Hey all, Jared Wallace, better known as eureka, bringing you a JP community spoiler from Opus 17 Rebellion’s Call, [17-109R] Cuchulainn! Not the prettiest community spoiler I’ve received but I digress. Let’s quit the banter before we hurt his feelings and get to the card!
A 4 CP targeted kill spell with EX, at the cost of a 1 turn time delay. Cuchulainn is most comparable to Atomos and Famfrit, the Darkening Cloud. The upside here is that you get to choose, which will on average increase the potency of the removal effect (though choosing could also be considered a negative in certain contexts). The primary downside is that Cuchulainn has the one turn delay and costs an extra CP. Costing 4 rather than 3 is relatively minor in a vacuum, but in practice means that even with Yuna on board the card will not be in the much appreciated discard-to-cast range of 2.
Cuchulainn certainly feels unique in its placement and given the right circumstances (and the right meta) it seems like it could be quite powerful… or, it might do nothing. In my opinion, the strength of this card can be evaluated in three parts.
- How high value is your target?
- Did you lose out by letting the target live between time a normal kill spell could be cast and resolution?
- Does your opponent have a way to make it fizzle, like blink or bounce?
Taking all of these into consideration, it seems like outside of an L3/L6 environment, Atomos is going to be the better card on average, at least in the current climate. We also can’t forget that, given the existence of Althea, Bismarck, and Chocobo, there is a good chance that hitting this on EX means very little against Wind decks.
However, if the meta evolves to one in which the most popular decks play a mixture of expensive threats and cheap threats (which would invalidate Atomos as the better sacrifice removal), or if “Cannot be Broken” cards were to become more popular, and Wind was not as big in the meta as it is currently, Cuchulainn could come in big as a popular removal option. That sounds like a lot of conditions, and it is, but stranger things have happened.
Additionally, I would be remiss to not talk about the fact that with this card there is also value in having an increased volume of these kills spells in Water, as it is a great archetype at spamming and recurring them. While this card specifically doesn’t exactly make me want to aggressively pick up Stall again, this could potentially have an impact on the draw-pass playstyle of Famfrit deckouts we’ve seen come and go over time. In that deck specifically, Cuchulainn most likely isn’t competing with Atomos and Famfrit, the Darkening Cloud and would be slotted as a compliment to them instead.
So, what do you think? Let me know what you think and how you want to use this card next set in the comments or on social media. Thanks for reading, and see you next time!
