So now that the holidays are over and Crystal Dominion has been out for uh… *checks watch* almost two months now, I should probably say something about it huh? The hustle and bustle of the holidays not withstanding, I did genuinely want to give it some time to play around and experiment with these cards, given how much hullabaloo there was about them. The playerbase's opinions appeared to be thoroughly split when the set list was revealed, with some people liking it and others claiming that it was one of the worst sets they had ever seen.
By now most people have probably made up their minds on where their feelings on Crystal Dominion fall. Boxes have been purchased, deck lists have been made, and investors in the waifu full-art stock market have already reaped those sweet, sweet dividends. I'll still do my usual thing where I give my thoughts on the set as a whole, since (spoilers) I actually like it quite a lot. But I thought it would be interesting to take a deeper look into why this set was so contentious in the first place, rather than simply saying "the cards are just good/bad and that's why".
So grab a hot mug of cider and get cozy around the fireplace because it's story time with everyone's favorite bearded Onion Knight. You're going to want to use the bathroom before this one, because we're in for a long one here, folks. Also be warned that the following tale contains salty opinions of a casual player to make a personal observation about the new set rather than, I dunno, math?
Well then, without any further ado... *Ahem* It all began with a set called Crystal Dominion, or so the legends say...
So I need to ask you... are you doing okay? Like, you know, on an emotional level? Who am I kidding, you're an FFTCG player of course you're not okay. I think it's time that we acknowledge something important here: We are all collectively scarred from Opus XIV.
Opus XIV was stuffed to the brim with so many explosively destructive cards, with things like Shinryu, Sterne/Macherie, and the Primals really pushing the definition of power creep to dizzying new heights. To make matters worse, all of them were particularly easy to socket into just about any deck imaginable with minimal investment. By comparison, the cards of Crystal Dominion seem considerably more conservative, and a big part of that is having their power tied to the new Crystal mechanic. In many ways, that seems almost like a restriction on the cards, and as we all know, cards with any sort of restrictions or requirements to fulfill are bad and the measure of a good card is just how many things it can blow up immediately on entry, right?
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| I remember when Fire cards were all designed like this too guys, but art like this wouldn't exist without adversity and hardship. |
I think that the initial split reaction to Crystal Dominion can be summed up as having a preference for a sledgehammer or a surgical knife. A sledgehammer is something that's big and destructive. It doesn't require too much foresight to make the most of it, so you can just hammer away with it. On the other hand, a surgical knife is something that requires more finesse. It requires a much more specific scenario to make the most out of, but it provides a level of precision and flexibility that wouldn't be possible with a sledgehammer. It's a bit of a heavy handed metaphor when it comes to cards, but I think that coming off of Opus XIV - a set that was mostly composed of sledgehammers - makes a set like Crystal Dominion which is full of way more surgical knives than usual seem a bit less powerful by comparison.
I will say that I think after a set like Opus XIV, we probably needed a moment to catch our breath and slow the hell down for a bit. Things have been escalating to absurd levels of speed and power, and after a meta that saw our faces slammed into a bloody pulp against the likes of Sterne Leonis and Doga/Sophie decks, it was probably a good thing to take a moment to step back and have a set that's a bit more chill. Oh and hey, speaking of which...
With bare knuckle brawls beginning to erupt in the streets over whether Crystal Dominion was good or bad, there was a third type of person who began to surface. These wise sages descended from upon high to impart their words of wisdom onto the masses, in the hopes of settling this heated debate with the following non-answer.
"Well yeah, there's a lot of interesting stuff in the new set, but it's really pointless to talk about with Sterne Chocobos and Doga decks around."
Well guess what? They're gone now. Sterne, Doga, and Miounne are dead, and Sophie took an arrow to the knee. They can't hurt you anymore. Is it finally safe to talk about cards again?
I'm honestly not sure what sort of card in Crystal Dominion would have made people happy before the new deck restrictions, unless it was something with an effect along the lines of "Search through your opponent's hand, deck, and Break Zone and remove every FFBE Forward from the game" or something. And even if there WAS, people still would probably have been unhappy. As a whole, there seems to be people clamoring for problematic cards to have answers specifically printed to counter them, while also having an extreme distaste for running said answers in their decks. Apparently some players find the prospect of running Mist Dragon truly repugnant since you have to, you know, wait for the ideal opportunity to use it and everything. Personally I'm of the opinion that a card that can prevent you from losing can be just as valuable as one that pushes you closer to winning, but that's a topic for another time.
The point is, as long as cards like Sterne and Sophie were running rampant, people were of the opinion that there was nothing in the new set that would matter. So it seemed like with them out of the way, people were finally eager to start giving the cards in Crystal Dominion a fair shake.
