it does not have the strongest dudes. In addition, pushing cards like Vanille/Calbrena up to power levels whereby they can trade with opposing forwards without any assistance is very strong during the middle stages of the game.

WoL, lets you attack every turn.

Cecil, provides some comeback mechanics if you fall behind early and a powerful EX Burst from 3 damage onwards. In addition, he is a very strong Tama target.

Other noteworthy forwards

Vanille, due to her near infinite presence she is a formidable card, however, she requires at least 8 deck slots to be that strong. If the deck has space for the 8 slots required for her, (2 copies of herself and 6 copies of Hecatoncheir) she is a very potent card

Guy/Yang, both cards cannot be dulled. This makes them strong if the deck you build is weak to Ice cards AND has a way to protect them from the popular Mateus, the Corrupt

Rydia, if your deck is not playing a backup Rydia, she provides some insurance against FFVI and mono Lightning decks by being able to break most of the forwards with Gaea’s Wrath (although the assistance of Hecatoncheir is needed if they are playing Duke Larg). Decks that play Vanille can also play Rydia, as they will have the high number of Earth summons required for Gaea’s Wrath.

Delita, very strong when played with Star Sibyl after playing Shantotto. The card is only really strong because it is an extremely high value target for both Star Sibyl and Tama.

Earth/Wind

https://ffdecks.com/deck/5167947089707008

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Earth/Wind v1

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (20):

1 Kam'lanaut (5-148)

1 Kefka (4-147)

3 Ingus (5-074)

3 Dadaluma (4-085)

3 Raubahn (4-096)

2 Wol (5-075)

1 Cecil (5-086)

2 Y'shtola (5-068)

1 Zidane (3-056)

3 Barbariccia (3-066) 

Monsters (6):

1 Calbrena (5-079)

3 Cactuar (4-058)

2 Leyak (5-071)

Summons (6):

3 Hecatoncheir (4-093)

3 Diabolos (5-062)

Backups (18):

1 Chaos (1-184)

3 Enna Kros (1-095)

3 Miner (5-082)

3 Star Sibyl (5-091)

1 Shantotto (1-107)

1 Tama (4-086)

3 Archer (1-088)

1 Semih Lafihna (5-059)

2 Maria (1-083)

The deck is very simple, survive until Dadaluma can clean up house.

The card choices are relatively, however, still deserve some explanation.

The earth forwards are all of the strong ones outlined earlier. There’s a lower Cecil count, because the deck already has comeback mechanics with the Dadaluma and Dadaluma is a higher priority target for the Tama and Miners than Cecil is. Also, a lower priority on WoL, as the opponent shouldn’t really have forwards to block with, so the pushing power that WoL provides isn’t too useful, in addition, your cards can be up to triple buffed so the +2,000 power modification should be almost useless.

There are 6 wind forwards. While Barbariccia normally is useless vs mono coloured decks, the additional Cactuar searcher and the existence of Semih makes dealing 2,000 damage to a forward an easy feat most of the time. Y’shtola and Zidane are the strongest stand alone Wind cards, so the leftover space was dedicated to them.

The two Dark forwards are good for demanding an immediate response from he opponent during the early game, and decent ways of spending CP in the late game. During the early game Kam’La is strong as it searches a 2 CP backup to help make reaching 5 backups an easy feat, and during the later stages Kam’La can get Kefka to provide the player with 2 Forwards over 2 turns. Kefka being an EX Burst is a nice thing, but the real strength is being able to find Cactuar as the deck cannot function without 2 of them on the field.

The summons are the best summons in each colour. 1 Diabolos can come out for a singleton of Asura to help vs Ice decks and Al-Cid decks.

The backups are fairly standard, except Tama takes a spot away from a Shantotto. During the very early phases the Shantotto is better as it clears a board without any conditions, however, during the mid-late stages (whenever 2 Cactuar hit the field), Tama can create a similar effect over 2 turns with the Dadaluma. 2 slots went to Maria over the Semih. The double buffs mean that Raubahn can survive his own effect without assistance from Ingus. The downside to this is that there are only 3 targets for Star Sibyl. This drastically reduces the power level of the card as the game goes on, but Star is mostly there just for securing Kam’La during the early phases or providing the player with a copy of Shantotto for defensive purposes during the early game.

Nothing fancy in the monster section. Just 1 copy of Calbrena over the 3rd Leyak. This lets Kefka fetch Earth CP while also providing a means of prolonging games. A lot of the time, you’ll just have Dadaluma and the Calbrena on the field. Once this happens, you don’t really have anything you need to spend CP on, so the expensive activation cost of the Calbrena is mitigated, also at up to 10,000 power, the revival effect is a joke.

This deck is well rounded and a pain for other decks to handle. If you see a lot of Water decks, remove Calbrena and 2 Maria for Paine and 2 Rikku to mill them out. Vs Ice, there’s Guy + Black Mage as potential additions to make sure that you’re able to survive their really strong onslaught of Dull + Freeze cards during the mid-game, however, as long as a Leyak is drawn, Ice can’t really interact with the forwards in this deck while they’re dull and cannot interact with the Leyak. There aren’t any bad matchups other than Water for this deck, it’s an all round decent deck, you just need them a bit of draw luck as there’s no Dadaluma searchers.

Earth/Water

https://ffdecks.com/deck/5136615571718144

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Earth/Water v1

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (21):

2 Warrior of Light (2-145)

3 Ingus (5-074)

2 Dadaluma (4-085)

3 Raubahn (4-096)

3 Wol (5-075)

2 Cecil (5-086)

1 Porom (2-136)

1 Refia (5-141)

3 Porom (5-135)

1 Gau (4-123)

Monsters (5):

1 Bangaa Thief (4-088)

3 Adamantoise (4-121)

1 Green Dragon (4-124)

Summons (5):

3 Hecatoncheir (4-093)

2 Bismarck (5-133)

Backups (19):

1 Monk (2-089)

2 Pellinore (3-094)

3 Enna Kros (1-095)

2 Miner (5-082)

3 Shantotto (1-107)

1 Tama (4-086)

1 Leonora (3-143)

3 Aria (III) (5-123)

3 Yuna (1-176)

Fall behind early, clear their forwards cheaply and efficiently for a couple turns, then snowball the field with Warriors of Light.

