How to Play Fire Emblem Cipher

Fire Emblem Cipher is a wargame transplanted into card form. Prior to playing, each player chooses a card from their deck to be their main character unit (主人公 shujinkou; protagonist, head of house) and sets it face-down in the vanguard area. During gameplay, this card is marked with either a special colored card, a die or other marker to indicate that they are the main character. This character represents the player, and acts as the traditional lord in a Fire Emblem game does--if the main character is defeated, the entire army will fall with them. Thus the object of the game is to defeat the opponent's main character while they have no orbs in play. Any card with a deployment cost of 1 can be set the main character, and in a best of three set a different main character can be chosen each game.

After setting one's main character face-down, both players draw a hand of six cards, and both have one opportunity to shuffle them back into the deck and redraw their hand. This is to prevent one from having a completely unplayable hand; the idea is to have at least one cost 1 unit in hand at the beginning of the game. If one chooses to redraw, they must put back their entire hand--the number of cards redrawn cannot be less than six. Once both players have finalized their hands, turn order for the game is decided randomly, and they place the top five cards of their deck into their orb area.

These five orbs represent the five orbs of the Fire Emblem shield; if all five are destroyed, the shield loses its power, and the main character is left vulnerable. Hence if the main character is defeated in a battle while no orbs remain, that player loses the game. The object of the game is to destroy all five of the opponents orbs and then defeat them in a battle. Each time the main character is defeated, one of their orbs breaks and is sent to that player's hand. This creates a continual rise and fall in advantage, as even a player who has the lead in orbs cannot completely overwhelm their opponent because the act of damaging them gives them more resources to play.

A deck must consist of at least 50 cards, but has no upper limit. Each card's card name (カード名) is made up of two parts, its title (称号) and its unit name (ユニット名).  At maximum, you may have four copies of a card with the exact same card name in a deck. (So you may have four "Lodestar, Marth" and four "Prince of Altea, Marth" in one deck, but you may not have five "Lodestar, Marth.") In all of the Lycian League's translations, the title and unit name will be separated by a comma for clarification; on the cards the title and unit name are simply separated by a long space.

As can be seen above, the play area has two distinct places for units. The vanguard and rearguard are effectively "spaces" on the battlefield like on a map in Fire Emblem, and a unit's range determines which part of the field it can attack. A unit with a range of 2 that is in your vanguard can only attack the opponent's rearguard, but if that unit is moved to your own rearguard, it can only attack the opponent's vanguard. A unit with a range of 1 that is in your rearguard cannot attack anything, but a unit with a range of 1 in your vanguard can only attack the opponent's vanguard. (Because it is adjacent.) Units with a range of 1~2 are thus the most dangerous, because they can attack anywhere on the battlefield from the rearguard. There is no limit to how many units you may have in the vanguard or rearguard, but if the vanguard is ever entirely empty, all units on the rearguard will perform a "forward march" and move to the vanguard.

A turn is made up of five distinct phases. During the beginning phase, the current player's units all return to a pre-action state (vertically oriented; equivalent to standing in Cardfight!! Vanguard or untapping in Magic) and that player draws a card (unless it is the very first turn of the game). During the bond phase, that player may play one card from their hand to the bond zone. Bonds are used to pay costs; you can turn them face-down ("Reverse") in order to use certain skills. Reversed bonds will never become unreversed except by a card effect. Furthermore, in order to play an ally from your hand to the battlefield, you must have a bond with the same symbol as that card in your bond area, and a number of bonds greater than or equal to that unit's deployment cost. "Symbols" identify the group a card belongs to, which is also reflected by that card's color. The symbols break down like this;

• Archanea (FE1, FE3, FE11, FE12) cards are represented by the Sword of Light symbol (the upper half of the original falchion) and are red.
• Ylisse (FE13) cards are represented by the Mark of Naga symbol and are blue.
• Fire Emblem Fates (FE14) is split between cards from Birthright (white) and Conquest (black.) Birthright is represented by the crest of Hoshido, and Conquest by the crest of Nohr.

As more games have their characters added, new symbols and colors are introduced. Be aware that a reversed card has no symbol, and hence only contributes colorless bonds when paying costs.

Each card has only one symbol; in this sample card, the symbol is the small icon on the left side below the card's cost (the number 1). So to play "Prince of the Halidom Ylisse, Chrom" you must have a card in your bond area with the Awakening symbol. The fastest way to get Chrom into play from your hand is to run him in a pure blue deck, which contains only Awakening-series characters.

During the deployment phase, you play units from your hand to the vanguard or rearguard areas, and move units between those areas. Moving a unit will cause it to go into the actioned state, being turned horizontal. To deploy units, you must have a number of bonds in your bond area that are greater than or equal to the deployment cost of those units. If you are playing a multicolored deck, you do not need to have all blue cards to play a unit, you only need to have the number of cards in your bond area match that unit's cost.

So if you have 4 red and 1 blue cards in your bond area, but have a blue card with a cost of 5, you can still play that card because there is at least one blue card in your bond area.

