Back to Basics: A Noob's Opus VIII Review

Hey there everyone, and welcome back to Lv.1 Onion Knight - The FFTCG blog that probably won't be chosen by a crystal to become a Warrior of Light any time soon. 

In what felt like both an excruciating long time and no time at all, Opus VIII is finally out. Last time I did a set review like this, I wasn't entirely sure what I thought about it. Opus VII was a fairly experimental set, and while it had a lot of good pieces in it overall, it kind of felt a bit like the awkward middle child of FFTCG sets. Opus III still probably has that dubious honor, but you get what I'm saying - It was kind of a weird set.

A set where two pre-teens are more terrifying than Sin or Sephiroth. 

Opus VIII was different. As more and more of the set was revealed, I became hyped to a frenzied level where I couldn't wait to get my hands on new cards and building decks. I stayed up until 2AM the night before prerelease just talking with my boyfriend about cards we were looking forward to. Now that everything is out I figured I would do another one of my janky reviews for it, because I know everybody is just dying to hear what I have to say about it. I'm super qualified now: I posted match pairings and did the equivalent of handing out cake and juice at my local Petit Cup. 

First off let me say that this review is not going to be a slavishly long analysis of every card in the set where I rank every single card by some arbitrary rating system I came up with - not that I've ever done that before but if you're new here then, I dunno, sorry? Honestly, I find that outright saying a card is “bad” or that it “won’t see play” before even trying it in a deck is kind of a counterintuitive and uninteresting way to look at new cards. Part of the fun of a new set for me is coming up with new combo and deck ideas, so I would honestly rather focus my energies on that. If anybody were to read an article of mine, I would prefer they be inspired to try something new rather than discouraged from experimenting with new builds just because of my opinion. Maybe that approach ends up being more informative in the end but I'm trying this newfangled "positivity" thing for a change.

I'm sorry for saying all that bad stuff about you in my Opus VI review, Dark Lord. Kageyama said you're good. Now can you please stop cursing my pulls?

And honestly I think it’s a little too early in the release cycle for me personally to get into details about individual cards and how I think they’ll perform in a theoretical vaccum in a way that won’t just be my kneejerk reaction - I absolutely hated Duncan at first, but just this weekend somebody topped a tournament with an FFVI centric deck that used him as a key card, and now I'm  excited to try him out. So now I’m just going with my gut on how I feel about the set as a whole and some of the broader aspects of it on a personal level. 

Now that I’ve established that this is going to be some milquetoast review, what do I think of the set? 

I can say without any hesitation this time that Opus VIII is genuinely good - it gets back to the basics of having solid elemental support while still pushing them into promising new directions. There's also a lot more mono-element deck support in this set than we've had in the last few Opuses, and does a lot to help solidify their individual niches: This can be both a good and a bad thing as I'll talk about in a bit, but overall the set comes off as a big step up in power - not quite on the level of Opus V, but pretty darn close.

The focus on monsters seems a lot more successful than they have in the past few sets as well. The introduction of monsters that do something when they enter and exit the field does a lot to speed them up, and the ones that stick around on the board like Scale Toad, Death Machine, and Lava spider do a lot to give you an advantage. I do kind of wonder what happened to the "discard from hand" monster effects they introduced in Opus VII, but I like that they're continuing to experiment with them. 

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Let's take a minute to talk about Fire, the element that everybody was hoping would finally be made incredible by this set. So, was it?

No.

Leading up to the release of Opus VIII, things were really looking up for Fire this set. If you wanted my opinion on highest value Rare in this set, it would be Ark Angel HM, whose double hit effect would be great even if he didn’t get an extra 3k on attack. He’s also a perfect fit for Fire’s kit with Haste and Unblockable effects, even if you don’t play him alongside Volker.

I don't want to take responsibility for this but like... you're welcome.

With the reveal of cards like Lava Spider, Golem, Marche, and Yotsuyu, it was looking like Fire was finally transitioning to be the fast paced aggro element we’ve been hoping for. But once the full set was spoiled, it was clear that there wasn’t enough there to elevate Fire to become a top tier meta element. A big, obviously impactful, unfair Fire Legend is still something we’re going to have to keep waiting for, and without that, I’ve heard a lot of people say that the Fire cards in this set do more to enhance other elements they’re paired with rather than make Fire truly incredible. As a Mono Fire apologist, I’d have to agree with that, but honestly is that really a bad thing?