Again, for earth forwards the strong ones. A priority this time on the WoL, as Water has natural Warrior of Light synergies, there’s an extra Cecil over a Dadaluma. This time because Water has no innate ways of dealing damage to it’s own cards, the Dadaluma is likely to have it’s effects wasted without the copy of Pellinore being drawn. Also, Water just has more EX Bursts, so it’s more friendly towards taking damage making Cecil a stronger card.

Warriors of Light. The board becomes basically unbreakable if an Ingus/Refia + Warrior of Light is drawn. Any additional cards with the job Warrior of Light turn them into unstoppable behemoths, hell bent on attacking you each turn. WoL, Warrior of Light, Ingus, Refia are basically interchangeable with the While, Red, Black and Pale riders respectively.

Porom is in the deck, mostly because Porom allows the deck to play 4 additional EX Bursts, while also providing a means of filtering towards Adamantoise + Raubahn. It’s really important to play those two cards onto the field at the same time, as that tends to be what starts the snowball, so Porom helping to filter towards the snowballing effects while also providing a strong early game defence is key for not simply dying in the first few turns vs Ice decks. There’s a copy of Gau in the deck as Adamantoise is a REALLY key card for the deck.

There are 5 monsters, all of which can be summoned via Gau. The real reason to play Water with Earth is access to the Adamantoise, turning Raubahn into a monster. 5 CP break their forward, draw a card. Sign me up please. The Tonberries is to help prevent people pushing through your defences before the board is set up with the Warriors of Light of the Apocalypse or WoLotA for short. Bangaa Thief is more of an exploit that currently exists in FFTCG, whereby nobody has nice ways of killing monsters, so by playing the Bangaa Thief it’ll just kind of exist as a 7k phantom forward until the game ends.

The summons can be swapped around. Keep 3 Hecaton, as again with Adamantoise you’ll be clearing away forwards like it’s nothing. The Bismark though, they aren’t particularly potent in this deck, they’ll let you recycle Raubahn, or even save him from his own effect (if you return the Raubahn to your hand, the 9,000 damage is still dealt to their forward). Other than that, it’s a nifty combat trick to keep the Poroms/early forwards from dying too easily in combat. The Bismarks could even become Moogle in this deck. Due to how basically every card costs 4 CP, it’s very likely that on 5 backups 1 will go to waste, so the Moogle filtering towards WoLotA/Raubahn+Adamantoise isn’t something to be discredited.

The backups are very clunky, they can be smoothened out a bit. Only 3 2 CP backups is very low, however, there really aren’t any others that are worth playing in the deck, maybe a Doga to help save the WoLotA during the later stages from some lightning cards. That being said, there are still 3 Aria and 2 Miners that can be played on turn 1. So it’s not too hard to find a backup to start the game on. Even if you don’t find a backup, most of the time Warrior of Light + WoL can just sort of get there without any backups. There are a grand total of 6 reactive backups though, so don’t expect to hit 5 without playing Shantotto+Yuna. They should be a part of your gameplan. Accept losing the board early to two forwards and playing Shantotto off of 3 backups to remove just two forwards as a good play. Sure it’s not the Shantotto clearing 5 forwards it could be, but the deck isn’t very strong at combat during the early phases and doesn’t want to bleed-out to a Setzar + Celes for example. Yuna is exceptional at buying time, as long as she exists in the top 10 or so cards you become incredible difficult to kill. If a player is trying to aggro you out, she can be EX Burst to buy an additional turn (2 cards closer to Shantotto), and if she can be played on a card that has a high initial investment, e.g. Setzar, she’s basically removal. In summary, expect to start shaky, with a single backup, then try to reach 3 backups, then you can start looking to steer your opponent towards a board state whereby Shantotto is good/Yuna is good. Then you can start playing FFTCG/WoLotA simulator.

Overall, this deck is actually a really strong deck. It’s biggest weakness is how binary in function basically every card is. However, they’re all REALLY good at their single functions. So yeah, reach 3 backups, get some cheap stuff down like the baby Warriors of Light/Porom, try to rob them of Tempo with Yuna/Shantotto then start playing WoLotA simulator!

TL;DR Dadaluma, Raubahn, Ingus, Cecil, WoL are the reasons to play Earth

[yehosera]

Locals Report 03/05/18

Played the same deck as I did at Paris. Went 2 wins 3 losses. I got obliterated.

The Deck

https://ffdecks.com/deck/6248519153221632

Except I swapped around 1 Selphie for 1 Yeul.

Best Card - Yeul

It saved me from using Tellah on a 9K Forward while a Belias was on the top of my deck. Also, it was just pretty fun to use the Yeul.

Worst Card - Cid Raines

I drew this card like once. Turns out this deck is unplayable if you don’t draw your 2 card removal combos.

Event Summary

Round 1 - Earth/Water. I managed to win game 1 by squeezing out a sneaky Belias + Genesis lethal. However, I got demolished in the best of 3, losing the following 2 games to a combination of Minwu, Warrior of Light and Cecil. Turns out 3 opus down the line and Minwu, Warrior of Light is still unbreakable for Fire/Ice without the help of Bahamut. Only Tellah can kill the card.

Round 2 - Mono Ice. It was a long game, I don’t think I should’ve lost that game, however, I made several mistakes over the course of the game. Eventually, the game state simplified from us both having a full 5 cards every turn to us basically top decking. He drew a string of Vayne, Genesis, Orphan, so that was the end of that game.

Round 3 - Mono Ice. Again I made a few mistakes. Then one turn, I attacked without playing a Vayne in M1. I genuinely did not even consider that he might block with his Setzar, so I kinda boned myself and got caught up in the eternal dull freeze all your forwards loop.

Round 4 - Mono Ice. Finally a win against Mono Ice. I drew Cid Raines for the first time! Set up a ChooChoo discard two with Glasya and the game was relatively easy. Kinda shows the importance of drawing your 2 card removal combos, with it I could win, without them, I’m just playing a worse Mono Ice deck.

