FFTCG - Opus IX Lords & Chaos

The Final Fantasy Trading Card game continues to grow and expands its card pool with the release of Opus IX Lords & Chaos.

The new set features characters from FINAL FANTASY IV, VI, VIII, XIV, XV, Mobius FINAL FANTASY and many more with artwork from legends such as Toshitaka Matsuda (who was art director for FFXIII-2) and Isamu Kamikokuryo (Art director for FF X, XII and XV) so you know that it’s going to be full of stunning cards.

Speaking of stunning cards it’s time to mention ‘Full Art’ cards. Full art promo cards have been available through FFTCG organised play for a while now and they look incredible. Opus IX is the first Opus to feature Full Art cards in its booster packs.

There are 16 Full Art cards in the set and you’d better believe these will be sought after. The excitement at the Opus IX pre-release events I attended this past weekend was palpable, and while a few full art cards were seen, they seem to have a rather low drop rate, (Shout out to Nick Hall for his drop rate chart below) which is sure to feed the excitement all Opus long.

After looking at Opus IX there aren’t many cards, to me at least, that seem outright amazing, which I absolutely love. Opus IX seems to be what I’ll call a tech set. There are many a card that will slot into existing decks and mix things up a fair bit, but none look so amazing that players will be screaming for the ban-hammer within a month of release.

So, which cards stand out to me…

A choice to surprise nobody who has ever sat across a table from me is…

Kain (9-084H)

Kain is a Dragoon (well duh), so of course I’m excited, the fact he’s the only dragoon in opus 9 aside this Kain is so much more playable than all the other versions of him (Kain 2-104R seems a tad more useful in a Water/Lighting ‘goon deck bolstered by the new IV cards like Rosa and Cecil). The high CP cost can be negated by breaking a back up you control. This could come in super handy, most Mono Lightning decks tend to rely on ramping out back-ups, meaning that sometimes that your more functional backs can get stuck in your hand. Kain, of course, gives you an out for this. On entry Kain also reduces a forward by 8000 power and if coupled with Quezacotl or Cyclops can pretty much remove any forward from the game.

Yiazmat (9-057L)

What to say about Yiazmat? Well, it’s wind, so you can pretty much guess how it’s going to work.

All of its 3 options are insanely good, yes it costs a huge amount at 9CP, but that’s pretty much irrelevant when it comes to Wind as an element. Wind as an element is so full of value that its cost won’t be much of a limiting factor. I mean, you can play it, use its entry effect to reactivate character back ups you used towards its cost and boom, value! On top of that (providing it survives) you get to trigger one of its effects at the start of your main phase, the cards an Ex burst to boot. I think we’ll be seeing Yiazmat pop up a lot.

Ace (9-003L)

Type-0 finally gets a bit of a boost with this Ace, it may even take the spot of Light Ace in my Cadets deck. I love the Type-0 video game and on the odd occasion I step away from Dragoons it’s always to build a Type-0 Cadet deck. Ace should allow you to build and maintain a decent board presence with his ability. Do I think that Ace will nuke the meta…No, but it’s nice to see the team push towards making a variety of decks more viable?

As always with every Opus release, we here at GameHype invite FFTCG players from the local community to draft with us (using goodies kindly provided to us by the TCG team at Square).

Now, as with most drafts the dilemma of do I draft competitively or draft for value pops up, well I can’t see that dilemma taking long to work out if a Full Art appears in your pack, regardless of how useless the card may be to the deck you are trying to draft.

GameHype drafts always follow the standard drafting rules used at official FFTCG events. Detailing every aspect of the draft would no doubt bore you to tears so instead, I shall quiz the players as to their highlights of the draft, not forgetting that the winner of today’s draft will take home the full art Nael (PR-052).

We all gather around a table, happy once again see friends we’ve made while playing FFTCG, warm greetings are exchanged…then, I crack open the box. I look around the table and I can see it in their eyes, the full art thirst! Nobody says a word, but we all know that should a full art appear in one of the boosters, we’ll claim it, no matter how useless it may be in the deck we are trying to build.

Packs are cracked, and the draft begins. I open my first booster, and there she is, Rosa (9-120L) (Amano artwork looking amazing) and that settles it, I shall build a Water deck. I clearly wasn’t the only player thinking this as pretty soon it became apparent that that water was drying up to reveal the dry earth underneath, or more accurately the earth cards being passed to me by Sam and Gary on either side of me. I had to switch to earth and in fact, the majority of my deck ended up yellow.

Mark, a long-time friend of the site was first to share his thoughts on what had transpired on this rainy sodden evening in Birmingham.

Game Hype: The draft is over, what deck did you manage to cobble together for this evening?

Mark: My deck was lightning fire FF14. Rhitahtyn was extremely useful and I had 4! Its restriction barely affected me with Olivia Nero and Gaius searching it all in multiple copies. Had I pulled Nael the team would be complete and winning it would have been amazing but for some reason, I invited Gary and luck was on his side!

Game Hype: Now, we know what a magpie you are for foil cards, what did you hope would pop up in a pack today?

Mark: Full art Meia for my deck outside of the draft. Full arts aside foil Ifrita because the card art is great and it would be really strong in my janky bomb deck

Next up was Keiron, this was the first Game Hype draft Keiron had attended and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Now, as the rounds were paired, it transpired that I wouldn’t face Keiron today. Now, that’s always a shame, for some reason every time Keiron and I face-off at local Organised Play we have amazingly epic games for all the wrong reasons. I’m sure he’ll be only too happy to recall the time I dropped Barabra and Estinein (L) on turn one and swung away until Barrett and his revealed just enough of his FFVII buddies to stop my ‘goon rush in its tracks.

Game Hype: What moment from tonight’s draft stands out to you?

Keiron: I could either break a forward with Zelera or play a Mindflayer (of which I had drafted 7). If I played the Mindflayer and don’t draw into an FF8 forward (only 1 Laguna left in my deck and Rinoa is on my board) I die! But if it lands, I win the game. Zelera possibly buys me a turn. I played the Zelera to be safe, took damage next turn and it was Laguna that bounced into the damage zone and cost me the game.

Keiron actually managed to pull the card at the top of his wishlist, Fusoya (9-094L) saying “I think it’s an interesting card and the art is amazing. I really look forward to building around it.:.

Samuel detailed his deck next with a description that elicited a mighty chuckle from me.

Game Hype: Sam, after being sat on my right during the draft and seemingly competing to draft the exact same deck as me for the first few boosters at least, what did you end up building?

Samuel: My deck was a wind/ice/water, sky pirate/VI/type zero jank-fest. MVP of my deck was a cross between Deuce and Locke (light forward). I managed to draft 2 light Lockes and the consistency of the first ability was surprisingly good.

I suppose that’s about it for our look at Opus IX Lords and Chaos from tonight’s draft. From my experience, tonight and last weekend at pre-release opus IX is a great and well-balanced set to draft (Insert fire jokes here). Of course, our FFTCG coverage won’t end here, stay tuned and keep clicking for more from Game Hype and the Final Fantasy TCG, and remember, Dragoons Eternal!