News: Tiki, Marth, Lucina, and Gaius in Second Set of Fire Emblem Cipher Sleeves

The next set of Fire Emblem Cipher sleeves have been announced for a September 10th launch date, just seven days prior to the launch of S02: Godflame of Light and Dark. The sleeves will feature "Hero to His Country, Marth" "Knower of the Future, Lucina" "Princess of the Divine Dragon Tribe, Tiki" and "Sweetest Assassin, Gaius." Tiki and Gaius were both voted for by fans during the game's prerelease livestream as the cards they would most like to see used as a sleeve. Each sleeve measures 67x92 millimeters, and 65 sleeves will come in every sealed package. Packs of sleeves will retail for 760 yen before tax, approximately $6 at the present exchange rate.

News: Multicolor Tiki Wins Kamata Tournament, Marth Tops Yellow Submarine Tourney

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July 4th, 2015. The Nanba branch of Hobby Base Yellow Submarine hosted an 8-person bracket Cipher tournament, as a buildup to its 16-person tournament on the 20th. Tournament winner Shibano played a Sword of Light deck, focusing on one of the more visible strategies of the Japanese Warblade of Heroes format; "Marth beatdown," quickly building up a field of low cost attackers and driving the opponent to a critical point in orbs remaining, before finishing them off with the reversal skill of "Hero to His Country, Marth." Marth's skill gives all of his allied cards +30 attack to ensure that the minimum number of attacks needed to deal the final blow will hit. Along with Inigo Harem (sometimes called "Flying Inigo") and Lissa-NoNo drawbeat, Marth beatdown is one of the first deck archetypes to be formally recognized by the Japanese play community.

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Shibano attributed his win to "Princess of the Divine Dragon Tribe, Tiki" whose support skill allows a card to be placed from the hand to the bond zone when Tiki is support checked. If her support skill activates early enough, it can allow for an abnormal disparity in the number of bonds controlled to arise, allowing for exponentially more units to be deployed each turn. The deck has an enormous advantage when going first, as that also allows for it to regularly maintain more bonds than the opponent already, and Tiki exacerbates this.

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A Sword of Light deck also topped at Grand Panda Canyon's 16-person Swiss Draw shop tournament on the same day, but this one integrated multicolored support to make use of Tiki's higher-cost forms, and the Pegasus Knight support that has been so overwhelmingly popular since the set's launch. Cordelia and Sumia together give the deck overwhelming offensive options, while leveling up Tiki from her cost 2 Mark of Naga stage to her cost 5 Sword of Light stage. Because the deck makes use of cards that cross color lines, its strategies are impossible for monocolor decks. This deck hues very close to Lyndis' deck from Card Kingdom Akihabara's shop tournament just a three days prior, with one Gordin being swapped out for another copy of Linde. It is unlikely that this is the same player; Lyndis' deck is distinguished by her playset of cost 2 Tiki's alternate artwork.

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Master's Guild also held an 8-person Swiss Draw shop tournament on the 4th, which accounts for the sole pure-Naga victory that is not an Inigo deck. While the Inigo Harem has flourished as one of the more difficult matchups of the format, Chrom has thus far languished in obscurity due to a combination of slow buildup, a lack of early or midgame options, and very little in terms of true acceleration when compared to the red and multicolor decks. Basic Chrom gains +10 power for every class changed unit in play, even during the opponent's turn, but this skill itself highlights the deck's core weakness--class changing takes too long. The majority of decks run a disproportionate number of cost 1 cards compared to their cost 2, 3, 4, and 5 cards, and getting enough bonds to pay the promotion costs of these high-level cards is exceptionally difficult because unlike Marth, Chrom has no way to do bond acceleration inside his own color. Moreover, in the time taken to set up class changed units it's easier to promote Chrom himself and lose his skill, and promoting contributes more base power than Chrom's ability will under most circumstances. For that very reason, the Chrom deck is an inversion of the Marth deck, running as many copies of promoted Chrom as possible rather than as few as possible.

"Protector of Ylisse, Chrom" still relies on class-changing, but has a more sensible once-per-turn skill rather than a weaker continuous one. When an ally class changes, that unit gets +20 attack and the number of orbs it breaks becomes 2 until the end of the turn, both making it easier to hit the opponent and helping to compensate for the later stage the deck functions at by dealing more damage at the endgame. Where the deck excels defensively is with "Red-eyed Bull, Sully" and "Blue-eyed Panther, Stahl" whose Aegis skills prevent all enemies with Bow, Tome, or Dragonstone from attacking, completely shutting down the opponent's ranged combat options. This punishes the opponent for trying to set up promoted ranged units like Gordin and Merric, and forces them to expose their main character onto the vanguard line to attack, rather than turtling in the rearguard.

