This weekend is my area's local anime convention, so I can't make it out to Commander tonight (nor Gundam on Sunday, yet again). While I may have forgotten to have any sort of post ready for when I went to Too Many Games about four weeks back, that's not the case for this week.
The last time I did one of these deck tech/"deck examination" type posts, I decided to go ahead and do a write-up on one of my favorite Commander decks. Fitting since it was posted on a Friday in lieu of going out to Commander night, at the time.
However, tonight, I'm taking a good look at one of my Final Fantasy TCG decks. Specifically my "first love" in the FFTCG, the deck I brought with me the very first time I tried to take on a Local Qualifier (where I got utterly thrashed since it was my first time, uh, actually playing FFTCG):
Dragoons. A solid, fairly budget-friendly list - though a few of the cards in it are a little pricey as of the writing of this post, the whole list will nonetheless be less expensive than a number of other decks in the current metagame, and comparable to a few others.
Let's get into it, shall we?
The Single Most Important Card in the Deck
We're going to start off with the one and only character in the deck that is not actually a Dragoon.
Alus, run at a playset of three copies, is the single most important card in the Dragoons list. Drawing cards is incredibly powerful, and while FFTCG already allows you to draw two cards per turn just as a default rule, Alus gives you high odds at drawing a third card, which is incredibly powerful in terms of the resource advantage that it will provide over the course of a game. Alus can also come in clutch at the end of the game to potentially remove a blocker on a game-winning turn.
With the way my list is constructed, the deck is 47 Dragoons - either Card Name Dragoon or Job Dragoon - and the only 3 cards that aren't are my copies of the Prince from Final Fantasy III.
Even if you disagree with any other aspect of my Dragoons list, you want three copies of the Prince.
There's Something Special About Her
If Alus is the single most important card in the deck for the sake of providing extra card draw and resources, Freya is the single most important name in the deck because of the power of the Burmecian Dragoon's Special Abilities.
Assuming you've never played the Final Fantasy TCG before, take a look at those Freyas above. Specifically the one that costs 3 and the one that costs 4. You see how they each have an ability that's named in bold, orange text and has a little red "S" as part of their cost alongside some number of Lightning CP?
To pay for the "S" on those costs, you need to discard another copy of a card named Freya. Any Freya, including the cost 2 Freya that doesn't have any such ability. The cost 2 Freya is also, coincidentally, the worst of the three Freyas, and is only in the deck for two reasons - one of them being her card name, meaning I can discard her for Cherry Blossom or Dragon's Crest.
The other reason is that she's both Lightning Element - meaning I can grab her to my hand if she's revealed off of either the cost 2 Aranea Forward or the cost 3 Ricard Backup - and Water Element, which means if I need to use Lunafreya from my Limit Break deck to dig a little deeper into my deck, I can use her to cover the requisite Water CP.
Back to the other two "good" Freyas: Cherry Blossom from the cost 3 is a powerfully scaling mass removal tool, with the deck being designed to dump Dragoons onto the field en masse, meaning it's almost laughably easy to have 4 or 5 Dragoons and have Cherry Blossom blast the opponent's entire field for 8k to 10k damage. Meanwhile, the cost 4 has two powerful targeted spot removal abilities - an attack auto ability that, simply put, unleashes a single-target Cherry Blossom to remove problem Forwards with each attack, and her Dragon's Crest Special, which is an even stronger single-target removal due to the fact that being based on Dragoons in the Break Zone means that it scales even higher, even faster than Cherry Blossom or the attack auto-ability.
The Best of the Rest
Limit Break Kain, released in Opus 25, was an outrageous benefit to Dragoons as a deck. Giving a strong 8k First Strike in the Limit Break, whose beefy 9 cost is reduced to an outright steal of 4 CP if you have even a few Dragoons in play. On top of being a powerful 8k body, much more importantly Kain provides much-desired recursion.
Being able to save Freyas from the Break Zone, both to replay one that's been subjected to removal or to simply provide another Freya to fuel another Special Ability without having to try drawing into one gives Dragoons more ready access to their most powerful removal pieces. And while Freya is one great target, most of the Dragoons in the list are well worth targeting for the return.
Among the many powerful Standard Unit Forwards in the deck that are Card Name Dragoon, the cost 2 that I affectionately refer to as "fat idiot" due to his absurdly scaling self-buff ability is one of the best available, offering an outrageously sturdy wall to hold off opposing aggression while you build up your backup line and general board state. I've had the "fat idiot" skyrocket to well above a 20k power, and with him being a Multiplayable card, you can have two or even all three copies in play at once and making an impenetrable wall of bodies that can turn around and attack when you're ready to finish the game out.
