News: Shop Tournaments for June and July

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.