Wind Is A Problem

One of the largest concerns for a non-rotating trading card game like the FFTCG is power creep. Power creep occurs when new cards come out that are so strong that they invalidate huge numbers of cards that come before them. Because those new, powerful cards never leave the format, they become the new power floor. As more and more sets come out, more and more powerful cards are printed and fewer and fewer old cards stack up. This constant arms race can spell disaster for a TCG. It’s like when you get into spicy foods and over time your palette adjusts. So, you need to eat spicier and spicier foods, chasing that first spicy high. Then you end up eating a raw ghost pepper. And that causes you such intense intestinal distress that you need to go to the hospital. In this analogy, Yuri/Chelinka is the ghost pepper and one of their eventual bans are the hospital.

While the constant increase of card power level is the most obvious form of power creep, there’s another form that can be just as problematic: color bleed. I believe that the FFTCG is currently suffering from a critical case of color bleed, it’s hurting the game, and it should be addressed via a ban or the institution of some form of rotating format. What is color bleed? In a game like the FFTCG each of the 6 main elements has its own identity. They have flavor or story behind them: Fire cards tend to be fire themed, Ice cards Freeze things, etc. They also have mechanical identities: Water cards let you bounce things, Earth forwards are bigger than the forwards of other elements on average. For most of the elements in the FFTCG, I can explain their mechanical identity easily. Let’s give it a go: Fire has Haste, Brave, and direct damage spells and abilities. Ice has dulling, Freezing, and discard. Thunder has Haste, First Strike, and directly breaking forwards. Earth has Brave, color fixing, and fighting. Water has card drawing, bouncing, and power/damage reduction. Wind has… everything?

I’m obviously omitting some of the more minor mechanical identities from the non-Wind elements, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that wind can do just about everything. Its main mechanics are activating forwards and backups, evasive forwards, and mass damage/boosts. However, it also has access to targeted discard, mass bounce, Haste, First Strike, destroying backups, breaking forwards, power reduction, untargetability, milling, countering abilities, and unrestricted searching. Wind has access to so many mechanics! Even worse, thanks to being the best Yuri element, Wind has easy access to freezing, card draw, direct damage, and removing enemy abilities. Wind has the most complete toolset in the game right now and thanks to that fact, it is difficult to construct top tier decks without Wind. Wind/Earth, Wind/Water, and Mono Wind are three of the top performing decks in the game. This also means that mono Wind can play a complete game in a way that no other mono element deck can. Mono element decks are supposed to trade versatility for consistency and Wind doesn’t have to make that choice right now.

Now you might be thinking that many of the mechanics that I’ve ascribed to Wind don’t show up on many Wind cards, and that’s true. Unrestricted searching is only available via Moogle(XI). Mass bounce is limited to Valefor. Only Archer can break backups. But because the FFTCG is a non-rotating game with 50 card decks and a limit of 3 copies of each card, any one card that breaks the color pie never leaves and those broken cards show up in almost every game they’re included in. So, unless something changes, Wind will either always have access to more mechanics than the other elements or the other elements will similarly bleed. And once more colors start bleeding, they all lose their contrasts and start feeling same-y. A bunch of the fun of deck building is making hard choices about what effects you want, how consistent you want the deck to be, and what cards you want to emphasize. If you remove that tension, deck construction becomes funneled into a handful of decks that play the same way. Instead of a beautiful contrast of colors, like a Van Gogh painting, you get an amorphous blob of brown, like an unkept toilet.

