Tears of the Planet - Card of The Week - Sephiroth [25-025L]

Hello everyone, this is Tarou Kageyama, producer of FFTCG. This is the fifth and final installment of Card of the Week, where I'm introducing never before seen cards from the new Booster Pack “Tears of the Planet” releasing on March 28th. I would like to thank everyone for reading up to this point. And thank you for reading this week’s installment as well. The last character I will be introducing from the “Tears of the Planet” series is Sephiroth [25-025L]. His design is different from previous iterations and showcases his younger appearance from FINAL FANTASY VII EVER CRISIS. Let’s look at this card.

Sephiroth [25-025L] is an Ice Legend and a Job Soldier Forward with 4CP and 8000 power. He has 4 abilities: the Keyword Ability First Strike, a Field Ability that grants First Strike, an Auto Ability that activates each time a Forward with First Strike attacks, and a Special Ability “Astral Gate” that simply inflicts damage.

Sephiroth [25-025L] has First Strike as a Keyword Ability, but iterations of Sephiroth with First Strike as a default besides this card date all the way back to the 2 Sephiroth cards included in Opus I (Sephiroth [1-044R] and Sephiroth [1-186L]). Furthermore, Ice Forwards with First Strike are quite rare, making this a unique type of card in that regard as well.

As mentioned earlier, Sephiroth [25-025L]’s abilities specialise in First Strike. First, his Field Ability is simple: “The Job Soldier Forwards other than Sephiroth you control gain First Strike.” First Strike is quite a tricky ability to deal with, enabling you to break your opponent’s card unilaterally if the power of the blocking card is less than or equal to that of the attacking card, or if you’re able to inflict damage with a Summon etc., even when your opponent’s Forward has slightly higher power.

Next, what happens when its Auto Ability for “when a Forward with First Strike you control attacks” is triggered? Well, the effect “your opponent discards 1 card” will activate as a result. You can force the opponent to discard a card just by attacking, and because your cards have First Strike making them harder to block, your opponent may find themselves bracing for a flurry of attacks. You can really make life hard your opponent when your Forwards attack by forming a party, which puts them in an extremely tough spot by forcing multiple cards to be discarded, and making it easier to deal damage to the player (as the attacks will be incredibly difficult to block).

Job Soldier is concentrated around Fire, Ice, and Lightning, so it doesn’t seem difficult to also construct a deck centered around Jobs (although there are exceptions like Cloud [11-136S], which is Earth, and Bartz [1-081R], which is an anomaly). Additionally, this will be a secret trick, but you could also consider adopting cards such as Gilgamesh (FFBE) [14-023L], which can have First Strike conditionally.

What did you think? Does the new Sephiroth [25-025L] inspire you to construct a deck?

That concludes the Card of the Week for “Tears of the Planet.” I hope everyone enjoys the new booster pack. I will see you again for “Gunslinger in the Abyss” releasing on August 8th!