Even if all this set did for Fire was just turn it into a solid "subjob" for other elements, if that’s enough that Fire sees more play in general, I would say it’s a definite plus for the element overall. Deck combinations like Fire/Lightning and Fire/Ice were pretty niche and generally underplayed, but now I think we’ll be seeing some interesting new builds – Personally I think Fire/Water looks amazing with the addition of the new IX cards, and I think Lunafreya gives Fire’s big boys that tend to be vulnerable to removal the protection they sorely need. Cloud also gives Fire a recursive body with Pseudo-negation that can punish your opponent, which IMO are all great effects that interact nicely with other element's effects. 

Even though Lava Spider’s attack boost doesn’t last until the end of the turn, it helps push a new kind of aggressive playstyle we haven’t seen too much of yet. It effectively turns all of your smaller forwards into cheap removal spells that you can threaten to trade up into your opponent’s more valuable blockers or force them to take damage. Forwards like Llednar and Rosso become a lot more troublesome to deal with if you have a spider on the board. Opus VI Goblin becomes a 2 drop 9k nuke. Paravir now lets you maintain your board presence of smaller forwards while taking out your opponents in a one-turn rush. Even if Mono Fire isn’t quite up to par with the other elements just yet, I think Opus VIII set does a lot of really great things for Fire’s overall playability… with one notable exception, and that's the lack of impactful summons. 

Did Wind really need this Summon? Like I know a lot of people have already gushed about how amazing/broken this card is, but it really is kind of overkill that you can break any Forward, Backup, or Monster with the only restriction being that it needs to cost 4 or more. Sure that means it can't target stuff like Y'shtola, Ashe or other problematic 3 drops, but the fact that this Summon is so versatile makes that restriction kind of a non-issue, which makes it all the more disappointing that we keep getting Fire Summons the look like this:

Ironically the Chapter's version of this Summon is amazing.

Just as much as this set gives Fire some new options in terms of playstyle, it really exacerbates that a new design philosophy is needed when it comes to Fire Summons that isn't "undercosted big ping number with unnecessary restriction to play it". The fact is that no matter how high the damage, having to put so much effort into playing these Fire Summons isn't worth it when the other elements now have access to Summons that can dispose of a Forward more efficiently, like the aforementioned Alexander, and the new Leviathan XI for Water. 

Speaking of those two elements, in comparison to Fire, the design process for for Wind and Water lately seems to just be adding more and more to them to the point of them being unnecessarily amazing at everything. It's getting more and more difficult to say that Fire is meant to be the "aggressive element" when other elements are equally good at being aggressive in addition to having a full defensive package to fall back on, -and- being super cost efficient. I think if Opus VIII has shown us anything is that Fire really benefits from a bit more versatility, and hopefully we'll see some more versatile Fire Summons in the future, but I think for now the cards in this set are a really good step in the right direction.

Oh and finally, on a personal note,I love this set because surprise surprise, it has a big focus on XI, as well as IX which together automatically make this my favorite set of any of them by like... a huge margin. I guess you can automatically discount everything I said about the set because I have a gigantic, unreasonable bias but who cares? Now I have a foil set of the Ark Angels and XI summons, AND this did end up being the Ninja Opus like I predicted, so the real winner of this set is me if you think about it.

Name a more iconic quintet of soulless eldritch monstrosities. Go ahead. I'll wait. 

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And that's it for my thoughts on Opus VIII! Is it strange that there's less to say about a really good set than there is about a lukewarm one? What do you guys think about the set? Are there any cards you're really looking forward to using?

Before I got, I wanted to share with everybody the final results for Opus VIII Bingo: We cut it really close this time but we managed to get a row completed, and for once it's not the central row! 

So what am I going to do this time to celebrate another successful Bingo? Well, you'll have to wait a bit to find out: I'm going to be heading overseas for a brief stay in Japan, so when I get back I'll set up another raffle. Who knows, maybe I'll bring back something awesome to give away to you guys? *wink wink* In the mean time, I'll be outside Hobby Japan's office, pressing my face against the window and crying while I beg them to make a modal Fire Summon. That or to give me a Lunafreya, since even after two boxes I still haven't pulled one...

