June 26th, 2015. To commemorate the launch of Nintendo Dream magazine's June 20th issue, the editorial staff hosted an "Emblem party" over Niconico's live streaming service. Making Fire Emblem Cipher the topic of the day and specifically refusing to address comments related to Fates, the hosts featured a box opening of B01: Warblade of Heroes, as well as the associated starter decks War of Darkness and Awakening. A recording of the stream can be viewed below.
The box opening begins at 12:00. The highlight of the opening was pulling a Super Rare "Hero to His Country, Marth" at 34:40. The broadcast was not without its problems; for several seconds starting at 43:39 the staff accidentally switched the view to an emulated game of Shadow Dragon from one of their computers, with Navarre reclassed as a Bishop. Viewership of the stream was relatively small, with the number of viewers peaking at 544.
Nintendo Dream's publisher, Tokuma Shoten, will be publishing an official guide to B01: Warblade of Heroes late next month, with endorsement and assistance from Intelligent Systems. The guide will go on sale July 24th, and come with two copies of the exclusive promotional card "Enigmatic Tactician, Robin (Male)."
Today's article was made possible by the donations of our patrons at Patreon. The Lycian League is funded by public contributions from readers like you.
June 27th, 2015. First place at the Master's Guild shop tournament was taken by a Sword of Light player, making this the third publicized pure Archanean deck to take first in a tournament since the launch of Warblade of Heroes on the 25th.The shop tournament was a small eight-man tournament, held in a Swiss Draw format. The tournament winner eschewed several of the common staples that have taken root in other decks, avoiding the popular cost 4 Marth and Caeda duo that have had so much success in these first days of tournament play.
Probably the most noticeable missing card is "Princess of Altea, Elice," whose Aum Staff ability has been seen as invaluable for being able to pull any Sword of Light card from the retreat area directly to the field. Elice has been a popular staple for being able to resurrect an ally with her reversal skill, partially negating the opponent's efforts in disposing of powerful units.
Instead this deck focuses on promoting a large pool of cost 1s with diverse ranges. Its strongest card is Steel Swordsman Ogma, whose Levin Sword ability makes him a magic user for one turn with a range of 1~2. Ogma's other ability gives both him and a deployed unit +10 every time a cost 2 or less unit is deployed, becoming exponentially more powerful the more bonds one has in play to deploy units with. Because there is no upper limit on how many cards may be in play, with a sufficient pool of bonds to draw from Ogma's power is theoretically as high as the number of cost 2s one has in hand.
Today's article was made possible by the donations of our patrons at Patreon. The Lycian League is funded by public contributions from readers like you.
Master's Guild Shop Tournament Cost 5: 2
x2 Steel Swordsman, Ogma Cost 4: 6
x4 Lodestar, Marth
x1 Princess, Minerva
x1 Sage of Gales, Merric Cost 3: 11
x2 Altea's Shield, Draug
x2 Archanean League Bowman, Gordin
x1 Infamous Knight "Prowling Panther," Abel
x2 Loyal Retainer, Jagen
x2 Wielder of a Bloody Blade, Navarre
x2 Aerial Combat Princess, Caeda Cost 2: 1
x1 Courageous Talysian Mercenary, Barst Cost 1: 29
x1 Crown-Prince of Altea, Marth (Main Character)
x3 Young Princess of Macedon, Maria
x2 Crown-Princess of Macedon, Minerva
x1 Talysian Fighter, Bord
x1 Talysian Fighter, Cord
x1 Healing Priest, Wrys
x1 Innocent Priestess, Maria
x3 Verdant Knight, Abel
x2 Liberation Army Archer, Gordin
x3 Mage of Winds, Merric
x2 Talysian Mercenary, Ogma
x2 Crown-Princess of the Divine Dragon Tribe, Tiki
x2 Scarlet Knight, Cain
x2 Crown-Princess of Talys, Caeda
x2 Crimson Fencer, Navarre
x2 Protective Knight, Draug
Tokuma Shoten Publishing Co., Ltd. will be publishing a guide to Fire Emblem Cipher this July, licensed by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. Titled the Fire Emblem Cipher Official Guide, this softcover strategy guide will include full-sized prints of the original illustrations used for Cipher's cards, tactics devised by Intelligent Systems for playing the game, a compilation of the rules, and a complete catalog of all cards in B01: Warblade of Heroes, S01: War of Darkness, and S02: Awakening. Each sealed first editions of the guide will include two holographic rare prints of the promotional card "Enigmatic Tactician, Robin (Male)," which will be exclusive to this guidebook.