Doga will choke this point!

Finally, a multicolored Tiki deck made first at Card Land Kamata's 14-person Swiss Draw tournament on July 5th. Like Chrom above, Tiki is new territory for tournament play. The Manakete build was theorized as early as magazine previews for the game, where the cost 5 "Manakete Princess, Tiki" was repeatedly billed as a strong main character candidate, but until now the deck has been held back by the heavily Falchion-centric metagame.

Both Chrom and Marth have the Falchion skills that give them +20 attack while doing battle with Dragon affinity cards, and in a format where Sword of Light is one of the most played decks this has made things very hard on Tiki. By running a "Altea's Shield, Draug" who can redirect attacks away from Tiki and onto himself, the Kamata player was able to negate the benefits of these abilities. Draug's other ability gives him +20 when attacked by anything other than Tome affinity cards, giving him concrete staying power.


This gives Manakete Princess full reign to add extra bond cards each turn, allowing the free play of high cost units for more powerful fields, and in turn giving way to more balanced deckbuilding. In contrast to Chrom and Marth, because the Manakete strategy rewards the late-game plays more proportionally to the amount of setup those plays require, it cultivates a deck better distributed among different costs rather than being skewed to either low or high cost units.





Yellow Submarine (Nanba branch) shop tournament
First place: Shibano/シバノ
Deck name: Monodark/暗黒単
Cost 5: 2
x2 Hero to His Country, Marth
Cost 4: 16
x4 Sage of Gales, Merric
x4 Lodestar, Marth
x4 Crimson Reaper, Navarre
x4 Angelic Advocate of Affection, Caeda
Cost 3: 3
x3 Steel Swordsman, Ogma
Cost 2: 8
x4 Winds of Restoration, Caeda
x4 Princess of Altea, Elice
Cost 1: 21
x1 Crown-prince of Altea, Marth (Main character)
x4 Mage of Winds, Merric
x4 Talysian Mercenary, Ogma
x4 Crimson Fencer, Navarre
x4 Liberation Army Archer, Gordin
x4 Princess of the Divine Dragon Tribe, Tiki

Grand Panda Canyon shop tournament
Cost 5: 3
x1 Hero to His Country, Marth
x2 Manakete Princess, Tiki
Cost 4: 7
x4 Lodestar, Marth
x3 Angelic Advocate of Affection, Caeda
Cost 3: 12
x4 Pegasus Knight Paragon, Cordelia
x2 Archanean League Bowman, Gordin
x4 Gentle Flower of the Shepherds, Sumia
x2 Aura's Heiress, Linde
Cost 2: 9
x4 Sentimental Divine Dragon, Tiki
x2 Princess of Altea, Elice
x3 Wellspring of Youth, Nowi
Cost 1: 19
x1 Crown-Prince of Altea, Marth (Main Character)
x4 Young Prodigy, Cordelia
x4 Maiden of Flower Fortunes, Sumia
x2 Ascetic Saint, Lena
x4 Crown-Princess of Talys, Caeda
x4 Liberation Army Archer, Gordin

Master's Guild shop tournament
Cost 4: 5
x4 Protector of Ylisse, Chrom
x1 Exalted Strategist, Robin
Cost 3: 11
x1 Princess of Ylisse, Lissa
x3 Blue-eyed Panther, Stahl
x1 Stoic Swordsman, Lon'qu
x3 Red-eyed Bull, Sully
x2 Warm-hearted Guard Captain, Frederick
x1 Duke of Rosanne, Virion
Cost 2: 2
x2 Sacred Descendant, Lucina
Cost 1: 32
x2 Crown-prince of Yllise, Chrom (Main character)
x3 Sprightly Cleric, Lissa
x2 Young Prodigy, Cordelia
x2 Maiden of Fortune Flowers, Sumia
x3 Gynophobic Swordsman, Lon'qu
x2 Childish Mage, Ricken
x2 Aristocratic Archer, Virion
x2 Brazen Scarlet Knight, Sully
x3 Podunk Hero, Vaike
x2 Intellectual Inquirer, Miriel
x2 Sharp-tongued Noblewoman, Maribelle
x3 Forgotten Knight, Kellam
x2 Amnesia-stricket Tactician, Robin (Female)
x2 Good-natured Azure Knight, Stahl