I'm honestly not sure what sort of card in Crystal Dominion would have made people happy before the new deck restrictions, unless it was something with an effect along the lines of "Search through your opponent's hand, deck, and Break Zone and remove every FFBE Forward from the game" or something. And even if there WAS, people still would probably have been unhappy. As a whole, there seems to be people clamoring for problematic cards to have answers specifically printed to counter them, while also having an extreme distaste for running said answers in their decks. Apparently some players find the prospect of running Mist Dragon truly repugnant since you have to, you know, wait for the ideal opportunity to use it and everything. Personally I'm of the opinion that a card that can prevent you from losing can be just as valuable as one that pushes you closer to winning, but that's a topic for another time.
The point is, as long as cards like Sterne and Sophie were running rampant, people were of the opinion that there was nothing in the new set that would matter. So it seemed like with them out of the way, people were finally eager to start giving the cards in Crystal Dominion a fair shake.
The thing is, I do find this kind of weird for two reasons. The first is that I think it's strange to assume that absolutely nothing would have changed with those cards around. I understand that gravitating towards whatever strategy gives the highest chance of success is just a natural consequence of gaming in a competitive environment, and that maybe those cards pushed that a little too far. But I also believe that necessity is the father of invention, and that given time new decks would have emerged for people to hate in future sets.
The other reason is, well... I don't think that Sterne and Doga needed to be banned. At least not so quickly anyway...
So this is obviously an unpopular opinion considering just how many people raced out to Sterne's grave to dance a merry jig on top of it after the ban was announced - a "hot take" if you will. But I think we would have survived the presence of Sterne and Doga in Crystal Dominion just like we did with Veritas, Kadaj, Neo Exdeath, or any of the other previous FFTCG boogeymen we've dealt with through the years. Of course, I also fully admit that cards like Sterne and Sophie were, in fact, completely bonkers, but I think I personally would have preferred an errata or something. Maybe limit Sterne's action ability to a hard once per turn and only on your turn clause so it didn't feel so oppressive, or making it so that Multi-Element cards only count as one element towards Sophie's effect so it wasn't quite so easy to abuse with Sarah and Doga.
Would that have fixed things in the long run? Who knows! We could be staring down a meta where Palom and Porom only cost 1 with Sterne, which is kind of a terrifying prospect to think about. But hey, I'm a Libra so I'm all about trying to find balance, even when everybody is already perfectly happy with the outcome of things. In any case, my weird contrarian opinions aside, with Sterne and Doga decks out of the way, the debate between Crystal Dominion's supporters and detractors did seem to die down, proving that sometimes beheading a monarch really is the most effective way to enact change.
The introduction of Crystals to the game is probably one of the biggest changes to the mechanics of the FFTCG since Monsters were brought in back in Opus IV. Like Multi-Element cards were a pretty big deal, but aside from their ability to be pitched for either element and their one-of-each cost requirements, they didn't really shake up how the game itself was played outside of being big powerful Forwards. The addition of a new persistent resource that players can stockpile between turns adds a new layer of strategy to a player's choices, and definitely feels like a bigger deal for the game than things like Tokens or making Damage into an official keyword did. However the general consensus seems to be that there just isn't enough to do with them at them moment, and that they weren't really implemented to the extent that people thought they would be.
I think that this is somewhat true to an extent, and it really boils down to the fact that some elements just have way more ways to use Crystals than others. Water and Lightning currently have some of the best ways to both generate and use Crystals with cards like Lady Lilith, Relm, and Lenna. By comparison, Fire only got the cost-reduction Summon that all the other elements got and Firion to spend their Crystals on. It is admittedly kind of weird that Water in particular got the lion's share of this new mechanic while others seemed like an afterthought. Since this is the first set that they're being introduced, it's difficult to know the impact that Crystals will really have on the game in future releases. However, I think as far as Crystal Dominion is concerned, it comes back to the good old "Sledgehammer vs Surgical Knife" comparison I keep trying to make happen.
I'd argue that right now, the biggest benefit to Crystals is not that the cards that utilize them have hugely broken effects, but rather that it lets low-cost cards have stronger effects that would previously only be found on cards with a higher cost. Because of this, using Crystals as a substitute for a card's effect-to-cost ratio increases the number of actions you can do per turn, the new Lenna being a good example of this. I don't think it's too much of a leap to say that the new one is an improvement over the old Opus III one in just about every way - assuming you include ways to generate Crystals in your deck of course, since otherwise she'd do nothing.
