The Origins of a Noob

Hey there Morbols, Flans, and every other monster in the bestiary, and welcome back to Lv. 1 Onion Knight - The Final Fantasy TCG blog that nobody asked for!™

Welp, all of the hullabaloo of the Crystal Cup in Boston is over, and things are starting to settle down at locals again. For those of you that attended, I hope that you enjoyed yourselves, had some good matches, and are currently fanning yourself with your official black playmats with the rest of the cool kids. For those of you who weren't able to attend, I hope you took advantage of the more experienced players missing from drafts like I did so I could actually win a few rounds for once.

In any case, last week during casuals I ended up having an unusual conversation with somebody who was interested in figuring out how to expand the FFTCG community and get more new players into the mix. Having a marketing degree I'm currently doing nothing with, I asked our group a question: Who did they think would be more likely to start playing the game - Fans of TCG's or fans of Final Fantasy?
 
So since this blog is all about being a #FilthyCasual, I wanted to write about how I got into the FFTCG, and hopefully get more people to share their stories on what got them hooked with this game, whether they be a new player or more experienced. Before we get into the real meat of this week’s post though, here’s a quick overview of a few things I’ve been up to with the TCG.   

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🔷 I still haven’t managed to pull an Eald’Narche from Opus V which is… expected. Sean asked me why I don’t just buy it since it’s not a particularly expensive card, but now it’s just about the principle of the thing.

Also the last time I bought a foil of an XI dark foil Legend I ended up pulling two more from packs, so I'm convinced it's gonna happen. 

🔷Last week during casuals I bought 3 Opus 1’s and 3 Opus V’s and got nothing good. The person who came in just after me bought 3 Opus 1’s and got both Shantotto and Maria... The Dead Sea wishes it was this salty.

🔷 One of the guys who went to the Crystal Cup was actually nice enough to get cards of Sean and my favorite characters signed by Kageyama-San!

 

Looks like this strange “friendship” thing is paying off already...

🔷  I’ve learned I have a particular distaste for playing against Lightning/Earth meta decks. If there were a limited or forbidden list for the FFTCG and Al-Cid was put on it, I’d be pretty happy about that. Actually could somebody maybe get on that, because that combo is downright ungodly.

Welp, that about covers it for the week. So, like all great adventures/tragedies, lets start things off at the beginning... 

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Long ago, in a faraway land called "New York Comicon", a beardy Onion Knight and his loyal Squire wandered into the kingdom of Square-Enix, none the wiser that they faced an encounter on the horizon which would change the fabric of their lives forever.

Chapter 1: The Journey Begins

In October of 2017, Sean and I were at NYCC, trying to figure out how to spend enough money so as to appease the convention Gods (I have many con rituals, including making sure I spend the last dollar in my pocket on something, eating a beef patty from 7-11 beforehand, making a blood sacrifice, stuff like that.) and we wandered into the Square-Enix booth since we’re both big fans of the Final Fantasy games. We tried out the new Dissidia game for a bit, earned a coin with Warrior of Light on it, and moved on to see what they had for sale.

Next to the merch stand, they had a series of tables where the SE volunteers were teaching people how to play the FFTCG. I had heard that the game had finally been imported to the US, so we learned how to play and picked up starter decks. I picked the IX starter deck because that’s one of my all-time favorite games in the series. Sean picked the Type-0 deck because… well because they were all sold out of the other decks so he had no other choice, and begrudgingly agreed to get it so we could play.

I just want to say that the views held by Sean about Final Fantasy Type-0 do not necessarily reflect the views of Lv. 1 Onion Knight. But I mean, c'mon... 

After the con ended we played a few times on and off, but then mostly forgot about it for a few months afterwards. Both of us had some experience with TCG's before, but in a suuuuper casual sense. We would occasionally buy Pokemon cards every so often, but it was mostly to collect, rather than to play. I had played Yu-Gi-Oh! on and off with a friend, and had an extremely short stint with Magic: The Gathering in college, but that was really it. In my neighborhood, there really were no other local places to buy FFTCG cards. Thankfully living in NY, "local" can be a very loose term.

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Chapter 2: A Chance Encounter

Cut to a few months later, I was tidying up and noticed our neglected decks were still sitting on my desk. Out of curiosity, I decided to look up places where they sold the TCG in the city. We found a place in Midtown called Montasy Comics, which neither of us had been to before, and made it a day trip to head down and buy a few packs.
 