Round 5 - Warrior of Light. I got obliterated. I had issues against an 8,000 power Warrior of Light in round 1. Now in round 5 he’s back as the final boss of the locals. With a full roster of Ingus, Luneth, Arc, Refia and WoL to support him as sub bosses. If I couldn’t remove an 8,000 power Warrior of Light, what hope did I have against 5…on minimum 9,000 power.

Under Performers

Just about ever card in the deck.

Over Performers

Yeul.

Potential additions

About 25 lightning cards. Ice/Lightning can play Odin. Odin kills Warrior of Light!

Overall, on a more serious note, I played poorly and this deck does TERRIBLE if the pilot plays badly. It was shocking how much of a difference being in the setting of a real event vs a locals made to this deck.

TL;DR Odin kills Warrior of Light. Odin = Friend.

[yehosera]

Spring Cup Paris 1st Place Fire/Ice (Cid Raines & co.)

This blog post is going to cover the 48 cards + 2 copies of Cid Raines I used to navigate myself to another 1st place finish at a Seasonal Cup.

Spring Cup

This was a 2 day event ran by Majestik Games in Paris. 126 players took part, making the event 7 rounds of swiss for day 1 (best of 1) with a top 8 cut for day 2 (best of 3).

Stream

Day 2 - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/255724584 (my game starts at 04:34)

Fire/Ice Cid Raines & Co.

https://ffdecks.com/deck/6248519153221632

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Cid Raines & Co. Paris Edition

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (26):

1 Zidane (3-154)

3 Vivi (3-017)

2 Firion (1-021)

3 Sabin (4-021)

2 Cid Raines (1-192)

3 Locke (4-048)

1 The Emperor (5-036)

3 Celes (4-038)

3 Genesis (3-033)

2 Vayne (2-026)

2 Setzer (4-036)

1 Orphan (5-029)

Summons (8):

3 Belias, the Gigas (2-019)

2 Phoenix (5-019)

3 Glasya Labolas (5-032)

Backups (16):

1 Ninja (5-017)

1 Red Mage (1-003)

1 Selphie (2-009)

1 Black Waltz 2 (3-015)

1 Irvine (2-001)

3 Tellah (5-015)

1 Scholar (5-030)

3 Duke Larg (1-057)

1 Gestahlian Empire Cid (4-026)

2 Edward (5-031)

1 Devout (1-048)

Swiss

Round 1 - Mono Ice. I had a good idea of what the list that my opponent was playing, however, my hand was very starved of backups. The moment he played a Harley turn 1 discarding a copy of Hurdy, I knew I’d lost that game. His hand was so strong that he had at worst Edward + a better 2 CP backup than Hurdy. Whereas my hand had Tellah + Duke Larg maybe. He hit 4 backups while I was on 2 still and out resourced and killed me. Mono Ice is like your deck but lacks as much burn, so generally whoever starts the game ahead will win.

Round 2 - Fire/Wind. This was a relatively easy game. Phoenix destroyed his Light Cloud and Vivi off of the Phoenix destroyed his Rosso. Making Phoenix a Bahamut but better. Relatively easy matchup, just killed his first couple forwards and it was smooth cruising.

Round 3 - 3 Colour Monsters. This matchup is all about pressure + Runic/Silent Verse. The deck can only clear your forwards with Shantotto and Valefor. They have a bunch of small removal spells (like Chaos, Walker of the Wheel), however, with enough discard pressure they simply won’t be able to play them all. The first challenge is forcing Shantotto, however, Setzar + Locke will generally apply too much pressure for them to hold onto Shantotto for very long. The next challenge is to poke for 1 damage a turn and find Runic/Silent Verse to stop their final attempt at removing the pressure on the board.

Round 4 - Ice/Lightning. I didn’t actually know I was playing vs Ice/Lightning until turn 3/4. The only cards I had seen were Devout, Edward and Thaumaturge. Then my Locke got hit by Seymour and that threw me off a bit. I was fairly fortunate that Al-Cid did not make an appearance, however, due to how low on cards both players were from the onset of the game, it would’ve been a miracle for him to have drawn Al-Cid + part. Due to his Edward + Thaumaturge on turn 2, both players were low on cards for the whole game. However, due to my deck’s superior removal options I was able to grind away his hand and field.

Round 5 - Mono Water. Unlike in the final, I did not know that I was against Mono Water at the start of the game. Overall, not very much all that interesting happened. I applied some pressure and he wasted Cagnazzo on Setzar + Locke. From then on in, it became a game of keep the pressure up and don’t give him time to become the aggressor. As Cagnazzo is on the field, his only swing card is Cloud of Darkness, so keeping his forward total low enough to not let Cloud of Darkness break one of my forwards is important. However, eventually he amassed 4 forwards and attempted to break my Sabin, in retaliation I broke my Tellah targeting his Cagnazzo, if this resolved his forward total would be down to 3, thus allowing the Sabin to survive. This generated a checkmate situation, because for him to negate my Tellah with his Porom it would remove a blocker (the Porom) and a valuable CP. However, if Sabin lived, Rising Phoenix guaranteed my lethal on the following turn. In the end, he negated with Porom and died to Orphan on the following turn.

Round 6 - Ice/Wind. My opponent opened with a 2 CP Backup (I’m tempted to say Thief). My hand was so bad, I played Setzar and Empire Cid by discarding most of my hand on turn 1. This set me up to have Locke for next turn. My opponent really did not like this and discarded his whole hand to play Edward + Imaginary Champion reducing both player’s total cards in hand to 0. My draws for turn were Sabin and Locke, at this point I had to make a choice between playing the Locke for 0 value or waiting to play Sabin next turn, the other choice is do I further simplify the board by attacking with Setzar and trading. I opted to hold my cards and aim to play Sabin on the following turn to make the Setzar attack good. He played another discard card, I lost Locke, then I played Sabin and started to work back from there. The game became close when he draw a Kam’La off of 3 backups and I could not discard his copy of The Emperor from his hand. Despite his attempts at a comeback, the early pressure coupled with Genesis + Vayne style oppression got me the win in the end.

