On 25th May, the Fire Emblem Cipher team held their Spring 2019 livestream–the second seasonal one of the year. The hosts were Ryota Kawade, Young, and Eri Suzuki.
Note: Images were taken from @kizuna_fecipher.
The main agenda was to discuss the upcoming Series 17: “The Advance of All Heroes”. This series breaks the usual trends of featuring a small number of factions by including not just every faction but every single game title.
Above is the official list of featured games. I won’t bother naming them all, but it’s all the mainline games from the first up to Echoes and including Heroes and Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. Unless I missed it, Warriors is not advertised, despite having cards in the past.
Besides that, the original Cipher mascots will make an appearance in Series 17 too. Above are Emma and Shade, the first pair of mascots, in the Falcon Knight and Dark Sage classes respectively.
Also, although Three Houses isn’t a featured title (because it’s a bit too new by the time the Series 17 releases), there will be cards for it, in the form of booster box “preview” promos. It seems everyone will get 2 of the 4 cards per box.
Next, Kawade showed off some cool deck boxes available via a new campaign. Those who buy the Series 17 starter deck are eligible to receive a Lucina deck box.
Meanwhile, those who buy a booster box or 16 booster packs in one go can receive one of the three designs: pixel Marth, pixel Sgurd, Eliwood and female Corrin or pixel Ike, Chrom and male Corrin. A list of participating retailers can be found here.
Above is an image of the starter deck: “Warriors of Bonds”. From 27th June to 7th July, there will be tournaments using this starter deck at participating retailers. Those who join in can receive a new swimsuit Elise promo card.
During the same period, there will also be “pack battles” using Series 17 booster packs. This type of game involves using a deck created from 5 random booster packs. Anything can happen! Players can receive the special marker cards shown above.
Anyway, let’s check out some more cards from Series 17! This colourless Marth, which was revealed earlier, is exclusive to the starter deck.
Next, we have unpromoted cards for Alm and Celica from neighbouring Valentia. Celica is notable for wearing her original outfit from Gaiden, like Brave Celica in Heroes.
Back to Archanea for a spell, with two new cards featuring Jeorge, the best bowman in the realm. His promoted form wields Parthia, one of the Three Regalia.
Fast forward a few millennia and there’s a new unpromoted Chrom card, showing him in the town being attacked by bandits at the very start of Awakening. Plus new cards for Lucina, found only in the starter deck.
The next card doesn’t seem related at first: Eleanora from Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. But she is Blue like the Awakening characters and her mirage is based on Virion, who’s from Awakening. So it’s tangentially related.
Are you eyes prepared for pure beauty? The next pair of cards is just that, showcasing pretty much all the main characters as depicted by Kotaro Yamada. The cards themselves are SR cards for Marth and Chrom, the Hero-King and his descendant.
Fates is next in the spotlight with new cards for male and female Corrin. After that, there’s a card for Beruka as a Wyvern Rider.
We then have a card for Midori as a Mechanist, followed by a card of her father, Kaze as a Ninja.
While on the topic of Kaze, Kawade showed off some familiar rough sketches from an earlier livestream. It was kind of hard to tell who the character on the left was, but as some people guessed–it’s a picture of Kaze. More specifically of his SR card from this series!
The hosts take a break from card reveals to talk about the upcoming Cipher Festival events in Japan. For more details, please check our earlier article discussing this event. Of note, visitors can receive promo cards featuring the house leaders from Three Houses.
First appearing at the Fire Emblem Expo in May, the Thracia 776 art exhibition will be returning for Cipher Festival. Apparently it was extremely well received.
From here, the team–joined by the guy with the apron who still refuses to share his name–brought out some of the merchandise available to purchase at Cipher Festival. Again, we already covered this information in another article. Still, it’s nice to see the stuff in the flesh.
Here’s the snazzy design for this year’s Cipher Festival T-shirt.
For many people, this is the closest you’ll ever get to the exclusive playmats sold at Fire Emblem events because they tend to sell out first.
If you missed out on them earlier, the previous two soundtrack CDs by the Cavalier Duo will be available.
Check out this huge–and very expensive–acrylic card of Marth.
Amusingly, there will be an opportunity to take photos with the summoning background from Heroes. Finally, you can pretend to be a summonable Hero. But are you an amazing 5-star unit or a 3-star that nobody wants to see?
Back to card reveals! These colourless Ike cards–including his Brave version from Heroes–can only be found in the starter deck.
From the Greil Mercenaries to the Dawn Brigade, we have Micaiah as a Light Sage and Sothe as a Thief and Rogue.
Things are looking purple as the spotlight moves to Elibe. First, we have unpromoted cards for Roy and Eliwood–the son and the father. Then a pair of cards for Brunnya, one of the Three Wyvern Generals who serves King Zephiel.
Magvel is next, starting with a pair of cards for Eirika by Mayo, including a signed version wielding Sieglinde. Plus an unpromoted card for Artur.
What colours are we missing still? Yellow for Jugdral of course! Sigurd gets an unpromoted Junior Lord card, while Leif gets a Lance Knight card. Does this count as Brave Leif?
The highly popular Ayra gets a new pair of cards, as a Myrmidon and Swordmaster. Finally, the heroine of the first generation, Deirdre, has new Shaman and Sage cards. This will be the second time she has a SR card.
That’s all for Series 17 so far; time for some information about the one after that! Series 18 will feature Three Houses proper, alongside Awakening and The Sacred Stones. Below is some artwork from that series.
Leading the way are the three house leaders once again: Edelgard, Dimitri and Claude.
Followed by the enigmatic girl, Sothis, and Dorothea of the Black Eagles.
On the Awakening front, enjoy new artwork of female Robin, Panne and Tharja.
As for The Sacred Stones, there’s Ephraim, Ewan and Tethys.
We have another announcement regarding the next series after that! Series 19 will feature Three Houses once again, with Genealogy of the Holy War accompanying it. No artwork was shown, since it’s still quite a ways off.
Near the end, Kawade took the opportunity to show off a very rare Lucina playmat awarded to the winners of this period’s Cipher Arena tournaments (and one random participant if there are over 32). Ouch, as if normal playmats weren’t rare and expensive enough!
The last announcement during the livestream was that the next livestream, the Series 17 pre-release one, will be held on 22nd June 2019. Hopefully we’ll see you there!
There’s a bit more news before we leave though. After the livestream, the official Twitter account posted additional cards or better quality images of previously revealed cards.
On Sunday, the day after the livestream, they shared signed versions of the Kaze and Deirdre SR cards shown earlier.
Monday, we got a better look at Ranger Ike, plus a new Vanguard Ike.
Tuesday, we got Awakening‘s cavalier duo: Sully and Stahl.
Wednesday was the day of Hero Alm.
The Laguz Kings of Tellius, Tibarn and Naesala, took flight on Thursday.
Finally, Camilla from Fates graced us with Wyvern Rider and Malig Knight cards on Friday. The latter is a SR card.
