Hey there folks, and welcome back to Lv.1 Onion Knight: The Final Fantasy TCG blog that doesn't quite have the clout to destroy cards on camera for the lulz... not yet anyway.
Boy howdy, it sure has been a while since we've talked. The last time I saw you, you were no taller than a Tonberry and now look at you! You've accomplished so much! All jokes aside, sorry for the long delay between posts. There were a few things that happened in my life that kind of sapped away any energy I had to talk about cards. These include:
- I got laid off my job which kind of shifted my focus to, you know, getting a new one.
- Opus XIV has generally been more difficult to obtain than past sets, further hampering my ability to get my hands on new cards.
- I had to watch as the person who bought packs right after me pulled a full-art Cloud. This I took as the ultimate sign that I am unbeloved by the universe.
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| Accurate rendition of my mood for the past few months. |
So much like the subtitle of this set, I too found myself facing an abyss of sorts, though with less crystals and more hysterical uncertainty and panic. I wouldn't be much of an Onion Knight if I didn't find a way to soldier onward in the face of adversity though, so today we're back in action to talk about Opus XIV - and give away some free swag!
Now that it's been out for a month, I've finally gotten enough experience with the new cards to write something halfway decent about them. I've noticed whenever I've done reviews in the past, my attempts to give any sort of definitive opinion on the set as a whole tend to fall into two specific camps. It's either "waoooow this new set is like SO strong you guys uwu" or "I find this set... strange because it didn't specifically focus on the things I thought it would...", and in retrospect, that's pretty weird right? Like of course the cards in each new set is going to push things further in terms of power and expand the options that are available for each element, so saying that kind of feels a little redundant.
With that being said, Opus XIV is actually kind of bonkers. The long awaited addition of the Primals from Final Fantasy XIV has finally come, and with them comes a tremendous increase in the game's speed. The past few sets almost looked like they were starting to mellow the pace of turns out a bit, giving some much needed answers to Forwards with auto-abilities like Amaterasu and Cid Randell. Opus XIV however slams down the throttle on the whole "Blow-Your-Opponent-To-Kingdom-Come-Five-Ways-Til-Next-Tuesday" thing. There's not much in the way of defensive options this time around, so the ones that we do have are more important than ever. Instead the set is stuffed to the brim with board wipes, breaks, and all-around debauchery.
A single turn can get much more explosive now, since it's never been easier to flood the board with Forwards or blast them away just as quickly. A lot of the credit for that certainly goes to the Primals, but cards like Machérie and Sterne Leonis that give blanket cost reduction to Summons and Forwards also play a big part in cranking up the speed this set. I'm particularly surprised that Sterne doesn't have some sort of restriction, such as only effecting Forwards of cost 4 or more or something, because being able to play popular threats like Opus III Zidane for only 2CP is pretty nuts. Easily splashed into just about any color deck (though Machérie obviously requires a heavier investment into Summons) these two are huge threats at any stage of the game, letting you set up faster early on, and being able to spam a variety of game-winning effects once your Break Zone has been filled up.
If we're going to dip into "expectations from this set that didn't end up happening" territory, I suppose a personal disappointment is that this set doesn't have the intense laser focus on Tribal that the last few sets did. That's not to say that there was NO Tribal support this set, and the new pieces that were included are definitely good additions for their respective decks. But even though the new Vaan is an absolutely incredible card that makes Sky Pirates competitive, I guess I was hoping for at least one new Backup and at least a handful of Forwards for the archetype. Oh also Job: Chaos makes a return and it's just as awkward as it was when it premiered back in Opus XI, but as wise philosopher Katya Zamolodchikova once said, expectations are just premeditated resentments.
As we reach the end of the Crystal... er Chronicles and head into the exciting new era of the sets no longer being labeled by Opus numbers (though good luck getting me to stop), I'd say that the Elements are generally much more balanced than they ever have been in the past - which is an incredibly "Avatar: The Last Airbender" statement if I ever heard one. I suppose there is one big exception this time around with how the Legends were distributed though. Earth, Water, and Ice got one extra Legend card this time around, but even then it doesn't feel like that gives them a massive advantage.