Card Land (Kamata branch) shop tournament
Cost 5: 4
x4 Manakete Princess, Tiki
Cost 3: 14
x3 Wellspring of Youth, Nowi
x3 Gentle Flower of the Shepherds, Sumia
x4 Altea's Shield, Draug
x3 Innocent Priestess, Maria
x1 Sweetest Assassin, Gaius
Cost 2: 13
x2 Sentimental Divine Dragon, Tiki
x3 Wyvern Rider in the Iron Mask, Gerome
x4 Fearless Mercenary, Gregor
x4 Wings of Restoration, Caeda
Cost 1: 19
x1 Princess of the Divine Dragon Tribe, Tiki (Main character)
x4 Tomboyish Manakete, Nowi
x4 Maiden of Fortune Flowers, Sumia
x3 Jet Black Ace, Gerome
x4 Protective Knight, Draug
x3 Young Princess of Macedon, Maria

Price Guide: Week of 6/21 Through 6/28

The following is a price guide for the week of 6/21/2015 through the week of 6/28/2015, comprising the primary high-rarity cards from B01: Warblade of Heroes. Rather than relying on auction sites to determine prices, the prices given below are based on averaging the day to day most expensive cards at Card Kingdom's Akihabara branch, at Grand Panda Canyon in Akiba, and at Cardbox Japan. Future guides will include additional retailers' in the price averages; at this time Card Kingdom and GPC are two of the biggest shops in the secondary market, with Cardbox being secondary to them, and web stores have yet to seriously adopt Cipher. In general GPC's prices are slightly higher than Card Kingdom's. The timeframe for the weeks given below is more limited than it may appear; Cipher launched on the 25th and the first price lists from a shop came out on the 24th, while the week of 6/28 ends on the 1st of July. 7/6/2015: Finalized prices for the week of 6/28 ending on 7/1 are now up.

Although most of the cards that made this list are Super Rare or above, the promotional cards "Prince of Piercing Principles, Chrom" and "Stoic Prince, Marth" are also included; unlike most promotional cards, these are not alternate artwork reprints of existing cards, but have a unique skillset and low availability. Chrom was given out to participants at official demo events of Fire Emblem Cipher, while a holographic print of Marth is packaged with the Japanese special edition of Fire Emblem: Fates. The difficulty of acquiring these cards and the small number distributed is driving up the price more than their skills.

"Knower of the Future, Lucina" is the breakout hit of the set, consistently outdoing other SR-rarity cards and coming out of this week at 1600 yen per card. Her signed SR+ print is currently the most expensive card in the game, averaging at the currency equivalent of over $50.

To convert from yen to US dollars, the quickest and easiest way is to introduce the decimal point two spaces in. So 400 yen becomes $4, and 4500 yen $45. However, this is only a pneumonic device, and should not be substituted for the real exchange rate. The real exchange rate of the yen is not 100 yen to $1 as is often thought, but is closer to 80 yen to $1 and fluctuates frequently. To get a truly accurate conversion, use either Google Finance's currency conversion or another financial exchange service.

Hero to His Country, Marth (SR)

230 yen (previous week) → 525 yen (current week)

Hero to His Country, Marth (SR+, signed)

2200 yen → 4180 yen

Angelic Advocate of Affection, Caeda (SR)

620 yen → 1200 yen

Angelic Advocate of Affection, Caeda (SR+, signed)

 1950 yen → 2640 yen

War-god of Talys, Ogma (SR)

200 yen → No data

Crimson Reaper, Navarre (SR)

230 yen → 330 yen

Crimson Reaper, Navarre (SR+, signed)

No data → 1500 yen

Manakete Princess, Tiki (SR)

830 yen → 1050 yen

Sable Order, Camus (SR)

150 yen → No data

New Exalt, Chrom (SR)

420 yen → No data

Knower of the Future, Lucina (SR)

 1110 yen → 1480 yen

Knower of the Future, Lucina (SR+, signed)

 5240 yen → 5880 yen

Sweetest Assassin, Gaius (SR)

250 yen → 300 yen

Pegasus Knight Paragon, Cordelia (SR)

970 yen → 1300 yen

Mage of Dark Obsessions, Tharja (SR)

660 yen → 1030 yen

Mage of Dark Obsessions, Tharja (SR+)

No data → 1400 yen

Chosen Warrior of Hope, Owain (SR)

50 yen → No data

Prince of Piercing Principles, Chrom (P01-005PR)

No data → 875 yen

Stoic Prince, Marth (P01-003PR)

No data → 1000 yen

News: War of Darkness Tops Card Kingdom Shop Tournament

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)