Tokuma Shoten has a strong relationship with Nintendo, being the current publisher for Nintendo Dream magazine in Japan. (Pictured above) Their issues have periodically included tie-ins to the Fire Emblem games, including paper toys to commemorate the series' 25th anniversary and the launch of Awakening. Their most recent issue features Phoenix Wright and Fire Emblem Fates.
The Fire Emblem Cipher Official Guide will launch on July 24th, 2015. It will retail for 1490 JPY, approximately $12.20 at the current exchange rate.
7/4/2015 update: The official guide is also now listed on AmiAmi.
June 27th, 2015. TCG Shop Grand Panda Canyon in Akihabara held a sixteen person Swiss tournament. The shop's staff reported the tournament to be at maximum capacity; its winner was Haro P(@DenoHaro), playing a multicolor deck built around "Cultivator of Smiles, Inigo," to take advantage of his ability that gives him power bonuses for having female units in play. Haro P commented on Twitter that he felt there were too many improvements needed for the deck. In his tournament experience, there were not many players who understood the value of Gordin nor how dangerous range 2 units could be, and this contributed to his victory. Haro P's Inigo deck relies on Inigo's cost 1 print always attacking for 50 base power when a female ally is in play, 10 more than the standard power for a cost 1 lord. This also means that on average Inigo doesn't need as powerful support checks as his opponent for his attacks to hit. His promoted form also gets +20 attack power during the opponent's turn if he destroys an enemy by battle, making him a defensive 80.
This deck's trump cards are the promoted prints of Lucina and Cordelia, the former of which can stack the top 2 cards of the deck to predetermine support checks, and the latter can attack again after successfully defeating an enemy--including the opponent's main character. Cordelia is a force to be reckoned with in tournament play, as it's infinitely easier for an attack to hit in Cipher than it in other games, and with Princess Minerva to negate the effective bonus of archers against Flying units it can be very difficult to bring Cordelia down in spite of having low base power for a cost 3. Haro P's full decklist is transcribed below.
The Mizonokuchi branch of Card Kingdom also held a 16-man Cipher tournament today. Tournament champion Narumiya(@otyapara) played a Sword of Light deck built around "Lodestar, Marth" from the War of Darkness starter deck, and her deck shared several of the same pieces as Taketea from Card Kingdom's Nerima branch. Narumiya credited her victory to the Attack Emblem support skill, which is shared by the cost 1 prints of Abel, Cain, Ogma, Cord, and Bord. Attack Emblem grants +20 attack to the attacking unit when its support checked, and as every card that has Attack Emblem has a base support value of 10, this grants a net +30 during the attack phase. She also lamented not having room for Draug in the deck in a later tweet, wishing to build a deck with her self-described husband as the main character.
Haro P is not the only multicolor player to come out of the woodwork this week. Over the 25th the first recorded tournament finals in Cipher's history were uploaded to the web, from card shop King Trading Cards in Noda. Unlike the Panda Canyon and Nerima tournaments, King TCG used a tournament bracket throughout the entire sixteen-person competition, rather than playing Swiss rounds. The finals were a multicolor Sword of Light versus a monocolor Mark of Naga deck, and the video is presented below.
The tournament finals were best of one, with a 30 minute time limit. The Sword of Light multicolor deck took advantage of having cards from both colors with the Magic Emblem ability, which allows a player that support checks it to draw a card and drop a card. This game also demonstrated one reason why Emblem cards have become so popular in the first few days since the game's launch; the Sword of Light player was able to consistently check both Attack and Defense Emblem cards that granted a +20 bonus on either the attacking or defending turn, putting them 10 points above the opponent's power every time. No decklists have turned up for the King TCG tournament.
