Let's Talk About Cards: Al-Cid (2-097H)

Hello, and welcome to Let’s Talk About Cards. The hope for these articles is to give players a concentrated insight into the usages of individual cards. This will include discussing a card’s synergies, a card’s role at different stages in the game, non-intuitive rulings or interactions, and counter-strategies.

Overflowing masculinity. Luxurious hair. Exquisite fashion sense. A pose that wouldn’t seem out of place in a bizarre adventure. Only one strapping fellow can fit these criteria: Al-Cid, terror of active Forwards everywhere.

Al-Cid’s preeminence among Lightning forwards is still largely uncontested, despite many strong options at the four-drop slot. Bringing seven CP for the cost of four, while doubling as removal, Al-Cid’s early and mid game efficacy is unrivaled. He provides Lightning decks with amazing CP efficiency and establishes early command of the board. 6000 power is certainly lower than what you might hope for at a four CP price point, but most four CP Forwards don’t do what Al-Cid does. We’ll start by breaking down Al-Cid’s ability.

Rulings and Interactions

Al-Cid has been the subject of many FAQs due to the clumsy wording of his ability, but that’s not going to stop me from lecturing anyway. We’re going to attempt to cover any potential questions in a succinct manner.

When Al-Cid enters the field, an active Forward must be chosen. At this point, Al-Cid’s ability has gone on the stack, and players may respond before his ability resolves. In order for Al-Cid’s ability to resolve, the chosen target must be legal upon resolution.

A legal target is defined as one which meets all of the conditions for having been chosen to begin with. (As a corollary to this, a player cannot choose an illegal target, by definition.) If the chosen target is no longer legal, Al-Cid’s controller will not be able to resolve the rest of the ability. As far as I am aware, the following conditions will make a legal target of Al-Cid’s ability illegal, thus countering Al-Cid’s ability on resolution.

1. The chosen Forward is no longer active.

2. The chosen Forward is no longer controlled by your opponent. (This could mean that it is no longer in play, or that a player who is not your opponent now controls the chosen Forward.)

3. The chosen Forward can no longer be chosen. (Such as by Aerith 1-064R’s Special).

4. The chosen Forward is no longer a Forward. (At this point in time, I do not believe this is a concern, but it is not difficult to imagine a time when we have Monsters which can be turned both into Forwards and not into Forwards at will.)

If Al-Cid’s ability is countered, no part of his ability will resolve, thus saving you from a world of pain. Be on the lookout for opportunities to counter his ability!

If Al-Cid’s chosen target is still legal on resolution of his ability, Al-Cid’s controller is granted the opportunity to play a Lightning Forward of cost 3 or less from their hand. If you did play a Lightning Forward of cost 3 or less from your hand, you must deal the Forward you chose as the target of Al-Cid’s ability 6000 damage.

It’s worth noting that once Al-Cid’s ability begins to resolve, no one has any chance to do anything. If you want your opponent to be able to play a Lightning Forward, but don’t want your Forward to be dealt damage, this is not a possible outcome.

Al-Cid’s entire ability will resolve before enter-the-field abilities of Forwards he puts into play are placed on the stack. This can be important, when considering cards such as Black Waltz 3 (4-102R) and Minwu (1-171H). If you’re placing Black Waltz 3 into play off Al-Cid, and your opponent has a Minwu in play, targeting a 7000 power Forward is a poor choice, as you will be forced to deal the damage to the Minwu-protected Forward before you can reduce his power with Black Waltz 3. You don’t kill the Forward, and feel rather silly as a result.

Synergy

In breaking news, leading researchers have discovered that Al-Cid is exceptionally strong when paired with Lightning Forwards of cost 3 or less. These synergies can generally be categorized into three types: extended removal, aggressive tempo plays, and miscellaneous value. There may be exceptions, but these tend to be what most players are looking for off their Al-Cid trigger.

