Hey there all you Warriors of Light, Darkness, and everything in between! Welcome back to Lv.1 Onion Knight: The Final Fantasy TCG blog that hopes that they'll soon be able to get back to getting wrecked at card games in person again. That Reunion playmat isn't going to lose itself you know!
Well it sure has been forever and a day since the last round of community spoilers, but at long last Opus XII is right around the corner! I know that there are a lot of people who wished that there was more time to play around with the last set, but personally I'm super pumped to get some new cards in my sweaty little Onion Knight clutches again. So why don't we take a look at one of those new cards right now: Glaive!
I can already hear people groaning that this isn't Ardbert or the other XIV Warriors of Darkness. Well, I can't say they aren't going to be in this set, but it looks like the original Final Fantasy Legends characters are making a return in Opus XII. We haven't seen any support for Warriors of Darkness since back in Opus VIII, so lets take a look at Glaive's second entry into the FFTCG.
The resident big boy of the Warriors of Darkness from Final Fantasy Legends/Dimensions has an effect that's as straightforward as his blunt personality. He's an 8k Earth Forward with Brave that gives all other Category FFL Forwards an extra 1000 power and Brave themselves. At Damage 3, his effect simply gives him an additional 1k power himself.
It's hardly anything we haven't seen in the game before. There are several cards from past sets that have given Forwards from a specific category Brave, but Glaive has more going for him than meets the eye by comparison.
Glaive seems to combine elements from each of the other Brave-granting cards that makes him one of the strongest boostForwards. Like Ignis, he gives an additional 1k boost in addition to the blanket Brave effect. Like Auron he starts with a more powerful 8k body, and like Cyan he has the Brave keyword himself. Getting to Damage-3 is incredibly easy, so most of the time he'll be a big beefy 9k too. It's rare for a card to provide solid buffs to multiple Forwards without having one of the smaller bodies on the field - Even Lyse is stuck at 7k until you get to 5 points of damage. Him being a soft 9k also makes him less susceptible to removal like most boosting Forwards usually are.
The biggest issue with using this Glaive in the existing Warrior of Darkness deck is weirdly enough, the other Warriors of Darkness - specifically his Opus VIII counterpart.
In the old Lightning/Earth Warrior of Darkness deck, Opus VIII Glaive's ability to search for Diana off of an EX Burst was an efficient way to get one of the deck's best recursion tools in your hand quickly. Opus's XII Glaive's effect is also redundant with Nacht, who can give himself the Brave keyword by having any other Warrior of Darkness on the field. There's something to be said about giving your Diana the ability to attack and stay active so you can threaten her pump effect for another card though.
That being said, the uses of Opus XII Glaive will depend on what other FFL/Warriors of Darkness get printed in this set. I think considering that we've seen Aigis spoiled already, it's a fairly safe bet that we'll also see the remaining FFL characters in this set. It's hard to tell just how the new Glaive will fit into Warrior Of Darkness or even Category Final Fantasy Legends decks in the Opus XII meta without knowing the other cards in the set. But the fact that he's one of the first cards that can provide strong buffs to a category's Forwards without a frail body makes for some interesting possibilities. Who knows, he might just end up being better alongside Sol, Dusk, and Sarah this time around.
