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.









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.





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,







