On Saturday, August 27th, the Fire Emblem Cipher team hosted the Summer Cipher Livestream on NicoNico. The stream focused on showing off some cards from the upcoming Series 6 and talking about the recent Cipher Caravan events, but it also showed off some new artwork for Series 7 and made a formal announcement for Series 8.
The stream was hosted by Cipher producer Ryoto Kawade, and he was joined by Eri Suzuki (Soleil’s Japanese VA) and Young (with Intelligent Systems). After some opening banter, Kawade formally announced that Genealogy of the Holy War would soon be released on the new Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in Japan.
In fact, not long after the stream aired, Genealogy was swiftly added to the Virtual Console, joining the ranks of Dark Dragon and Sword of Light, Gaiden and Mystery of the Emblem as other retro Fire Emblems available to play on Japanese 3DS systems (the latter, being a Super Famicom title, is likewise exclusive to the new 3DS).
Afterward, discussion then turned to the Cipher Caravan events that had just finished up the previous weekend. Many photos were shared, and the final winning colours for the Caravan Derby were announced. The events seemed to be a great success! Hopefully we will see more special Cipher events held in the future.
The next portion of the stream was dedicated to showcasing some new S6 cards for Genealogy, including Sigurd, Ayra, Deirdre, Aideen, Arvis, Midir, Arden, Erin (Fury), and Manya, as well as an alternate art R+ card for Finn.
Shortly after, the hosts were joined by Katsuyuki Konishi (Xander’s Japanese VA), who brought a jumbo version of Xander’s new signed SR+ card along with him.
They had some fun chatting for a bit, and then moved on to showcase some of the Fire Emblem Fates cards that will be released in S6. The new cards shown include Xander, Elise, Peri, Beruka, Arete, Shura, Midori, and Nyx.
Interestingly enough, it seems that the Xander SR+ card will keep the same art as the regular SR card. The SR card was also later posted to the FECipher twitter account, to give us a better view of it, and confirming that the new Dragon Vein mechanic deals with the Face-Up Orbs referenced in his earlier card.
With many new cards revealed, discussion then turned to the next series coming out this winter. Series 7, which will feature cards from both Blazing Sword and Fates, has been given the title “Rise to Honour” and will be released on December 8th, 2016.
Many new art was shown for upcoming cards in the set. For Blazing Sword, we get to see a finished version of the Hector sketch revealed earlier this year, as well as completely new artwork for Eliwood, Matthew, Priscilla, and Canas.
The Fates portion of the set is based on Revelation with a focus on characters aligned with Hoshido, just like how S6 focused on characters from Nohr. New artwork was shown for Ryoma, Hana, Shiro, Fuga, and Scarlet.
The later portion of the livestream was dedicated to the long-awaited announcement of Series 8. S8 will feature a return to Awakening and will also include characters from Generation 2 of Genealogy. Altenna’s art was showcased as a preview for the new set, but little other information was given. The set will likely come out in March of 2016.
Kawade also showed off some cool posters of the matching SR artwork of Xander from S6 and Ryoma from S7. The flip side of both posters reveals some rather epic new artwork of Sigurd fighting Arvis. Since we still have not seen SR cards for either Sigurd or Arvis, it’s possible this art will be used for those cards, or it may be saved for a later set.
With that, the Summer Livestream is over, but that’s certainly not the end of the Cipher news stream! New cards will be continued to be shown on weekdays from now until the set release, and the S6 pre-release livestream will be held on September 24th.
In the meantime, feel free to come chat and speculate with other Cipher fans in SF’s Cipher Subforum. If you’d like more information about FE Cipher, including information on purchasing cards outside of Japan, please check out my Newcomers Guide.
