A Noob's Opus XI Review and Bingo Raffle!

Hey there folks, and welcome to Lv.1 Onion Knight: The Final Fantasy TCG blog that really needs somebody to teach them how to use OCTGN or Untap or whatever so they can play this game online. 

Well, it certainly has been a few months since I've posted anything here. I'm starting to feel a bit like YouTuber from the early 2010's that keeps promising to upload more only to never follow through with any of it. Of course, things have only gotten more difficult lately now that it really does feel like a psychopathic clown moved some magical statues around and caused the world to plummet into ruin.

"Or perhaps you HOPED!"

Constant state of anxiety and depression aside, there was quite a bit going on behind the scenes this past release season. For starters, I got to write about some of the awesome new Ninja cards from Opus XI as part of the community spoilers posted on the main Final Fantasy TCG website! Clearly I'm a man who is known for his love of Ninjas, so even if it meant even less posts here between set reviews, the fact that people let me rant about them in an official capacity was pretty amazing. I feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. 

Big mistake. Big. HUGE.

I also hosted my first ever tournament with the decks that people came up with for the first Blooming Onions Challenge! As awful as I am at deckbuilding, it was insanely fun getting to test out the decks that people submitted with the NYC crew, so a big thanks to everyone who participated in the last one. I'm going to use my next post as a way of getting back on schedule with the Blooming Onions challenges, both because I'm excited to write about the winning deck (which I can honestly say had some of the most exciting and dramatic matches I've ever seen) and to reveal the card that was selected by the community vote for the next challenge. I've also been peddling Opus Bingo around on Facebook and Reddit as usual, the results of which we'll dive into a little bit later. 

If I can take a moment to get "real" for a second though, with everything that's been going on in the world, it's been a little tough for me to have the emotional energy to be creative about TCG stuff. I know that things like cancelled prerelease events and not being able to hang out at locals are extremely small in the grand scheme of things, but you'd be surprised at how not being able to do something as simple as go to the store and crack packs of cards every week with friends can impact your mood. Everybody is dealing with things the best way they know how, and I'm notoriously bad at dealing with stress. 

Jumping off a cliff never felt so relatable.

With that being said, the FFTCG community has been doing a great job at keeping things as normal as possible, and just getting to talk online about cards has been a good way to get me out of my slump, even if just for a little bit every day. I seriously wasn't joking about needing somebody to teach me how to use Untap so I can play online. Sean and I have had a lot more time to play together now, but I haven't gotten a chance to play against what people have been cooking up. Is the new Sephiroth the game-breaking, meta defining card that everybody predicted it would be when it was spoiled? I have no idea! 

Oh c'mon who ever heard of a Dark card defining the meta?

But seriously, a big thanks to everyone in the community who has been working hard to keep things going. As a filthy casual, I may give the tournament scene a lot of flack, but anybody who has worked to arrange one online is my personal hero. In particular I want to give shout outs to:

• Nick from EnvyGames for his amazing box breaks on Discord/Twitch. It's been a great way to simulate the thrill of popping packs with other people. If you can get into one, I highly recommend it - they fill up fast! And even if you don't, he does tons of giveaways during the stream too. He also provided me with some of the prizes I'll be giving away this time too!
• Mogpod Gaming for cranking out so much content every week. I'm especially a fan of their deck summary articles which have been coming out nonstop since the set released and they really gets me pumped to try some new builds.
• Richie Brady for holding things together on the US side of things and for talking me off this ledge every day. Also for effectively holding a one-woman marketing campaign convincing me to buy a PS4 so I can play the Final Fantasy VII remake. Spoiler alert: It'll be coming in this week.
• Tonberry Prince from Trading Card Game Pit for helping me get my hands on prerelease kits, boxes, tins, and generally keeping me rolling in product on a weekly basis, some of which is I'm going to be raffling off in this post! I haven't actually rolled around in the raffle items, but I could if you're into that sort of thing.

Funnily enough, this blog started out two years ago as an outlet for me to deal with my anxiety and depression as I learned how to play this game after losing my job, and I'm finding the FFTCG once again acting as my emotional shield. Getting to talk to all the friends I've made online about cards can often be the little spark that I need to distract me when getting through the next 15 minutes can seem like a challenge. If there's anybody out there who isn't having a good time right now and can have this blog do the same thing for them - even if it's just for a laugh - then consider this to be a thank you to the community that continues to get me through some tough times. 

Phew, that got dark. Enough of all this earnest emotional frippery. Lets talk about cards! 

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So Opus XI has been called the "Power Creep Set", mostly as a reaction to seeing Sephiroth-L and the sheer amount of text on the new Exodus Summon. It's pretty hard to argue with that seeing some of the new things that we got, many of which are straight upgrades to older Opus I cards, but I don't think that this set is quite as much as a game changer as Opus V was in terms of the sheer amount of staple cards that can and should be plugged into every deck that was running that element. That's not to say that that the cards from Opus XI are bad. On the contrary, this is probably the tightest set with the highest number of consistently good cards in it. I'd argue that the reason it feels like less of an absurd power creep is because the card designers have come a long way in designing cards that are both powerful and balanced. 