Characters may attack in the same turn they are placed. You may not have multiple units with the same unit name in play (you can only have either "Prince of Altea, Marth" or "Lodestar, Marth" on the field, not both). There are no limits to the number of units or bonds you may have in play, nor to the number of cards in your hand. During the deployment phase you can also level up a unit into a unit of the same class if they share their unit names, or class change into that unit into a new class.

When leveling up, you pay the new card's deployment cost just as if you had played it from hand, hence the primary reason to run the base form of that card is so that it can be your lord. For example, I can level up the cost 1 "Divine Dragon Princess, Tiki" into the cost 5 "Manakete Princess, Tiki" by playing Manakete Princess over my existing Divine Dragon while having 5 bonds to pay for the deployment cost. This is a level-up and not a class change because both cards have the same class (Manakete), both are unpromoted units, and Manakete Princess has no promotion cost.

When class changing, you instead decrease the cost of the new unit by paying its promotion cost instead of the deployment cost. Only promoted units have this cost, while unpromoted units do not. The promotion cost is a smaller number below the deployment cost that indicates how many bonds you must pay to play it if you have a card with that card's unit name in play. In the sample card at right, "Hero to His Country, Marth" has a deployment cost of 5 and a promotion cost of 4. Thus if you have any other Marth card in play, you only need 4 bonds in play to put "Hero to His Country" over your existing Marth. Furthermore, when you class change you also draw a card, so you don't lose anything from hand and this is actually an improvement over not running the base form at all since you still get a unit for the early game. Generally the promotion cost is less than the deployment cost of a unit as a trade-off for needing that unit's basic form in play in order to play it.

During the action phase, you can use your units' Action skills by paying their costs, as well as initiate attacks, beginning an attack phase. To attack with a unit you must turn it to the actioned state, and hence cannot attack with a unit unless it is in its pre-action state. You must also have a valid target for an attack, an enemy that is within your unit's range, and that unit must have a weapon emblem that allows it to attack--sword, axe, lance, tome, dragonstone, or one of many others. Emblem are located below a unit's symbol; in the Marth card shown above, Marth has the emblems "male" and "sword." The sword icon allows him to do battle. Units with the just stave emblem cannot attack, and so do not have a range value.

When attacking with a unit, the battle phase progresses in several steps;

• The attacking unit chooses a target.
• Both players place the top cards of their decks face-up into the support area. If the revealed cards have a support value, the attacking player's support value is added to the attacking unit's attack, and the defending player's support value is added to the defending unit's attack. (If a revealed card has the same unit name as the unit it was revealed for, it is sent to the retreat area without its effects being applied.)
• Support skills resolve. These skills activate only when the card that has them is revealed during the support check. The support checked cards are then sent to the retreat area.
• The attacking player may choose to discard a card with the same unit name as the attacking unit to perform a critical hit, doubling that unit's attack power. (i.e. "Lodestar, Marth" can be discarded to double the attack power of "Hero to His Country, Marth")
• The defending player may choose to discard a card with the same unit name as the defending unit to perform "godspeed evasion," completely nullifying the attack.
• Damage calculation. If the defending unit's power is less than or equal to the attacking unit's, the attacking unit wins the battle. If the defending unit's power is greater, battle ends with both sides safe.
• If the defending unit was defeated, and it was the main character, an orb is sent to the defending player's hand. If they have no orbs when the defending unit is defeated, they lose the game. If the defending unit was instead an ally, it is sent to the retreat area.

On the first turn of the game, the player that goes first cannot attack. After the action phase, the end phase takes place. Any skills which resolve in the end phase are resolved, and the turn then passes to the next player.

If your deck runs out of cards during a game, there is no deck out; instead the retreat area is shuffled into the deck.

Skills and Resolution

Formation Skills are paid for by an action cost; this means you turn the unit sideways, just as if you were moving or attacking with it. In addition to Formation Skills, there are also five types of regular skill represented by a specific color;

• Auto skills activate with an automatic timing, i.e. "when this unit attacks," "at the beginning of your deployment phase," and so on.
• Permanent skills are always active as long as a card is on the field and its conditions are met.
• Action skills can be optionally used during the action phase. These typically have either action costs, or reverse costs, meaning they require bonds to be flipped face-down to use.
• Special skills do not fall under other categories, and have unconventional effects like bringing cards out of the retreat area, preventing a unit from being put in specific areas, or treating a card as another card.
• Support skills activate when the card with the skill is revealed during a support check.

"Destroyed" versus "Destroyed by battle"

Cards make the distinction between a card being "destroyed" (破壊) versus being "destroyed by battle," (撃破) chiefly with regards to orbs. If a skill allows you to destroy a card by battle, and a main character is a valid target for that skill, then it becomes possible for that main character to be destroyed by battle through the card effect, causing their controller to draw an orb. The main character will never be sent to the retreat area, but this is important because there are skills which cause a card to destroy itself, and these cards can be set as your main character. In the event that a card simply says "destroyed," if it is used on the main character, it does not break an orb. As of Booster Set 01, all cards that say "destroyed" only refer to orbs, not to units--but the importance of "destroyed by battle" should still be kept in mind.

This article was made possible using the translations of Dan, Aubergine, audiotronica, and the Serenes Forest translation community.