Until next time, Keep on Grinding, 

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A New Dawn: An Opus VII Review

Hey there everyone, and welcome back to Lv. 1 Onion Knight: The FFTCG blog that wants to remind Thaumaturge and Gesper to not let the door hit them on their way out.

Now that Opus VII has officially been out for over a week, I've had a good amount of time to ruminate on the set, gather my feelings on the cards, and wonder why I still haven't pulled a single Jecht yet. So what exactly do I think about the set?
Well I'm still trying to figure that out actually...

I don't know why, but I've been hitting a major writer's block trying to figure out what to write about Opus VII. For my last review, I felt like Opus VI was full of so many highs and lows that it was really easy to pinpoint what I liked and disliked about the set. But for this one? I'm kind of having a tough time even figuring out why I don't really know how I feel about Opus VII, and trust me, when you're stressing out because you don't know what to write about cards, you may need to reexamine your priorities, which of course, I haven't. 

I'M TRYING OKAY???

I think part of the reason why I've been having such a tough time figuring out what to say about Opus VII is that in general, there's been a lot of mixed opinions across the board about the cards after the full set reveal. If I asked right now what the best Legend card in Opus VII was, I would probably get a lot of different opinions. Some people think Noctis is amazing while others don't think he lives up to the hype, some people think Lann is the card that will bring Mono fire back to meta relevance while others think his effect is just too expensive. Noel? Either an incredible removal tool or not worth running because Estinien exists. I've been having a tough time getting any sort of consistent feedback from the community about the value of cards in this set, which is kind of an interesting conundrum, honestly. 

As far as I can tell, there isn't a universally agreed upon "best" card in the set like Wol or Estinien that is the big money chaser. There doesn't seem to be a humongous power creep like in Opus V either as far as card balance goes. In fact I'd say that the overall element balance seems much improved over the last few Opuses... for the most part. 

I'll get to you in a minute babe.

After thinking about it, if I had to describe Opus VII in one word, it would be "Potential". I know that sounds like a backhanded compliment, but really I find the fact that many of the cards have potential uses that aren't always super obvious at first to be pretty exciting, and allows for more creativity in deckbuilding. This may seem like a given - Of course any new set of cards released is going to lead to new decks being made, but I feel like mechanically many of the cards work very differently from trends we've had until now.

As anybody who has read this blog before will know, I'm not exactly on the cutting edge of the FFTCG competitive scene. I don't cover or really even follow tournaments - I'm the sort of person who just likes to experiment with cards and builds and have fun with it, all while sneering at the Meta from aloft my ivory tower. 

When your confidence vastly outweighs your actual skill.

In all seriousness, there's a really dedicated competitive scene that is very analytical and could probably give you a much better analysis on how to use the cards, and that's great! That's probably why they win many more games than I do - just the competitive scene isn't the space that I personally occupy when I look through new sets, even if it might be "suboptimal". Long story short, I'm still a filthy casual even after all this time.

It's more fun to me to see how to use cards in new decks - for example, I've heard a lot of rumbling about the new Khimari card, and how it's too slow and too vulnerable to removal to be a good enough linchpin to make Guardians worth playing, especially compared to the Gullwings. However, my thoughts on the card is that Khimari forces your opponent to spend double the resources in one turn to try and remove your other, more powerful combo pieces like Jecht and Tidus, leaving them open to your plays. Covering both X and Guardian cards also gives him a much bigger umbrella of cards that he protects, with a much wider scope of cards he can work with in the future as more cat X stuff is released. While Guardians may not be as good at locking out your opponents options, as a whole they seem to be a much more aggressive, combat oriented archetype compared to the Gullwings, and Khimari combines nicely with the other members. I do think that going forward, there needs to be more counters or negation for "Enter The Field" abilities besides Y'shotla so that cards with a long-term advantage or slower cards have a greater value and aren't a risk of the player wasting CP without getting an effect off, but that's a discussion for another day. 