Okay I know I might be a bit biased towards Fire cards, but they also perfectly illustrate what I'm talking about. 

Both BFA and Shadow are powerful cards that can realistically be put into any Fire deck for good results, but get the most benefit by being played in more specific builds. BFA (aka Bachelor of Fine Arts AKA hands down my favorite Legend in the set) is the direction that high-costed Forwards really should have gone in for awhile now: Big and difficult to deal with easily. Sure he's still a Diabolos target, but his built in "protection" means that playing this against an opponent with a developed board means they're going to have a hard time dealing with it, since even targeting it will let you blow something up. If you don't deal with it though, you can kiss that board goodbye. His discard effect is absurd value, but one that you'll only see in a highly specific Multi-element Summoner deck. 

Shadow likewise is a new key card for VI specific builds, and gets the highest benefit out of being played alongside new bestboi Interceptor so you can get Locke's effect online blisteringly fast. But the speed that he ramps up backups while also giving you a body on the field means that you could realistically run him in any deck that uses Fire as a support element.  Honestly I don't even think that Fire needed cards this strong anymore now that it's finally found efficiency in the form of low-cost burn-based control and board swarming, but I'm not about to complain. 

In general this set has done a lot to fix some of the imbalances between elements of the last few sets. For so long Mono Fire had been described as a "bad Lightning" but in recent sets the tables were turned, mostly because a lot of the speed that made Mono Lightning powerful in the past - such as being able to spam multiple Forwards onto the field while removing your opponents board with combo damage - had been transferred over to Fire. Mono Lightning still maintained it's ability to ramp-up Backups quickly, and the element still had a pretty noticeable presence with cards like Fusoya, Kain, and Ranperre totally dominating the meta in Lightning/Earth decks. But now it felt more like a support element, falling back on a lot of the same old staples they had been using for the past few sets like Illua and Diana/Alba, with the Legends printed not being quite enough to restore it to its former glory as king of aggressive control.

However, Mono Lightning got a breath of fresh air in Opus XI with stuff like the Kingsglaive package (Glauca in particular being a pretty big game-breaker for the element) combining the best aspects of what made the element infuriating to play against in the past: Combining fast Fowards with dulling and instant break effects, giving it more of a "hit and run" feel. 

Cards like Gadgeteer, Man in Black, Puck, and Aranea using the Break Zone as a resource for added value also do a lot to bring back the "Oh you thought you were safe huh?" aspect of the element. And anybody who says that Kuja is a worse Seymour because he deals you one point of damage can feel great that they get to sit on the same bench as anybody who claimed that Cloud and Nael were bad cards when they were revealed. I'm not sure if it's enough to make Mono Lightning the terror it once was, but judging from some recent tournament results, things are looking a lot better for it. 

There are of course still some issues with balance though. 

Remember back in the day, I made a joke about how the design for Fire cards seemed to be like this? 

Well for awhile, the design of Wind cards feels like it's been this: 

You get what I'm saying though. Just absurdly efficient cards that can pretty much do everything. Protection, free plays, easy AOE board wipes, and basically making most Forwards over the cost of 5 nigh-unplayable for the past 5 sets or so. In every set there seems to be at least one card that fits in nice and snuggly in Wind/Water listings to make the deck increasingly more disgusting, without adding in any sort of counter cards that can deal with Wind's repeated activation shenanigans. 

The Wind Legends in this set are mercifully ones that need very specific decks to be run in, but that doesn't mean they didn't find a way to add more bizzarely degenerate cards to the element...  

There's a lot to take in here, especially with something like Pandemonium, which appears to have been printed in the event that Valefor-S was banned. I feel like Wi/Wa didn't really need a card like Fiona to help get any character from the deck either. Sure it costs 4 and a dull but without a "once per-turn" or "only on your turn restriction" it nets you cards incredibly fast in an element that really couldn't care less about activation costs. Chelinka... well, she may actually wind up being better in Fire/Wind, but with stuff like Opus VI Zidane, Opus V Cloud of Darkness, and now Opus XI Celes, there's a lot of opportunity for some pretty gross plays to surface.

So what am I recommending? That they only print bad Wind and Water cards? No, of course not. There's a lot about Wi/Wa in its current form that I think will keep in on top top until pieces like Opus III Zidane and Valefor-S get banned, or until an easily splashable counter card that stops reactivation is printed. Most of the Wind and Water cards in this set are actually better suited for category or job specific decks rather than just solid element support.

I am saying that I'm bitter from losing one too many time to Wind/Water decks over the past year and I've given up on any sort of subtlety about it at this point. 

Ahem... back to the topic at hand. 

One of the things I love the most about Opus XI is it's major focus on several job archetypes that have not had a whole lot of support in the past, and not only that but giving them a really solid identity and win condition too! I originally thought that Ursula was really underwhelming for the Legend slot in Earth, but with the amount of support she gets from other cards in the deck she quickly becomes a monster. There's something incredibly satisfying about how quickly the Monk deck can build a board of cards that Ursula can quickly machine-gun into the break zone to wipe out your opponents Forwards like Nael on steroids. 

