This past Saturday, the Fire Emblem Cipher team held their Cipher Winter Livestream on NicoNico. As usual, Ryota Kawade and Young were our hosts, and they were joined by Juri Kimura, the voice actress for Mozu and Nyx in Fire Emblem Fates.
The beginning of the stream was filled with talk about the latest Fire Emblem news. They discussed the upcoming “Fire Emblem Music Collection: Piano ~Faith & Engagement~” CD release, and the “Fire Emblem Fates: The Crown of Nibelungen” manga starring Leo which starts its run this month.
Afterward, discussion turned towards Cipher, and they began showing off some new cards from the upcoming Series 8 releasing next month. The first batch of cards were all characters from the second generation of Genealogy of the Holy War.
These reveals include new cards for Altena, Ares, an older Arvis, Julia, Julius, Lana, Larcei, Lester, Seliph, and Shannan. Ares, Arvis, and Seliph will all be holo Rare cards and the others will be Normal or High-Normal. Seliph’s R card has the same text at his secret R+X card that was released back in S6.
Tarusuke Shingaki, the voice actor for Gerome, Stahl, and Saizo, joined the group shortly after. After a bit of discussion, and convincing Shingaki to reprise some of his lines, they began to show off some new Awakening cards from S8 as well.
New cards were revealed for several characters from Awakening, including a beautiful signed SR+ card of Exalt Chrom as a counterpart to the Risen King Chrom SR revealed earlier in the week.
Other new reveals include cards for Emmeryn, Gangrel, Gerome, Miriel, Male Morgan, Stahl, Sully, Tiki, and Vaike. Tiki is the only foil Rare card revealed in this batch, the others are all Normal or High-Normal.
Ominously, Morgan’s card shows his name as “???” and it appears to be an evil version of him, very similar to the one met in the Future Past DLC chapters.
For the next segment of the stream, Young brings out a board with names of various FE titles: Gaiden, Thracia 776, Heroes, The Sacred Stones, and Fire Emblem Warriors. The hosts announced to much fanfare that titles that get a ribbon will see a Cipher release sometime in 2017.
The first title to get a ribbon was, unsurprisingly, Gaiden. It was already announced that Gaiden would be seeing representation in the upcoming Series 9 along with Hasha no Tsurugi, Path of Radiance, and Radiant Dawn.
After some discussion about Gaiden and its upcoming remake, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, we were treated to some new pieces of art that will be used for cards in S9, including shots of Celica and Saber from Gaiden, Gant from Hasha no Tsurugi, and Naesala from PoR/RD.
They also announced the official release date for S9: June 22nd.
Thracia 776 received a ribbon shortly after, but there was very little discussion about it as our group was then joined by a surprise guest: Fire Emblem Heroes director Shingo Matsushita. Heroes was the next game to earn a ribbon, and Matsushita also showed off a small stuffed version of the owl from Heroes, whose name is Feh.
Matsushita had a very unexpected announcement to make next, and it actually had nothing to do with Cipher. He formally revealed that Seliph and Julia from Genealogy and Eirika and Ephraim from The Sacred Stones would be the next characters to make their debut in Heroes. Their art looks gorgeous!
This happened to be the perfect segue into giving SS a ribbon on the board, followed shortly by a ribbon for FE Warriors as well. So it turns out that all five titles teased will be seeing an inclusion in the Cipher this year!
However, Kawade didn’t give any word or hint towards which of these titles will be seen in S10, an announcement many were hoping for. It looks like we’ll have to wait until a later stream to learn what our September set is going to look like.
After Matsushita left, we were joined by our last guest: Manabu Sakamaki, the voice actor for Kellam and Gangrel. It so happens that Sakamaki is a fan of FE and TCGs in general, and he also plays Cipher! He was happy to show off his deck to everyone watching.
Next, Kawade turned discussion towards the upcoming Cipher Sai events. They showed off some of the merchandise that will be available, including a look at the elusive “mystery playmat” which features new artwork of Lucina and Tiki. You can see a full list of merchandise in our earlier article.
Of course, Cipher Sai is more than just merchandise. Our hosts also demonstrated how draft tournaments work and showed off pre-set games for learning how to play Cipher. Kawade even posed with a replica Armads that will be available for photoshoots!
With that, the Cipher Winter Livestream wraps up. The next livestream will be on March 11th, the Saturday before the S8 release date. In the interim, more cards will be shown off via daily Twitter reveals, and we’ll keep reporting all the news as we get it.
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.