Also powerful is the cost 5 "Power Loss" Dragoon from Category FFEX, one of the few non-damage sources of removal in the Dragoons deck (which can be useful to get around a variety of Forwards that have abilities that prevent them from taking damage from Abilities). An 8k body for 5 isn't the best cost-to-power ratio, but that powerhouse removal - much like cost 4 Freya, single target but mighty - makes him far more than worth it. His biggest weakness is that at 8k power, he's susceptible to getting taken out by Amaterasu from any Fire deck, which will both stop the auto-ability and break the Dragoon itself.
While Alus is the single best card in the deck, and therefore single best backup in the deck, the rest of the deck's backups certainly don't skimp on the value.
Ricard of Final Fantasy II, the franchise's original Dragoon, gives you a deep dig into your deck, letting you grab any Lightning card you find within the top 5 - and with every card in the deck being Lightning, that means you'll get to take your pick from the revealed cards. In a pinch, he can throw First Strike out on to one of your other Forwards - the cost 2 Standard Unit just above, who would admittedly shrink a little bit from the loss of a Dragoon on Board, being a prime candidate if you need one - making them much safer to block with, or to win a combat trade when attacking.
The rest of my Backup Line, aside from Ricard and Alus, are all a variety of Standard Unit Card Name Dragoons. Each and every one has a different effect that's well worth their cost and any one of them could have easily been put in place next to Ricard for this position as "the best". However, I am biased and like Final Fantasy XIV, so I chose the Dragoon that provides more recursion in much the same way as LB Kain does.
The Game Plan
So how do you actually play the Dragoons once you've put your deck together? While you might think that Dragoons are an aggressive deck - and they can be, if your card draws demand it - they don't necessarily need to be.
Your first order of business: You want a turn 1 Alus. If you don't have one in your opening hand, mulligan. If you don't get one on your second hand, all is not lost, but if you can't find one by the end of turn 1, it will mean being more cautious with your resources as you won't have the (probable) third card draw each turn.
Ricard is useful for helping to dig deeper for Alus, to a much lesser extent so is the cost 2 Theatrhythm Aranea, and if you need to, the cost 2 Freya can be discarded for Water CP, enabling you to play Lunafreya from your Limit Break deck to dig another five cards down.
Try not to overextend your hand too drastically - it doesn't do any good to manage the Alus in hand if you don't have the resources to then play him, especially with how prominently Ice is showing currently, meaning there's a remarkably good chance your opponent will force you to discard an unplayed Alus if you dumped too many resources into digging and you weren't able to actually play him afterwards.
Regardless of whether you get Alus in play or not, you want to start building your backup line. A lot of your best effects rely on you having a large number of Dragoons in play, and a deep backup line both absolutely counts and is a lot harder to remove than a line of Forwards. Obviously Alus lets you "draw" more cards a turn, meaning you'll see more of your deck and it'll be easier to find your Backups, but you can absolutely manage without, it's just a little trickier.
As for setting up a defense until you can manage to establish yourself and start doing some damage with Freya or Aranea, you'll want to see the cost 2 "fat idiot", the cost 3 that gets cheaper for each Dragoon you control, or even the cost 6 Aranea who, on top of breaking a Forward on entry, is a 9k body with First Strike, making her an excellent deterrent.
Being in Lightning, you also have some strong Limit Break options, including Cloud who can also break the same caliber of Forward as the cost 6 Freya while leaving an 8k body behind, Gilgamesh who can remove cards from your opponent's break zone so that they can't use their own recursion effects, and in my case, I use the cost 8 Sephiroth to round the list out. Kain is pretty handily the best LB card for the deck, but there are times when you can't always get him out the way you need or want.
Your offense will come predominantly from your Freyas, ideally the cost 4 as it can apply pressure and act as removal even if you don't necessarily have another Freya handy to fuel its Special, compared to the cost 3 who can only wipe the board if you have another Freya to spare for Cherry Blossom. Backing Freya up with your Standard Units, while holding some of your largest bodies back for defensive purposes, can help you speed your victory along.
Conclusion
Dragoons are one of my favorite decks in the Final Fantasy TCG. Being mono-element, they're arguably less difficult to play than some other lists since you don't need to worry about getting locked out of elements you need to play the game with. This makes them, in my opinion, quite nice for a newer player to start with, and being a fairly popular Job gives them extra appeal while they're at it.
They're also nice and focused since the game plan, while I was fairly specific above, largely boils down to "having more Dragoons in play is better for your Dragoon effects". This makes them relatively straightforward, which is again a good option for a newer player.
But despite the relative ease and straightforward nature of the deck, it's got its tricks and it has a startling amount of bite that can let it hang out competitively with some other top decks.
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