And then there's Edge. AKA my new lord and savior.

I've been hoping for a set to be the "Ninja Opus" since way back in Opus VI. And this card... this friggin CARD! Color corrects a job that's split across multiple elements? Check. Makes them all 1 CP cheaper with no "Can not become 0" restriction? Check. A thematically appropriate ability that can provide insane value? Check. All of this on a 2 CP body. His only real flaw is that his low power level makes him easy to remove but being in Wind makes this less of an issue thanks to cards like Yshtola and Usaganashii providing the protection needed to create an insane board of Ninjas while clearing the opponent's board. This is hands down the card that I've been most excited to play with in this entire set. 

Hell, even Samurai's got a killer support card this set. I've been hearing a lot of rumblings online about how adding this new Cyan to the Samurai package and combining it with Ifrita's AOE burn effect makes it absolutely terrifying. Combining Hien's 1k pump with Ayame's 1k damage boost means that every time one of your Samurai Forwards attacks, there's going to be a LOT of math to take into account and I am here for every second of it.

Even Summoners, who had no support outside of Braska in Opus VII is now basically the "Oh, you thought we were playing the same game here? Oh honey, no." deck. There are so many new tribal deck options to test out in this set with their own unique flavor that it's amazing that in 11 sets, Sky Pirates don't have one other than trying and keep a specific number of small Forwards with underwhelming effects on the board to power up Fran or something. And with that I've fulfilled my quota for complaining about Sky Pirates this set. 

The next set is XII themed though so there's a glimmer of hope I can finally shut up about it.

The only cards that I would really say were a disappointment for me in Opus XI would be the Chaos cards based off of the Four Fiends from Final Fantasy I, who I've been hoping to see for awhile now. These guys are the FFTCG equivalent of "Why buy one when you can have two for twice the price" with how expensive it is to trigger their on entry effects - so much so that it makes me feel like there's something I must be missing about them, so if you've discovered a use for them by all means let me know. 

Always wear a lab coat when talking about cards and it's impossible to be wrong.

The fact that they pseudo-replace themselves with another Job Chaos character when being sent to the break zone is an interesting concept, but most of their additional effects are too expensive to justify the cost - except maybe Lich -  leaving you with nothing but a big vanilla 9k beater otherwise. You can also search for the new 1 CP Chaos Backup, but I would rather just play Kamlanaut for that cost and to get an overall better Forward in the end. 

I'm really baffled why Chaos just didn't say "If the card you played from the Break Zone is 'Job: Chaos', you can activate their effect without paying the cost." or something. I was almost positive that there would be a new artwork Garland to go along with all the new Category I cards printed in this set that would do something along those lines for the Four Fiends. Of course, just like Summoners, there's always the chance for more Chaos cards to be printed in the future (Opus XIV is villain themed after all...) which might make these cards significantly better, it just may take a few sets to happen. 

That or I'm just overreacting about a bunch of Common cards which is entirely within the realm of possibility. 

But all in all, I think we're going to see a big shakeup with the types of decks we see in the meta with this set, just because there are so many fresh archetypes we haven't seen fully executed in the past come to life. And the cancellation of major tournaments for the next few months means that people have more time to breathe in a less competitive environment, which has been leading to a lot of more experimentation than usual.

And we're not just talking about Cloud's wardrobe here either, but both are equally encouraged. 

All together this is probably the first set in awhile where 3 boxes still isn't enough for me to get all of the cards I want to run, and usually that's enough even split between two players. I still haven't managed to get my hand on any Kujas! Once things get back to normal I'm really eager to start drafting with this set and hopefully pull a full art Monk to go along with my full art Ursula, who is my new BFF and #1 best girl. 

And that's it for my set review! So now lets get on to the thing everybody actually cares about: Bingo results and free stuff!  
 

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Well, it's been a pretty good run, but for the first time since I started doing this in Opus VI, we did NOT get a Bingo this set, proving that 2020 is an irredeemable dumpster fire. 

I'm sure that some of you will say that we did in fact get the center row, because we got Azul. Unfortunately that was revealed before I made the Bingo so I knew about him beforehand which means he can't count for that space. I was specifically expecting that we would see a few new Tsviets this set, but nope! Nary a Rosso or Weiss in sight. 

In the past I've done raffles to celebrate a successful Bingo, but the reality is that even if we never got a single square I would still do a raffle regardless! But don't let you think I'm going to quit putting my powers of card prognostication to good use for more Bingos in the following sets! Just TRY and stop me! 

This time I've decided to put together a little care package for one lucky winner, with some great stuff purchased from both Envy Games and Trading Card Game Pit. 

That's right - I finally managed to get my hands on a promo signed by Kageyama to raffle away! Thanks again to my main TCG bro Nick for being kind enough to provide me with this one, since he is important enough to get things like this on a regular basis. 

So all together one lucky winner will receive: 

• One sealed Tifa Tin Gift Set. (Yes, everything is still inside)
• One pack of Shinra Electric Power Company card sleeves. (60 Count)
• One pack of KMC Character Guard Sleeves (60 Count)
• One Ultimate Guard Deck n' Tray Case (Black) 
• One Foil JP promo Yuri PR-055 signed by Tarou Kageyama.  