Extended Removal

6000 damage might be killing some two-drops, but unless your opponent is playing Mono-Water’s bevy of underpowered four-drops, Al-Cid is going to need some help. That’s where the most famous members of his entourage enter: Rygdea (1-211S),  Onion Knight (1-125R), and Black Waltz 3 (4-102R). Bringing 3000 damage, 5000 damage, and -2000 power to the table on their enter-the-field abilities, an Al-Cid player is capable of shooting down an active Forward with at most 11000 power, which you may recognize as every single Forward in the game, barring certain circumstances involving scaling powers, such as Tidus (1-163L) and Ramza (5-118L).

Rygdea (1-211S) and Black Waltz 3 (4-102R) can take down Forwards of more ‘reasonable’ size, capping out at 9000 and 8000 power respectively. The astute reader knows that only three Forwards at this time have default powers of 10000: Minerva (3-146H), Feral Chaos (3-148H), and Eald’narche (5-147L), none of whom see terribly much play. With the extended removal suite, Al-Cid players have the opportunity to kill basically any Forward in the game while developing their own board.

Aggressive Tempo

The aggressive tempo options with Al-Cid have only recently become more popular, partly as a function of an expanding card pool. Hildibrand (4-109H) was the leading contender in this category at the onset of Opus 4 with Nashu (4-107R), as together they provided a reasonable body with Haste that could dodge hard removal. Recently, however, Illua has made her terrifying entrance to the competitive scene in the same role. Her cancel ability makes her more robust against damage-based removal and Sheol is consistently incredible, unlike the boom-or-bust Manderville Dance. Both cards, as well as the lesser-played Lightning (5-116H), allow for an Al-Cid player to remove a smaller Forward and apply pressure immediately, sometimes in the form of a party attack. This forces a defending player to be cognisant of the potential for burst damage, even if they have existing blockers.

Miscellaneous Value

There are a number of excellent Lightning Forwards which neither kill Forwards nor immediately punch the enemy in the face. A Knights tutor package using Duke Goltanna (1-134R) to fetch Ramza (3-119L), Dycedarg (4-105R), and Zalbaag (1-136C) was one of my personal favorite lineups for getting miscellaneous value, though this team was often ignored in favor of additional extended removal and aggressive tempo options. The knights lineup eschews some raw power for circumstantial blowouts. More commonly, Ark Angel EV (4-097H) fills this slot as a difficult-to-kill midrange Forward who is as good attacking as he is defending. Utilizing these options allows an Al-Cid player to skew their deck towards a middle ground between the heavy removal and aggressive tempo options.

Roles

Al-Cid is a bit of a chameleon, as his role adjusts depending on the card he’s putting into play. We’ve already discussed those roles, but it’s worth examining how Al-Cid’s impact changes over the course of a game.

In general, I believe you can delineate an average game into three stages, which I’ll refer to as early, middle, and late. I’ll define early game as the first two turns of the game, where one of two things has generally happened: players either developed Backups or played Forwards. We’ll save the game theory behind this for another article.

The mid game is the time between when a player achieves 2-3 Backups and a player reaches 5 Backups, followed by several draw steps as that player’s resources accumulate.

The late game is marked by at least one player having 4+ Backups, and leveraging the card advantage gains associated with that much renewable CP.

In the early-game, Al-Cid mostly exists to be a blowout. If an opponent is playing a Forward during the early game, they’re almost certainly at a loss for Backups or playing a deviant strategy (a possibility which we’ll ignore for the purposes of this article). The cost of playing relevant Forwards in the early game is extraordinarily high with respect to card advantage, and Al-Cid will annihilate a player’s early investment and the pay-off. In a world where your opponent plays a four drop on the first turn, playing your own Al-Cid and killing it while also getting another Forward usually puts you in such a dominating position that it’s difficult to lose.

I would posit that Al-Cid is at his best in these moments, despite the implied resource cost of discarding two cards to cast him. You’re free to develop Backups at your leisure, having disrupted an early threat and pushed two threats to the table which your resource-strapped opponent must now address. Alternatively, you can leverage your pressure advantage and go wide, preventing your opponent from having the time to play any Backups they draw and forcing them to compete with your high-value Forwards. Party attacks in particular can be devastating in such cases.

