Hey guys, I haven’t done a Community spoiler for a few sets now, but this time I get to show you Opus XIV’s Sahagin (XIV) – thanks to Tim Schilder for the spoiler!
Sahagin’s a pretty exciting spoiler, depending on what gets spoiled before this one goes out, or if any of the guesswork I make below turns out to be true. I’m going to be making a lot of assumptions in this article, so do bear with me.
Assumption 1) We’re probably seeing a Primal Leviathan, Susano or Bismarck in this set.
The first two are pretty firmly coded as water Primals in FFXIV but the latter’s a bit of a reach, mostly because he looks like a massive whale. Even if we only see one of them this set, this card may also serve as support if we get more Water Primals down the line! Awesome. If I had to put my money on one, I’d put it on Leviathan being our water Primal for this set, being instantly recognizable as a series mainstay, and being one of the “original” primals from A Realm Reborn’s postgame.
Assumption 2) We’re going to see a full cycle of these backups to support their relevant Primals.
This one is definitely big if true (if some haven’t already been spoiled by the time this goes up on Monday), as the main complaints I’ve seen with the revealed Ifrit and Garuda Primals is that they would be much more playable if they were slightly cheaper – considering Sahagin (XIV) has the multi-card icon, it’s not unreasonable to assume that we’re going to see our hypothetical Leviathan/Susano/Bismarck come down for 3 cheaper (via these backups reactivating and therefore ‘refunding’ CP) – and considering the effects that the revealed Primals have, there’s some great potential for value there. The current Primals revealed (at time of writing) are Ifrit, Garuda, and Ravana, with Ifrit costing 5 and Garuda and Ravana costing 6. Assuming similar costing on a Leviathan, we’re going to be paying 5-6, and getting 3 of that CP back in a triple Sahagin (XIV), which sounds pretty cool!
Chapters had cards like Sahagin (XIV) to support their relevant primals, so I would be very surprised if we didn’t see one of these to go into every element, especially with how long Primals have been hyped for.
The first ability on this card, as previously mentioned, means you’ll reactivate the backup every time you play down a Water Primal (important to note it doesn’t specify a name, so this may be important if we see more Water Primals in the future.) Obviously this refunds you a portion of the CP you spent on your big watery boss monster, but it also has neat synergy with Baralai, for those who enjoyed the Ghido playstyle. If you have 3 of these on the field, you have gotten a Baralai into play. and then you manage to get a Water Primal down, you’re going to be activating 3 backups to hit your opponent’s field for a total of 9k via Baralai – now, I have no idea what Leviathan/Susano/Bismarck’s effect is going to be at this point, but that already sounds like it has potential for a big advantage swing. At the very least, as soon as you play down your Water Primal, you’re ready to use that ability to set up a nasty EX burst, or control your next draw. Maybe there’s some potential for Fusoya (2-146H) to make a bit of a resurgence?
Moving on to the second part of the ability, Sahagin also lets you sculpt your draws for the next turn, or shift EX bursts to the top of your deck if needed – the only caveat to being able to use this ability is having a Water Primal on the field, outside of that you can do it any time, including your opponent’s turn. If you have a couple of these active and ready to be used, you can set up what 2 cards you draw for your next turn, and being to plan ahead to that degree is fantastic, especially if the cards you are choosing to put on the bottom of your deck are things you want to keep in the deck to search later. Reasonably rare among this kind of effect as well, especially on a 2 cost backup is that you don’t even have to put this backup into the break zone to use this effect. If you do want to use this multiple times throughout a game to control your draws though, make sure you’re packing enough ways to protect your Water Primal, or at the very least recur it so you always have it available.
Out of all the Community spoiler’s I’ve done so far, I think this one is the one I’ve had the most fun writing about, even if a lot of it is assumptions – at the time I’ve written this, it’s the first hint of Primal support that I’ve seen outside of Chapters, and I’m really excited for Primals to become something actually viable in the game – I’m excited to see what the rest of the cycle looks like!
Thank you for reading, and I’m really glad I’ve been able to bring you this spoiler via the FFTCG Crystarium today.
Good luck at your prereleases!
Esufer
A fun fact to close out on, literally as I was writing this an unrelated Leviathan summon got spoiled, and for a second I thought it was going to be the Primal version of Leviathan, and I’d have to rewrite this entire article.