Honestly, the card that I've been hearing most people agreeing on as the "best card in the set" tends to be the new Snow Backup, which is... really hard to dispute. Being able to give all of your Forwards the ability to dull a potential blocker is already absurdly powerful, but then being able to do all of that for free? No CP cost, no dulling or breaking Snow to activate the effect - nope, all entirely free. Combined with the fact that its an Ice element and my kneejerk reaction was that it's getting harder and harder to claim that there's no bias towards Ice on the card designers part.    

 

I'd also complain that this is the third Snow we've gotten in three sets, but he's still a Husbando, so I' have to take what I can get. 

But - and this comes as a huge shock to myself - as much as I've been the "anti-ice" dude on this blog... I don't hate Snow, and think that the Ice cards are much better balanced than they were in past sets. Cards like Snow and Terra may have powerful effects, which have obvious benefits to making certain Ice builds even more obnoxious - Militesi Coeurl can swing and dull two forwards, Shiva can dull three forwards instead of two, ect. But because neither of the cards I mentioned are limited to Ice Forwards/Summons, I feel like it kind of makes Ice more of a splashable element? As I mentioned before, Opus VII feels like it has a lot of options for creative deckbuilding outside of what we've seen before - Serah is a really strong Ice Legend, but she needs to be played in a specific deck, rather than just being splashable into any Ice deck. Cards like Yuri, Snow, and Terra that allow you to mix typically element-exclusive strengths with other elements really makes me want to experiment with making new decks, rather than seeing what preexisting decks they can best fit into. Screw Vikings, I wanna try and use Snow in a Fire/Ice build with lots of Hasty dudes, and maybe a few of the Opus VI Goblins for maximum dull/burn action. 

No Goblins then?

Hell, I even like the new slew of standard units that have added effects when you play them with CP of other elements, and I hope that in the future we can see some non-generic cards with effects like that (besides Kefka) to open up new multi-element decks that we might not have seen a whole lot of in the past. With the return of Back Attack cards, the new Monster mechanics, and great Title series support, I think that Opus VII is the start of a fantastic new direction for the FFTCG, and I hope that it can keep this creative momentum going in future sets. 

So yeah, no real complaints this time around (shocking, I know) other than perhaps, that I wish there was a Dawn Warrior Backup or a new Lenna or something. So really quickly, why don't I go over some of my favorite new combos with Opus VII cards, so I actually have something interesting to talk about here! 

Opus VII Combos 

I couldn't mention a new set without talking about Fire cards right? I think Opus VII is the best Fire's been in awhile - for one the idea that Fire card effects need to make you go into a huge minus for okay-ish effects seems to have (thankfully) been dropped since the last set. Cards like Aeigis and Sol are incredible for making more aggressive decks, and Varuna is an excellent pressure tool, but I think he works amazingly well alongside Vermilion Bird L'cie Zhuyu. 

Most of the time when you swing in with Zhuyu, your opponent will let the attack through to avoid his reactivation effect. With a Varuna or two on the field now, the choice of whether or not to block Zhuyu becomes a no-win situation for your opponent: Either way you're guaranteed a point of damage and activated Varunas. 

  

Using Titan defensively to surprise your opponent was one of my favorite plays last set - it might be a bit overkill, but you can effectively get rid of three of your opponents Forwards with this combo: Declare block and cast Titan - break the Attacking Forward and nuke a second Forward, then dull a third to clear out your opponent's field. 

Another Terra combo idea: Play Legendary Phoenix and fetch the new Time Mage from the Break Zone. You get two dulls, a burn, and a freeze off of an already amazing Summon. 

    

"The Opponent playing a backup? During MY turn? It's more likely than you think..." 

Seriously, your opponent will hate you for this combo. It'll be great. 

I haven't quite been able to find a deck that makes the best use of Ajido's ability to cheat in high-cost summons for free. With the new Krille, Yuna, and Garnet, I was kicking around the idea of a Water/Earth Summon deck with rainbow summons like Pheonix. Diabolos, or even Raiden. You can search and cheat in Ajido with Star Sibyl, play him to play an expensive summon, then play Yaag to reuse his ability while keeping your Backup line intact. 

