This past Saturday, the Fire Emblem Cipher team held another successful livestream over NicoNico! Ryota Kawade (Cipher Producer) and Young (Intelligent Systems) were joined once again by Eri Suzuki (voice of Soleil, Delthea, and Emma) to start off the show.
The main focus of the stream was to show off cards from Series 10, Crossroads, which releases this week on 21 September. The set contains cards from Thracia 776, Fates, and Fire Emblem Heroes. We also got to have some fun with a few other guests, and get a few more tidbits of news and art for upcoming Cipher sets and events.
Thracia 776 Card Reveals
Many of the set’s yet-unrevealed cards are from Thracia, including the set’s only unknown SR card. Thankfully, a good number of these cards were shown off during the stream. To start off, take a look at some cards for Machua and Ronan, neither of whom had yet to be confirmed in the set.
We also got to see some additional cards for already-confirmed characters, including Asbel, Diarmuid, Lifis, Nanna, and Olwen.
Further on, we got a good look at the SR+ cards for Leif and Nanna. Like other Jugdrali SR+ cards, the leading lord and lady get a gorgeous joined-art card together.
Finally, the last remaining SR of the set was shown off live during the stream: Tina! The lovely younger sister of Safi gets an unpromoted N card as a Cleric and also a promoted SR card as a High Priest.
On Sunday, @fecipher revealed the SR card officially, along with its SR+ alternate art version, both drawn by kawasumi. Although Tina wields a Tome in her SR art, the card’s skills reference her unique Thief and Unlock staves from the game.
Fates and Heroes Card Reveals
The remaining half of the set goes to cards from Fates and Heroes. Proportionally, more of these cards have already been revealed, but the stream still included a few surprises.
On the Fates side, we have unpromoted cards of both Male and Female Corrin, additional cards for fan-favourites Ophelia and Soleil, as well as confirmation of more cards for the Awakening-esque children units Rhajat and Asugi. Matching cards for Caeldori were not officially shown here, but you can see them in the intro image above.
Almost all of the Heroes cards have already been shown off, barring the final cards for Anna. However, there was one completely unexpected card shown off fairly early on in the stream: Bruno N+X. He is shirtless in the card, referencing his damaged artwork in the game.
This N+X card follows the same theme as Delthea N+X from S9. It also seems to have a unique foil pattern around the edge. Unfortunately, the card in the stream is too blurry to see if the card text for the secret version is any different than the regular N.
Booster Box Goodies, Promotional Stickers, & Tournament Promos
There are more cards and goodies in S10 than just those available to pull in packs. As usual, you get a number of additional goodies in every S10 booster box. The opened box here shows one of the available sleeve packs with promotional art from Heroes.
The promo card pack within that box contained the S11 preview promo for Ephraim and the 2nd Anniversary reprint promo for Flora. Young also shows off the other types available: Thracia box art sleeves, Eirika promo, and Felicia promo. Each box comes with one pack of either Ephraim/Flora or Eirika/Felicia and then one of the two sleeve packs.
They also showed off the S10 sticker sheets. Participating retailers will be giving away one sheet of stickers for every eight Cipher packs purchased. Good news for international collectors, AmiAmi will once again be giving away these goodies with their Cipher booster box shipments! We don’t know which theme of stickers they’ll be giving away, though.
That’s not all. We got our first look at the S10 Tournament Promos! For the first time, the tournament promo packs themselves feature character artwork on the front of the pack, such as this art of Witch Corrin.
As usual, the set of six tournament promo cards contains two completely new cards and four alternate art reprints. The new cards feature Shannam from Thracia and Male Corrin as a Ballistician siding with Hoshido.
The alternate art promos are either yellow or black. For Thracia, we’re getting reprints of the Cost 1 cards for Finn and Mareeta. The Nohrian cards are reprints of the Cost 2 cards for Nina and Female Corrin. Despite dressing as a Witch, this Corrin has the Nohr Princess class and wields a sword; the costume is just for show.
Fun With Guests: Atsumi Tanezaki & Yosuke Hayashi
After the opening segment of the stream, our hosts were joined by a new guest: Atsumi Tanezaki, the voice actress for Faye from Fire Emblem Echoes. The actress reprised her role to read off a few of Faye’s quotes from her S9 cards.
Atsumi and Eri also played a Cipher match during the stream! Their decks featured Faye and Delthea and MCs respectively. Kawade very patiently explained the rules to the newcomers.
Later on in the stream, another new guest appeared: Yosuke Hayashi, the Fire Emblem Warriors producer from Koei Tecmo! He came ready to show off his love for Fire Emblem with a pretty great shirt featuring opening text from Dark Dragon.
Hayashi showed off some live Warriors gameplay, playing through segments of the game as many different characters, including the recently-revealed Sakura. He also gave us our first in-game look at Validar, the antagonist from Awakening.
New Artwork for Series 11 and 12
The stream also took time to touch upon the upcoming sets and show us a bit of progress. So far, most of the S11 artwork we’ve seen has been focused on The Sacred Stones. This time, we get to see a bit more attention given to the Warriors side of the set, including another look at Rowan and Lianna.
Get ready for a bit of a shock with additional Warriors card art for Marth and Lissa! This confirms that Warriors cards will not be limited to OCs like the Heroes side of S10. We do not yet know if Warriors cards will match existing colour factions (like TMS#FE in S4), if they will be colourless cards like Heroes, or if they’ll be something else entirely.
With the voices of both Delthea and Faye on the stream, it was a perfect opportunity for our first look at some cards from the Echoes side of the set! Both characters were revealed to get cards for Overclasses, Enchantress and Harrier respectively. We will likely see other Overclasses appearing in the set as well. Cipher artist Mayo has confirmed that she drew both pieces.
The TSS roster was explored a bit further, including our first look at cards for Colm, Neimi, Ross, and Seth. With such a small cast, it is likely that most of TSS‘s characters will appear in S11.
Additionally, we got a sneak peak of some artwork from Series 12! S12 comes out in March of next year and features characters from Genealogy of the Holy War, Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn, and Awakening. Accordingly we got a bit of artwork from each, including unfinished art for Sigurd (also by Mayo), Stefan, Makalov, and Nowi.
Upcoming Events
At the very end of the stream, the Cipher team took the opportunity to announce a few exciting upcoming events! Such a momentous occasion requires a very special announcement method…
First of all, Kawade confirmed that Cipher will once again have a booth at the upcoming winter Comic Market! Comiket93 will take place in Tokyo from 29 through 31 December. The Comiket booth has been a source of popular and unique Cipher merchandise, including special promo cards, boxes, playmats, and other goodies.
Cipher Sai will also be returning in late winter of 2018! Like before, Cipher Sai will have two separate events, one in Osaka (West) on 4 March and one in Tokyo (East) on 11 March. More details about all these events will be revealed over the next few months.
And with that, the stream comes to a close! S10 releases is just a few short days on 21 September. For discussion and speculation in the meantime, visit us at the FE Cipher Subforum on the Serenes Forest forums.
