Cowboy Up!

Yes ladies, he's still single!
You don't want to know what I went through to get this fanart... Irvine is one of the quintessential ranged characters of Final Fantasy, so I HAD to find art for him. After pages upon pages of Irvine Yaoi I find this gem. (I swear, I just can't look at Zell in the same way again.)

Seifer-sama really makes Irvine shine in this piece. I've always had extra respect for artists who are especially good at drawing folds of clothing around a figure. I think this piece is a great example of that, the lighting seems spot on too.

One other thing Seifer-Sama said that I thought was interesting was that the piece was done in Crayola colored pencils. I'm such a snob about my prismacolors, it's nice to see something this talented come out of what I would assume are pretty ordinary colored pencils. Shows me that I should pay more attention to actually drawing then how much I pay for my art supplies...

Check out her page for some more awesome fanart. She has A Song of Ice and Fire fanart too!! Lots of stuff actually, I guarantee you'll find something you like. Check it out at http://seifer-sama.deviantart.com
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In the game, Irvine is the worst nightmare of Mages for sure. I see it being pretty common for the ranged characters to make it to the front row and get taken out before they can hit the mages in the back. Irvine just bypasses the middleman and takes the guesswork out of stopping a bothersome mage. Remember all the Bahamut stuff I talked about last blog? Barring any sort of recovery ability, Irvine ends the problem for you right there with his grenade rounds.

Another less noticeable thing is that Irvine becomes a real threat when you attach weapons to him. He's already at 1400 attack, and it's not difficult to get him a bit higher. When he hits 1600, he can take out most melee characters with ease, not to mention a lot of characters with the "counter" ability are monk type characters who's defense happens to fall into the 1400 range.

Anti-Mage, Anti-Monk, what's not to love?

The 1000 defense really hurts... but he can also run to the rear, and get a parting blow at the same time.

I guess there really isn't much synergy with him as far as card combos go, but he's definitely a solid character and worth a place in the ranged portion of your deck.

Here thar be Dragons!

He's here!
I'm sure some of you were waiting for summons, and Bahamut doesn't disappoint. This is a great Bahamut piece from a very talented artist. Genzoman talks about how his Bahamut design was inspired by different incarnations of Bahamut in the games. I'm lucky to get such a great, and original design to use in the game. Check out Genzoman's page at genzoman.deviantart.com.
He's done work for professional card games too! Pretty sick. I highly recommend the mythos section of his page, I spent like 45 minutes looking through it!
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Instead of looking at this entry solely from a Final Fantasy fan's perspective, I'm going to take a look at it from a competitive gamer's perspective.

I feel every game needs at least a card that makes the other player freak out when it hits the table. The trick, is getting that card to mesh with the rest of the cards without creating a balance issue.

I don't think a meticulous game balance is the end-all-be-all of competitive gaming. If it was, we'd all be playing Virtua Fighter instead of Street Fighter or Tekken. Guess which game is in the $10 bargain bin...

Not that Virtua Fighter is bad... it's a masterpiece, balanced to perfection... but it's TOO balanced, like no matter which character or style I'm using, it feels like Potato vs. Potato. Instead I'm playing Tekken where I can juggle 80% of a character's health away, or Street Fighter where I can Spinning Pile Driver someone out of a jab.

I wanted the game's Summoner mechanic to mirror this. Even though Summoned creatures power varies Final Fantasy to Final Fantasy, you're fighting dragons, and gods, and other majestic things.

I want people to freak out when Bahamut hits the table, and scramble to take out the Summoner before it finishes. (sometimes in vain!)

I feel Bahamut accomplishes this, that's certainly a powerful ability, considering it can't be dispelled, if the opponent doesn't have a Summoner, it's pretty much an auto-win for you.

So where the heck does the balance come in? Well, lucky for me, true summoners in Final Fantasy are usually the damsel type, small children, or anemically weak. I try to give all summoners a base ATT/DEF of 600/600. (which is 200 points above the Mysidia twins by the way, ouch) This means, it's really not all that hard to kill a Summoner, any class can do it. Even if they have other magicks, if they're already kneeling, they're prone to any magic spells you may have anyway. Not to mention you can only have 1 copy of each Summon in your deck, you don't want to recklessly waste that power card.

In a summoner's defense though, you don't have to start your battle with a summoning. Pop in your summoner after most of the field is knelt out, and you'll have a better chance of survival.
Also, don't forget, the only requirement to trigger a summon is for the summoner to re-stand, and while most of the time, this will occur through 2 consecutive passes, and the round ending, anything else to prematurely stand the character also works. Haste works well for this, there is definitely some other synergy for this also, just gotta be an optimist. ...

Magic 101: Part 2

So, compared to the flaming rain of ultimate destruction black mages often deal out to their opponents, being a white mage is a pretty thankless job. But nobody will deny that it's one of the most important roles in all of Final Fantasy (anyone who has played Final Fantasy XI especially is probably nodding in agreement right now.)

