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: 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: A Tribute to Iwata Satoru, Dead at Fifty-five

Today Nintendo announced the death of Iwata Satoru on July 11th 2015, from a cancerous growth in his bile duct. It was this same condition which prevented his presence at E3 last year, for which he had undergone surgery. Born on December 6th 1959 (Shōwa 34), Iwata died at the too-young age of fifty-five, making his thirteen years the shortest reign of any President of Nintendo. Since 2002 his radical vision for the future has repeatedly redefined the company's position in relation to the rest of the market, and set it above and beyond the scope of competing developers. Nintendo has lost its greatest President, and the fans have lost one of their best friends.

Iwata is someone that we cannot write about impersonally. Composing an exhaustive list of all the games he contributed to in life is likely impossible; Iwata was a constant presence working alongside Nintendo's development staff even after ascending to the position of President, and for every game he worked on there lies a story and more uncredited work behind it. Several of his contributions only became known years after the fact, and there's likely still more that will never be public knowledge. While Iwata is famous for reprogramming EarthBound from scratch midway through its development, for this editor Iwata's greatest accomplishments were in the late 90s and early 2000s. We first came to know Iwata through his work on Super Smash Bros. Melee, on which many sleepovers and afternoons were spent. Even now the arguments over whether Marth or Roy was better still come to mind. The handheld Kirby games filled many long car rides across the United States, and in each of his games a small piece of Iwata's soul touched our lives. His revolutionary direction as President fundamentally changed Nintendo into a developer for more than just gamers, achieving a level of proliferation with the Wii that the press could never have anticipated. His policies of openness between developers and fans lead to the creation of Iwata Asks, a column hosted on Nintendo's official site in which he would interview game developers about their upcoming projects. With Iwata gone, the future of the column is uncertain.

Iwata was the first President of Nintendo to cut his teeth on programming video games before ever ascending to the position, but what characterized his career most strongly was how he retained a developer's mindset even after succeeding President Yamauchi. Setting him apart from the distant Yamauchi was that while Yamauchi died having never played a video game, Iwata had hands-on experience with both playing and developing games. To prevent new titles from languishing in obscurity, he gave his seal of approval to games that would have otherwise struggled to find funding. (Of note is that several years prior to his presidency, Iwata was one of the executive producers for Doshin the Giant. Could such a bizarre game have ever existed if Iwata and Miyamoto hadn't done the executive coordination to get it funded?) His constant involvement with a huge variety of Nintendo's titles left Iwata's mark everywhere. The compression tools he created doubled the content of Pokémon Gold & Silver, and the debugging work he did over the course of three weeks on Melee was some of the most important ever done in the field. His code now lives on forever in the screens of the annual Apex and EVO tournaments.

Following his sudden departure, Iwata's place is being filled by representative directors Takeda Genyo and Miyamoto Shigeru. Our prayers are with them during this difficult time. Several insensitive comments have already been made regarding Iwata's death and this year's E3. Please be respectful of the Iwata family's grief in the days ahead, as well as that of his friends' and coworkers'.

Feature: Booster 1: Warblade of Heroes Box Opening

Our Cipher orders arrived earlier this week, so it's high time we get on with our first box opening. In addition to the Warblade of Heroes booster box we also ordered a War of Darkness starter deck and 25th Anniversary sleeves. We made our purchase on AmiAmi prior to the game's availability over Amazon; AmiAmi's base price was the most competitive online at the time, but once shipping is factored in it only becomes worthwhile if you're ordering additional products (or multiple boxes) on top of that.

Whether Amazon is worth your money now that there's several import services getting in on Cipher depends on your order; several Amazon sellers are offering free shipping but charging ~$70 per item, while AmiAmi is doing EMS shipping that will generally work out in the range of $30~36 depending on how many items you order and their combined weight, but only charging ~$40 per box. So if you're ordering multiple boxes, AmiAmi will generally work out as a better deal than buying through Amazon--two boxes on Amazon is ~$140, whereas on AmiAmi that would work out to ~$110. But if you're only ordering one, Amazon is better suited for that.