Grand Panda Canyon Shop Tournament First place:Haro P/ハロP Cost 4: 11
x4 Knower of the Future, Lucina
x4 Angelic Advocate of Affection, Caeda
x3 Princess, Minerva Cost 3: 12
x4 Man of Flower's Fragrance, Inigo
x4 Pegasus Knight Paragon, Cordelia
x2 Wellspring of Youth, Nowi
x2 Aura's Heiress, Linde Cost 2: 4
x4 Princess of Altea, Elice Cost 1: 23
x4 Cultivator of Smiles, Inigo (Main Character)
x4 Young Prodigy, Cordelia
x2 Myrmidon from Parts Unknown, Athena
x2 Young Princess of Macedon, Maria
x3 Crown-Princess of Macedon, Minerva
x4 Crown-Princess of Talys, Caeda
x4 Swordsman Known as Marth, Lucina
Card Kingdom Mizonokuchi Shop Tournament First place:Narumiya/なるみや Cost 4: 4
x4 Lodestar, Marth Cost 3: 5
x3 Steel Swordsman, Ogma
x1 Infamous Knight "Raging Bull," Cain
x1 Infamous Knight "Prowling Panther," Abel Cost 2: 5
x3 Loose-Cannon Swordsman, Naarre
x2 Princess of Altea, Elice Cost 1: 36
x4 Crown-Prince of Altea, Marth (Main Character)
x4 Verdant Knight, Abel
x4 Scarlet Knight, Cain
x4 Talysian Mercenary, Ogma
x4 Crown-Princess of Talys, Caeda
x4 Talysian Fighter, Bord
x4 Talysian Fighter, Cord
x4 Crown-Princess of the Divine DragonTribe, Tiki
x4 Ascetic Saint, Lena
June 26th, 2015. A representative of the Nerima branch of card shop Card Kingdom tweeted the results of their weekly Fire Emblem Cipher shop tournament, congratulating tournament champion Taketea (@taketea0hyuga) for winning the 16-man tournament. Card Kingdom is one of the most notoriously competitive shops in Japan, with each of its six branches hosting regular tournaments for each of their supported Trading Card Games. In the west the shop is primarily known as the inspiration for Cardfight!! Vanguard's fictional Card Capital; the owner of the franchise was a friend of Bushiroad CEO Takaaki Kidani prior to the company's rise to prominence in the TCG market. Taketea's decklist is transcribed at the bottom of the page.
Taketea's deck uses three primary cost 1s; Navarre, Gordin, and Tiki. Navarre is invaluable in the first turns of the game because his power rises from 40 to 60 if he and the main character are the only allies on the field, all but guaranteeing that his attack will go through and take an early orb from the opponent. Gordin's range 2 lets him attack the vanguard from the rearguard without fear of reprisal. The two become all the more dangerous when promoted to their cost 4 and 3 versions. Navarre becomes capable of destroying another non-main character unit every time he destroys a card by battle, while Gordin can move the opponent's Flying units every time a cost 2 or less ally is played. Gordin's attack power is below average both prior to and after promotion, but because his permanent skill gives him +30 while attacking a Flying unit, he can effectively check against decks that try to set up Triangle Attack combos.
Tiki forms the lead in the deck's support lineup. Because Tiki's support skill can accelerate bond control by putting a card from hand to the bond area every time she's support checked, Sword of Light decks have an incentive to run her for her support alone. Moreover, she becomes a base 60 with 4+ bonds in play, which puts her on par with "Crimson Fencer, Navarre" and "Talysian Mercenary, Ogma" as a big basic unit that can make an effective attacker.
Taketea's other support cost 1s are Caeda, Wrys, and the three cost 1 Pegasus Sisters. Caeda and the Pegasus Sisters all have the same support skill of moving a unit other than the attacking unit when checked, which lets a unit that has already attacked move to the rearguard to protect it from vanguard attacks. Caeda also promotes into a cost 4 that can search out cost 2 and lower tech cards like Elice and Ogma, and units with Flying as a whole play into the deck's cost 4 Minerva, who powers up based on the number of Flying units in play.
Wrys is valuable in most Sword of Light decks because his support preemptively prevents critical hits from being used, which can prevent a key unit from being taken out of play. Defensively he can also protect vulnerable allies with his action skill.
