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.

Showdown

I know some of you were wondering when we would see these two. Check out that art! Probably the most famous rivalry in Final Fantasy history is represented perfectly by Daniel Chou. The two pieces are meant to go together, and I really like them because they're more of a mature art style, and these cards represent the most developed part of the rivalry. I really like the faint smile Cloud has, because it shows his growth through the series. He seems to have grown out of the stoic loner mindset a little. Anyway, check out Daniel's page at http://www.zureul.deviantart.com. He has a quite the variety of pieces, definitely worth checking out if you like these two.

So first, let's talk about Cloud. Get to know him, because he's going to be your fighter backbone for the demo deck. He starts out at a solid 1600/1600, and his ability, though moderately useful, is a definite combo card. In FFTCG, characters can only have 1 relic, or 1 equipment card attached to them at a time. Cloud gets that 1 equipment or relic, and ANY number of swords you can stack on him. An aggressive player might have a mythril sword, gunblade, and masamune on him at once! That would even make T.G. Cid run screaming. Similar to Mog, he's only going to get better, the more swords we get, the more people will fear him.

Sephiroth is an interesting card as well. The first thing you notice, is that he has the Villain trait. (outlined in evil red so you don't miss it)
Villain is actually a negative trait. Anytime you win a battle, and you only have Villains in play, the relic goes back to the pile and nobody gets the relic. (Villains do what they want)
Of course, when you see his stats, you might not care too much. Sephiroth has the printed max for attack, and above average defense, as well as black and summon magic himself. This guarantees he will always be a threat. Don't forget that when he stands, he's immune to black magic, because of his black magic trait. You'll have to use brute strength to get him usually, unless he's already attacked this turn.

His character ability is also negative. Due to needing host bodies of remnants to manifest himself in the physical world, Sephiroth discards another character you control as a cost to be in play. This could be a liability, considering the penalty for winning with villains alone, and the fact that he has to do it again if you raise him. Seems balanced on paper to me, though we'll see as he shows up in decks. At any rate, he'll be tricky to use, but I'm sure a clever or experienced player will make good use of him.

Oh, and don't fret if you're one of the Sephiroth fanclub, and you don't want to juggle so many variables around in order to use him. Sephiroth is unique in my mind, as he has FOUR well-defined forms to make cards from: SOLDIER Sephiroth, Crazy "I am a clone" Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel Sephiroth, and this Advent Children version. The SOLDIER version isn't even a villain, how cool would that be to play?

Relics

How's this for a first relic? Thanks to Mog, we've got a totally redone version of the gunblade in case piece. Computer graphics seems to work really well for weapons, and IMO Mog's gunblade is the best of them all. He has a nice collection of art on his site: http://www.mogcaiz.deviantart.com check out his Sora especially, it's great.

So, as far as the game goes, can you expect to ruin people's shit with the gunblade? Absolutely. Generally if anything is a relic, it's going to be overpowered because the the extra strength offsets the fact that you're essentially gambling with your points to use them. The gunblade gives you a pretty weak damage increase, but in turn, dooms characters instead of discarding them when they are defeated, this does 2 things for you:

Firstly, it technically eliminates recovery. The definition of recovery is "prevent a character from being discarded" and when you switch out the discard for doomed, the abilities cannot function. That means no potions or cures. (Also note that the wording on the Gunblade is different from the wording on Zozo, which is "when a character would be discarded, they are doomed instead" which means that characters in Zozo can still be recovered. This makes the Gunblade significantly more powerful.)

Secondly, it kicks problem characters out of the battle, (so I guess that means no phoenix downs or raise either) This can be great for characters like Cecil or Zidane, that you want to STAY dead when they leave play.

It's definitely a strong ability, well worthy of the gunblade, but there's one more offset. Your character is considered to have no traits. No... you're not going to be able to turn your ranged character into artillery with this, or stick it on Cyan to make your opponent cry blood dealing with your counters. It definitely seems strong as is.

What do you think? Would you play relics? I do want hoarding to be a valid tactic, but not to be the only sensible option.

Kupo-po!

So before you say it, I know. The pictured moogle is not technically Mog (Mog is actually the badass moogle that tells you how high your attack is.)

The thing is that there is no Mog fanart or official art that translates well to card form that I could find. But I thought he was so tied in to the last post, I had to wing it. This moogle is actually from Final Fantasy XI, starring in one of the mini-expansions.

Anyway, Mog's ability is inspired from an old Game of Thrones card called Wheels within Wheels. WWW gave you the ability to switch plot cards around at will. Plots are similar to FFTCG's location cards, and I have a feeling Mog will be just as good in this game as WWW was in Thrones.

Being able to switch out locations can be useful. On the losing side, and don't want your opponent to take a certain relic? Switch it with something not currently useful. Overrun by your opponent? Bring in Bevelle really quick to reset the round. Or, how about starting with Auction House if you're behind, switching to Mako Reactor, and next turn retreating. Ouch.

(One important thing to note, is that since the leader check is made at the beginning of the round, swapping your locations around doesn't affect the amount of characters you can play.)

The more locations are released, the better Mog will get. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of evil my playtesters and myself can dish out.

The World is your Battlefield!

Ha! Bet you thought I abandoned this! I was actually on vacation, so I apologize for the delay in posts, and updates.

So, the demo deck will take a little while yet, I've got to do cards for the items, relics, locations, equipment... you get the idea. For the final product, I'll probably commission an artist to do a lot of the small stuff, but for now, I'll just use official art when I find it.

So anyway, I got some of the locations done. For those that don't remember, they are dual-sided cards. You fight at a location, and when you win, you get the relic on the back to add to your point total/arsenal.

Anyway, here's some without further ado:










For all who forgot, you play these before you fight, and it changes the face of the fight in some way. It should help to keep the game from feeling stagnant. See the class on the card as well? This is how you identify if the location matches up with your leader's class.

Expect a new post soon! I'll show you a character who thrives on these cards.