This is no exception in the card game. As you can see from these cards, White Magic typically has less options to offer you per each spell. But each spell has it's place amongst your party.
I would've showed you guys the mainstay of white magic: Cure and Raise, but honestly, they're just more efficient versions of Potion and Phoenix Down, so I figured I'd just show some slightly more exotic white magic spells today.

First one I'll show you guys is Protect. Protect is definitely a nice spell; in the card game, it's basically an extra life. True, you may or may not have to use it immediately in a battle, but it's always nice to be prepared. One other thing you may notice, is there is no "Recovery" trait anywhere on the card. This means that because it's technically not a recovery card, it can save you from no recovery attacks! This is huge, and possibly crippling if you've got a high defense guy guarding your back row. Of course, no strategy is foolproof. Magic has no problem taking out your protected characters, because protect only grants the extra life to characters defeated in physical combat. Of course, that's what Shell is for...

Oh, and note that the "Status" trait in the ability text is green, this lets you know the status effect is beneficial, and items like Remedy or spells like Esuna will not effect them. (They only effect the red Status cards like Bio, Fire, etc...

The second one is Haste. The applications for this one aren't too hard to figure out. Stand Auron... duh. Stand any character you want to take a second swing really. It can also be used to stand mages to give them back their resistances. Haste is also special because you can also trigger Hastega and stand your whole row. Should be annoying at the very least.

The third one is going to make people hate you over and over again. Dispel!
Every card game has a card like this, restrict your opponents moves and actions, without sacrificing any advantage yourself (except card advantage, really.)
The applications are great, and all are irritating. Imagine a player getting ready to Thundaga your Cecil with fire on him, and you just tap him and play this to cancel the spell. Now your opponent is out 3 cards and probably quitting the game. Also, keep in mind you can cancel White Magic with this. Cancel your opponents' Cure, to make sure the character dies, or even cancel your opponents DISPEL!

Once again, gotta say thanks for reading and keeping up on the game! With every post, the game gets closer to demo status, almost done! Just a little longer!

Magic 101

So it goes without saying that magic is the most powerful force in this game. However, magic does more than just rain death upon your opponent. Some weaken, some mess with strategies, being a mage is more than just being a cannon. (Though there's nothing wrong with being a cannon.)

Each spell has a base effect, and this effect can sometimes be amplified by discarding extra cards along with your spell. So Fire, +1 discarded card becomes Fira, +1 more discarded card becomes Firaga. You get the idea. It will tell you what the extra effects are on the cards, so don't worry too much about it.

The one thing you need to remember though, is that the effects stack, so discarding 2 cards with your Fire spell gets you the base ability, lv2 ability, and lv3 ability.

I'll introduce a few of the spells and their applications.

Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder. Probably the most basic spells in final fantasy, have 3 very different applications in the card game.

-Fire is a pretty versatile card, the base effect of fire (where you just cast it and discard it with no extra cards) has you attach the card to an opponent and drops their defense by 400 points. It's a quick and easy way to weaken a fighter with really high defense, or get a regular fighter a low enough defense to get picked off by the ranged characters.
-Fira ( discard 1 card) also weakens the character further by discarding all equipment and relics from the attached character. Definitely more situational than the base ability, but definitely has its use, if not just for the chance to snipe some relics off your opponent. (Afraid of a little fire Cloud!?)
-Firaga (discard 2 cards) just says "screw it" and discards the character completely. This is by no means an efficient discard, but it has it's place. It is definitely the most powerful since there is no criteria to do it other than "be a character"

-Blizzard is primarily a defensive card, good for slowing down aggressive characters by tapping them prematurely. Or just speeding up the next round by decreasing your opponents options.
-Blizzara is probably the most tactical spell. It has all the power of Blizzard, but when used on a character that is already tapped, it discards it. This is great if you can hang on to it and a caster by the time your opponent has exhausted his options, because it gives you free reign of who to discard.
-Blizzaga is the spell that is going to make people scream "CHEAP" and cry like Edward. With all the effects of blizzard, and blizzara, blizzaga extends this by attacking an entire row instead of a single character. This has the potential to cause some serious damage as a round ender by wiping out the fighter row when they're already tapped, or even a good opener, tapping the row early.

-Thunder is your surgical removal card. As long as a character is a legal target and has 1600 DEF or less, it discards it from play. Simple application, and a definite staple to the mage's spellbook.
-Thundara is your guaranteed surgical removal card. By adding the 'no recovery' criteria, you can be sure your opponent isn't going to just cure or potion the pain away. Dispel should be your only worry, but there are only so many white mages...
-Thundaga is the ultimate I never want to see you again card. It just dooms the character, no chance of recovery or revival. Keep in mind though, that all of the thunder series spells can only target characters with 1600 or less, so it's not the only answer you'd want to have.

So there's a taste! Of course there will be more magic to stock your decks with, but you should be able to get by on just these.