Cactuar Correspondence - Weekly FFTCG Chat 5/2/19

let's talk fftcg!

Every week, there is something new to discuss and analyze in this game. In this feature, we answer your questions and respond to recent developments, new meta decks, specific cards we like or don't like -- you call it, we'll answer.

This week we are joined by a dear friend of the team, John Schreiner!

If you want to join the conversation, send us your thoughts! We would also love to hear the questions you have next week, so please shoot us a message at Facebook or on Twitter. Thanks for reading!

What are your thoughts on the Opus X Dual Deck starter products and the reprints?

JOHN: I think that the dual starter decks are amazing products. They offer competitive staples that have already had their time on the secondary market for the new players getting into the game. With a recent boom in interest locally, cards like Diabolos and Phoenix are simply not available for trading to the new players. I also think releasing them after the majority of the competitive seaSon eases some of the pain of those who recently invested in those cards, since they should still get their value out of them. Personally, I'm excited to be able to have extra playsets of these legends!

RON: Initial thought is, a starter light and dark card means we'll have 3 light and dark cards in the set so that's pretty cool. I'm pretty fond of the character choices to represent the starter deck as well. I'm beyond excited to see what the rest of the hero and villain pairs they choose will be. As for the reprints, I've never cared TOO much about value increases and decreases in cards unless I was personally trying to obtain a playset of an expensive card. In this case, Diabolos just became easier to obtain and being a full-art is an added bonus.

TREVOR: Just like the first Dual Deck product, these new ones are fantastic as well. I’m 100% ok with reprinting non-foil copies of staple legends. All this does is lower the barrier to entry into the game.

CURTIS: I am a fan of the Opus X Dual Deck reprints; I think it’s going to benefit everyone except for maybe “vendors.” From what has been shown, they don’t appear to be foil so it won’t really affect the secondary market too much in my opinion. The cards look great and Diabolos is pretty annoying to get a hold of so I’ll be glad to have some extras to save me time in swapping between decks. It’s going to help a lot of newer players become more competitive by having access to more meta cards.

How do you feel about the mistranslations?

JOHN: I think what worries me the most about the translations is that one of the cards that got an errata is from Opus 2, and it drastically changes the way the card works. It makes me wonder how many other cards we have been playing incorrectly and how long we could have gone before finding out. I don’t think anyone feels good about a player being eliminated from a foreign tournament because of a translation that was only correct on one side.

RON: Fortunately enough, none of the cards that I've been testing and have/had any strong thoughts on were affected. On a bigger scale however, I think it's scary to see that it takes a high profile tournament for heads to turn. It blows my mind that Nono wasn't corrected until about 6 sets later lol.

TREVOR: I’m not mad, I’m just… disappointed. I understand how it happened, and in reality it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s a bit frustrating.

CURTIS: I’m actually very amused by the whole ordeal. I don’t think I will ever be in pitchfork mode and scream into the abyss about it. However, it is disappointing even if it is entertaining. It’s pretty sad/funny that Square only found out about these issues because Tim and Mr. Cool went to Japan and Hunter got top 4 in Tampa. It really gets you curious about other cards…

Do you expect FFTCG will ever have an official online platform?

JOHN: I expect that if FFTCG is ever going to have an online platform, it will be many years in the future. It took Magic and Pokemon a long time to make digital versions of their games, and as someone who helped test PTCGO I can tell you that it was a horrible mess for a while even once it came out. Square Enix would need to devote a lot more resources to the TCG and get an entire developer team to make the game and they simply aren't investing like that into the TCG at this time. I think it's something that feels simple to ask for, but is very complicated to actually have done.

RON: At the rate of growth that this game is seeing, it wouldn't surprise me if an official online platform was either in the near future or at least being considered by Square. Whether or not I'm for it, I'm not entirely sure.

TREVOR: In our current state, no. We don’t have the player base to support such a complex program. If somehow we start making larger gains on the big 3, then it has the potential for something to happen. Till then, janky 3rd party and cardboard is what we have.

CURTIS: I don’t think FFTCG is going to get any kind of official online platform anytime soon. Back when I was doing the FXBG Turks Podcast we actually talked about this topic in detail about how it might affect the game. It’s episode 23 if you want to hear all of my thoughts on the topic. The game is really too small and I still think that if they actually did go through with it, at this exact moment, it would kill or slowly kill the physical card game scene. You can find the episode on SoundCloud if you are curious.

What is the worst Legendary card in this set?

JOHN: I honestly believe that Dark Fina is the worst Legendary card in this set. I say that with the caveat that she could be insane in the future, but for now she is simply in the wrong color to get the most bang for your buck from her abilities. She is very expensive, and Phoenix L is probably the most powerful summon she can "cheat" in. It forces her to be in Fire/Ice, a deck that is already having trouble fitting all of its powerful forwards. I used to think the answer to this question was "Rufus" and I was very wrong.

RON: The worst legendary card (which isn't even that bad) is Ardyn. I feel that people see this 7CP 9k hit the board with an essay worth of text and think that he has to be dealt with immediately or something. A lot of decks naturally tech against Ardyn without intentionally doing so. Some examples include Famfrit which is in most water decks, Veritas which is in most decks in general, Genesis, Kuja, Vayne can all lock him down in ice.

TREVOR: Due to lack of fleshed out support, it must be Rufus. There is just not enough out right now that takes advantage of the Turks synergy.

CURTIS: I think all of the Legends in this set are actually pretty good. Each legend in this set has found a home in some form of meta except for Rufus, Nacht, and, I would argue that Rain fits into this category too. But if I had to pick the “worst” one it would probably be Rufus. His package is pretty limited in versatility and he can be pretty easy to play around since he is very weak power-wise. The fact he has an Ex-Burst that lets you ramp up saves him from being garbage though.

If you had to build a deck around your answer to the last question, how would that deck win games?

JOHN: If you were to build a deck around Dark Fina, it would likely abuse her unique ability to search for very specific game-closing summons. If you wanted to play a mono ice deck with Rinoa Legend and Dark Fina, you may use something like the new Shiva as your Dark Fina target just to consistently search out a way to tap down your opponents board so your smaller forwards can push through. She may be good in a new vicekings style build where there are other expensive game-closing summons that are still in color like Syldra.

RON: If I had to build a deck around him and since Colin already laid the foundation for this "archetype" in our local scene, I'd go with Oops All Exbursts. The deck is already predominantly Earth and the goal is to have problematic forwards for the opponent to deal with while taking hits that, more often than not, kill 1-2 forwards. You win when an Exburst shifts the momentum of the game.

TREVOR: Lulu H + Rufus is I think where most people’s mind instantly went when they saw the card. If I was building a list around it, I would probably start with Dan Nguyen Lucid Dreaming list from Opus 5 and work from there.

CURTIS: Haha, I already did that at Tampa. I piloted a variant of Death Machine Control (RIP) that got me to Day 2 that had 3 Rufus and 3 Reno; no Rude. I really wanted to play the Turk package since I was with the FXBG Turks at the time; but it just wasn’t good enough in Mono Lightning or maybe Wind/Lightning. I found that it did fit in the Death Machine mold though and it allowed me to be aggressive in pushing for damage due to the awkward situations Rufus brought to an already established board. Rufus was definitely not the focus of the deck but he got in them guts because no one wanted to block him.