So how can you enter to win these fabulous prizes?  

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 everything pictured above.

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 two weeks from the post date of this blog (April 20th - May 4th), and I will announce the winners via Facebook on Monday, May 4th at 8PM EST. 

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! 

Everybody got that? So if you want to enter the raffle, just click the link below!

Enter the Raffle Here!!   

 

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And there you have it folks - another totally unqualified set review brought to you by everybody's favorite ornery Onion Knight! The way things have been going this year, I think I may have actually gone down a level, if that's even possible. But rest assured I'll still be here, trying to figure out new and exciting ways to create the fresh FFTCG content you guys have all learned to tolerate from me over the past two years. Now if you'll excuse me, somebody else got a full art, foil, and nonfoil Sephiroth from one box in my last box break and I need to go cry about that for a bit.

Until next time - Keep on Grinding, 

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Blooming Onions: A Community Deck Building Challenge

Hey there folks, and welcome back to Lv.1 Onion Knight: The Final Fantasy Trading Card Game blog that wishes that it were as beloved by the FFTCG community as it is by the bots that always fill the comments of these posts with spam. 

Welp, 2019 sure came and went by faster than I'd like to think about, and with it a lot of change has come both to the FFTCG and my personal life. With the combination of the hectic holiday season as well as going through the process of moving into a new apartment, I haven't really been doing a super job of keeping that promise I made to write more blog posts considering that my last one was almost two months ago. Ouch.  

Oh come on, like anybody reads this blog outside spoiler season.

But that doesn't mean that I haven't been keeping up with all the FFTCG related news that's been coming out! 2020 is shaping up to be a big year for the game, with all kinds of cool stuff announced. The one I'm most excited for though has to be the introduction of the new L3 format, which means that we'll finally start to see a bit more deck diversity in competitive play, instead of just Wind/Water, which seems to be getting more and more degenerate in every set. 

And no, I'm not bitter that after placing high in our last local monthly tournament, I got my clock thoroughly cleaned by a typical YRP build. Like... the elderly woman who brought my clock in to get repaired burst into tears when she finally got it back, because she hadn't seen it looking like that since her father brought it home from the Great War when she was a little girl: That's how cleaned my clock got. 

"Guys it's cool we introduced a format where you can't use Valefore so we don't have to ban it from standard." 

Typical sour grapes aside, diversity in deck building and experimenting with cards that may not have obvious applications is something that I've always been a major proponent of. Okay, well maybe not always, but nobody can say that I haven't at least been a plucky contrarian who likes to try and see the potential of cards that other, better players might have overlooked. When the new Aerith from this set was released, I don't think anybody saw any value in it until one crazy person discovered that combining her with the Biggs/Wedge/Jessie package, Godo/Yuffie, and freaking Opus VII Xezat of all things (who I sincerely hope is the next contender for a full-art promo...) could be used to create infinite resources. The player who came up with that combo wasn't me unfortunately, but it's that kind of experimentation that I find really exciting about this game. 

So what am I getting at with this, besides once again thumbing my nose at the competitive scene that I'm not good enough to be a part of? Well do you remember that "different content" that I've been teasing for the better part of two sets now? Today I'm happy to finally tear away the veil of mystery and reveal a new community challenge designed to test your deck building skills and uncover new combos for the fun of it: Blooming Onions!

Blooming Onions will be a new bi-monthly challenge where I choose a card or cards that I think have gone underutilized by the community and task all you brewmeisters out there who are significantly better at this than I am to use them to come up with the best deck that you can within a specific format. I'll even give you some ideas of how I think you can potentially use these cards to better effect, though you're welcome to completely disregard my suggestions if you can think of something better, and let's face it, that probably won't be too hard. Think of it as one of those cooking competition shows where the contestants are given a weird ingredient that they have to incorporate into their dish. Chopped? Sure, lets go with that. Like Chopped but with trading cards. 

In any case, lets quickly go over how all of this works, shall we? 


Q: How are the cards that are picked going to be chosen?

🔰:The first card will be chosen by yours truly, but at the end of each Blooming Onion post, I'll leave a poll of five cards for the community to vote on and select which one they want used for the next challenge. If you've got an idea for a card that you'd like to see used, let me know in the comments!

Q: What do I have to do to enter this challenge?

🔰: All you need to do to enter is create a decklist using FFDecks and leave the link in the comments of this post. That's it!

Q: How will you choose a winner?

🔰: A crack team of Onion Knights will be deployed to evaluate all submissions, though if Kageyama ever enters, he wins by default.

(I'll be judging which decks/combos I think make the best use of the card, as well as consulting with the NYC crew and other members of the FFTCG community. I'll also potentially be testing out some of the builds that I like to make a decision.)

Q: What do I get if my submission is chosen as the winner?

🔰: Nothing.

Okay, well maybe nothing physical, at least for now - though I may include some sort of prizing going forward. That being said the winning deck and deck builder will be featured at the beginning of the next Blooming Onion post, so if you want a chance to show off what a stone cold badass you are to the rest of the community, here's your chance.