Round 7 - Urianger Mill. This was a really unfortunate matchup for my opponent. I’d practiced Urianger decks the most before this event (I was planning on playing an Urianger deck initially), so I knew the deck inside and out. Similarly to the 3 colour monster deck, you just grind it out of cards early with Discard effects and pressure to force a Shantotto, then hold Runic/Silent Verse to cancel a key summon to close out the game. In this instance it was an Exodus, The Judge-Sal that was cancelled. Normally I would hold the summon cancel for a copy of Phoenix/Diabolos, however, the Exodus would’ve broken my Locke and his hand was 1, maybe 2 cards after casting Exodus, so I really wanted to take away the maximum resources possible by hitting him with the Locke and playing Celes. I also drew my copy of Red Mage to oppress the Calbrena every time it turned into a forward.

Going 6-1 meant that I placed 7th after swiss.

Top 8

Round 1 - Earth/Wind. This matchup is terrible for Fire/Ice, Tellah is the only real advantage you have over the deck. I was extremely lucky, in that his decklist was incorrect and I got a game 1 win. Essentially, I handled all of his dangerous forwards pretty quickly, Recall on the first Dadaluma, Recall on some other forward and Tellah breaking itself + Irvine on the first Shantotto. He was starved for cards so often that I didn’t really feel like I could be threatened by anything and proceeded to win rather comfortably.

Round 2 - Mono Lightning. This matchup is why Phoenix is so important. Outside of it’s niche uses to bring back situational 3 drops vs other decks, the deck it really shines against is Mono Lightning. Game 1 started with me being on 5 damage and REALLY far behind. I didn’t have a smooth backup curve vs Mono Lightning and he played two Al-Cids in quick succession. Normally after an Al-Cid, Celes is what allows you to start catching up, but that got hit by Edea. Celes prevents a damage by freezing them after attacking and allows you to attack back while picking them off. Despite falling behind, playing multiple copies of Glasya to pressure his board position and hand followed by drawing Phoenix to, once again, pressure his position on board and hand meant that I could eventually close out the win with 0 cards in deck. In this kind of situation whereby you are being pressured out of the game early, it is possible to play as slowly as possible from behind and win. Simply work on destroying each threat they play and take bad trades. No attacks from any forwards until they are down to 2/3 cards in hand, that’s when you can finally start playing FFTCG. By pressuring the hand + board you are able to force them to use a lot of premium removal early and ensure that your later game forwards stick around, in this case it’s just a shame the first forward that stuck was a Vayne while I had about 8 cards left in deck. Game 2, I opened strong. He played 2 backups, then played an Illua. This prompted me to think that his hand was filled with forwards and summons making this turn a really good one for making him discard, but his hand still had a backup in which threw me off a bit. His plan to go aggressive early did not work, and he was out resourced and destroyed by Rising Phoenix in the end. Game 1 was by far the hardest game of FFTCG I’ve played in a long time.

Round 3 - Mono Water. Just forward simulate vs this deck and it’s pretty defenceless. Aim to alternate Forward, Backup, Forward, Backup each turn, so you can pressure their hand with Locke/Genesis and still build your own resource. Game 1, my hand had Empire Cid, so I played that T1 and added Locke. T2 played Locke + Ninja, this forces him to play a forward. As he had no Wakka his forward was only 7k, so a Duke Larg solidified Locke as the strongest forward on the board. It’s all about snowballing the Locke, and creating situations whereby the Locke is applying pressure to their life total and hand every turn. Once they are pressured out of having a hand and have the minimum number of backups, the number of playable top decks is greatly reduced as any 5 drop is unplayable. In contrast, the majority of cards you can top deck apply even more pressure. As shown by game 2, Sabin simply is unkillable during the early portions of the game, only once they have enough resources to play a lot of forwards and a Cloud of Darkness can he be easily dealt with. Sabin also snowballs the Locke pressure massively by making Locke unbreakable.

The Deck

Backups

There are very few 2 CP backups in this deck, that is to make Tellah more likely to hit with Recall. Tellah is really the centre piece of the backup lineup, enabling Irvine and Black Waltz 2 during the late game and providing a really good way to invest 3 CP during the early game. Due to the large volume of named Backups there’s a high priority on breakable backups.

Ninja. Possibly the easiest 2CP backup to break in the game, as the only requirement is that a Forward is in play and does not require any additional CP. Ninja is very flexible, don’t be afraid to break Ninja just to deal a point of damage if you are able to replace the slot it took up.

Red Mage. Really solid turn 1 backup, where this differs from Ninja is that Red Mage cannot be broken. That is the main reason as to why I opted for 1 Red Mage, 1 Ninja. As any game I opened 2 Red Mages I really sad at being basically unable to play 1.

Selphie. While a solid investment on turn 1, I actually never used her effect. This card could probably come out for a Bard (4-027). Winning fights isn’t your primary concern, keeping the board clear is.

Black Waltz 2. I EX Burst this card twice and both times it was as effective as an Odin. Play this over a 2nd copy of Irvine to get some name differentiation going on, while both cards are functionally the same, I cannot place two Irvines onto the field.

Irvine. Shuts down aggro, shuts down Al-Cid parts, heck it even shuts down other Cid Raines. Being able to play a card like Vivi/Cid Raines/Glasya and an Irvine in the same turn puts your opponent back two steps and you ahead two steps. You develop a Forward + a Backup and they lose a Forward + a card in hand. Obviously, this card shines most with Cid Raines, however, there’s no shortage of ways the Sniper will find his mark in this deck.

Tellah. Without this card, Fire/Ice would be a Moogle deck. The raw power Tellah adds to the deck is unmatched by any Opus 5 card. During short games, whereby board control is all that matters, he is a Brynhildyr that provides CP. In a long game, Recall means that eventually 2 of their forwards will die at the cost of 2 CP and a backup that cannot be played. This lowers your total number of dead draws during the late game by a bit more and means that 2 of their key forwards simply don’t exist. Also, in principle, being able to convert backups into what is essentially a Summon adds a lot of power to the backup lineup. Finally Tellah’s last power use is in conjunction with Irvine/Waltz, during the late game when you are on 5 backups, Tellah not only deals enough damage to allow the entry effects of Irvine/Waltz to kill a roadblock, but it also frees up a backup slot for the Irvine/Waltz to be played. To further exemplify the point, vs Mono Ice if they played Jihl Nabaat (2-037) on turn 1, I straight up lost. Legitimately 10% win rate over about 30-40 games vs that Jihl Nabaat.