The Pegasus Knight sisters are one of the most subtly important aspects of the deck. The object of running so many units with Flying is to get out Princess Minerva, whose Iote's Shield ability forces all enemy archers to lose "Clear the Skies," the skill that gives them a permanent +30 bonus versus Flying units, mimicking its in-game effect of nullifying effective bonuses. Each of the Pegasus Sisters can action herself and reverse 2 bonds to search for one of the other Pegasus Sisters and play them, creating one of the cheapest swarming tactics to come out of Warblade of Heroes. Unlike other players that try to use the cost 3 versions of the Pegasus cards to initiate a Triangle Attack with 100 base power, Taketea instead runs just the cost 1 Pegasi with Minerva, to setup a field that will make Minerva continually have 80 base power.
This works like a slightly weaker but less costly and always-active Triangle Attack, that also doesn't give up any allies for the turn. Since each Pegasus can search for each other Pegasus, it's fully viable to at the late stage of a game play one Sister, search for another one, and then search for the third one with that one's skill, then play a Minerva from hand to nullify Clear the Skies and attack for 80. These are search skills, so there's also no need to run all three sisters in high quantities when drawing any one of them can be as good as drawing all of them, and they conveniently circumvent bond costs by playing one another straight from the deck--with only two bonds in play, one can play three Pegasus Sisters, two from hand and one from deck.
Finally, Taketea's main character line is Marth, but while many were theorizing around maximizing main character lines to increase opportunities to perform critical hits and evasion, Taketea instead shaved off the fourth copies of his cost 4 and 5 Marths to make room for ally units. "Lodestar, Marth" can come out as early as the third turn via promotion cost, and once per turn can move a rearguard enemy to the front when an ally is played, which synergizes with the Pegasus Sisters' ability to search one another, as well as with Caeda's search skill. "Hero to His Country, Marth" is the defensive end goal of the deck, as 70 base power is the highest unmodified original power allowed on any card. By reversing three bonds and discarding any Marth, he gives +30 to all allies until the end of the opponent's next turn, ensuring that even if the opponent survives the current turn, they won't be able to destroy anything during their own.
By saturating his deck with strong unpromoted units that synergize towards a few key plays with his higher costed ones, Taketea built a deck that could simultaneously play a game of overwhelming force with field swarming while also seizing control of the endgame. The deck notably uses less than 20 promoted units, which is shaping up to be typical of the Japanese metagame at this time. One feature of Cipher that's been observed repeatedly is an in-game bias against higher costed cards, as a direct result of lower costed ones being cheaper and more easily played.
First place:Taketea/竹てぃ (Pseudonym) Deck name: The Deck I Thought Strongest/ぼくのかんがえたさいきょうのデッキ Cost 5: 3
x3 Hero to His Country, Marth Cost 4: 12
x3 Crimson Reaper, Navarre
x3 Angelic Advocate of Affection, Caeda
x3 Lodestar, Marth
x3 Princess Minerva Cost 3: 2
x2 Archanean League Bowman, Gordin Cost 2: 4
x2 Princess of Altea, Elice
x2 Strong-armed Gladiator, Ogma Cost 1: 29
x4 Crown-Princess of the Divine Dragon Tribe, Tiki
x2 Pegasus-riding Little Sister Knight, Est
x2 Pegasus-riding Lady Knight, Catria
x2 Pegasus-riding Big Sister, Palla
x4 Crimson Fencer, Navarre
x2 Talysian Mercenary, Ogma
x4 Healing Priest, Wrys
x4 Liberation Army Archer, Gordin
x4 Crown-Princess of Talys, Caeda
x1 Crown-Prince of Altea, Marth (Main Character)
The Japanese Cipher portal has been updated with the latest Japanese tournament locations and dates for June 25th through July 1st. Participants in these tournaments will receive Promotion Card Pack Vol. 1, which contains two randomly assorted cards from a pool of six promotional cards. Currently 128 tournaments have been scheduled for the month of June, and 511 for the month of July. 31 of Japan's 47 prefectures will host Fire Emblem Cipher tournaments. As these are all locally-organized weekly shop tournaments, none of them are especially large; the maximum attendance cap for any of these is 16 persons.