Q: How long do I have to make my submission?

🔰: Since I'm going to be testing this out on a bi-monthly schedule, you'll have 30 days after each post goes live to submit your deck. After that I'll evaluate them and get the next Blooming Onion challenge live at the end of the following month.

Q: Are you seriously encouraging people to use cards the community has established as bad and create a bunch of meme decks?

🔰: Yes.


Everybody up to speed and ready to make some decks? Then let's see what the first month's challenge is. 
 

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🔰Blooming Onions #1🔰

Featured Cards: King of Eblan & Queen of Eblan 

Format: L3 

So as you've probably guessed from the title image, the first candidates for the Blooming Onion challenge are both the King and Queen of Eblan. I remember that when these cards were released, it was at the time when Fire still wasn't in a place to compete with the other elements and when people saw these guys... well lets just say that the reaction wasn't pretty. Taking up two of the H-Rarity slots was bad enough, but the fact that it was decided to give what was seen as an underpowered element more cards with an unnessecary restriction was a breaking point for enough people that they never really saw the light of day.

That being said I think that they may have gotten a bit of a bad rap, and much like Ifrita who came out in Opus IX, may have been released at a time where there wasn't much available to really take advantage of what they actually do well. Even now that Mono Fire is starting to have meta relevence, these two still show up on people's "top 10 worst cards" lists alongside the likes of Chocobo Chick, but is that really fair? Let's take a look at what these cards do well as well as why people don't end up using them. 

Pros:

• The ability to both search and play straight from the deck is very efficient CP-wise. 
• Plays well with Fire's newfound ability to flood the board quickly with bodies, and can become huge with Fire's many boosters. 
• Category IV seems to be moving towards a "Have X amount of Cat IV things on the field" similar to Category VI, so being able to build up numbers quickly could become more relevant. 
• Ping-heavy decks are becomming more popular, so an extra 5k ping on party attack is helpful. 

Cons:  

• Admittedly stupid restriction of not being able to attack in a deck that excells in removal is an odd attempt at balancing the "play from the deck" effect. 
• King only exists to fetch Queen, and has no other abilities without her. Likewise Queen is a dead draw since she can't be played with the King's ability from either the hand or the Break Zone. Both need to stay alive and party attack to get the ping damage. 
• Probably should have had Haste to make them more usable. 

So saying that this set of cards has been wrongfully maligned definitely isn't fair, but the challenge for this series isn't "how can I make a top-tier deck with these cards?" but instead "what deck can make these cards work?" To go back to the Chopped analogy, can you make a cake that tastes good when you have to incorporate rice and avocados? Here are a few ideas that might make these two work in an L3 deck.

 
Build Idea 1: Mono Fire Ping - Zack is probably one of the most "enable-y" cards from Opus X outside of maybe Terra-S, though both have a similar "get more value from actions you normally do" effect. Even though Zack sees the biggest benefit from playing Category VII Forwards, the ability to soften up almost any enemy target is pretty good, so getting 4k burn damage and 2 bodies isn't a bad trade off. With Iroha out on the field, that's 6k damage on entry, letting you take out smaller targets or finish something off while building up a more aggressive board state. 

Build Idea 2: Cat IV 

From what I understand, PR cards are fair game for L3 format, so one of the first cards I thought would combo nicely with the King and Queen was promo Rydia that was rumored to be included as a standard card from Opus XI or XII. The King and Queen can help hit Rydia's character requirement to search for a 1 CP summon like Opus IX Belias or Opus X Titan depending on the characters you use. I think that we'll be seeing more Category IV support in Fire and Earth in the following sets, so this may be more of a build to keep an eye on rather than something fully fleshed out, but the peices starting to get set up. The only question here would be how do you make a Fire/Earth deck that isn't just a mediocre version of WoFF? (Though I don't think WoFF would be usable in L3 to begin with...) 

Build Idea 3: Fire/Ice Control 

The King and Queen may have that dumb restriction that prevents them from attacking if your opponent has no Forwards on the field, but it doesn't specify anywhere that they need to be active Forwards, so dulling/unblockable effects will let you bypass that. I also wrote this whole big thing about how Snow from Opus VII would be great for this kind of aggro build only to realize that he's not eligible for L3 anymore. Womp.

And there you have it folks, just a few ideas to help you get started brewing the absolute best jank that you possibly can! And while you're here, don't forget to vote on which card you'd like to see for the next Blooming Onions challenge!


Having trouble viewing the poll on mobile? Click here to vote!


I hope that everybody has a good time brewing some solid jank, and remember if you have any suggestions for cards or formats you want to see in the future!
In the meantime I'll be here, wondering why my new apartment has a dedicated space for trading cards but I still just have a mattress on the floor to sleep on.

Until next time - Keep on Grinding, 

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A Noob's Opus X Set Review and Bingo Raffle!

Hello there FFTCG fans and welcome back to Lv.1 Onion Knight – the Final Fantasy TCG blog who’s biggest concern about Worlds is that whoever wins better pick a better promo card to slap their name on this time.

