Final Fantasy TCG Locals - July 13th, 2026

 So fortunately, (some of) my card orders arrived today, meaning I got the cards I needed for the deck I had wanted to play during yesterday's LCQ:

Fire/Water Warriors, now featuring a playset of Akstar that (when the tracking was originally added to my order) had been meant to arrive last Friday.

Ah well, better late than never. Especially at the cost those stupid things command right now.

Regardless! Tonight's Locals saw eight players come out to sling some cardboard over the course of three rounds of play, and since my Akstars finally arrived, that meant I was able to play Warriors for tonight's event.

Round 1 vs Sky Pirates - Win 7-1

I won't lie, this is a deck that Warriors should not have a good matchup against. A lot of removal for Warriors comes from damage-based effects, and between Balthier and Ashe it's generally hard to actually punch enough damage through on enough of their Forwards to actually remove them.

Fortunately for me, my opponent's draws were garbage. They had five Backups fairly early on in the game, but the lack of actual plays off of those Backups meant there was nothing they could do to capitalize on their resources.

This meant that I was able to take their Forwards out with shocking ease, between Akstar and Wuk Lamat's entry and attack auto-abilities, letting me run away with the game.

Round 2 vs Category VIII - Win 7-6

Sweet Hydaelyn, this game was bloody tense.

With an early 4-drop Squall whose abilities made him effectively immune to my removal (had I kept the two Cuchulainn that I had in my opening hand, I could've blanked him and taken him out, but I didn't expect to really need them, which was frankly a mistake in a lot of ways) while also letting him freeplay Forwards onto the field, I was facing a lot of challenge with my Warriors.

While I was doing my best to remove everything else they had except for Squall - who, again, was basically immune to my removal - we were slugging each other back and forth for tons of damage. Eventually, on what wound up my opponent's last turn of the game, they made a major misplay.

Freeplaying Adel off of Squall and giving her haste with Selphie, they swung in and used Adel to break my Akstar, along with Squall afterwards, knocking me to damage 6. This left me with enough juice that I was able to use a top-deck Ifrit (XVI) to remove Adel, then between Wuk Lamat and Ifrit being able to take out the rest of their blockers, I was able to finish off the game as they fortunately didn't hit any EX Bursts to save them.

Had they, instead of playing Adel, freeplayed Quistis, they could have dull-frozen my board and left me without any offensive power except for the top-deck Ifrit, meaning they would've taken the game on their next turn.

Round 3 vs "Army of Kain" - Lose 3-7

I'm going to be completely real, I lost this game on turn 2 or 3, when my opponent Warped their Kain - the new(ish) Legend from Dreamlike Oceans.

The turn after, when Kain actually came into play, I forgot that the Warp ability creates an auto-ability to actually played the Forward. Had I used my Amaterasu on the Warp trigger, this would have been a dramatically different game. Unfortunately, I forgot I could use the Amat there, tried to Amat the on-entry auto-ability, and had Kain avoid it with a Jump Special.

From there, I could never quite remove the Dragoon, with any attempt being met with a Jump as my opponent always had more Kains in-hand than I had removal available.

This made the game a slow, honestly kind of frustrating affair where I got a few points of damage in, but Kain kept managing to remove my most powerful Forwards, keeping my ability to pressure my opponent at a minimum.

Conclusion

Warriors are fun. And really good. I see pretty easily why they're one of the best decks in the format right now.

Akstar is absolutely nutty, helping the deck run in an insanely powerful way - using Taivas's ability to play Akstar for free, and then having Akstar in turn freeplay another three-drop Forward is almost obscenely powerful, especially with how many Warriors have yet more potent removal abilities attached when they enter the field.

I'm glad I finally decided to bite the bullet and pick up the set, though time will tell how often I actually decide to play the deck. Plus side, if I ever decide to pick up the rest of the pieces I need to build WoL7 in the future, I've got the most expensive piece of that deck available to me now.