With the release of Cipher Series 4 a couple weeks in the past, Cipher aficionados are already looking forward to the next set release this coming summer. Although it’s still a few months away, we’ve already got enough interesting tidbits to pique the interest of Cipher players and collectors.

Originally announced in November of last year, Cipher Series 5 will be released on June 23rd, 2016, approximately one year after the card game made its debut last summer.

The booster series, entitled Beyond Strife (相剋を越えて), will feature a return to Tellius with green cards from Radiant Dawn, and also introduce characters from Binding Blade as new purple cards. Binding Blade cards will also be showcased in the associated Structure Deck, Binding Rebellion (封印動乱), which releases on the same day.

It’s not just the prospect of new cards and characters that are intriguing to fans, however. There are also a few exciting changes coming to Cipher that will start with the new series. Originally teased during the last NicoNico livestream, notices posted up at recent Cipher events confirmed some of the new things we can look forward to.

Tellius cards released in Series 5 will feature an “Ultimate Promoted Class” form. Although we don’t know exactly how the mechanics surrounding this will work, the idea is clearly based off of the 3rd Tier Classes that were available in Radiant Dawn. Elincia was shown in the flyer as an example, with the larger, 5/3 card representing the Ultimate Promoted Class based off of her Queen class.

Binding Blade cards will also receive their own gimmick, namely with increased Support Skills. Unpromoted purple cards, such as the promo Roy included in some Series 4 booster boxes, may have more than one Support Skill per card. The text also indicates that other high cost and/or promoted cards may also have a Support Skill. To showcase this, we get a sweet preview of how the unpromoted Roy card looks.

The last change is purely aesthetics, but it’s one that Cipher artwork fans will certainly be pleased to hear: SR+ and R+ card variants will have different artwork from the basic SR or R. When mentioned during the livestream, these two images of Dieck were shown as an example. However, we don’t know which art will be normal and which will be used as the + variant.

With these tidbits in mind, it’s hard to not be excited for the next Cipher series! Pre-orders for Series 5 booster boxes and Structure Decks are already open through Japanese online retailer AmiAmi. Unfortunately, it’s still a long wait until release, but we’ll keep you up to date with news as we learn it.

In the meantime, there are still more Series 4 promos coming out in Japan. In addition to the P04 cards shown in my previous article, a Female Corrin promo card will be available in the Japanese release of the Fire Emblem Fates New 3DS LL. The console will come with 2 copies of the promo card, and releases next month. No images are available yet.

If you’d like to speculate about the new series or chat about anything else Cipher related, feel free to pop us a visit us in the Cipher subforum of the official Serenes Forest forums.

Thanks are due to twitter user @hasetch_tenchou for providing the photograph of the Cipher Series 5 flyer, forum member Mutsugami for translating the text, and forum member Draxal for a tip regarding the Female Corrin promo.