News: Second Wave of Cipher Packaging Shown on Official Site

Today the Japanese Fire Emblem Cipher portal updated with images of the upcoming starter decks S03: Birthright and S04: Conquest, as well as the second booster set B02: Soulful Flames of Light and Dark. The starter decks will provide full support for the colors white and black, representing the Hoshido and Nohr factions from Fire Emblem Fates, and will retail for 1300 yen each (approximately $10.50 at the present exchange rate). The second booster set, which launches in Japan on September 17th, will likewise include cards designed to enhance each color. Like Warblade of Heroes before it, Soulful Flames of Light and Dark will include ten cards in each booster pack, and sixteen booster packs in each sealed box of the set. MSRP for the booster packs is 350 yen each (~$2.83) and 5600 yen per box (~$45).

The Hoshido and Nohr factions supported by Soulful Flames were originally introduced as promotional cards packaged with Warblade of Heroes boxes. Cipher is handling the split version mechanic of Fire Emblem Fates by representing the protagonist of Birthright as the male incarnation of Corrin, and the protagonist of Conquest as their female incarnation. So far all known Corrin prints can also be treated as having the Hoshidan or Nohrian symbols, allowing white and black decks to be efficiently mixed together, though each of their skills still draw power boosts from their respective black and white colors.

The third booster set, which has no formal title nor announced launch date, will continue to support the factions from Fates while also introducing Tellius cards from Path of Radiance.

News: Kozaki Hints at International Release for Fire Emblem Cipher

July 2nd, 2015. At this year's Japan Expo in Paris, Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates character designer Kozaki Yuusuke held both a signing, and a panel to address questions from his fans. When asked as to if Fire Emblem Cipher would be coming to the west, Kozaki speaking through a translator hinted that this option was on the table;

Nous devons voir comment le jeu marche au Japon avant de le sortir en Europe et en Amérique.
We must see how the game does in Japan before releasing it in Europe and in America.

While normally one would expect Kozaki to issue no comment on the question, his statement suggests that Nintendo and Intelligent Systems have already been considering the viability of an international release. Kozaki has been deeply involved with Cipher from the beginning, most recently having introduced the game to the general public alongside Intelligent Systems staff in a pre-launch box opening and game demo streamed in late June. Along with his core artwork for Awakening and Fates, he also illustrates cards for Cipher. He has also been a regular at Japan Expo for several years now.

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News: Booster Set 01: Warblade of Heroes, Starter Decks Launch

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.

The official Cipher Twitter account tweeted in commemoration of the launch.

“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.

Image credit

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.

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