Well, Opus IX certainly went by with a blur, considering that the last posts that I’ve made were my spoiler and then… uh… my last set review and raffle. I’d love to say that I’ve had a bunch of super interesting stuff that’s been consuming my time, but really it’s just a bunch of mundane life stuff. That’s not to say that I haven’t been actively playing the FFTCG though, since nothing helps deal with the soul crushing anxiety of life quite like trading cards. I even placed second in our local monthly tournament. Second! And with Warriors of Light of all decks. I’ve tasted what it feels like to get to split a prize box and get the most recent foil promo and now I’ve gone mad with power.

This joke works on multiple levels.

But rest assured fair readers that despite my meteoric rise to success I’ll still be the champion of the underdogs in the casual FFTCG community. In all seriousness though, thanks for sticking around everyone! I promise that I’ll do more than just spoilers and set reviews this season, but while we’re here let’s talk about Opus X.

When I was reviewing Opus IX I said that it was “weird”, and despite the fact that I think it ended up getting a worse rap than it deserved, there’s no denying that it felt a bit like a transitional set before the big game-changer that was Opus X. The new set feels a lot tighter and more consistent, but it also is the first set in a long time where it feels like things are finally being changed up, and not just because Damage was incorporated as a keyword. Considering that we’ve had “additional effect at Damage X” cards for a while, and they didn’t really add too many cards with Damage effects this set, that’s not really super revolutionary, though I will say I like that the Damage cards they did add feel a bit more “swingy” and impactful than before.

But I think we can all agree that this was really Fire’s debut set can’t we?

If you're one of those people who thought Nael was a bad card I'm never going to let you forget that you were wrong. Just saying.

Okay, so it’s not really fair to say that Fire has been bad per say in other sets. Cards like Cloud and Nael did a lot for the element in general, and are arguably better generic Fire staples than either of the two Legends that premiered in Opus X. I think that some of Fire’s bad rap came from the community’s general unwillingness to play the element the way the card designers had intended. Despite better Fire cards coming out in every subsequent set that helped boost Fire’s power level, there was still a loop of “Does nobody play fire because it’s bad, or is Fire bad because nobody plays it?”. We saw builds like Fire/Ice VI and Fire/Earth VII become popular, but Fire was still branded as a bad element.

BUT ALSO LETS BE REAL FOR A SECOND. 

For a long time the design direction for Fire cards seemed to be “slightly over curve effects with a massive downside” as though saving 1CP to do 1k extra burn damage was a big enough deal to justify that. Aside from Belias and Phoenix, the Summons that came out for Fire were usually some variant of “do big damage to one Forward” in increasingly clunky ways. Being an aggressive element is a bit hard when “defensive” elements like Wind and Water were a lot faster and cheaper, or when Ice was just as capable at manipulating the CP in your hand as well as your Forwards on the field, making aggressive play a huge risk. What the card designers seem to have finally realized in Opus X though is that what Fire - and aggro decks in general - needed wasn’t bigger numbers. It was efficiency.

And the Fire cards in this set are just so damn good because they’re efficient. Both of the Legends from this set bring so much speed and value to Fire in ways we haven’t really seen executed properly before. Xande and Caius add much needed board flooding abilities. Terra is not only a soft 2cp Forward that lets you recycle your Summons, but makes them all hit for an extra 2k damage. Zack amps up ping damage and when combined with cards like Iroha, Opus VIII Cloud, and Firion-S, combo damage decks becomes significantly more dangerous. WoFF went from a silly niche deck to being played in Worlds, with Fire cards being the primary thing that makes it good. And the new Ifrit. THE NEW IFRIT YOU GUYS! Finally a burn Summon that’s not only slightly below cost, but is actually versatile AND makes the Ifrit/Ifrita package usable? What Opus X does well isn’t just that it has strong individual Fire cards – it’s that they work with the good cards that Fire already had and makes them even better. 

"Ifrita is a bad card because there are no good Ifrits!" Ifrita: "Hold my purse."

Oh right, there are other elements besides Fire… Well in general I think this set feels like the first time that the card designers are actively trying to directly answer issues with the meta. Cards like Faelthanos, Black Tortoise L’cie Gilgamesh, and Cid-Exvius all have strong counter effects that we haven’t seen before and seem like they were specifically made to counter a lot of Wind, Water, and Ice shenanigans. Citra finally gives us a Light card besides maybe Yuri that can be splashed into just about every deck. Hell, Warrior of Light Tribal became strong enough that it let me, a person who is notoriously bad at competitive play, come in second with a pseudo-4 color deck against a bunch of Unei and Doga builds during our local monthly tournament. In general I think that there’s a ton to like about Opus X and that we’ll finally start to see some big shifts in competitive play.

If there’s anything to complain about in this set, it would be the fact that Sky pirates got shafted for two sets in a row.