Scholar, fantastic card. Adds back Mirage Dive or Cid Raines to clean up the board. It’s another Irvine/Waltz synergy card. On 5 backups, it can be broken to add back Cid Raines while freeing up a backup slot for Irvine/Waltz to be played and also providing the Cid Raines to finish the job that they started.

Duke Larg. Was going to be a 1 of. I am glad that it ended up being a 3 of. The card once again saved me by allowing my Genesis/Locke to trade into 8k forwards, which with a Sabin on board made people extremely sad about, as the Gensis/Locke straight up killed their forwards without dying.

Edward, while Silent Verse is undoubtably a strong ability, only 2 copies of Edward are needed. He shines most vs Urianger and 3 colour monsters. In those matchups, you only need to negate 1 summon to win, so only 2 Edward are played as you have almost the whole game to draw both. During swiss 2 is fine, as most people assume you will be playing 3, so every turn he is left open and the other copy is not in public knowledge, it seems extra likely you will have a copy.

Gestahlian Empire Cid, finally cut it down to 1 instead of 2. I don’t really like 2 of a searchable card, it kinda defeats the point of being able to search it AND it’s not like Setzar HAS to get Empire Cid to be useful.

Devout. Sometimes Tellah deals 16,000 damage if you check this card instead of another 2 CP backup. Legit, that’s only why Devout is in here. There are some cool combos you can do, by bringing back Sabin when they block an attacker, but realistically, it’s only there because it is a T1 backup that is breakable and makes Recall stronger.

Summons

Belias, the Gigas. Realistically this card could still be at 2. I barely used the card. Don’t get suckered into using it on a Genesis/Locke T1, that just costs you cards and opens you up to removal. Card’s also really good for activating Clione while The Emperor is on the field.

Phoenix. Specifically for Lightning based decks. Lightning really hates having it’s forwards killed and has a finite amount of removal. So, Phoenix provides a way of killing taxing their removal total a bit more (by bringing back problem cards for the deck, like Locke) and removes their forwards. In addition, vs Lightning decks, the Phoenix can remove a forward and bring back Zidane, Zidane can use the “Untap all IX” option and block Illua, thus meaning you don’t have to waste cards on Illua or they have to burn cards stopping the Zidane picking off their primary attacker. Another cool use is to bring back The Emperor when they activate a draw card.

Glasya Labolas, for beating Lightning decks harder and for shutting down any and all early aggression. Glasya kills all of Mono Lightning’s Al-Cid parts under Lulu and Setzar Locke (without Duke Larg). So while not only crippling decks like Mono Lightning and Earth/Ice, it also shuts down any aggressive Shelke based decks. Any player that draws badly and played an 8k forward on turn 1, then hits you with it is about to get blown out of the game by Glasya + Cid Raines generating a Choo Choo Discard Two situation. Essentially, Glasya is all about being safe early and having some late game use with the Dull + Freeze options.

Forwards

FFVI

Sabin. Snowballs your board position. Sabin should not be the first forward played (unless the other deck lacks removal) but really should be used as an enabler for other forwards. When you’re behind, using the effect on Celes to force them to block and lose a forward, or allow Celes to hit and deal damage, thus opening their forward to followup burn is a great example of how even on a losing board Sabin allows for the player to start to turn the game back into them being the attacker. Whenever you’re ahead on board, Sabin asks the same question, but with Genesis/Locke in a block and lose a forward or lose a card from hand type situation. As if the ability to swing/snowball a board state isn’t enough, while Sabin is on the field, nothing can block him. If they ever play enough forwards to make attacking a bad idea, Rising Phoenix puts them all in the soup.

Locke. Win more incarnate. As a great Starcraft caster once said “If you’re ahead, get more ahead”. Useless when behind, however, if you start to find yourself even a little bit ahead the Treasure Hunter finds himself hunting the treasures in the opponent’s hand a little bit too frequently. Off of 2/4 backups (including an Empire Cid), Setzar + Locke sets you up to be the aggressor. Any game the Locke is left unchecked will be a hard one for the opponent. Anytime you’re short on forwards, Scholar lets you add back Locke to play it again for some more pressure, not only that, but if a Locke is already on the board Scholar converts itself into a point of damage via Mirage Dive. Locke is the primary Phoenix target on a winning board, as it sets the opponent back even further. Don’t be afraid to block with Locke if the situation calls for it, while he’s an amazing attacker, if he can trade for a forward he’s still over performing.

Celes. While you’re behind Celes is fantastic as she stems the bleeding AND makes the opponent consider defending. In a situation whereby a forward has been frozen by Celes, if she attacks, you opponent might let her hit, in which case all of the burn damage will now find it’s mark (while before you might be short some damage) or do they block her and lose a forward anyway. While ahead Celes + Genesis back to back keep a forward out of the game for a very long time. While even, Celes is a great first forward to play as Freezing a backup may throw them off of their curve. Finally, Runic provides a win condition vs most of the 3+ colour decks and any deck playing Phoenix + Diabolos. She’s basically good at everything.

Setzar, originally was a 1 of, however, I ended up cutting a card so he filled the slot. Protect your Setzar and he will carry you, I cannot stress enough how important it is to not just throw away the Setzar in a trade because “he added a card so his job must be done”. Just keep the Gambler around and wait until the Dull + Freeze effect can find value. Not just keeping a forward down for a turn, but say, setting up for Glasya/Cid Raines/Celes to become enabled on the forward. Also, while they have bigger forwards, just attack with him. Nobody wants to block Setzar and feel the wrath of Cid Raines on their blocker. Even if the followup burn is not Cid Raines, how south the game starts to go if it is Cid Raines should deter most people from blocking.