In the mid-game, Al-Cid is still quite good, but not as devastating. He’ll kill someone small and bring an aggressive or midrange friend, or he’ll kill someone big, but the opponent has enough Backups or other Forwards that this isn’t a debilitating problem. In the mid-game, Al-Cid’s 6000 power body begins to show its weakness, and in order to be effective, he’ll need to be partying up or staying back on defense. In the mid game, the best place for Al-Cid to be might be in and out, getting value from his ability and then teaming up with a stronger Forward to party up, so that you can play another Al-Cid later. Ideally, your opponent can’t kill the stronger Forward or afford to take the damage, so Al-Cid kicks the bucket in these engagements.

Al-Cid in the late game is an interesting quandary, and his utility will hinge completely on your deck’s plan. Slower decks may find him continuing his mid game role, as they’ve generated enough card advantage with their Backups to still have targets for Al-Cid and not be top-decking consistently. More often, I find the Lightning deck hasn’t been able to reach a critical mass of Backups by the time their opponent has, assuming their opponent hasn’t already lost. The Lightning players find themselves in a position where either they forfeit some board position to accelerate their Backup count (after which Al-Cid will continue his mid game shenanigans), or they enter into top-deck mode. In top-deck mode, Al-Cid becomes a liability, requiring that you draw a three drop alongside him to grant utility. This might mean Al-Cid is stuck in your hand for turns as you churn out the glut of four drops which so many Lightning decks play. Al-Cid is a terrible card without a less expensive Lightning Forward, and this weakness is placed on full display if a Mono-Lightning player has made it to the late game without adequate resources.

Counter-Strategies

Much of the frustration that arises from playing against Al-Cid is in the disconnect between the conditions for his ability to occur and the consequences. More explicitly, it doesn’t make a lot of intuitive sense that having an active Forward means your opponent gets to kill a guy and play two guys. If you’re hoping to play effectively against Al-Cid, you’ll eventually need to internalize this relationship between cause and effect. Gaining an appreciation for this nuance will inform your ability to decide what course of action to take: to counter or to mitigate.

While it’s possible to counter his ability, much of the response to Al-Cid comes in the form of mitigating his impact. There’s a cost to taking either course of action. To counter his ability, you’ll need to waste card advantage. To mitigate his ability, you’ll have to control the growth of your board.

Countering

To counter his ability, you’ll need to interact with it while it’s on the stack. In an ideal world, we want to turn Al-Cid into a 4 CP Forward with 6000 power and no ability. Unfortunately, if there’s a legal target, we’re likely going to have to do something to make the target illegal or otherwise cancel the auto ability, and that costs cards. The only two options to cancel an auto ability at this time are Y’shtola’s action ability (5-0068L) and Seven’s (3-057R) Snakebite.

Our options for making the target illegal are more diverse: we can remove the Forward from the field in some way, we can dull the Forward, and we can prevent the Forward from being chosen as the target of abilities. On the topic of removal, we can bounce or break the Forward. Naturally, bouncing is the more appealing option, as we don’t X-for-1 ourselves by using our card to kill our guy that we spent some number of CP on. As a result, I won’t be considering cards that kill our own Forward, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t!

Forwards with ‘Put this Forward into the Break Zone’ action abilities, like Vivi (3-149S) and Gabranth (5-078R), should almost certainly be used to catch the negligent Al-Cid player unaware. The abilities are especially nice because they can be used the turn the Forward enters play.

Regular readers of this column will be familiar with options for bouncing Forwards. Scholar (1-157C), the suite of Leviathans, and Bismarck (5-133H) are great choices that you should already be playing in your Water decks. Other elements are less fortunate with respect to bouncing, and might have to carefully evaluate whether depriving their opponent the free Forward is worth burning a removal spell.

Dulling your Forward is a particularly elegant solution, as it doesn’t require you to re-play your guy. We’re going to not consider options which freeze the Forward in question, as this is likely not a good idea, but those opportunities also exist. Titan (1-110C), Bard (4-027C), Steiner (4-129L), and Glasya Labolas (5-032H) all represent interesting takes on at-will dulling, as do each of the Opus 5 FFIII Warriors of Light: Luneth(5-024H), Arc (5-052H), Ingus (5-074H), and Refia (5-141H). Serah (5-152S) is a very spicy choice seeing some play in the emergent Moogle decks, though their quality has yet to be verified.

