Blooming Onions: A Community Deck Building Challenge

Hey there folks, and welcome back to Lv.1 Onion Knight: The Final Fantasy Trading Card Game blog that wishes that it were as beloved by the FFTCG community as it is by the bots that always fill the comments of these posts with spam. 

Welp, 2019 sure came and went by faster than I'd like to think about, and with it a lot of change has come both to the FFTCG and my personal life. With the combination of the hectic holiday season as well as going through the process of moving into a new apartment, I haven't really been doing a super job of keeping that promise I made to write more blog posts considering that my last one was almost two months ago. Ouch.  

Oh come on, like anybody reads this blog outside spoiler season.

But that doesn't mean that I haven't been keeping up with all the FFTCG related news that's been coming out! 2020 is shaping up to be a big year for the game, with all kinds of cool stuff announced. The one I'm most excited for though has to be the introduction of the new L3 format, which means that we'll finally start to see a bit more deck diversity in competitive play, instead of just Wind/Water, which seems to be getting more and more degenerate in every set. 

And no, I'm not bitter that after placing high in our last local monthly tournament, I got my clock thoroughly cleaned by a typical YRP build. Like... the elderly woman who brought my clock in to get repaired burst into tears when she finally got it back, because she hadn't seen it looking like that since her father brought it home from the Great War when she was a little girl: That's how cleaned my clock got. 

"Guys it's cool we introduced a format where you can't use Valefore so we don't have to ban it from standard." 

Typical sour grapes aside, diversity in deck building and experimenting with cards that may not have obvious applications is something that I've always been a major proponent of. Okay, well maybe not always, but nobody can say that I haven't at least been a plucky contrarian who likes to try and see the potential of cards that other, better players might have overlooked. When the new Aerith from this set was released, I don't think anybody saw any value in it until one crazy person discovered that combining her with the Biggs/Wedge/Jessie package, Godo/Yuffie, and freaking Opus VII Xezat of all things (who I sincerely hope is the next contender for a full-art promo...) could be used to create infinite resources. The player who came up with that combo wasn't me unfortunately, but it's that kind of experimentation that I find really exciting about this game. 

So what am I getting at with this, besides once again thumbing my nose at the competitive scene that I'm not good enough to be a part of? Well do you remember that "different content" that I've been teasing for the better part of two sets now? Today I'm happy to finally tear away the veil of mystery and reveal a new community challenge designed to test your deck building skills and uncover new combos for the fun of it: Blooming Onions!

Blooming Onions will be a new bi-monthly challenge where I choose a card or cards that I think have gone underutilized by the community and task all you brewmeisters out there who are significantly better at this than I am to use them to come up with the best deck that you can within a specific format. I'll even give you some ideas of how I think you can potentially use these cards to better effect, though you're welcome to completely disregard my suggestions if you can think of something better, and let's face it, that probably won't be too hard. Think of it as one of those cooking competition shows where the contestants are given a weird ingredient that they have to incorporate into their dish. Chopped? Sure, lets go with that. Like Chopped but with trading cards. 

In any case, lets quickly go over how all of this works, shall we? 


Q: How are the cards that are picked going to be chosen?

🔰:The first card will be chosen by yours truly, but at the end of each Blooming Onion post, I'll leave a poll of five cards for the community to vote on and select which one they want used for the next challenge. If you've got an idea for a card that you'd like to see used, let me know in the comments!

Q: What do I have to do to enter this challenge?

🔰: All you need to do to enter is create a decklist using FFDecks and leave the link in the comments of this post. That's it!

Q: How will you choose a winner?

🔰: A crack team of Onion Knights will be deployed to evaluate all submissions, though if Kageyama ever enters, he wins by default.

(I'll be judging which decks/combos I think make the best use of the card, as well as consulting with the NYC crew and other members of the FFTCG community. I'll also potentially be testing out some of the builds that I like to make a decision.)

Q: What do I get if my submission is chosen as the winner?

🔰: Nothing.

Okay, well maybe nothing physical, at least for now - though I may include some sort of prizing going forward. That being said the winning deck and deck builder will be featured at the beginning of the next Blooming Onion post, so if you want a chance to show off what a stone cold badass you are to the rest of the community, here's your chance.

Q: How long do I have to make my submission?

🔰: Since I'm going to be testing this out on a bi-monthly schedule, you'll have 30 days after each post goes live to submit your deck. After that I'll evaluate them and get the next Blooming Onion challenge live at the end of the following month.