Phoenix Targets

Cid Raines. Best card in the deck/game. Combos with a million other cards in the deck. Makes people feel really sad. Why Al-Cid Onion when you can Cid Raines Vivi. Cid Raines is the real edge this deck has over most other decks. Not very many decks can punish attempts at taking back initiative as savagely as any deck playing Cid Raines can. Tried to sneak in a damage? Now you’re two steps behind and I’m two steps ahead.

The Emperor. I actually wish this card was at 2 in my deck. Despite the Dull + Freeze effect only coming up once (and both me and my opponent forgetting to activate the effect), 4 CP 7k discard a card is actually really good (reminds me of a certain card from Opus 3). With Phoenix, wait until they try to draw a card and ruin their forwards. However, where it really shines is that off of 4 backups when you play Phoenix, the last backup doesn’t get wasted.

Vivi, sometimes kills 2 cards with Phoenix (making it a 7CP Bahamut with upside), also allows Phoenix to reach huge numbers (vs cards like Gilgamesh: 1-207). Vivi is so strong because it is both a complete piece of burn during the early game and a combo enabler during the late game. Early game, people tend to have enough cards in their hand for Vivi on it’s own to destroy early forwards. During the mid game, they tend to have just enough, but there’s always the possibility for them to discard cards to make Vivi miss it’s mark. In situations like that, cards like Irvine and Cid Raines to finish off the card they tried to save is especially devastating. At any point in the game, attacking with Vivi is kinda annoying for the opponent, as you obviously have followup burn and losing a forward for a Vivi doesn’t make anyone happy. Making Vivi indestructible with Sabin and attacking with Vivi is like the ultimate disrespect, especially while you don’t have the followup burn in hand. If they block, they potentially lose their forward, and if they don’t you get a damage. During the early phases, there’s no point in blocking with Vivi to prevent a point of damage, so you might as well start generating tough choices for the opponent. The more questions you ask the opponent, the more likely it is that they mess up.

Zidane. A last minute inclusion. I lost 1 game due to drawing him and won more by having him in my hand. With Phoenix he can either lessen the burden Phoenix has on your hand, or start pressuring the opponent’s hand size. Zidane excels vs Illua he’s super potent as bringing him back with Phoenix and untapping provides a blocker for her. In more general use, he’s a massively snowbally card if you’re able to play Vivi, Cid Raines + Zidane in one turn. That puts them SO far behind and asks so many questions with regards to how they intend on defending themselves. Always play Zidane asap, don’t let him rot in your hand and play him as early as possible. The longer Zidane is in your hand the longer your options are limited. In a deck that’s main strength is it’s flexibility, having a card lowering your ability to do that is pretty devastating.

Generic Good Forwards

Firion. Deals damage. Deck likes cards that deal damage.

Genesis. Snowballs any board with a Locke on it. Stems the bleeding sometimes. Fantastic with Sabin. The card is just good, and having 8,000 power with a Duke Larg is something that just doesn’t sit right with me.

Vayne. Opponent called Ice on Kam’La? Np Vayne. Opp is playing big cards? Np Vayne. Opp is playing Ice? Np Vayne. Opp is playing Water? Np Vayne. Mono Earth, Ice, and Water all play a large number of 5+CP forwards and as such Vayne will be useful vs them. Every deck in top 8 (even the 3 colour Monster deck) had at least 2 5+ CP forwards.

Orphan. Oppression incarnate. Orphan blows people so far out of the water it’s actually quite comical. The turn Orphan is played 2 cards get Dull + Frozen. So 6 CP they lose 2 cards for 2 turns is already pretty strong, but then the Orphan has a 10/9,000 power body to attack with AND has upside for attacking? Amazing. Every time I drew Orphan (other than in the first 3 turns) setting up a board to meet the 5 Ice condition meant I’d literally won the game. It is so backbreaking to be stuck handling early pressure + removal then once you’ve finally stabilised the board it’s all gone thanks to Orphan. Orphan is the main reason to include Mog (XIII-2) in the deck. I would not want more than 1 copy of Orphan though, as it would come at the cost of additional burn cards, and the Orphan is not as scary without burn to support the cards Orphan needs to work during the early stages of the game.

Potential Edits

There are a grand total of about 3 cards I would consider not mandatory in this deck.

2nd Firion, 3rd Belias, the Gigas, Selphie.

These can all come out for the following potential additions

The Emperor, Setzar, Aloeidai, Phoenix, Mateus, the Corrupt, Bard, Mog (XIII-2).

The Emperor can come in at 2 because I honestly felt like the 1 was so strong I would consider two. Being a discard card with upside that doesn’t require any further set up and isn’t a Light card makes him super strong.

Setzar, maybe a 3rd is fine, as some of the time Setzar + Locke on 4 backups is a win condition.

Aloeidai. I always like to have at least 1 monster in a deck (it just seems wasteful not to have all 4 types of card). Aloeidai is a prime candidate for this as it’s so big for the effect it has. Also, still, people just lack cards that interact with monsters. It’s quite annoying to have a Genesis that can’t be interacted with.

Phoenix, fantastic card, could be a 3 of so I see it a bit earlier.

Mateus, the Corrupt. As a 1 of it’s really powerful when deck lists are public.

Bard, nice breakable 2 CP backup. A problem the deck has is sometimes it reaches 3 Fire backups instead of 3 Ice backups and it’s hard to play off of 3 Fire backups, so an extra ice one is nice.

Mog (XIII-2), makes the one of Orphan a bit more justifiable. Also, I REALLY like adding Cid Raines to my hand.

Mulligan Guide

Any 2 CP backup + Setzar/3 CP backup is a keep. Due to the lack of 2 CP backups, any hand with one in is kinda strong. 2x 3CP backup if one is Empire Cid/Duke Larg and the other is Tellah is okay as well. Premium hands are 2 CP backup + 3x 3CP backup.

Early Game

Try to reach 4 backups asap and play Setzar + Locke. Don’t discard your removal cards during the early game when possible. Value cards like Glasya above Sabin. Just cook up a big removal turn in your hand in case the early game goes wrong. It is possible to get stuck on 2 Backups, at this point you have to start reducing the opponent’s resources by being the aggressor.