Our promo for the box is "Princess of Nohr, Corrin (♀)." Each Warblade of Heroes box comes with a print of either Corrin (♀) or Corrin (♂).

Each side of the box contains eight packs, with ten cards in each; depending on which card is the Rare or Super Rare, there are either 5 blue and 5 red cards in each pack, or 4 of one color and 6 of another. Each side contains six Rares and two Super Rare or higher cards.

Our first Super Rare was actually a signed Super Rare+! "Angelic Advocate of Affection, Caeda."

Our holos broke down as follows: "Eldest Pegasus Sister, Palla" (R), "Middle Pegasus Rider, Catria" (R), "Youngest Pegasus Sister, Est" (R), "Princess, Minerva" (R), "Angelic Advocate of Affection, Caeda" (SR+), "Gentle Flower of the Shepherds, Sumia" (R), "Pegasus Knight Paragon, Cordelia" (SR), "Wellspring of Youth, Nowi" (R), "Demure Dancer, Olivia" (R), "Man of Flower's Fragrance, Inigo" (R), "Sweetest Assassin, Gaius" (SR), "Guardian of Rosanne, Cherche" (R), "Exalted Strategist, Robin (♀)" (R), "Princess of Ylisse, Lissa" (R), "Chosen Warrior of Hope, Owain" (SR), and "Stoic Swordsman, Lon'qu" (R).

Overall the total value of the box's contents ranges from $70~$92 depending on whether you're looking at averages or peak highs for each card. Caeda and Cordelia together pushed up the cumulative value immensely. The pulls were about as blue as you can get; 11 blue holos and 5 red.

All of our red Normal and High Normal pulls.

All of our blue Normal and High Normal pulls. In total we're 14 cards short of having every nonsigned card in B01.

News: Marth Decks Dominate Tournament Results, Tops Akihabara Tourney

Chrom didn't make the cut in Super Smash Bros., and he's not making it in Cipher.

Ten new tournaments took place between June 2nd and July 6th. Of the eighteen tournaments that have been reported on since the game's launch last month, twelve of them have been won by Marth decks. Accordingly, red is also the most consistent top in the game. The second most played deck of the Warblade of Heroes format is Inigo Harem, which has easily surpassed Chrom as the primary deck of choice for blue. Marth decks cumulatively account for more than two thirds of tops, while Inigo makes up 17% of the top decks. The rest is spread between rogue decks that have only topped once. An index of the most recent tournaments is provided below.

Marth Tops Cardbox, Masters Square, Card Brunch Motomiya Tournaments

Inigo Harem Tops Game Plaza and Nerima Tournaments

Multicolor Tiki Wins Kamata Tournament, Marth Tops Yellow Submarine Tourney

What should be kept in mind with these results is that more than a hundred shop tournaments took place in June, and a hundred more will have finished by the end of this week. Only about 8% of all tournaments that happen are reported, and so we are generalizing from a very small sample of data that may be skewed by the low number of reporting card shops. Provided that it is accurate, the first two weeks of tournament play should not see this kind of gulf emerge between Sword of Light and Mark of Naga decks. An ideally diverse format would be split 50-50 between the two colors.

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On July 8th, Card Kingdom Akihabara held a 16-person double elimination tournament, which became the second consecutive top for Lyndis, winner of the previous Akihabara shop tournament. Lyndis' deck underwent several major revisions between tournaments, most notably removing her cost 2 Tikis in favor of running cost 1 Nowi to accelerate her bond zone instead, as well as cutting Sumia to make room for the Tharja line. Tharja has been an unpopular choice in both pure blue and multicolor decks, requiring heavy reversal costs and restrictive handsize conditions in order to force the opponent to discard and gain attack bonuses.

With particular regard to "Mage of Dark Obsessions, Tharja," the costs and difficulty of setup can be worth the investment. If Tharja's cost 3 print was class changed from either her cost 1 or cost 2 variants, her reverse 3 skill forces the opponent to discard 3 cards, which effectively counters most forms of acceleration due to the low availability of true card advantage in the game. Without cards in hand the opponent can't place bonds, deploy units, discard for evasion, or discard for critical hits; at best they must choose two of those options to be available to them, and sacrifice the rest.