Promotional Pack Vol. 1 primarily features reprints of existing characters with alternate artwork; the Jagen, Minerva, Cordelia, Tharja, and Tiki cards can all be found in Warblade of Heroes or War of Darkness. However, the cost 3 Wrys is wholly unique to the Promotional Pack, being an original scenario unit that reclasses the curate as a Hero. Wrys' skill is the same as his cost 1 print from Warblade of Heroes; by turning himself horizontal and destroying himself, Wrys can increase an ally's power by +20 when it's attacked, which on top of the support check can help prevent that ally from being defeated. Primarily this is useful for protecting the main character from damage. Because it requires turning Wrys to the actioned state, he can't do this after moving or attacking, so it's not possible to attack with Wrys on one's own turn and use his ability on the opponent's. What Wrys gains by promoting into a Hero is 30 additional attack power, range 1, and the axe emblem, which allows him to do battle unlike his base form. And if one uses Wrys as their main character and promotes into Healing Hero, he can be part of a viable turtling strategy. By moving Wrys to the rearguard, one can deliberately destroy him by battle during the opponent's turn to protect vanguard units; the main character cannot be sent to the retreat area, so one of Wrys' orbs will break and be sent to hand, creating a net +1 while protecting an ally unit. Doing this repeatedly puts one very close to defeat though by deliberately destroying their own orbs, and is chiefly viable when there are a series of strong vanguard attackers in play that are worth using Wrys' skill to protect.
Jagen is a more simplistic promo, and unlike Wrys doesn't have an unpromoted form to make his play cost easier to pay. His base attack is higher than the standard 50 for a cost 3 unit, but in exchange he can't be played to the bond area and this can be dangerous in a protracted game if there are multiple copies in the deck.
Loyal Retainer, Jagen
Deployment cost 3/Promotion cost 2/70 Attack/1 Range/20 Support
Battle-Worn Veteran: Special: This card cannot be placed in the bond area.
Healing Hero, Wrys
Deployment cost 3/Promotion cost 2/60 Attack/1 Range/10 Support
Vulnerary: Auto: [Action this unit, destroy this unit by battle] When one of your other allies is attacked, if you pay the cost, until the end of the attack phase that allied unit's attack gets +20.
June 25th, 2015. Today is the Japanese launch date for B01: Warblade of Heroes (英雄たちの戦刃 Eiyuutachi no Senjin) the first booster set in Fire Emblem Cipher. The set is accompanied by starter decks S01: War of Darkness (暗黒戦争篇 Ankoku Sensou Hen) and S02:Awakening (覚醒篇 Kakusei Hen.) The War of Darkness deck contains only units from its eponymous group, comprising characters from Marth's continent of Archanea, while Awakening likewise contains only characters from Chrom's Ylisse. Warblade of Heroes is split evenly between support for both groups, which are color-coded as red for War and blue for Awakening. The set comprises 100 cards with 14 alternate prints; 48 Normal, 24 High Normal, 16 Rare, and 12 Super Rare cards. The fourteen alternate prints are six SR+ and eight R+ rarity cards with gold foiling, and the six Super Rare+ cards are signed by their respective character's voice actors. These will be signed by Midorikawa Hikaru (Marth), Tange Sakura (Caeda), Koyasu Takehito (Navarre), Kobayashi Yu (Lucina), Sawashiro Miyuki (Avatar/Morgan), and Asumi Kana (Lissa.) Each sealed box also contains a download code to unlock Minerva in Fire Emblem Fates.
Each box contains sixteen booster packs, with ten cards in each. One card in each pack is guaranteed to be a High Normal or higher. Exact distributions are unknown, but current information suggests that one is guaranteed four Super Rares in every box. Japanese auction prices currently put the base price for each SR at 1000 yen per card. The manufacturers' recommended price for one box is 5600 yen, or $45 at the current exchange rate. Certain retailers like AmiAmi will sell boxes for the currency equivalent of $40 or less.
“Finally release day for Fire Emblem 0 (Cipher) is upon us. Now the tides
of victory within the World of Cipher are in your hands.” (Translation credit)
The Serenes Forest translation community is hard at work creating a functional wiki for the set, but in the meantime readers can turn to a text-only compendium of card translations created by Aubergine of the same community.
6/25 Update: Box openings have shown that every box contains 4 Super Rares and 12 Rares.
Each sealed distributor carton contains sixteen boxes.