Mid Game

If you’ve reached 4 backups without a problem, it’s actually very hard to lose if you keep the good cards in your hand for the specific matchup. It’s all about being able to flexibly answer any problem presented by the opponent without letting up on the pressure. Try and predict what the likely answers to your problems are and how you can counter that. For example, vs mono Lightning, keep in hand a copy of Genesis, Phoenix and Cid Raines, because if they play Zemus, you will retort with Genesis to oppress it for a turn. At that point their best answer is Edea/Al-Cid. If they have that as an answer you’re now able to Phoenix, target Vivi and play Cid Raines to clean up the Zemus + Edea/half of Al-Cid. It’s all about knowing the threats and how to navigate around them + force certain cards out for you to react to. In the event that you’re stuck on 2 backups, just keep playing 4 CP cards while looking for a turn to propel yourself up to 3/4 backups with Vivi + Irvine/Waltz/Duke Larg. This is because they’re the only backups you have that impact the board. If you are behind on backups and stuck applying pressure just to buy time, you will probably lose if you spend the turn playing a static backup.

Late Game

Wait for the power cards to close out the game in one go. Just poke with whatever attacker you can afford to, and wait. Phoenix, Orphan, Rising Phoenix, Runic, Silent Verse, Mirage Dive, Recall. There’s a bunch of single cards/Special abilities that can open up the window for dealing 7 points of damage. Just be sure to be patient and mindful of what removal/comeback options are available. If you fall behind at this point, the deck WILL NOT recover. If you were behind at the start and on the pressure game plan, look for a window to deal 7 before they stabilise. Once the window closes it’s gone, so keep trying to set yourself up for the potential to deal 7 before the window closes. This means things like playing Cid Raines/Vivi/Firion, just so that you have 3 attackers for the next turn while they’re on 4 damage. Anything to set up to kill them before the window closes.

Priority Cards

Early Game: 2 CP Backups, Empire Cid, Setzar, Irvine, Black Waltz 2, Vivi, Cid Raines.

Mid Game (stuck on 2 Backups): Irvine, Black Waltz 2, Vivi, Genesis, Vayne, Sabin, Celes, Belias.

Mid Game (4 backups+): Irvine, Black Waltz 2, Cid Raines, Vivi, Tellah, Setzar, Empire Cid.

Late Game: Sabin, Tellah, Edward, Celes, Orphan, Glasya, Phoenix.

Try not to discard forwards that you have no more copies of, as their effects are probably needed once per game to win the game.

Final Thoughts

I don’t think I’ll be getting a coach to Paris again. I was sooo sleepy during day 1, I could be caught sleeping on chairs between rounds due to how exhausting being on a coach is. The side events were fun, the quiz and the Chocobo Hunt. I got to see Joe Hill go from never playing Chocobo Hunt to being on the final table for the Chocobo Hunt tournament in one day. I brought some more of Dark Sphere’s innate raffle luck to Paris and managed to win 3 raffles over the two days. It’s basically a Dark Sphere trade secret now how to win raffles. I’m quite sad Robert Phillips didn’t manage to break out and make it past top 8 (not that he would’ve made it past top 4 as I would’ve been his opponent), it’s also getting quite comical how often I keep having to gatekeep Jamie Faulkner. This time should’ve been his win, but his hand writing was so bad he started top 8 with a game loss. It was great seeing so many friendly faces from previous Seasonal Cups and being asked to sign cards was a new experience for me! Finally, a huge thank you to Kim Man and San Nguyen Chau for being so supportive and making the trip a pleasure! And to Robert Phillips for not only playing the same deck as me, but writing that it’s copy written in his deck list. It wouldn’t have been possible without him taking so many losses at the hands of Belias + Vayne to make the decklist.

TL;DR Cid Raines won me the Spring Cup in Paris

[yehosera]

Fire/Ice Serah

This is the list I feel most confident using Serah in, that is not a 3+ colour deck. Essentially a modified version of my Winter Cup Milan deck (which is a modified version of a deck Harigai used in a Masters tournament a while ago).

Fire/Ice Serah

--Generated By FF Decks (www.ffdecks.com)--

Deck Name: Fire/Ice Serah

Created by: yehosera

Forwards (26):

3 Vivi (3-017)

3 Sabin (4-021)

2 Cid Raines (1-192)

3 Locke (4-048)

3 Celes (4-038)

3 Genesis (3-033)

2 Vayne (2-026)

3 Serah (5-152)

3 Setzer (4-036)

1 Orphan (5-029)

Monsters (2):

2 Aloeidai (5-025)

Summons (8):

3 Belias, the Gigas (2-019)

2 Phoenix (5-019)

3 Glasya Labolas (5-032)

Backups (14):

3 Montblanc (2-021)

1 Hurdy (2-043)

3 Duke Larg (1-057)

2 Gestahlian Empire Cid (4-026)

3 Mog (XIII-2) (1-196)

2 Hurdy (5-043)

This list lacks the raw amount of burn the prior list had access to. Losing out on 2 Firions and the 3 CP Fire Backups (Irvine, Black Waltz 2) really hurts the consistency at clearing out early forwards. The compensation is that this list only has to play 14 backups (instead of the 18 needed previously).

All of the 14 backups can be searched for with the exception of Duke Larg. This means that the only randomness in hitting 5 backups stems from your ability to draw Duke Larg.

As always the question you should be asking yourself when making this style of Fire/Ice is “why am I playing Fire cards instead of additional Ice cards”. The Fire cards give rise to the risk of damaging consistency, and detract from a more traditional Ice game plan as Fire cards do not come with the text Dull (with the exception of Tifa), Freeze and Discard.

In this deck, the Fire cards exist for 2 reasons. Firstly, they give access to a VERY potent attacker in the form of Sabin, Sabin allows to deck punch through even the largest of walls, a feat only possible in Mono Ice with the help of Rinoa. The second reason is that, Hurdy is the strongest Moogle to use in conjunction with Serah, so Fire cards are needed to utilise the Montblanc that Hurdy fetches.

Rather than go over every card, I’ll just make a quick note of the stranger ones.