Hooray! We got a new Prishe and Shantotto this set - I suppose it will do until we get Lilisette. In any case, you -could- use Zagnal with Opus I Shantotto for a free point of damage, but why not maximize your opponent's sodium intake by blocking with 2 drop Prishe, playing 9 Drop Prishe for free and nuking a forward, then having two beefy 9k forwards ready to swing on your turn? 

 

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So there you have it, my entirely unqualified opinions on Opus VII! I hope everybody has fun with all these great new cards, and can make some really surprising decks. 

Oh, and speaking of Opus VII, wasn't there that bingo thing that was going on...? How did that go?

 

Not bad! This time I decided to count each row that got a Bingo towards the overall completion goal, and I'm going to be announcing a brand new Raffle to celebrate the release of Opus VII and another successful Bingo next week, so keep your eyes peeled! 

Until next time - Keep On Grinding,

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The Forbidden Opus: An Opus II Review

Hey there all you Ninjas and Sages, and welcome back to Lv.1 Onion Knight, the FFTCG blog that exists to make you look like a better player by comparison! 

Okay, so I was totally ready to write a post about my attempts in trying to make a deck revolving around Edge from Final Fantasy IV. I really was. I finally got around to finishing the GBA version of the game, made my way through the Lunar Ruins, did everybody's trials and beat Zeromus EG. And then, just when I was prepped and ready to write an earth-shattering article about how Ninjas need more archetype support in Opus VI, this happened:
 

 I'm really doing a great job at selling this whole unemployment fantasy to you all.   

So yeah... we bought a box of Opus II this week. Up until this point, I really hadn't had much experience with the cards from this set. When we first started buying packs, I mostly focused on III and IV. Sean's favorite Final Fantasy has always been VIII though, and because Opus II has such a heavy focus on cards from that game, he started off buying those packs. Once we started getting more serious about the game, our focus switched to getting the new cards from Opus V and the big staple cards from I. We opened about 16 packs of Opus I during casuals last week and didn't pull a single Maria or Shantotto, and since we both need at least two of them, odds are we're still going to be pulling from there for a good while. 

But as we started to buy packs we noticed something strange recently: All of our local shops were selling out of Opus II. Some people from our FFTCG group told us that the set was now out of print, so the shops we frequented would likely not be getting them back in stock any time soon. I have no idea if this is actually true or not, but that seemed to be the consensus with the people we played with. I found this strange because even though it's an older set, a lot of the cards from Opus II are very popular in top tier decks: In particular, my new least favorite card to play against, Al-Cid.

Pretty hard to stay mad at a guy with such luxurious chest hair though.

In any case, we both figured that it would be a good idea to pick up a box, and here we are. So instead of the content I said I would write about in my last post, I thought that because I haven't really gotten too many of these cards, it would be fun to go over our pulls and give my thoughts on some of the individual cards from the set instead. So if you're one of the 3 people who regularly read this blog and were really looking forward to that Final Fantasy IV Edge deck, what can I say except well... maybe next time. Otherwise, lets dive into the mysterious and alluring collection that is Opus II.

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The Pulls:  

Even though this was the second box of FFTCG cards we purchased together, Sean wasn't around to help me open Opus V, so this was his first time diving into a fresh sealed box. He had yet to experience the rush that I had last time tearing into the shrink wrap and getting buried in a pile of discarded wrappers as you opened all those packs. It's like opening the Ark of the Covenant, except without the whole face melting and spontaneous combustion thing. 

Anyway we quickly divided the piles of booster packs and dug in. I usually don't have incredible luck pulling super valuable cards, so you can imagine my surprise when I pulled this:

Cue the Liberi Fatali Chorus

Rinoa! And a foil one at that! As a FFVIII fan, this was probably the number one card that Sean was looking for from this set, so that's pretty lucky. Now you're probably wondering when it comes to sharing a box of cards between two people, how do we decide who gets what? Well for the most part if it's a card that the other one has really been gunning for, we'll claim the exclusive "ownership rights" of that card, so we can use it in our decks. Otherwise it goes into the binder for either one of us to use. 

That being said, a majority of the good cards that had been pulled in the past had already gone to Sean, as he tends to focus on Ice, Lightning, and Earth cards. So he made me a deal: He'd keep the Rinoa in exchange for the foil Opus I Shantotto he pulled awhile back. Since XI is my favorite, and they're both fairly valuable cards, I was more than happy to accept this. I plan on repaying his generosity by using it against him it at every available chance, because that's just the kind of boyfriend I am. 