With all of that in mind, what can Square do about this issue? The most obvious solution is to institute some form of rotation schedule a la MTG’s Standard rotation. Every few years, some of the older cards could rotate out of competitive legality. This would quickly purge some of the more glaring mistakes like 3 cost Zidane, Archer, and Valefor. A Standard rotation forces change in the bluntest way possible and that can be good for the game. No one deck or card can stay on top forever. However, rotating formats tend to do damage the long-term value of cards, which collectors and entrenched players hate. Also, the FFTCG is not currently set up in a rotation-friendly way. There are a bunch of truly foundational effects that should probably never rotate: the cycle of +1000 power backups (Lulu, Wakka, Lebreau, and the gang), basic summons (Odin, Moogle, Ifrit), and title searchers (Brother, Rinoa, Eiko). The FFTCG isn’t just a vehicle for competitive play, it also has a ton of fans who want to play with their favorite FF characters. That doesn’t mean that every title or element must be perfectly balanced or competitive. It does mean that foundational effects should be preserved so fans of certain games or strategies aren’t completely left in the cold. Ask FFIV fans how it feels to not have a searcher for years if you don’t believe me. Furthermore, a Standard rotation is a very big change for what seems to me to be an element specific problem. Why change the whole game when Wind is the problem?

Given that there are structural impediments to rotation, how about bans? Wind could have its section of the color pie trimmed back by banning a few key cards that step over the line. I think the prime candidates for bans would be Y’shtola, Archer, Diabolos, and 3 cost Zidane. Y’shtola combines the fairly flavorful and common Wind ability to dodge summons and abilities with a functional counterspell that protects almost anything. If she just had some limitation on her sacrifice ability, she would probably be fine and within the color pie boundaries. That’s not the world we live in though. She forces people playing against Wind to have two answers to any must-answer threat on an on-curve, 3 cost body. She even has the audacity to hate on damage-based removal, just in case she didn’t do enough. If I could only ban one Wind card, it would be her. Archer seems like a benign card, but breaking backups is a tool Wind really shouldn’t have access to. One of the cleanest ways to counteract Wind’s small direct- damage abilities is to play backups like Minwu or generic power boosters. Archer gives Wind a relatively free way to answer those answers without dipping into another element. At least make Wind decks splash Earth cards or more niche cards like Sephiroth if they want to interact with backups. Diabolos just does too much. Until Opus V, Wind’s main weakness was its summons… then the Big Devil showed up. Now it has a summon that can functionally break two forwards for 5 CP or break one for free. While each of Diabolos’s four options is within Wind’s section of the color pie, combining almost any two of the four is over the line. Banning one of the most expensive and powerful cards in the game would certainly prompt a backlash, and for that reason I expect it will stick around. But that card was a straight up mistake and the game would be better without it. About Zidane, I understand why thieves are Wind cards and I get why they “steal” a card from your opponent’s hand. However, 3 cost Zidane’s unrestricted discard ability is just so absurd on its face. Discarding is firmly an Ice ability, so I just cannot understand why Wind was given the most powerful form of discard attached to a completely reasonable body. Thaumaturge was just banned and for one CP more, Zidane gives you a bigger body and the ability to choose what card your opponent discards. I know that Thaumaturge was banned as a targeted effort to weaken turbo discard, but that card just fit in one annoying deck. Zidane can go in any Wind deck and play into any strategy. He’s a great early play in an aggressive deck. He’s great at clearing the way for a haymaker in a midrange deck. He’s a great early blocker and bridge to the late game for a controlling deck. He just does it all for such a low cost. Maybe the greatest indictment of 3 cost Zidane is that he’s the best discard spell in the game and he isn’t even in the discard element. He should probably go.

I hate to be the guy advocating for bans or whole-sale competitive play changes, but Wind just does too much, and it needs to be pruned. It would be one thing if Wind had a few overpowered cards that could be hated out with appropriate counter-play or deck building. What makes Wind a unique problem is that it both has powerful, proactive threats and generic, proactive answers to anything that the opponent could do. Something needs to change and hope Square reigns Wind in. Man, I barely even talked about Yuri. How could I discuss the problems with Wind and ignore one of the most broken things in mono Wind? Because Wind is so messed up, that’s why.

Gino Grieco is a freelance writer. You can read his work on Giantbomb and Waypoint. He co-hosts the "Deep Listens" podcast which can be found here. You can find him on Twitch, Youtube, and Twitter.