When we got there, after buying a few packs, we were told by the store owners that we should stick around for a bit: As luck would have it, there were going to be some folks from SE visiting to promote the card game, and there might be some demos and giveaways. Never one to turn down free shit, we sat down, tore open our packs, and clumsily attempted to figure out the ins-and-outs of the game again. While we were playing, someone sat down next to us and asked if they could watch us play. Thinking it was just a person who was interested in trying out a new game, we agreed and played a few games. After we finished, the person who asked to watch introduced themselves - It was Richard Brady, the Square-Enix community representative for the FFTCG. 

It was a real Deus Ex Machina moment.

They preceded to gently correct us on some erroneous plays we had made, and talked about what was going on with the game recently. They spoke with us for awhile, gave us a few promo cards, and told us about another event that was happening a few days later at a place called The Uncommons down by NYU. I had been there a few years back for a birthday - I had thought it was just a cool little cafe where you could get together with friends and chill out with one of the board games from their impressive library. That being said, it had been like pulling teeth to coordinate people's varying work schedules to go down and play board games, so I had kinda forgotten about it until then. We left Montasy with our new cards, making plans to attend the event, thinking that it was just a one time promotional event and that would be the end of it.
 
I don't think I need to say that this was obviously not how things went down...

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Chapter 3: Joining a Party

Up until now, we didn't really know that there were active communities for the game, and had just bought the cards because we liked that they featured Final Fantasy characters. The basics of the game are generally well explained in the instruction pamphlet included with the starter decks, but it doesn't really do a great job of teaching brand new players some of the mechanics and rulings, especially if you aren't familiar with the structure of games like Magic: The Gathering, so it had really been the blind leading the blind until that point.
 
I always joke around and say the rules of the FFTCG are kind of like entering a strange verbal agreement with the other player. When you're starting out, you'll go in thinking you know the rules, only to have a more experienced player explain that no, you can't just activate that red mage backup's effect to make your forward unblockable after the opponent has already declared a blocker, because once you declare something, you've entered into a binding magical contract. That may seem self explanatory, but keep in mind I was coming from the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon which have a little bit less complexities with their phases. As a newbie, learning how certain cards work and how certain effects resolve requires the presence of another, more experienced player nearby. 
 

...Or a Judge. I'm still calling shenanigans on some of those prerelease matches I lost... 

The fact that a newbie can have a hard time grasping the rules on their own may seem counter intuitive for a game, but that ended up being one of the reasons why I came to love playing with the FFTCG community: The eagerness people had to help get new players up to speed. Often I'll find myself testing a deck at home, only to encounter a situation where I'm not totally sure if a play I made was valid or not, leading me to grab my phone and quickly message a member from our local group to ask about it. They're always nice enough to get back to me almost instantly too.
 
The casuals I go to aren't sponsored by the company, they're the result of the efforts of an individual fan of the TCG that wants to take an active role in growing the community, and sharing their mentorship with new players. It's because of that sense of inclusion that I get to play this game every week with my local host of colorful characters. Hell, I even got to hang out again with the guy who taught me and Sean how to play the game back at Comicon which is pretty cool. In a way, both the game and this blog really have become a new adventure for me, and I can't wait to see where things go from here.

 
So going back to the question that started of all this, I wanted to ask you guys who read this: How did you get started playing the Final Fantasy Trading Card Game? Leave a comment sharing your story, not only so I can get to know the community better, but because I wanna know if people are actually reading this nonsense, seriously I agonize over if I'm using too many ellipses and I just need to build a sense of accomplishment here so just do this for me okay??? *Huffs*
 
In any case, I've been wondering going forward what I should do with this blog, since I'm not a top tier player or anything, writing about meta cards or decks or whatever was never going to be a thing for me. The next few posts should definitely be a bit less wordy in any case. I was actually mulling over the idea of making casual/gimmicky decks based around characters from the Final Fantasy games I've been playing, since I have only completed a handful of them and the TCG makes me want to check them out. I just finished up IV... so I think I'll get started with a deck based on a character that hasn't really gotten much love in the FFTCG so far. (Hint: It's not Golbez.)


Until next time - Keep on Grinding,