The set also launched alongside the first wave of Cipher's sleeve collection, which comprises four different character sleeves; Lodestar, Marth, Protector of the Halidom, Chrom, Bewitching Shaman from Plegia, Tharja, and the 25th anniversary dot character sleeves. Each sleeve measures 67x92 millimeters, and each pack of sleeves contains 65 sleeves. The 25th anniversary sleeves are decorated with the map sprites of the lords from the current thirteen Fire Emblem games, with Fire Emblem 7: Blazing Blade represented three times over by Hector, Eliwood and Lyn.
Warblade of Heroes will be followed up on by the second booster set on September 17th, B02: Soulful Flames of Light and Dark (光と闇の神焔 Hikari to Yami no Shinen.) B02 will include characters from Fire Emblem Fates, and will be accompanied by starter decks S03: White Night (白夜篇 Byakuya Hen) and S04: Dark Night (暗夜篇 Anya Hen.) S03 corresponds to Birthright and S04 to Conquest. MSRP for both starter decks is 1300 yen, approximately $10.50 at the current exchange rate, and 350 yen per pack or $2.99. Each sealed box of B01: Warblade of Heroes is packaged with one of two promotional prints of male or female Corrin, whose standard prints will be in B02. The white and black theme of B02 corresponds to the split versions of Fates, white the Hoshido path being represented by white and the Nohr path by black.
Today's article was made possible by the donations of our patrons at Patreon. The Lycian League is funded by public contributions from readers like you.
June 22nd, 2015. Kitanishi of Intelligent Systems Co., Ltd., actress Lynn (voice of Fire Emblem Fates' Azura), and Fire Emblem Cipher producer Kawade Ryouta hosted a Niconico Live stream in commemoration of the upcoming launch of Cipher's first booster set and starter decks. Nico streams of this type are common in the promotion of Japanese media, and Cipher's was particularly notable for drawing in a massive crowd despite being a new trading card property--which typically need more time for the public to warm up to. The broadcast in its entirety can be viewed below.
Kawade provided an overview of the Fire Emblem Cipher demos held across Japan in the past month, which began on the 12th and carried through up to the day of the stream. The game's producer showed a surprising familiarity with the major card shops of several regions, hosting demos and interviewing players at game store Ma-ya in Kasai (Edogawa) on the 12th, and in card shop Fire Ball in Koshigaya on the 13th. Both of these retailers are two of the largest in their local areas, with Ma-ya having been in operation for fifteen years. The game won over many of those Kawade interviewed, as even the players that expressed first-time difficulty with the game's rules remained interested in trying a second time because their history with Fire Emblem and familiarity with the characters. One man who demoed the game had been playing Fire Emblem for sixteen to seventeen years, which kept him open to trying Cipher.
(Game begins at 0:18:40 and ends at 0:45:48, box opening at 0:56:44, loose packs at 1:03:52)
The broadcast then cut to a live play of Cipher with Lynn and Kozaki Yuusuke, character designer for Awakening and Fates. They were introduced to the rules by Cipher teacher Umata. In the interest of time both players played with less than the standard number of Orbs, three instead of five. Lynn played Starter Deck 1: War of Darkness with the Crown Prince of Altea, Marth as her main character, using Archanean units from Fire Emblem 1, 3 and 12. Her strategy in the game was to use archers and mages to attack from outside the range of Kozaki's units, while promoting her lord to increase his base attack power and thus make it difficult for Kozaki to successfully defend.
Kozaki played Starter Deck 2: Awakening with Crown Prince of Ylisse, Chrom as his main character, using the Ylissian characters from Fire Emblem 13. His strategy was to use prepromoted allied units with higher costs but also higher base attack power to prevent Lynn's attacks from hitting.
Umata explained that to begin the game, each player draws five cards, then
places five cards from the top of their deck into the Orb Area (three in
this demo game.) If either player is attacked while they have no Orbs, their
main character is defeated and they lose the game. Each player's turn is made up of five phases; the opening phase, bond
phase, deployment phase, action phase and then the end phase.
In the opening phase the current player's turn begins and their units return to an action state, vertically-oriented. (Equivalent to being untapped in Magic or stood in Vanguard.) They also draw one card--except during the first turn of the game when they are the first player to take a turn.
