On 19 August, the Fire Emblem Cipher team hosted another successful livestream via NicoNico! Ryota Kawade and Young were our hosts as usual. Hibiku Yamamura, the voice actress for Rinea and Shade from Fire Emblem Echoes, also joined in as a special guest.
The stream opened up with some discussion about the upcoming release of Series 10, Crossroads, which features characters from Thracia 776, Fates, and Fire Emblem Heroes. The set will release on 21st September and the Cipher team started sharing daily card reveals just earlier this week.
Retailers in Japan will be giving out promotional Cipher gifts as part of a release campaign for S10. The items this time around are sticker sheets featuring various Cipher art! They come in two sets of three sheets which you can see here.
The stickers include artwork from throughout the whole lifespan of the game, as far back as S1’s Chrom and Marth, up to and including art from S10. If you look closely, you can even spot currently-unrevealed artwork for Finn and Anna!
Based on previous release promos, AmiAmi will likely be included in the list of approved vendors. Good news for us international Cipher fans!
S10 Thracia Card Reveals
Discussion turned shortly after towards cards from the upcoming set, with Thracia cards the first to be highlighted. New cards were revealed for many Thracia characters such as Dean, Diarmuid, Fergus, Halvan, Lara, Lifis, Mareeta, Nanna, Safy, and Sara. Diarmuid and Lara will be R foil cards, while the others are all N/HN cards.
Kawade took a moment to set up a playmat and show some of the new cards in play. In doing so, he also revealed the R card for Leif. This card was foreshadowed two sets ago when it was released with alternate artwork as a secret R+X card in S8.
S10 Fates Card Reveals
The next batch of cards to be revealed were from Fates. The Fates portion of the set has a focus on the “Heirs of Fates” storyline, so Kana and the other children characters play a very large role. The new Fates first cards revealed followed along these lines, showing off promoted versions of Siegbert and Shiro wielding their fathers’ legendary swords.
Not all of the cards follow this pattern, however. We’re also getting some new cards for Fates characters that have not yet been printed in Cipher, such as these new cards for Izana and Iago.
Kawade took an opportunity to show off one of the new Fates cards in person, a particularly interesting card of Shigure that features faction symbols for both Nohr and Hoshido. It seems that these dual-faction cards will be a new mechanic introduced with the Fates cards in this set.
A few more dual-faction cards were revealed shortly thereafter: joined-art, signed SR+ cards for Male and Female Kana! Although there are no borders for SR cards, you can see that the cards also feature both faction symbols. The cards were officially posted to the @FEcipher twitter shortly after, so we have a higher-quality version to share.
As the SR+ cards are signed variants, the regular SR cards will feature the same art, as seen in this live shot of Kawade playing with a Fates deck.
S10 Heroes Card Reveals
Heroes cards have been kept the most under wraps in this set so far. Based on the numbering, we won’t be getting all too many of them, but a few more were revealed during the stream. Both Alfonse and Sharena get Cost 2 cards without promotions, which was expected seeing as they don’t promote in game. We also get our first look at Veronica.
A few unexpected faces also showed up as new, colourless cards: our two new Cipher original characters, Alice and Valjean! Since their Cost 1 cards are both colourless, these characters likely originate from the World of Zenith, the setting of Heroes. Valjean is an knight devoted to Alice, a magically-inclined noble lady with a fierce sense of justice.
Both characters also get promoted cards in this set, split among the remaining colours. Alice promoted into a Strategist as a dual-faction white/black card. Valjean joins the other Jugdrali in yellow as a promoted General.
Special Guest: Hidari!
Hidari, the official artist for Echoes, joined in the middle of the S10 reveals as a special guest. They took some time to discuss his work for Fire Emblem, including his appearance at the Go! Go! Summer Tour! events in Japan where he drew this lovely Alm and Celica art.
All four presenters had a small art contest where they competed to draw quick sketches of Shade. From left to right, top to bottom, you can see the final pieces as made by Young, Kawade, Hibiku, and Hidari.
Afterward, the audience was polled to see which art was the favourite. Kawade’s emotional piece of Shade playing the shamisen won by a large margin!
Series 11 News & Artwork
After Hidari left and the S10 reveals finished, attention turned to the next upcoming set, including a formal title and date announcement!
Series 11, formally titled Glorious Twinstrike, will be released on 7 December 2017! The name references two sets of twins from two of the featured titles for the set: Ephraim and Eirika from The Sacred Stones, and also Rowan and Lianna from Fire Emblem Warriors. S11 will also see a return to cards from Echoes.
So far, most of the pre-release information for S11 has focused on TSS, and today’s livestream was no exception. Kawade formally confirmed that Magvelian cards will be purple, just like cards from Elibe. However, the border designs will be different. The Eirika card used as the example implies that this art for her will be her Cost 1 card.
Besides Eirika, we got to see several new pieces of TSS character artwork for the stream, including Ephraim, Garcia, Innes, and Joshua.
We also get a fully completed art piece for Myrrh, as opposed to the unfinished version we saw last stream, and a look at our first Magvelian monster: a Bael terrorizing villagers.
Series 12 Announcement
As hinted at over the twitter, the livestream provided a formal announcement of Series 12, which will be the first set of 2018. The included titles will be Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn (green), Awakening (blue), and Genealogy of the Holy War (yellow).
Aside from the included titles, little else is known about this set so far. Presumably it will be released sometime in March of 2018. We might get more news and art as soon as the next livestream in September.
Shortly after the S12 announcement, the stream wound down to a close. Our hosts will be back again for another exciting pre-release livestream next month! In the meantime, feel free to come visit the Cipher subforum of the Serenes Forest forums for Cipher discussion. We’ll also keep posting new cards and news as we learn it!
