Hey guys, Eureka here today with a rundown of my thoughts on all of the Opus IX Legends. Here’s the rating scale I’ll be using today.
5/5 Fantastic card that I expect to see play
4/5 Good card that will probably warrant it’s slot, but has some kind of drawback or fits a niche that probably needs filling
3/5 Decent card that has some good synergies or powerful effects going for it but really depends on fitting a niche to see play
2/5 Underwhelming or fits a niche I can’t see needing to be filled
1/5 Maybe unique but bad
0/5 Really, really bad
It’s a little fuzzy, but I think it’ll get my feelings on the cards across pretty well. Without any further ado, let’s get started.
Meia 2/5
A super hype card at the time of being spoiled, Meia has not held up very well over the rest of the pre-release term. Lightning is not short on good 3CP Forwards and, while she does have some powerful text on her effects, only being able to give Haste to a Mobius Forward is more than a bit of a drag. Her only Mobius buddy in color is Fusoya, a strong card in its own right but not necessarily suited to low-to-the-floor decks Meia has the potential to shine in. There’s some possibility that a Meia/Fusoya/Wol shell might do something neat with another Mobius color, perhaps Fire or maybe even Wind but without some more friends to get free Haste she looks to be a little underwhelming.
Fusoya 4.5/5
The only thing that prevents Fusoya from receiving a 5/5 in my book is needing your opponent to control a Forward to use it’s ETF ability. Now don’t get me wrong, that’s not exactly a tall order. Fusoya doesn’t need to clear an 8k to buy its slot, it can kill Izanas and Zidane Hs for all I care, he does a great job of cleaning up a little board mess and has just enough of a body to fight for tempo against early aggressive decks. I expect him to make appearances in Mono Lightning (obviously), Earth/Lightning (in which summons have really been pushed), and potentially an Earth/Wind-based multicolor deck. Earth is a particularly good partner for Fusoya because of the general cost of cards being higher despite similar relative CP efficiency (think Miner and Minfillia) letting you get a better chance at one-shotting with his ETF without reducing the playable cards in your deck. Of course, Earth is great at generating off-color CP in it’s own right (especially with the new Earth Moogle that can produce Lightning CP) meaning it shouldn’t be hard for Fusoya to find a home there. The ability to cast your summons free of color restriction is really just icing on the cake here, but leads me to believe there’s a chance of Mono Earth splash everything on the horizon.
Gabranth 2.5/5
At first glance this card seems pretty underwhelming, possibly even borderline awful, but I have made the mistake of underestimating playable EX cards one too many times. That being said, a pseudo-2CP 5000 Forward (until much later) is pretty bad. Looking for a home, I think this is a particularly potent addition to XV-based Mono Earth as a 1-2 of, cushioning your EX count to an even healthier total while being recyclable and very playable in the end game. Notable targets in color include Cecil, Asmodai, and Ignis. The world is your oyster in off-color, but some particularly potent options include Sephiroth, Veritas of the Dark, Fina, Fusoya, and the next Legend I will be introducing, Rydia.
Rydia 4/5
Rydia is so close to what I want for summon synergy in this game. Casting summons free of charge is really appealing, but we have all been burned by reveal 5 too many times to buy this on face value. The good news is that the options for stacking summons isn’t horrible. With Lightning you’re realistically only going to get Seymour, but you get to tutor whatever summon you could possibly want. Other options include scry effects plentiful in Water (Oracle, Geomancer, Moogle XII and so on), but not very CP efficient or are one-shot abilities. Yeul can help a lot but sticks out like a sore thumb in Ice, the only other synergy we really want there perhaps being Rinoa. The (X)Dull ability is realistically only performed when there’s nothing else to be done or when you have consistent scrying, meaning it might often come up a wash. Still, I think Rydia has some tremendous power and I am looking forward to seeing how innovative players make this card broken.
Rosa 2.5/5
Rosa offers the ability to make all of their weenies not suck at attacking individually. Unfortunately, this hasn’t exactly been something that Water has struggled to do, either in or outside of color. Historically Cloud of Darkness has been clearing the path since Leila’s release and Cagnazzo has been clearing paths since O3. Still, it’s not by any means an awful card. Damage reduction is good against exact damage removal (especially AOE) and the S ability can be pretty helpful against Ice in Mono. I don’t expect Rosa to make a splash, but there tiny spark of potential as a defensive option if the need were to arise.