Multi-element cards were all about "STRONGER! STRONGER!! ADD MORE TEXT TO IT!" so introducing a new mechanic's whose primary function is more about efficiency and cost reduction certainly comes off a lot less exciting by comparison. But Backups have generally become less and less important over the last few sets, and deck ratios have shifted to include less of them than was previously necessary. Having a new way to generate value outside of them while still keeping your hand size intact is something that I think will only become more and more important as the game continues to grow.
Plus as many people have pointed out by now, this is just the introduction for Crystals, so things will naturally develop more in future sets. We're currently in the "New Hope" phase of things for Crystals so here's hoping the next set is the "Empire Strikes Back" for them. Of course, it's also a possibility that Crystals are actually in the "Phantom Menace" phase of things, meaning we have a big messy "Clone Wars" coming up, but I'm going to be uncharacteristically optimistic when it comes to the future of this new mechanic.
It looks like we've finally made it towards the last chapter of our long, meandering tale here. You all have my thanks for sticking with me through it. I hope I didn't piss you off too much with the whole "Sterne shouldn't have been banned" thing! In any case, after reading all of that I'm sure you're all curious as to what my final verdict on Crystal Dominion is. Is it a wrongfully maligned staple set that didn't deserve all the controversy, or is it actually an under powered set that gives Opus III a run for the title of "worst FFTCG set"?
I also liked that this set took a different approach when it comes to power and value. Palom and Porom for example, are two Legends that I think were seriously underestimated until people started running them together in decks. A pair of scaling threats that acts as a two-turn ticking clock before they becomes completely unmanageable is something we haven't really seen too much of in the FFTCG, since as I mentioned before, fast entry abilities have mostly been dominant. Palom in particular can become a nightmare if he's left unchecked, and his free 2k ping damage can even be useful when combined with cards like Terra (10-132S) and the new Brynhildr. I think a lot of people initially balked at their low power and slower counter mechanic, only to be shown their true potential at the Italian National Tournament. I find that really cool!
Now anybody who has tolerated reading more than one post on my blog may have picked up on the fact that I am a really really big fan of FFXI. I am incredibly unsubtle about it. I am like a shambling ghoul from 2005 rising out of the mire to claw at your door, muttering incoherently about my nostalgia for Vanadiel while you desperately look for your shotgun. But yes, XI meant, and still means a lot to me much in the same way I suspect XIV means to a lot of you out there now. It was the first place an awkward loner of an Onion Knight like me learned how to be somewhat social. The first people I came out to were my friends from that game. I even met my fiancé playing it. It really stoked my interest in fantasy worlds and the Final Fantasy series in general, and without it I would never have gotten into this card game or started writing this blog.
For my last Bingo Raffle, I decided to go big and give away a pretty substantial prize: a sealed Sephiroth tin. I picked a winner, packaged everything up, and shipped it out. And that's where things went horribly off the rails.
Eyup... the person who I accidentally sent the first tin to actually did mail the tin back to me. This was admittedly very kind of them, but also feels a bit like the universe giving me some sort of karmic slap in the face for something I did in a past life. So now I was here, having spent way more on these prizes than I ever thought I would just because I'm a big doofus who didn't double check the address before I mailed the first one out.
The other reason is, well... I don't think that Sterne and Doga needed to be banned. At least not so quickly anyway...
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| I know. I'm pretty disgusted with myself too. |
So this is obviously an unpopular opinion considering just how many people raced out to Sterne's grave to dance a merry jig on top of it after the ban was announced - a "hot take" if you will. But I think we would have survived the presence of Sterne and Doga in Crystal Dominion just like we did with Veritas, Kadaj, Neo Exdeath, or any of the other previous FFTCG boogeymen we've dealt with through the years. Of course, I also fully admit that cards like Sterne and Sophie were, in fact, completely bonkers, but I think I personally would have preferred an errata or something. Maybe limit Sterne's action ability to a hard once per turn and only on your turn clause so it didn't feel so oppressive, or making it so that Multi-Element cards only count as one element towards Sophie's effect so it wasn't quite so easy to abuse with Sarah and Doga.
Would that have fixed things in the long run? Who knows! We could be staring down a meta where Palom and Porom only cost 1 with Sterne, which is kind of a terrifying prospect to think about. But hey, I'm a Libra so I'm all about trying to find balance, even when everybody is already perfectly happy with the outcome of things. In any case, my weird contrarian opinions aside, with Sterne and Doga decks out of the way, the debate between Crystal Dominion's supporters and detractors did seem to die down, proving that sometimes beheading a monarch really is the most effective way to enact change.
