Final Fantasy Trading Cards Games
Card of the week 2021-11-11 18:08:34

Crystal Dominion Card of the Week - Ardyn


Ardyn from FINAL FANTASY XV

Greetings, everyone! This is FFTCG Producer Tarou Kageyama. This will be the last Card of the Week for this series—time really flies. I appreciate that you’ve all stuck around until the very end. This time, I’ll be introducing Ardyn [15-129L] from KINGSGLAIVE FINAL FANTASY XV. Let’s take a deep dive into the power of this Dark Legend card!

Ardyn 15-129L

Ardyn [15-129L] is a 5 CP Forward with 9000 power. The CP-to-power ratio is average for a Dark card, but such a card usually has powerful and unique abilities, so let’s take a look. Ardyn [15-129L] has only one auto ability, but this auto ability is a powerful and very unique one, just like I mentioned earlier.

“When Ardyn enters the field, discard your hand. When you do so, your opponent selects 1 more than the number of discarded cards from 3 following actions. Your opponent can select the same action more than once.

  • Your opponent selects 1 Character they control. Put it into the Break Zone.
  • Your opponent puts the top 20 cards of their deck into the Break Zone.
  • Ardyn deals your opponent 1 point of damage."

Discarding your entire hand! That is a very big disadvantage state to intentionally put yourself in. As you know, your hand also serves as CP, your resources, so the notion of unnecessary cards in your hand doesn’t exist in this game. That being said, what you get in return through this ability is worth this huge disadvantage. Your opponent must select 1 more than the number of cards you discarded from the 3 actions above. So, for example, if you discard 3 cards, your opponent must select to perform 4 actions, each time choosing from the 3 possible options; and if you discard 5 cards, they must select to perform 6 actions. Furthermore, all 3 of the options are quite detrimental to your opponent. Though your opponent has say in which options to choose, you’ll be able to achieve great benefits, no matter which options are chosen. The more cards you discard, the bigger the impact; so, if possible, cover the cost using 5 Backups, which would be the ideal way to cast Ardyn [15-129L] as you won’t need to discard any cards from your hand. Furthermore, if you have Backups lined up, you can also recover quickly from having 0 cards in your hand. As such, it would be better to have lots of Backups in this sense as well. That being said, if you are able make your opponent select 3 or 4 actions to perform, then the card is doing more than enough as a 5 CP Forward; so, depending on the situation, one possibility to consider is to discard 1 card from your hand and play Ardyn [15-129L] sooner than later.

Ardyn [15-129L] has a powerful ability, but there is one point you need to be careful about when using it. Unlike such cards as Neo Exdeath [12-110L], there isn’t much meaning in playing this card as soon as possible. This is an extreme example, but let’s say you go first, play Ardyn [15-129L] on your first turn, and demand your opponent to select 3 actions to perform from the options. Your opponent can dodge this as if nothing happened by selecting “put 1 Character in the Break Zone” 3 times. Of course, this is the most straightforward situation I’m presenting as an example, and nobody would actually play like this; but even in other situations, you are taking a big risk by discarding your entire hand, so it will be important to use this card while thinking about achieving the highest efficiency.

This wraps up the Card of the Week columns for Crystal Dominion. I’ll see you all again when we restart the columns for Emissaries of Light, the booster pack scheduled for release in March 2022.