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."





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! 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 theysolved 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...

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!





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,