Orphan, you should hit the 5 Ice cards required every time it is played. 4 Ice backups and Orphan itself. The reason Orphan is at 1 instead of 3 is purely space related. It is definitely a powerhouse for the deck when it comes to closing out games or just applying insane pressure to the opponent during the mid-game.

Aloeidai, at first glance this card looks like a more expensive Genesis. However, there are quite a few merits to playing this cards. Firstly, it isn’t possible to play 5 Genesis. Also, on an empty board, Aloeidai is a lot scarier to handle. On an empty board the Genesis entry effect is missed out, in addition, you leave behind Genesis’ body. This gives the opponent something to react to. A mark for their situational removal spells. Whereas, with Aloeidai, it is very unlikely that they are carrying removal for it. As such, the card applies a lot more pressure and forces awkwardness out of people. For example, do they float CP to use a removal spell just in case you turn it into a Forward? If you can start to sniff out what their likely answers are and only animate the card when those answers are awkward to use, then the Aloeidai will start to seem very potent. Finally, it gives you something to do with the extra CP Serah gives you. Protip, vs Mono Water monsters playing Aloeidai + an ice backup T1 will apply crazy pressure to their hand during the first few turns AND the Aloeidai will stick around for later use.

Hurdy. The real reason the deck works is because of Hurdy. The 4 CP Hurdy giving access to multiple Moogles early on, means that any game whereby the player has Serah or Mog (XIII-2), in the opening hand, the hand is playable. It’s possible to simply expire the majority of your hand to get into play Serah + both colours of backup early on. Despite being expensive, this means that you have a solid backup foundation to start building upon AND if Serah sticks to the field, you’ll gain back the lost card ADV due to the extra CP she’ll be providing each turn. Any game whereby the player opens Serah + Hurdy, and is able to use Hurdy to fetch Montblanc + Serah to fetch Mog (XIII-2), then set up 3 Moogles with a Serah primed to attack. Setzar/Empire Cid becomes such insane followup. The total cost for the two cards will be reduced to 5 CP, due to Serah refunding 3 CP. THEN if the Serah is still unchecked, the Setzar/Empire Cid will have provided the player with enough cards to fully utilise the refund on CP Serah provides each turn.

Mulligan Guide

Keep any hand with 4 CP Hurdy and a followup play. The followup plays to Hurdy are any of the 5 CP Forwards or 3 CP Backups. This is premium.

Any hand with Mog (XIII-2) is playable. These hands can become premium hand very easily, for example, if the only live card is a Mog (XIII-2) and the player misses on a 2/4CP Backup, simply playing the Mog and searching for Serah means that on the following turn the player can still set up to go to 3 backups. Serah fetches Hurdy, then next turn the player can play Hurdy + Montblanc. How this becomes premium so easily, is that to not draw Setzar/Cid Empire/Duke Larg by that point is pretty hard. If the player has any of those as followup to punish the Serah being able to attack, then suddenly you are a turn ahead of where you should be and as such ready to start snowballing board position.

Worst case playing Serah by discarding 3 is an option but not a happy one.

Any opening without Serah is not preferable, this is because she becomes easier to handle the later she is played. The easier she is the handle, the less free CP she’ll provide and the weaker she becomes. However, if the hand has a decent backup curve keep it. Duke Larg + Empire Cid is actually weaker than just Mog (XIII-2).

Early Game

Try to stick one of your 5 CP forwards and protect it. I cannot stress enough how important it is to protect Setzar due to the sheer volume of damage the card is capable of. His existence provides a lot of tension onto the board and is likely to hit each time. In addition, Setzar becomes scarier the higher the damage number go so the longer you’re able to protect him the better. Stick a 5 drop and try to stick a Locke. It’s all about sticking something.

Mid Game

Either Serah has snowballed the board position to the point of no return, or nothing has stuck. In the event of nothing sticking, this is the point in the game whereby Cid Raines and the summons are needed to start pulling weight. Cid Raines and Glasya hurt their hand and can allow the player to start to look for a window to stick forwards again, due to their liimted hand size. Phoenix is for trying to swing the board back into your favour, making them pick between removing the card that was just pulled from Phoenix or trying to redevelop the forward that was just removed. No matter what option they pick, if it’s not some kind of Cid Raines/Terra play being used onto the forward Phoenix summoned, their board position should be weakened. Lastly, Belias is to help vs lots of forwards as it can break up mid-game party attacks. Celes is very key if the board is lost. Celes can stem the bleeding AND open up opportunities to counter attack. By keeping down an attacker, then attacking herself and weakening the forward she froze last turn to the point that Cid Raines/Glasya can pick off the forward will allow the player to start to put themselves back into the driver’s seat.

Late Game

The deck has some late game. Not in the sense that it has super high value end game forwards. Sabin is the only super high value end game forward. It is more that it’s super easy to play every forward you draw from this point onwards. On 5 backups, due to the low density of backups, you should draw live every turn. Even the Moogle draws are live with Serah on the field so it’s only really the Duke Larg and Empire Cids that are dead draws. This means that provided you don’t die, there should come a window whereby they miss on something and being able to capitalise on that window of opportunity is very important. At this point in the game, the Glasya is best used for freezing rather than discarding.

Priority cards

Early Game: Hurdy, Mog (XIII-2),Serah, Setzar, Aleoidai

Mid Game (if behind): Glasya, Belias, Cid Raines, Celes, Vivi

Mid Game (if even): Orphan, Genesis, Sabin, Duke Larg

Mid Game (if ahead): Sabin, Locke, Aloeidai

Late Game (if behind on damage): Phoenix, Cid Raines, Glasya, Belias, Orphan

Late Game (if they’re on 5/6 damage): Serah, Setzar, Locke, Sabin, Orphan, Glasya, Genesis

Late Game (if there’s a board stall): Locke, Sabin, Phoenix, Orphan

This guide is not as in depth as my usual ones are, in terms of raw analysis, however, I’ve tried to cover more specifics. Especially on the priority cards list to try and help people choose what cards they should be discarding. Early game means turns 1-3. Mid game means the part between turn 4 and hitting 5 backups. Late game is after 5 backups once the game has started to settle down a bit.

TL;DR Cid Raines also works with Moogles