Oh yeah, and then I pulled this: 

I take back everything bad I ever said about you baby!

So yeah, a foil Al-Cid, and this one I wanted since Sean had pulled a regular one back when we first started playing. Now, I realize that:

A) I just made a big fuss about how I wish this card would get banned. 

B) I have yet to use lightning in any of the decks I've made. 

But now that I actually have this card... well, I reserve the right to be a hypocrite when it comes to rare cards, okay?? 

In any case lets take a look at all the goodies we pulled from our Opus II box. 

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Legends

I was kinda hoping to get a foil of the Emperor. I guess I should have specified which one...

Heroics

Is it weird that I was more excited about the Foil Edge than the Arc?  

So yeah, all things considered it was a pretty good haul! Two Al-Cids, a foil Zemus, Vayne, Xande, and Rinoa is nothing to sneeze at. I was kind of hoping to get the L Cecil or Vincent from this set, but unlike Eald'Narche, it wasn't all that disappointing - Sean had already gotten an Opus II Emperor, so now I have one too! Maybe now that I've gotten these cards, the FFTCG cool kids will let me sit with them. Probably not, but an Onion Knight can dream.
 

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Final Thoughts

Opus II was a bit of a strange one for me. On the one hand, I'm pretty surprised that this set is becoming harder to find in stores. Out of all of the FFTCG booster boxes listed on Amazon, Opus II was about 30 dollars more expensive than the other ones, and at the time I ordered, the only one not eligible for Prime shipping. From what limited experience and knowledge that I have with this game, a lot of really powerful and meta-defining cards originated in this set. Hell, most of the top decks in the Crystal Cup had decks featuring cards like The Emperor, Rinoa, and Vayne. If the rumors are true and Opus II is really out of print, I hope that there's a reprint somewhere on the horizon, because it would be nice if these high value cards were more readily available. 

Also it's nice to have a character on the packs that isn't from FFVII or... Lightning. 

If I had to pick an element that "won" this set, it would definitely be Ice... which is probably why I didn't focus on it much when I first started playing, being more interested in Fire cards. At first I didn't really understand why Rinoa was such a valuable card, but the ability to dull all of your opponents forwards can completely change the pace of the game. You can use her ability both offensively and defensively, and is in general a really great card even outside of VIII focused decks. Vayne is another powerful Ice card that will keep getting better as new sets are released. Being able to dull and lock down any 5 drop or higher is incredibly valuable, and shuts down a lot of powerful cards in Opus V like Vaan and Ramza. I'm really not surprised that Ice tends to be popular in the tournament scene with cards like these, and cards from Opus III like Genesis and Kuja only helped make it more powerful.

There are a lot of big beefy Lightning cards in this set too, with stuff like Edea Al-Cid and Amon that can really disrupt your opponents forwards and generally be a pain to play around. Mono Lightning decks are pretty much a thing because of the cards from this set, so if you're a newer player who's looking to play that element, I would definitely start collecting Opus II. 

It also has the other elements beat in sheer fabulousness.

If I had to pick a losing element in this set, it would be Fire, which is kind of a bummer for me since it's my favorite element. Sure, Emperor Xande is one of the key cards in my Marche/FFVI Forwards deck, and probably one of the better fire cards in general, but unlike the other Legends from Opus II, he pretty much has to be played in Mono Fire, which at the moment, is pretty far behind other elements in terms of power and viability. Sure I have fun in casuals with it, but in comparison to other Mono Lightning or Mono Water, it just doesn't keep up.  Every set Fire gets just a little closer to being competitive in the "meta" sense with stuff like Pheonix and Zhuyu in Opus V... it just needs a few more cards that do something other than "Does Damage"... Who knows, maybe Opus VI will make those fire ninjas i keep talking about top tier or something. 

In any case, that's enough of this Noob's opinions for now. What are some of your favorite cards from the Opus II collection, or your thoughts on the set as a whole? Where does it rank for you on the scale of best/worst Opus? Lemme know in the comments! 

Until next time - Keep on Grinding, 

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