In the bond phase, the player puts a card from their hand into the bond zone horizontally. They may only play one card in this way each turn. (Equivalent to playing a land in Magic or attaching energy in Pokémon.) During the deployment phase, the player can play units from their hand whose costs are less than or equal to the number of cards in the bond area. (So with one card in the bond area, a card with a cost of 1 can be played, and with two cards in the bond area, two cards with a cost of 1 can be played, or one card with a cost of 2.)
In the action phase, units with skills that say Action can use those skills by paying costs like reversing bonds (turning them face-down) or turning them to an acted state. In the action phase the player can also use their units to attack other units within their range, either sending the opponent's allies to the retreat area (discard pile) or dealing damage to their main character and breaking an Orb. Attacking requires a unit to move from the action state to an acted state, and so is mutually exclusive with using some skills. In the end phase, the turn passes to the next player.
In Lynn's action phase above, Gordon and Merric are in Lynn's rearguard, while Navarre and Marth (her main character) are in her vanguard. Chrom and Lon'qu are both in Kozaki's vanguard. Marth and Navarre can both attack Chrom and Lon'qu because they have a range of 1 and those enemies are adjacent to them, and Gordon and Merric can also attack either unit because Gordon has a range of 2 and Merric a variable range of 1~2. When Lynn attacks one of Kozaki's units, both players reveal the top card of their deck, and the support values of the revealed cards are added to their respective side's attacking and defending units. (If the revealed support card has the same character name as the unit, it has no effect.) The revealed cards are then sent to the retreat area. As long as Lynn's attacking unit's power is greater than or equal to Kozaki's defending unit's, she will win the battle, and if that unit was the main character an Orb will break and be sent to Kozaki's hand. Towards the end of the game Umata introduced one last game mechanic; by discarding any card with the same character name as their attacking unit, a player may have that unit perform a critical hit with twice the attack power. The defending player can do the same to perform evasion, completely nullifying the attack, which gives purpose to otherwise-dead cards--as each player can only have one copy of a unit in play.
Although Lynn could not attack due to going first, being able to
always have one more bond than her opponent as a result of being the
first player to place a bond let her always have more allies in play
than Kozaki, overwhelming him with multiple attacks. However, her
archer strategy was hampered by the low base power of the archer
characters, as Gordon and Y only have 30 base power while Chrom's is 40.
This means that Lynn needed to consistently check higher support value
cards than her opponent in order to hit with the archers, introducing an
element of chance to the game that effectively gave her a smaller
margin of error than her opponent for hitting with attacks. The outcome of the game could have been changed in Kozaki's
favor had he protected Chrom by moving him to the rearguard early on.
Although Marth has the ability to move one enemy per turn, this requires
tapping both himself and one of his own units, which would decrease the
number of attacks Lynn was making per battle phase by 2 each turn.
The stream was not without incident, as minor technical problems repeatedly
inhibited its airing; several times cameras had to be repositioned to
get them out of shots, and microphone errors interrupted the audio at
times. For this broadcast neither player used card sleeves, likely to avoid further camera trouble. Sleeving cards creates a reflective surface so that the face of the card cannot be seen in recordings when placed under direct lighting.
After the demo game, the group showed off four character sleeves from the first wave that will launch along with the set; "Lodestar, Marth," "Protector of the Halidom, Chrom," Bewitching Shaman from Plegia, Tharja and the 25th anniversary dot character sleeves. For the second wave of sleeves fans were able to vote during the broadcast for what character they would like to see out of those introduced in War of Darkness and Awakening.
From The Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light cast Tiki won the majority vote, with 52.2% of all votes going to her. Second place was Caeda with 17.9% of the vote, third Navarre with 11.1%, fourth Ogma with 10.5% and fourth Cain with 8.2%. From Awakening, Gaius won a considerably more divided contest; 28.1% of responders voted for Gaius, 23.7% for Cordelia, 23% for Olyvia, 13.6% for Owain and 11.5% for Lon'qu. Viewers could also participate in a raffle for a box of Booster Set 1: Warblade of Heroes, with the winner receiving several signed cards pulled by the hosts during the stream.
The group then did a live box opening of the first booster set, B01: Warblade of Heroes. Kitanishi was forced to briefly intervene when Kawade did the opening, to hide the character download code for Fire Emblem Fates packaged inside. Every sealed booster box contains a code to download Pegasus Knight Minerva into the Japanese edition of Fates. The stream also revealed that each box also has a promotional print of Corrin from Fates. The standard version of the card will be printed in B02: Soulful Flames of Light and Dark, which launches this September.