Larsa, Gilgamesh, and Cloud need more specific builds in order to get the most out of them rather than being easily splashed in any deck. So to me at least, it just feels like "more options for different types of decks are available" rather than it being a straight buff to those Elements. But what do you guys think? Are you a Mono-Lightning stan that views this as a massive sleight to your favorite Element? Either way, as far as the overall balance of things go, I have considerably less to complain about than I did when I first starting writing these blogs in the dark days Opus V. I'm having war flashbacks to that old Legendary Palom just thinking about it.
In any case, let's cut to the chase and take a quick look at some of the most interesting updates from this set!
Water
Okay so I know I just said that the Elements feel more balanced than ever in Opus XIV, and as far as overall mechanics and more even matchups go, that's certainly true. But Water definitely got the most... uh... help this set. There's no denying that Leviathan, Lord of the Whorl is an obscenely powerful buff to Water as a whole. Water's primary removal method in bouncing Forwards back to your opponent's hand always felt like a worse alternative to just outright breaking them, especially if it had a particularly dangerous entry effect you didn't want to see used again. But this card single-handedly turns bounce effects into a two-for-one special, regardless of the type of card that's returned to the hand.
The entry effect potentially removing a whopping six cards from your opponent's side of the field is already pretty strong, but the fact that his effect triggers when either player's card is returned to the hand (including himself, weirdly enough) is usually enough to end a game in your favor, though thankfully his high cost prevents him from being played without a lot of setup first. Combined with the fact that Wind now has access to more self bounce than ever before, the dreaded Wi/Wa deck makes a triumphant return after lying dormant for the past few sets. May Altana have mercy on our souls...
Water also wins the award for some of the most unique and interesting cards in Opus XIV as well. Stealing a card from your opponent's side of the field, aka "Mind control" is an effect that we've seen only a few times before, and never in a way that's made a particularly big splash, if you'll pardon the pun. The developers seemed a bit wary of making it too easy to snatch your opponent's Forwards, which is understandable because it's a really strong effect. Stuff like Shuyin (6-112H) and Ninja (8-124C) only gave you control of the Forward until the end of the turn. Since gaining control of a Forward is the same as if you played it yourself, without Haste you still can't attack with it, making the effect really clunky and hard to use. If anything it was just a weird version of bounce in that respect, since it only temporarily removed a potential blocker from the opponent's field.
Now it would seem that mind control is going to become a more staple Water effect with the introduction of cards like Golbez and Ultimecia. They both require an additional cost, but you now permanently gain control of the card rather than the effect only lasting for one turn. I really enjoy this direction for Water, controlling the flow of battle (that's strike two for puns, sorry) and trading your resources for your opponent's. We've even seen a Golbez deck take the top slot of a major tournament, as piloted by Travis Pfeifer, Lord of the Pfeifer Fifedome. Pretty good stuff!
Now it would seem that mind control is going to become a more staple Water effect with the introduction of cards like Golbez and Ultimecia. They both require an additional cost, but you now permanently gain control of the card rather than the effect only lasting for one turn. I really enjoy this direction for Water, controlling the flow of battle (that's strike two for puns, sorry) and trading your resources for your opponent's. We've even seen a Golbez deck take the top slot of a major tournament, as piloted by Travis Pfeifer, Lord of the Pfeifer Fifedome. Pretty good stuff!
Water had started to make a major comeback with powerful Sophie decks in Opus XIII after languishing for several sets as a fairly passive Element in a meta that valued speed and aggression. Now Water not only has a lot of generically good cards that aren't tied to a particular Title or Tribal Archetype, but it also has entirely new ways to play the Element that are a big departure from how it worked in the past. With any luck, this new direction for Water will continue to make big waves in future sets.
Okay, that's three puns. I'll see myself out now.