Well I mean they partially solved the problem the last set that there were not enough different Sky Pirates in the game I guess. But even after bringing out the Revenant Wings B-squad, they still feel like an unfinished archetype. I guess It’s not really fair to say that they have nothing going for them though since their whole thing seems to have been solidified into “have lots of Sky Pirate Forwards to trigger their effects”. Considering that they got an L slot dedicated to them I would have thought that they would have had more effective synergy. But even though Fran isn’t a bad card by any means and could end up becoming a cheap threat that’s difficult to remove, she’s more dependent on having an established board instead of being a play enabler for Sky Pirates. Hell, if her protection effect worked on all Job Sky Pirate Forwards in a more limited capacity, (give them all an Illua bubble effect instead?) that would have helped with the strategy of keeping your field full of small guys intact.

It’s kind of made even worse when you consider that WoFF was turned into a top tier deck with only four new cards from this set, thanks in no small part to the fact that their new Legend enables an absolutely absurd amount of shenanigans. That isn't to say that playing Sky Pirates as they are now wouldn't work, or that it won't be a fun deck to try out. Of course there’s still a handful of Revenant Wings character artwork that hasn’t gotten used, so we might see a Cu Sith Backup, Balthier, or the millionth copy of Vaan that acts as a clinch card for the archetype or something, but they still feel like they’re still missing one or two things (solid Backups mostly) and that the rest of them are coming in the next set. Of course, that’s what I thought they were going to do with Cadets, but instead we got… Type-0 Earth? Okay!

My secret power is the ability to turn memes into real cards.

That’s really my only gripe though, because otherwise they completely knocked it out of the park with this set. It’s exciting to see things begin to transition and more cards that shake up the state of the meta. Plus the gross Final Fantasy XI bridge troll inside me has been thoroughly satiated by the Kam/Eald full arts (If I could only get my hands on them...) and the new kickass deck engine with Ranperre/Shantotto-S. I can only hope that the card designers continue to change things up in interesting ways like they have with Opus X.

Now that Mono Fire is finally seeing success though I’m going to need to find something else to complain about, but I can always transition from the “whines about Fire” guy to the “whines about Sky Pirates” guy. It’s tough finding a niche to fill these days but I know what the people want. 

And speaking of what people want... 

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Yet again, the center free space did most of the heavy lifting and I'm not at all devastated that Karaha-Baruha didn't actually make it into the set to get us another Bingo, which means I'm doing a prize raffle to celebrate a 5-set undefeated streak! So what can you beautiful readers win this time?

Opus X Bingo Prize: Lv.1 Onion Knight Custom Playmat

That's right folks I've got my own merch now! Well, not really. But since we got the four new Onion Knight cards in this set, I figured it would be a good idea to get some artwork of the best-worst Onion Knight to do... something with. I originally just wanted to use it as a mockup for my own version of the Onion Knight cards (obviously a Dark element version), but I was so enamored by the artwork done by the lovely and talented artist and my very close friend Beau Gilliam that I wanted to do a little bit more with it. So I made the playmat design you see above! Now YOU can have the chance to show everyone at your local TCG group that while you may not be super great at this game, you're a class act with dubious taste in blogs. 

I'll be picking two winners and having the playmats printed at a size of 24"x 14" using Inked Gaming. If you're chosen as a winner you'll be the owner of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon of playmats in that there are only 3 of them - the third one will be owned by me of course, so that it can never be used against me.

Oh yeah and you can also win this as well: 

That's right, one of the most controversial cards of this set and my next character to cosplay if I spend all of 2020 at the gym, a full art Feolthanos!

So how can you enter the raffle? 

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 one of the two playmats, or the Full Art Feolthanos. Each winner will be chosen at random. 

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. 

3) The Raffle submission period will go for 24 days from the post date of this blog (November 28th - December 20th), and I will announce the winners via Facebook on Friday the 20th at 8PM EST. 

4) I will contact the winners 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! 

Everybody got that? So if you want to enter the raffle, just click the link below!

Enter the Raffle Here!!  

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Good luck to everyone who enters! I always look forward to when Opus Bingo season starts up again, but thankfully we have a few months to go before Opus XI comes out. It feels like the last few sets have been an absolute whirlwind. 

What's that? It's the exact same amount of time that it always is between sets and I have no excuse to not make more content? Fair enough. I'm still looking to roll out that mysterious thing that I teased at the end of Opus IX which I'm being cagey about for no reason and it is probably much less exciting than I'm hyping it up to be with all this subterfuge, but much like my Ninja article, it'll happen, just maybe not when I said it was going to, haha... 

Until next time - Keep on Grinding, 

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Spoiled Onions: An Exclusive Opus X Spoiler - Joker!

Hey there all you fledgling adventurers and welcome back to Lv.1 Onion Knight - The Final Fantasy TCG blog that knows it's only a matter of seconds before somebody kills this article's view count by reposting my spoiler on Facebook without linking back here, and I'm not gunna call you out but you know who you are...

Erm... so do you guys remember how I said on my last post that I had something different planned for my next post? As it turns out, the different thing I had planned was not in fact, "Post nothing at all". I've actually been swamped with a brand new temp job, and working on my Endgame Thor cosplay for New York Comicon in my free time. I gotta say, the combination of feeling like a screw-up while also being a Nordic God is both a dramatic case of tonal whiplash and oddly similar parallel to the character's arc in the movie... 