Ultros 4/5
Ultros is a resilient Forward, plain and simple. More decent AOE for Water to couple with CoD attacks, Nichols and Cagnazzos is strong, and all the while remains a plain and simple 2CP trade against Diabolos as long as you haven’t drawn multiple. The power floor with the card is probably lower than other Forwards, as you are obligated to slot 3 of him and there is a chance that he’s simply dulled/frozen the entire game. On the other hand, having a good proactive Forward that can ‘survive’ and swing over Veritas is probably worth looking into.
Nael 2/5
This card has been roasted to all hell, but really it could be worse. Sometimes you get some cards back, and you can nuke your backups for a strong finisher. In Fire, we call that a success.
Ace 1.5/5
There is a lot to talk about this card if we go into Title, but I’m just gonna mention that it’s pretty good there and might drag that deck from the depths of O3 hell. In Constructed, however, the card is pretty underwhelming. The EX is, for all intents and purposes, on the strictly wrong auto ability. If you could reliably get your cards back off the top 7 every time you played it then I think it would be fine, the main problem with that line of thinking being that you have to run other cadets in your Constructed deck to make that a reality, and Ace and King alone can’t carry that hard.
Yiazmat 3.5/5
I was a non-believer when I first saw this card, mainly looking at the very large number in the top-left hand corner. The more I think about it though, the letters in the top-right make it okay against some Ice-based aggressive strategies. Additionally, any format where this card is good, the number is not as big of a problem as I would first imagined. That being said, barring any Meia shenanigans I don’t expect Yiazmat to see a ton of success outside of Mono Wind (or maybe pseudo Mono Wind splashing Water) given that most other color combinations have strictly better things to do with their CP and can’t utilize the CP on EX very well. The card obviously lends itself well to the Bartz/Fina style of Yuri shenanigans and, if protected with a Y’shtola, can do some really degenerate stuff over a turn or two.
Luso 1.5/5
Yuri’s best friend that really doesn’t have a lot to do outside of that. Getting a natural five is about five times harder than getting Bartz to enough jobs for two attacks, and Luso doesn’t even get Haste. If there is somehow an aggressive wind strategy that finds room and tops out at Yuri, there’s a small chance for it to see play but otherwise the card seems like a dud. Some day there may be more ‘Yuri-like’ cards that get this playable status some day, but it is not this day.
Vayne 0.5/5
The Ardyn of Opus IX, everyone already has an opinion on this card, so I’ll try and keep it short. There are so many ways to kill Vayne, and if there is a reason to kill him he will often just be dead on arrival. Half of the time he won’t be doing anything, and even when his ability matters the most your opponent could just pay the tax. If you wanted to sweep AOE you could just play Fina or Chaos, or hell Valefor, Ifrita, Viera… There is no redemption for this card, other than it could be neat to try and high roll in Title with.
Azure Dragon l’Cie Soryu 3/5
Soryu is following the trend of just being a decent dragon with EX Burst attached to it. It seems like dragons get out of control when unchecked, and Soryu is no exception. He’s quite versatile and EX +1 is just what the doctor ordered for Mono Ice. I expect to see Soryu around if we can find the slots, but wouldn’t be surprised to see him as one of the first Forwards cut.
Wol 2/5
Wol’s greatest (but not only) sin is being a Light card. Give this card to an element and it would be a 4 or 5/5 card but by giving it a strict restriction and banishing it to Light means that I don’t think this card will see a ton of play. Having Xande status on ETB makes it difficult to deal with properly and a good attacker, but it competes for slot with Veritas and is much harder to get onto the field, which is not where you wanna be as the underdog. The considerably lesser sin is being named Wol and competing for Warrior of Light job synergy slots, which is more of an afterthought in lieu of the other problems.
Chaos (Mobius) 2.5/5
Chaos has some serious CP efficiency potential, but flooring in Ice as a 4CP 9000 and Fire as a Fina is just enough to make the card okay in my book. The way this card most likely sees play is in Mono Fire or Fire/Ice as a comeback card, though I don’t really expect to see it in the latter due to the numerous low-to-the-ground options (cough Locke) available that require your opening turns to be well-drawn and flexible. Maybe I’m just happy that Fire has access to a Fina-sized AOE, though.
In Closing
Thanks for reading this far. If you’re interested, please check out our other content and leave me a comment letting me know about the things I missed, how you feel about the new Legends, or your favorite new card from Opus IX.
