It’s almost hard to believe that the Final Fantasy Trading Card Game has had 11 sets released, by how time does fly when you’re busy ex-bursting.
As regular readers know we are big Final Fantasy fans here at GameHype and being the resident TCG nerd I simply couldn’t pass up the chance to delve into Opus XI…Dragoon box topper? What do you mean? No, nothing to do with it!
Ok, you got me, that’s a huge lie. Anyone who has ever played a TCG with me knows that I love tribal decks, first off they tend to be rather cheap to build and secondly it means that while they seldom top the meta when they do work, they work well.
In FFTCG my tribal deck of choice has always been Dragoons and always will be, I’ve had a Monks deck on the side for a while but as they are about to be everywhere after the release of Opus XI I think I’ll leave my sidedeck to other players.
The box topper this set is Aranea from Final Fantasy XV and of course she’s a Dragoon. When this card was spoiled what feels like forever ago now, I was beyond hyped and delighted. With the XV cards we’d seen up to then I knew we’d get an Aranea card, but I was sure she wouldn’t be Job Dragoon, I had no logic for this, just a now mistaken hunch. Such is my affinity with Dragoons that when the spoiler was seen by our local group of players my phone almost exploded from notifications.
As a card Aranea seems pretty decent, especially as she slots into my deck rather nicely, as does Glauca, I mean I do like spamming goons and hitting cherry blossom, so everyone costing one fewer CP coupled with each cheap goon buffing Aranea to high heaven.
Our next peek at Opus XI Soldiers Return came with the Two-Player Starter Set: Cloud Vs Sephiroth, based around the Final Fantasy VII Remake this set had a lot of hype and in my view delivered. Not just the amazing artwork on the cards (Aerith 11-139S anyone <3) but with some fantastic cards to boot, Kadja may be taking a one-off spot in my deck just because he gives my foe something else to think besides “Let’s kill all the Barbara (7-097R)”.
I really hope this starter set brought a decent amount of new players into the FFTCG, as hopefully, will the FFVII Remake, I’m actually shocked that an FFTCG promo card wasn’t included with the retail version of Remake. I know many players who only discovered the existence of the TCG through the Promo cards that shipped with Dissidia NT.
Long time readers will no doubt be aware that thanks to the generosity of the fine folks at Square we normally host a community draft with local players each set release. Unfortunately, due to the current global situation this hasn’t been possible.
In place of my usual draft write up I’ve opted to share my new deck-list with the new offerings in Opus XI, I look forward to the comments trolling my lack of skill. 😉
So, I’m toying with the idea of adding Wind and a bit more FFL to make certain things a tad more consistent, however, as it’s more on-brand for me I’m going to share the mono-lightning build as it stands.
While typing this up there are things I don’t like, but such is deck building if I go down that rabbit hole this article will never see the light of day.
Opus XI is on shelves and webstores now and I’ve got to say overall as a set it excites me much more than Opus X and seems to have renewed some passions for Final Fantasy TCG. I look forward to seeing you all across a table once lockdown ends and I can once again see many of the friends this wonderful game has helped me find.
Guess I’ll sign of here and as always, Dragoons Eternal.