King TCG held its second shop tournament over July 2nd, and uploaded the results of the tournament to YouTube on the 4th. While the previous tournament was won by a conventional Marth deck, in this tournament finals Ogma made a surprise appearance as the champion's main character of choice.  The majority of players stick to Marth because of his ability to move an opponent's unit, controllign their field and exposing them to attacks. It's this very quality that has reinforced the use of units with Flying, as their shared support skill allows one to move units without setting them to the actioned state, allowing them to move and attack in the same turn.

By playing Ogma instead, the tournament winner gave up these qualities for a better offensive game. Basic Ogma becomes a 60 attacker as long as there are two other cost 2 or less allies in play. In his promoted state as "Steel Swordsman, Ogma" he both gains +10 attack every time a cost 2 or less ally is deployed and gives +10 attack to the deployed unit, preventing the opponent's defensive checks from blocking their attacks. Steel Swordsman can also become a range 1~2 attacker by reversing one bond, which gives him comparative levels of field control to "Lodestar, Marth" since the opponent can't move their units out of Ogma's range. This also gives him the freedom to move to the rearguard area and attack from there, where the opponent can't reach him.

The Chrom player in the finals ultimately lost the game as a result of mismanaging their bonds, being unable to play the cards they had in hand due to a combination of not having the right colors face-up at key times, and not having enough to pay the costs. They were also unable to ever take the lead in orbs due to their preoccupation with attacking allied units rather than Ogma himself, whose power skill benefited from needing to deploy replacements.

Card Kingdom (Akihabara branch) shop tournament
First place: Lyndis/リンディス
Cost 5: 4
x2 Hero to His Country, Marth
x2 Manakete Princess, Tiki
Cost 4: 10
x4 Lodestar, Marth
x3 Angelic Advocate of Affection, Caeda
x3 Mage of Dark Obsessions, Tharja
Cost 3: 7
x3 Wellspring of Youth, Nowi
x4 Pegasus Knight Paragon, Cordelia
Cost 2: 7
x3 Princess of Altea, Elice
x2 Bewitching Plegian Shaman, Tharja
x2 New Exalt, Chrom
Cost 1: 22
x1 Crown-prince of Altea, Marth (Main character)
x2 Ascetic Saint, Lena
x4 Crown-princess of Talys, Caeda
x4 Practitioner of Dark Arts, Tharja
x4 Young Prodigy, Cordelia
x4 Tomboyish Manakete, Nowi
x3 Liberation Army Archer, Gordin

News: Nintendo Hosting FE0 Event at "25th Anniversary of Love and Courage"

The official Fire Emblem Cipher portal updated today with new event information for the end of July. On July 25th Nintendo will be hosting a special concert in commemoration of Fire Emblem's anniversary, "The 25th Anniversary of Love and Courage," and Cipher will have its own special gallery at the event space featuring prints of illustrations created for the game. Fans of Cipher will also be provided a space to play the game in, but only individuals aged twenty years and older will be able to attend. The anniversary will be held at the Tokyo Dome Hotel, and it will cost 4000 yen to enter.

The 25th anniversary concert is set to include a variety of merchandise, including a 2000 yen folding fan decorated with the body of the divine dragon Naga, a 12000 yen replica of Azura's pendant from Fire Emblem Fates, and a commemorative "One Hundred Poems of Heroes" (英雄百歌 Eiyuu Moka) box containing illustrations that tell the stories of the Fire Emblem cast across twenty-five years in the form of waka poetry.

Modeled after traditional poetry sets used for karuta matching games, the Hundred Poems will contain two hundred cards with each complete poem split between two cards (and thus two illustrations). The first hundred are intended to be read by a poetry reader, while the remaining hundred are used for two players to try and matching the second half of the poem to its first half before the first half can be read. The Hundred Poems box will also come with a booklet and a CD that can recite the poems in place of an actual reader. It will cost 8424 yen, approximately $70.

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