Wind
Okay hear me out. By "bland" I don't mean "bad", so you Wind fans can put your pitchforks down. You can't have the return of Wi/Wa without the "Wi" part after all. Wind got a lot of strong cards that help it do what it does best, which is generate absurd amounts of value. Bismark, Lord of the Mists is essentially a Miounne (5-067R) that activates every turn on a big 9K body, at the cost of only being able to select Wind Characters to return to your hand. Not that this is remotely an issue though, since there are lots of easily abused targets in Wind that you'll want to reuse the effects of again - and by that I of course mean Zidane (3-056H) whom you should expect to be the target of Bismark's effect 90% of the time. You've got Rosa who is another addition to Storm decks, Sin who offers Wind another way to cancel Auto-Abilities outside of Y'shtola (5-068L), Garuda, Lady of the Mists who breaks a big Forward and generates value when your opponent plays another one... it's all GOOD. It just isn't a big shift from what Wind decks could already do in terms of play style and mechanics.
Perhaps it's a bit unfair to expect that Wind would have a radical shift in play style only two sets after the new "storm" mechanic was introduced only two sets ago, but it just seems like a lot of the Wind cards just kind of gild the lily in terms of what Wind already did well in the first place. I'm not sure if "these cards are good Wind cards and therefore I find them kind of boring" makes any sort of sense outside of my own head, but that's my official stance I suppose. In a shocking turn of events though, my favorite card from this set is actually a Wind card. I know right? You either die a hero or you live long enough find yourself becoming a Wind player I guess.
More so than Leviathan or Bismark, Vaan makes Wi/Wa decks feel fresh and exciting again, rather than relying on the old YRP package that the deck exclusively ran in the past. So yeah, let it be known throughout the land that Lv.1 Onion Knight is officially a filthy hypocrite when it comes to Wind decks.
Oh also, the Foil and Full Art versions of Vaan have two completely different holofoil patterns, which I believe is the first card in the game to have that distinction. I just thought that was a nice touch.
Fire
In yet another example of cards that are both awesome in Tribal and good generic deck support, we have Garland in Fire. Fire is an Element that typically has access to less draw power than the others, so the fact that Garland's effect doesn't have a hard once-per-turn limit and triggers when any Backup is put into the Break Zone, he can quickly become an absolute beast even without using his S-Ability. And make no mistake - his Flare ability is, in my opinion, one of the strongest in the game. Breaking any Forward while reducing your opponent's resources and giving you an extra draw on top of it gives Fire a type of destructive value that it previously didn't have access to. It's also particularly great at hamstringing your opponent in the early game, and since he can't be removed with damage effects, he can potentially stick around for quite awhile too. If you run him with self-breaking Backups like Princess Goblin or Alchemist (11-125C), or use Forwards with effects that break Backups like the new Susano, Lord of the Revel, your opponent will definitely want to find a way to kill Chaos.
Gutsco is another card that brings an absurd level of draw power to Fire decks. Your opponent will absolutely not want to have him stick around for more than a turn or two unless they want you to draw half of your deck in one go. Fire has more than enough access to removal to ensure that Gutsco won't be in danger of being blocked - or to blow him up themselves to trigger his effect at the right time. It's also important to note that his effect says "When he leaves the field" not "When he enters the Break Zone," so there are plenty of
Red XIII also provides a lot of interesting options for Fire decks, giving you the ability to turn your big expensive Forwards into a one-turn bomb - so long as you don't mind that you won't be able to get them back once their turn is up, that is. Mono Fire (which seem to have become the premier competitive Mono deck in recent times) now has the option of using Red XIII to play a handful of "off-color" cards who you'd really want to bring in, like Sephiroth (7-034L), Locke (12-116L), or Lightning (13-081H). You know what the correct choice is though: Bring in that old Dark Sin and trigger its Giga Graviton Special. Watch your opponent's utter bewilderment as it gets RFG'd and you declare that you didn't even need it because your victory is already a foregone conclusion.
Lightning
Fire/Lightning seems like an ideal place for Ravana since you can give him Haste with the new Zenos. That particular combination seems to have hit a bit of a renaissance in Opus XIV, since the new tools those two elements got can quickly spell ruin for whatever your opponent tries to defend themselves with.