Making our opponent unable to target our forwards is very enticing, but only exists on a narrow field of cards. Aerith’s (1-064R) Planet Protector is capable of protecting all of your Forwards, Gilgamesh (3-103H) can protect himself for Wind CP, and Elementalist (5-058C) can protect a Forward of your choice, if she has a chance to use her activated ability.

One last note: our boy Minwu (1-171H) is a real show-stopper against Al-Cid’s removal capabilities. He could be considered a useful piece of mitigation, but he’s so effective nipping Al-Cid in the bud that it almost feels like a hard counter. For Water players, Minwu is a critical component in the fight against Al-Cid.

Mitigation

On the other hand, mitigation is the option for all the cases where you don’t have a solid answer to Al-Cid’s ability. Not being able to prevent the ability is no excuse for playing into it. As previously discussed, Al-Cid is at his best when he’s blowing you out, and the blowout is most devastating in the early game. It’s particularly easy to just haphazardly play a Forward when you don’t have Backups. Tilt is a real factor, and it can be easy to succumb to a demoralizing start.

Don’t. Get. Wrecked.

Have the discipline to decide if you can afford to have your Forward blown up by Al-Cid and a friend. When behind on Backups, losing a Forward and having your opponent double-down on pressure can be a death sentence that you may have avoided, if you just didn’t play a Forward and absorbed the damage from a single Forward. This is still true, even if you’re forced to discard cards. While it’s usually correct to play cards to avoid End-of-Turn discard, Al-Cid is powerful enough that he should temper this decision. Individual circumstances will vary; I can’t tell you when it will and won’t be right to not play a card into a likely Al-Cid, but I do want to emphasize that it’s an option that not enough people consider or take.

If you do have Backups and suspect that your opponent is playing Al-Cid, developing your Backups in the early game is a strong course of action. The farther you get from the early game, the less powerful Al-Cid becomes. The more Backups you have, the easier it will be to play multiple Forwards in one turn, which should be your primary goal moving into the mid game.

Al-Cid decks can be hard-pressed to deal with multiple Forwards on the same turn, due to the incremental nature of their removal and the small size of their Forwards. How long you can afford to develop Backups before playing multiple Forwards will depend on your plan: the longer you wait, the worse Al-Cid becomes, but taking early hits from aggressive Lightning players is not a trivial cost. In fact, it can end up backfiring and making Al-Cid a stronger late game play, by making removal with a hasty Forward a lethal consideration.

It’s also worth weighing the cost of losing a Forward to Al-Cid. At any given moment, it should be a straight-forward mental exercise to compare the ease with which Al-Cid can facilitate a Forward’s untimely demise to the cost to play the Forward. Porom (5-135L) is a great example of a card which has a rather high cost compared to how easily she’ll die to Al-Cid (he doesn’t need any help and a hasty three drop will send you straight to Frown Town.)

Forwards like Illua (5-099H) or Ashe (2-121H) are much better choices against Al-Cid, as they almost disable the double-tap style of removal (albeit each in their own way) and also cost less. In general, you should be looking to force the Al-Cid player to have the most specific answers while spending the least number of cards to do so. Cheap and strong are the name of the game if you suspect you’re about to be Al-Cid’ed.

Illua and Ashe raise the topic of resilient Forwards. If you do need to play an early Forward into an Al-Cid player, making it one he can’t target or kill easily is a great choice. Llednar (4-024R) imposes a pretty steep tax on Al-Cid, and Forwards such as Zidane (1-071L), Capricious Thief (2-059C),  and Ranger (3-053C) are all illegal targets for Al-Cid’s ability.

Trey (3-064H) is a big problem for Al-Cid, too.

Conclusion

Al-Cid, at first glance, presents Lightning players with an overwhelmingly strong option that can simultaneously punish poor starts and solidify mid game advantages. Further examination reveals that mindful play can help minimize the suffering Al-Cid can inflict, and that taking the game long can be a powerful strategic choice. There are a number of cards which can either counter his ability or prevent its use, meaning deck design can be a crucial component in maintaining a favorable matchup.

About the author: Joe Giallo's favorite archetype to play in FFTCG is Mono Water. His favorite Final Fantasy game is V.