Q: Are you seriously encouraging people to use cards the community has established as bad and create a bunch of meme decks?

🔰: Yes.


Everybody up to speed and ready to make some decks? Then let's see what the first month's challenge is. 
 

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🔰Blooming Onions #1🔰

Featured Cards: King of Eblan & Queen of Eblan 

Format: L3 

So as you've probably guessed from the title image, the first candidates for the Blooming Onion challenge are both the King and Queen of Eblan. I remember that when these cards were released, it was at the time when Fire still wasn't in a place to compete with the other elements and when people saw these guys... well lets just say that the reaction wasn't pretty. Taking up two of the H-Rarity slots was bad enough, but the fact that it was decided to give what was seen as an underpowered element more cards with an unnessecary restriction was a breaking point for enough people that they never really saw the light of day.

That being said I think that they may have gotten a bit of a bad rap, and much like Ifrita who came out in Opus IX, may have been released at a time where there wasn't much available to really take advantage of what they actually do well. Even now that Mono Fire is starting to have meta relevence, these two still show up on people's "top 10 worst cards" lists alongside the likes of Chocobo Chick, but is that really fair? Let's take a look at what these cards do well as well as why people don't end up using them. 

Pros:

• The ability to both search and play straight from the deck is very efficient CP-wise. 
• Plays well with Fire's newfound ability to flood the board quickly with bodies, and can become huge with Fire's many boosters. 
• Category IV seems to be moving towards a "Have X amount of Cat IV things on the field" similar to Category VI, so being able to build up numbers quickly could become more relevant. 
• Ping-heavy decks are becomming more popular, so an extra 5k ping on party attack is helpful. 

Cons:  

• Admittedly stupid restriction of not being able to attack in a deck that excells in removal is an odd attempt at balancing the "play from the deck" effect. 
• King only exists to fetch Queen, and has no other abilities without her. Likewise Queen is a dead draw since she can't be played with the King's ability from either the hand or the Break Zone. Both need to stay alive and party attack to get the ping damage. 
• Probably should have had Haste to make them more usable. 

So saying that this set of cards has been wrongfully maligned definitely isn't fair, but the challenge for this series isn't "how can I make a top-tier deck with these cards?" but instead "what deck can make these cards work?" To go back to the Chopped analogy, can you make a cake that tastes good when you have to incorporate rice and avocados? Here are a few ideas that might make these two work in an L3 deck.

 
Build Idea 1: Mono Fire Ping - Zack is probably one of the most "enable-y" cards from Opus X outside of maybe Terra-S, though both have a similar "get more value from actions you normally do" effect. Even though Zack sees the biggest benefit from playing Category VII Forwards, the ability to soften up almost any enemy target is pretty good, so getting 4k burn damage and 2 bodies isn't a bad trade off. With Iroha out on the field, that's 6k damage on entry, letting you take out smaller targets or finish something off while building up a more aggressive board state. 

Build Idea 2: Cat IV 

From what I understand, PR cards are fair game for L3 format, so one of the first cards I thought would combo nicely with the King and Queen was promo Rydia that was rumored to be included as a standard card from Opus XI or XII. The King and Queen can help hit Rydia's character requirement to search for a 1 CP summon like Opus IX Belias or Opus X Titan depending on the characters you use. I think that we'll be seeing more Category IV support in Fire and Earth in the following sets, so this may be more of a build to keep an eye on rather than something fully fleshed out, but the peices starting to get set up. The only question here would be how do you make a Fire/Earth deck that isn't just a mediocre version of WoFF? (Though I don't think WoFF would be usable in L3 to begin with...) 

Build Idea 3: Fire/Ice Control 

The King and Queen may have that dumb restriction that prevents them from attacking if your opponent has no Forwards on the field, but it doesn't specify anywhere that they need to be active Forwards, so dulling/unblockable effects will let you bypass that. I also wrote this whole big thing about how Snow from Opus VII would be great for this kind of aggro build only to realize that he's not eligible for L3 anymore. Womp.

And there you have it folks, just a few ideas to help you get started brewing the absolute best jank that you possibly can! And while you're here, don't forget to vote on which card you'd like to see for the next Blooming Onions challenge!


Having trouble viewing the poll on mobile? Click here to vote!


I hope that everybody has a good time brewing some solid jank, and remember if you have any suggestions for cards or formats you want to see in the future!
In the meantime I'll be here, wondering why my new apartment has a dedicated space for trading cards but I still just have a mattress on the floor to sleep on.

Until next time - Keep on Grinding,