Lightning's ability to outright break Forwards with increasing efficiency and hot, nasty, bad-ass speed has gotten a boost outside of Summons as well in Opus XIV. Being able to break any damaged Forward for only 1CP with Ewen is undeniably good. Lightning decks that revolve around party attacks can make particularly good use of him, since his cost makes him a perfect target for Mid Previa (12-087H) and his low power will be a non-issue when he teams up to get Mid's damage trigger.
Exdeath on the other hand is one of the more expensive Backups Lightning has access to, but his high cost is offset by just how much value you get out of one card. Like Red XIII in Fire, this gives Mono Lightning the ability to play off-color since the only requirement for the revival is being a Forward of cost 4 or less. There are a ton of targets with powerful entry effects in that range, like Terra (10-132S), Gabranth (9-063L) or the new Al-Cid. Since he doesn't specify that the Forward needs to enter the Field dull (and I'm just now noticing that none of the cards in Opus XIV have that requirement for cards revived from the Break Zone...), bringing in something with Haste like Nyx or the Multi Element Y'shtola could help push more pressure on your opponent as well.
Lightning generally seems to have found a good deal of stability with Opus XIV, both with more access to cheap breaks and by combining with Ice with their new Multi Element combination. Oh and hey, speaking of Ice...
Ice
Ice has always been a popular Element with the player base thanks to the dominance of control decks in the earlier years of the game's release. But with the meta shifting more to aggro decks in recent years, people have been hungering for the good old days of Mono Ice's Supremacy. With how much easier breaking Forwards has gotten, a lot of the grumbling I've seen about Ice is that it needs to do more than just temporarily getting cards out of the way. Shiva, Lady of Frost seemed to get a resounding "Meh" from players when she was first revealed, and admittedly the idea of Dulling one Character and Freezing all Forwards seems less impactful after dealing with an archetype like Samurai that can destroy a full board in one swing with a bit of setup.
However I would argue that Ice serves an important purpose as a counter to the huge increase in turn speed that came in Opus XIV. With minimal new counters or defensive cards in this set, Cid Randell's ability to lock your opponent's Forwards out of their Auto-Abilities is more crucial than ever. Shiva, Lady of Frost may seem unexciting in comparison to Primals like Leviathan and Titan, but she gives Ice decks a practical way to punish overly aggressive turns. Much like Nael before her, the idea disposing your precious Backups as an alternative cost seems like a hard pill to swallow, but in a practical setting if it wins you the game, the cost really doesn't matter. Ending your turn with a board of frozen Forwards is never a position your opponent will want to be in, especially with the aforementioned Ice/Lightning combo giving the Element a much needed boost in speed to compete with the others.
You don't always have to reinvent the wheel for the best results though, and Zeromus is also an especially good choice for Al-Cid's free play, since at Damage 3, the combination will let you Dull/Freeze one Forward and Freeze two Characters, all while still having to deal with an attack. Choosing to target Backups to lock up will also seriously hinder your opponent's options, and his ability to dull all your opponent's Forwards at the end of the turn makes Reactivation a little bit less of a problem for Ice decks to get around. Finally, Sephiroth is just a really versatile card that plays well with what both Elements want to do, and is a good choice for Ice/Lightning decks with a heavy Category VII focus.
Ice and I have had a pretty complicated relationship over my years of playing this game. I used to absolutely loathe it for what I saw as a way to stop your opponent from playing the game at all for little to no effort - and really can anybody who played during the days of Turbo Discard say that's an unfair assessment? But now not only does control feels a lot more strategic instead of an easy win condition, it has a lot more fun build-around cards like Gilgamesh (FFBE) to experiment with too. All in all Ice still has some poor matchups - Monks are still a problem for it thanks to cards like Yang (13-064R) and Maat making Dull/Freeze all but useless. But an increased ability to splash other colors and the ability to limit your opponent's options by Dull/Freezing Backups help Ice maintain a better pace overall against aggro decks.