I'd wear the costume to my job if my new co-workers wouldn't ask why I was dressed as King Arthur.

In any case, the thing I was planning is still going to happen! But as always, spoilers come first, so without any further ado, I'm happy to reveal my Opus X community spoiler: Joker from Final Fantasy XI! 

I'm actually really stoked because this is my first category XI spoiler. If you've been following along here you'd know XI is hands down my favorite Final Fantasy game of all time, having played it actively for around 14 years or so. So for starters if you're one of those pedantic rubes who likes to complain in the comments that they don't like in-game screenshots for the XI cards, then you can kindly make sure to wipe off the back of my door after I slam it in your face. Can't be getting face grease all over it - I'm trying to run a classy establishment here. 

In any case, here's a brief rundown for those of you that haven't spent a little under half of their life playing an MMO. Joker is a character from the Federation of Windurst leg of the initial Main Scenario Quest of the game, and is a Cardian - a class of soldier automatons themed after playing/tarot cards. It is later revealed that Joker contains a piece of the soul of Karaha-Baruha (who is also on my Bingo and totally going to be in Opus X you guys), the Summoner who formed a pact with Fenrir and saved Windurst from annihilation during the Crystal War with the Shadow Lord two decades prior. This act however drained the magical energies of the surrounding lands, and only by restoring the pieces of Karaha-Baruha's sundered soul could the impeding decay of Windurst be stopped.

So let's take a look at what Joker here can do. He's a 2 cost Earth backup that can reduce the damage taken by a Forward that specifically has Brave by 2000 by paying 1 Earth CP and dulling Joker.

I think that a lot of people are going to draw parallels between this card and another backup that does something in a similar vein, which is Opus II Monk, and are not entirely without reason for doing so. 

Monk could quite possibly be better than Joker for what you want them to do: for 2 Earth CP and putting Monk into the Break Zone, you can pump a Forward by 3k and give it Brave, which allows it to be used both offensively or defensively. Joker's activation cost is also a bit clunky, requiring it and another backup be active and only able to target a Brave Forward. 

That being said, Joker isn't without it's advantages. Unlike Monk, you don't have to sacrifice a backup in order to get the effect off, so you can reuse the effect multiple times in a match while still keeping back row intact. It being a Category XI character means it's also a search target for one of the best cards in the game - Star Sibyl (Who Karaha-Baruha was totally getting it on with FYI). In the Earth/Wind XI package, it can make the deck build backups extremely fast  when you combine Semih Lafina's cost reduction, Star Sibyl's search effect, and Joker's low cost. Plus in Wind decks, Joker can also be reactivated to reduce damage multiple times in one turn. To be honest, most decks Earth/Wind decks would probably rather search out Moogle XI who has the same cost and a potent search S-ability itself, so the best use of this card would be in a deck that runs a lot of hard to remove Brave Forwards in Mono-Earth or Earth Fire builds.

 The XV package works particularly well with Joker's effect. The fact that Ignis gives all the other XV car boys Brave makes having Noctis on the field an even stronger defensive play: Because Noctis is given 1K power and Brave, you can use his "fight" mechanic to break an Opponent's Forward and use Joker's ability to reduce the damage Noctis takes to keep him alive. Because Joker can be used on either player's turn, you can also use it to keep Noctis or any other XV Forward with Brave out of range of removal as well. Any deck that has either a card that provides Brave to other Forwards could make good use of Joker as well, like Aegis in Fire/Earth Warrior of Light builds which can stack other forms of damage reduction Like Opus II Light Wol with Joker's effect. A Fire/Earth deck using the Samurai/XIV package not only has Brave cards like Hien and Rhitahtyn, but can also run other Category XI cards like Ayame and Iroha as well. 

Finally, any card that can simply give a Forward Brave for a turn can help make Joker's effect easier to use with impunity, such as Momodi and Wol. With Joker's damage reduction effect it can let your Forwards push more aggressively, since even having Joker and one Backup active will make your opponent reluctant to block and turn what would have been an even trade into a one-sided loss for them. Of course, it's important to note that both Wol and Momodi's effects can only be activated on your turn during specific phases, so keep that in mind. That being said, combining these cards with water/earth and Minwu can make your Forwards extremely hard to deal with.

Also on one final note, if Karaha-Baruha is in Opus X (which he totally is going to be), he might just have something to do with Joker which would be pretty cool. All of the Earth Tarutaru backups have a tendency to be insanely good value, and there seems to be a push to finally finish up all of the pre-Promathia XI cards in Opus X, so we'll have to wait until the full set is revealed to see if there are more secrets that Joker holds. 

...You know what? I'm gunna go ahead and give myself a pre-emptive half bingo for Karaha-Baruha. We already got half of him here anyway, right?

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So that's my spoiler for this set guys! As always major thanks to Square-Enix and Richie Brady for letting me do another one of these reveals. And thanks to all of YOU who for some reason continue to come here to read a floundering Onion Knight's thoughts about cards. I'm looking forward to having more FFTCG content and less broken promises about said content in the future! 

Until next time - Keep on Grinding, 

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