Hey there all you Chocobos, Moogles, and everything in between, and welcome back to Lv.1 Onion Knight: the FFTCG blog that really wants to be the mythical guy Square Enix pays to sit around all day taking high-resolution screenshots of FFXI characters.
We interrupt your regularly scheduled content for this breaking Opus XIV update!
It's should be no surprise to anyone who has been reading this blog for awhile that I really enjoy discussing tribal decks, since it's one of my favorite aspects of the FFTCG. I've been finding myself looking forward to building decks around a specific tribe rather than an element in recent sets, and with Sky Pirates finally getting some much needed updates in Opus XIV, I can't really see that changing any time soon. Samurais and Ninjas are probably my two favorite decks of all time, and I'm always eager to see what new options existing archetypes will get in upcoming sets. But oddly enough, I still haven't gotten around to discussing one of the oldest tribal decks in the game before now. So grab yourself some Gysahl Greens for the road, because we're talking about Chocobos today.
Chocobo decks haven't really seen much direct support in recent sets (though the buffs to Party attacks in Opus XII certainly helped them), but they've been around for quite a long time in the FFTCG's history. They're usually extremely cheap to build and make for an ideal pauper deck, but they've also made the occasional splash at major tournaments every now and then too. Their ability to quickly swarm the field with a large board of small Forwards and generate advantage with cards like Fat Chocobo (9-051R) can quickly catch opponents off guard, so the card I'm revealing today should make for a natural addition to the deck, and a few others that might catch you by surprise: Choco/Mog.
Choco/Mog is category VII EX Burst Summon with a relatively straightforward effect. For 2CP you can deal a Forward of your choosing 1000 damage for every Character you control. Additionally if you have control of a Chocobo and a Moogle, you can draw a card. A few things to keep in mind here is that you need to control both in order to get the draw, but unlike the Choco/Mog search Summon from Opus VI, it counts both job and name Moogle and Chocobo cards. Thanks to this, you have a significantly wider range of cards that count towards this effect. With a well developed board, you can potentially take out one of your opponent's Forwards without losing any hand advantage, since the extra draw makes the card essentially "free".
It should be noted that this card's effect is almost identical to Sylph (10-053C), with the upside being that you have the potential for a much higher damage cap, and the downside being that you need to have two specific cards on the field in order to get the draw effect. Sylph is actually a card that saw use in the hyper-consistent Earth/Wind Storm deck, which as my dedicated readers know, I just love. Since that deck makes heavy use of cards with a cast requirement like Locke (12-116L) and Ashe (12-037L), it makes sense to run as many "free" cards like Sylph that count towards your totals.
Choco/Mog has the potential to be a dangerous new tool for that deck to run, but being forced to control both a Chocobo and a Moogle make the card slightly more cumbersome to use. However, it's actually surprisingly easy to make Choco/Mog work in Storm without fully committing too much space to those tribes, thanks to a few key Backups the deck can naturally take advantage of.
Chocolatte was already being run in storm decks thanks to Wind's ability to easily reactivate her for extra draws, and she has the curious distinction of being a job: Chocobo. I didn't know that being a Chocobo was a career path one could aspire to, but hey, that's one half of the duo down already! For Moogles, there are a few choices, but my personal picks would be Class Eighth Moogle and Mog (FFBE). The latter is an especially good choice considering that it searches out Fina.
The Bartz and Boko combo made a big splash in Opus XII, and can quickly spam out a bunch of cheap, 1CP Forwards for party shenanigans. That makes Stiltzskin an easy inclusion in this type of deck, since he can pick up Forwards like Bobby Corwin or Black Chocobo. Since Choco/Mog counts Characters for its damage, loading it up with utility monsters like Spiceacilian, Leyak, or Ochu can help get the Summon into lethal range too.
Sometimes these things can be real nail-biters, since for awhile nothing that was revealed was hitting any of these spaces, and then BOOM, all of a sudden I was getting them left and right. As of right now there are four rows that need two more stamps to get a bingo, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I managed to get something quite exotic to raffle away this time, and I would hate for it to be tinged by the stench of failure.