The introduction of Crystals to the game is probably one of the biggest changes to the mechanics of the FFTCG since Monsters were brought in back in Opus IV. Like Multi-Element cards were a pretty big deal, but aside from their ability to be pitched for either element and their one-of-each cost requirements, they didn't really shake up how the game itself was played outside of being big powerful Forwards. The addition of a new persistent resource that players can stockpile between turns adds a new layer of strategy to a player's choices, and definitely feels like a bigger deal for the game than things like Tokens or making Damage into an official keyword did. However the general consensus seems to be that there just isn't enough to do with them at them moment, and that they weren't really implemented to the extent that people thought they would be.
I think that this is somewhat true to an extent, and it really boils down to the fact that some elements just have way more ways to use Crystals than others. Water and Lightning currently have some of the best ways to both generate and use Crystals with cards like Lady Lilith, Relm, and Lenna. By comparison, Fire only got the cost-reduction Summon that all the other elements got and Firion to spend their Crystals on. It is admittedly kind of weird that Water in particular got the lion's share of this new mechanic while others seemed like an afterthought. Since this is the first set that they're being introduced, it's difficult to know the impact that Crystals will really have on the game in future releases. However, I think as far as Crystal Dominion is concerned, it comes back to the good old "Sledgehammer vs Surgical Knife" comparison I keep trying to make happen.
I'd argue that right now, the biggest benefit to Crystals is not that the cards that utilize them have hugely broken effects, but rather that it lets low-cost cards have stronger effects that would previously only be found on cards with a higher cost. Because of this, using Crystals as a substitute for a card's effect-to-cost ratio increases the number of actions you can do per turn, the new Lenna being a good example of this. I don't think it's too much of a leap to say that the new one is an improvement over the old Opus III one in just about every way - assuming you include ways to generate Crystals in your deck of course, since otherwise she'd do nothing.
Plus as many people have pointed out by now, this is just the introduction for Crystals, so things will naturally develop more in future sets. We're currently in the "New Hope" phase of things for Crystals so here's hoping the next set is the "Empire Strikes Back" for them. Of course, it's also a possibility that Crystals are actually in the "Phantom Menace" phase of things, meaning we have a big messy "Clone Wars" coming up, but I'm going to be uncharacteristically optimistic when it comes to the future of this new mechanic.
Well unfortunately I don't know what the actual answer to that question is. But boy, Crystal Dominion sure is the most fun I've had with a new set in a long time!
I think the part about Crystal Dominion I enjoyed the most was the Crystals, funnily enough. Now there's a new element that you have to think about when building decks, and that's finding the right balance of Crystal generating cards with cards that can use them. A misstep here can see you either with a ton of Crystals and nothing to do with them, or being forced to hold onto your Mog or Robel-Akbel for most of the game while you wait to draw a generator. I think that this is the first set in a long time that has really forced me to change the way I think about how I put decks together, so for that alone I really enjoyed it.
I also liked that this set took a different approach when it comes to power and value. Palom and Porom for example, are two Legends that I think were seriously underestimated until people started running them together in decks. A pair of scaling threats that acts as a two-turn ticking clock before they becomes completely unmanageable is something we haven't really seen too much of in the FFTCG, since as I mentioned before, fast entry abilities have mostly been dominant. Palom in particular can become a nightmare if he's left unchecked, and his free 2k ping damage can even be useful when combined with cards like Terra (10-132S) and the new Brynhildr. I think a lot of people initially balked at their low power and slower counter mechanic, only to be shown their true potential at the Italian National Tournament. I find that really cool!
I do think that there's probably more value in printing easily splashed-in staples that can be used in a larger variety of decks. But personally I find that sets full of big strong bombs can be kind of overwhelming too. It becomes more of a question of how many existing decks can I put this card into and what needs to come out to make space for it, rather than getting to start from scratch and figuring out how to make a whole new deck work around a more niche Legend. So because of that, I think that Crystal Dominion is quite possibly the most fun I've had deck building recently, and I think your own personal enjoyment of it may primarily depend on how much you like getting creative and experimenting with new play styles.
Now anybody who has tolerated reading more than one post on my blog may have picked up on the fact that I am a really really big fan of FFXI. I am incredibly unsubtle about it. I am like a shambling ghoul from 2005 rising out of the mire to claw at your door, muttering incoherently about my nostalgia for Vanadiel while you desperately look for your shotgun. But yes, XI meant, and still means a lot to me much in the same way I suspect XIV means to a lot of you out there now. It was the first place an awkward loner of an Onion Knight like me learned how to be somewhat social. The first people I came out to were my friends from that game. I even met my fiancé playing it. It really stoked my interest in fantasy worlds and the Final Fantasy series in general, and without it I would never have gotten into this card game or started writing this blog.