Although the opening was intended to show off the availability of signed
cards, an awkward moment arose when none of the Super Rares pulled were
signed. Kitanishi then brought out a box of loose packs, from which
Kawade immediately pulled a signed Liss.
Notably, the box opening seems to demonstrate a packaging bias common to new card games. Two of the three Super Rares pulled came from the left side of the box; due to the way in which cards are automatically cut and inserted into packs from a printed sheet, packaging biases sometimes emerge due to a failure to properly randomize the distribution, and B01 may be victim to this same mistake. This primarily matters when buying packs from a shop, as if the packaging bias holds true it's better to buy packs from the left side of a box to guarantee higher-rarity cards.
"Everyone please look forward to the launch! Thank you very much! Goodbye!"
Each of the hosts closed out the livestream with their own special farewells. Kozaki made the announcement that he will be expecting his first child in the fall, receiving his fellow hosts' congratulations as well as those of the viewers'. Kitanishi encouraged those watching to keep trying even if they don't understand the rules at first, to participate in events and take a look at the homepage. Producer Kawade spoke to each of the "strong and thoughtful" fans of Fire Emblem, stating that it would make him happiest if everyone could enjoy playing in the world of Cipher. Lynn stated that she had fun with the game even though it was her first time, and asked all of the viewers to look forward to playing Cipher.
Over 24000 viewers tuned into the broadcast, posting more than 16000 live comments during the stream. Afterwards a poll conducted for the remaining viewers showed an enormously positive reception to the game, with 77.2% of responders ranking the livestream "Very fun," 17.7% "A little fun," 3.2% "plain," 1.1% "Not very fun," and 0.8% "Not fun."
Today's article was made possible by the donations of our patrons at Patreon. The Lycian League is funded by public contributions from readers like you.
Today is the launch day for the Lycian League, a Fire Emblem Cipher-centric news organization that aims to provide comprehensive coverage on Nintendo & Intelligent System's latest trading card game. We will provide information regarding tournament play, events going on both in Japan and internationally, as well as upcoming booster sets and starter decks.
Our goal at the present is to raise awareness about the game and help foster a community for our readership, by translating relevant Japanese-language materials and starting up local organized play for the Japanese TCG in the United States and other English-speaking countries. In the long term we intend to help support Nintendo and Intelligent Systems in bringing the game over to the international market.
You can support us by donating to our main branch (which is Cardfight!! Vanguard centric but which covers the costs of Lycian League) at Patreon. Card shops, suppliers and other businesses may want to consider advertising with us; you may contact our senior editor through the main branch email, vanguardunitedstates@gmail.com.
on the 25th. The shop tournament was a small eight-man tournament, held in a Swiss Draw format. The tournament winner eschewed several of the common staples that have taken root in other decks, avoiding the popular cost 4 Marth and Caeda duo that have had so much success in these first days of tournament play.
. Each sealed first editions of the guide will include two holographic rare prints of the promotional card "Enigmatic Tactician, Robin (Male)," which will be exclusive to this guidebook.
. Their most recent issue features Phoenix Wright and Fire Emblem Fates
.
This deck's trump cards are the promoted prints of Lucina and Cordelia, the former of which can stack the top 2 cards of the deck to predetermine support checks, and the latter can attack again after successfully defeating an enemy--including the opponent's main character. Cordelia is a force to be reckoned with in tournament play, as it's infinitely easier for an attack to hit in Cipher than it in other games, and with Princess Minerva to negate the effective bonus of archers against Flying units it can be very difficult to bring Cordelia down in spite of having low base power for a cost 3. Haro P's full decklist is transcribed below.
, Protector of the Halidom, Chrom
, Bewitching Shaman from Plegia, Tharja
, and the 25th anniversary dot character sleeves
. Each sleeve measures 67x92 millimeters, and each pack of sleeves contains 65 sleeves. The 25th anniversary sleeves are decorated with the map sprites of the lords from the current thirteen Fire Emblem games, with Fire Emblem 7: Blazing Blade represented three times over by Hector, Eliwood and Lyn.
