Opus XIII Community Spoiler [13-056R] Vanille With Thanks to NLG Dandenong!

With thanks to NLG Dandenong we at the Crystarium are excited to share with you another Opus XIII spoiler in Vanille. Vanille is bringing us something we haven’t seen before and I’m excited to see what she’s capable of.

If you’re in Melbourne, Aus and are looking for a locals, we’ve got a great group of regulars running on Saturdays at 1PM. We would love to have you!

I know I always get excited about a card with a high ceiling and Vanille definitely has it. There’s a whole heap of high costed, high impact forwards for Vanille to play via her ability should she survive for 4 of your turns, it’s also worth mentioning that you can play the forward on your opponents turn which is unprecedented for these high costed forwards. If Krile has taught us anything, it’s that 2cp Earth weenies can spend more time on field than is reasonable and the difference between 5 and 6k matters a lot here. She’s safe versus things like Fina and fire backups that deal 5k. But with a little bit of a prayer and 4 turns of patience she could just be your road to victory.

Now it has to be said, there’s no immediate impact for Vanille and if I’m honest that’s a whole lot to ask of any card in FFTCG especially following an Opus XII metagame. With the ceiling aside, Vanille could function more like a proactive Cu Sith, she just has to survive essentially one round of your opponents entry effects to be getting a card back for you to cash in on when she is inevitably answered and that sounds fairly reasonable a lot of the time.

Should we reach the high ceiling, these are just some examples of the kind of cards that can do some unprecedented things during your opponents turn. Two forwards for blockers and a 3CPs entry effect from Shantotto. Discards when you gain priority after the opponent has drawn with Sephiroth. As well as two removals and a blocker in Ramza.

So far there isn’t much synergy for Vanille, but there are searchers in Ice and Lightning at least giving us some direction. I’m inclined to play her alongside Ice because the discard factor can create a simplified game state in which she might thrive. But there’s always Feolthanos in Lightning for the brave.

If she were to find the right support and tools to help her to 4 Soulsong Counters, either by some inherent protection or a way to increase her Soulsong Counters (Gestahlian Empire Cid is specifically counters on monsters), we might see Vanille proving to be a very serious clock for the opponent, opening up a lot of combo potential and new deck archetypes.

If we’re all in on the 4 Soulsong Counters Vanille game plan, we’ll definitely be looking to protect her with some of the classics and with the payoff that high it definitely could be reasonable to be playing them for her. There’s also some new hopes for protection in Opus XIII in Leviathan, Remedi and Cid Randell.

Looking forward to seeing the brews that come from Vanille in Opus XIII, we’ll see you in the next one!