Earth
Bust out those Opus III Zaleras because there's finally a cost 11 target he can break thanks to Mont Leonis! Seriously though, Earth now has quite a few new options they can use to quickly play Forwards onto the field outside of Monks - though they mostly serve to make Monk decks even more busted. Since the Monk Archetype requires a heavy Earth core and can quickly play both Backups and Forwards onto the field, Mont Leonis's huge cost quickly becomes more manageable. He can technically be free if you have 11 Earth Characters on your board, and Mont into Yang into Ursula into Sophie gives you an amount of value that I'm not smart enough to math out.
Mont into the new Wol is also an option to consider for bonkers value plays. Mobius Forwards have been some of the heaviest hitters in the history of the FFTCG, so the fact that Wol himself can be played for free, to then play one of them for free is admittedly kind of dumb. Maybe this will be a controversial opinion, but I don't know that cards like BFA or Yiazmat should be able to be played out for free considering how powerful they are. Like is it really that crazy to think that Neo Exdeath shouldn't be made easier to get out onto the field? It's opinions like this that make it so I can never win any tournaments. I am a scrappy underdog by choice.
Finally in the lineup we have Hojo, who lets you essentially replace your Forwards that have already served their purpose with a new one of a lesser cost from the Break Zone. Anything with a powerful entry effect that really only serves as a body on the field afterwards can be "morphed" into whatever you need it to be as long as your BZ has been set up properly first. The ideal application at the moment however seems to be - shocker - turning the Monk (13-063C) that you probably only paid 1CP for into Ursula, Yang, or Sophie. It's not as though you're really going to weep that those Monks are now RFG'd anyway.
Earth may have gotten pretty nuts in the past few sets to be the go-to Element of the FFTCG's competitive scene, but what do you guys think? Is this the Cinderella story you guys were hoping for, or is it time for the clock to strike midnight on Earth?
That's another set down, and another successful bingo! Some highlights from this time around are:
- I honestly thought if they were going to make a Wi/Wa Aerith, she would have been a Legend, but instead she's a common. Whaddaya know?
- Pour one out for my boy Basch, who never seems to get any love in this game.
- Since there were Characters from FFXI's Treasures of Aht Urghan expansion this set, I was really hoping we'd see the Serpent Generals make an appearance. They're actually super cool characters, and if you're interested in the story behind this awesome group, YouTuber Ruaumoko has a great video series about them.
- I've never played War of the Visions, so I had to do some research on likely candidates for characters. I gravitated to Zazan for obvious reasons.
So yeah, this time around I managed to get my hands on a Sephiroth tin to raffle away!
Major thanks to our pals over at Trading Card Game Pit for letting us buy this awesome tin! This bad boy is sealed tight and ready to go into the deserving hands of one lucky winner. Who knows? Those Opus XI packs might just have a Full Art Tifa inside. Maybe? I mean, it's in the realm of possibility at least.
Enter the raffle below for a chance to find out!
Raffle Rules:
1) In order to be eligible for the raffle, you must complete the survey I'll be linking below. Your entry makes you eligible to win the Sephiroth Tin.
2) The contest is open to both local and international fans, so if you don't happen to be from the US, don't sweat it! I will be in contact with the winners to discuss shipping arrangements. (Note: Due to obvious global issues there may be some delays in getting this to you depending on where you live, but I'll be sure to mail it out as soon as possible.)
3) The Raffle submission period will go for three weeks from the post date of this blog (September 13th), until Monday, October 4th at 8PM EST. I'll announce the winner on Facebook.
4) I will contact the winner via the email they submit in the survey. If I do not hear back from a winner in 48 hours, I will choose another winner at random, so be sure to submit an email that you check often!
Enter the Raffle Here!!
That's it for my Opus XIV Review! I just want to give you all a big thanks for sticking with this humble Onion Knight over the years. I'm hoping to get back on a regular content schedule soon - hopefully before *grits teeth* Crystal Dominion comes out in any case. In the meantime I'll be here trying to sort out my deep and complex feelings about Wind.
Until Next Time - keep on grinding!
Until Next Time - keep on grinding!