So yeah, this set has a lot of XI cards from my favorite expansion, Wings of the Goddess, featuring my hands down my favorite job from that game getting tribal support: Dancer. That means I like it. This is a wholly subjective and personal opinion that does not accurately measure the value of the set in any way shape or form. If you don't like that I'm doing that in my own personal set review, you're welcome to write a letter voicing your disapproval to the head of the Onion Knight broadcasting corporation. He will then bring them to me so I can officially wipe my butt with them.
Weirdly enough, this tirade does kind of have a point with one of the things that I enjoy about the set besides my best girl Lilisette finally making an appearance in the game, and that's how Crystal Dominion has a heavier focus on tribal than Opus XIV did, which for as powerful as a set as it was, was something I was actually kind of disappointed in. It seemed so strange to introduce a piece of powerful Sky Pirate support in Vaan and nothing else, in that set (it is also strange to introduce such a good Vaan there and then follow up immediately afterwards with one that's not as good...), but CD gives a lot of support to job-specific decks - even a few of the really weird ones, which are always my personal favorites to experiment with. Sky Pirates are now on top of the meta and honestly after scraping through the gutter since Opus V, it's about damn time they got their chance to shine.
Another new element of Crystal Dominion that I haven't seen too many people talk about but I really enjoy is the addition of two jobs for certain cards. I think that job-specific Tribal decks have a lot of built in consistency to them that give them the potential to be extremely powerful (see how Samurai and Sky Pirates are currently kicking all kinds of butt in tournaments), so adding a second job really helps add some diversity to the types of cards that can be included in them. Who would have thought Crystal Dominion would have been the set we saw friggin' Warrior support of all things, but packaging them together with Rebels gives them a really interesting play style that gives them a unique combat-oriented deck focused on pumping your Forwards to 10K so you can get a flurry of draws with Leon.
Honestly though, I'm mostly expecting that the card designers will just end up making a new Tifa that's an Avalanche Operative / Fighter or something, which would be quite hilarious admittedly...
So those are some of my thoughts about the story of Crystal Dominion. Thanks so much for listening and don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, and all those other things you totally wouldn't know to do without a call to action or whatever.
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Oh, hang on a second... what's this?
It looks like the pages of my book were stuck together here! There's actually one more short chapter that was hidden away in the end. Well, since I still have you here, we may as well finish this story together right?
So this set's Bingo was a pretty big success. Three whole rows with a Bingo! I think the biggest surprise on this set was Dancer Tribal, but that was really the fevered dreams of a mad man who loved Wings of the Goddess made real. I did a lot of guesswork based on that one Cait Sith full art that was revealed early on, but it seems I got pretty lucky this time around.
And that's where my luck ran out. Or well, I suppose it ran out in Opus XIV...
The person who won the prize told me after a few weeks that nothing had showed up, which naturally I found quite alarming. After doing a little bit of investigation, I discovered that that person had actually won a small prize from me a few years back, and I had used the address that I had in those old messages to ship it out.
An address that was no longer where that person lived. Oof.
An address that was no longer where that person lived. Oof.
I asked if it was possible to get in contact with the person at their old address, but they were met with no response. Considering that the problem was entirely caused by my own mistake, I figured the tin was just lost and decided to do the right thing. I bit the bullet and bought a second Sephiroth tin, because why buy one when you can buy two for three times the price, right? I made sure that this tin was sent to the right address, and the person finally received their prize. So that takes care of that right?
Well a few days after they got their prize, this showed up in my mailbox.
Eyup... the person who I accidentally sent the first tin to actually did mail the tin back to me. This was admittedly very kind of them, but also feels a bit like the universe giving me some sort of karmic slap in the face for something I did in a past life. So now I was here, having spent way more on these prizes than I ever thought I would just because I'm a big doofus who didn't double check the address before I mailed the first one out.
But you see, the beauty of this whole scenario is that you all get to benefit from my blunder! I decided I would just raffle this tin off, which is in fact, the tin that I intended to mail out last time for Opus XIV. It is still sealed nice and tight and in perfect condition, it just carries the stank of my hilarious buffoonery on it.
And that's how you can have another chance to win a Sephiroth tin. This time making sure that it is in fact, mailed to the correct address.
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 (January 24th), until Monday, February 14th 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 this set review! What did you guys think of Crystal Dominion? Do you think it's a good set, or were you left cold by it? I would love to hear your thoughts! In the meantime I'll be here trying to make this 'Oops All Emperors' deck from my spoiler into a reality.
Until next time - keep on grinding,
