Our first spoiler!!!!!!!!! Big thanks to SE and the NA Team for allowing us to get a spoiler this time around. We are incredibly excited and look forward to sharing it with you.

Without further ado, and for those who don’t like a nice read on a beautiful October Sunday, we will cut right to the chase. Our Beyond Destiny Spoiler is……………………………..

21-080R – Runda

Making his debut in FFTCG, Runda is a 2CP Earth back designed to protect your forwards from damage-based removal. His text is simple and straightforward.

Tap: Choose 1 Forward you control. During this turn, the next damage dealt to it by Summons or Abilities is reduced by 3000 instead.

See Card Above

Unfortunately, this isn’t very strong text in modern FFTCG and will mostly be relegated to sealed environments, but I do like seeing new character names in the game. Also, can we take a couple seconds and admire the beer belly this machine has on it? I mean, I know AI is a hot topic, but this is just taking it too far? I mean, Runda the Rotunda anyone?

Anyways, back on topic, This is The Bear Den, we need to prove why the card isn’t very good and break it down. Our goal is to use this opportunity to help understand how we evaluate cards and guide players on why cards don’t make the cut. So, sit back, enjoy your favorite Sunday brew, and let’s dive in………

Card Evaluation

First, when evaluating cards, I start off by asking some simple questions that allow me to get a good grasp of the card overall. The questions I use are:

• How much does it cost?
• Does it have a job with known support?
• Is it searchable?
• What is the real CP of the effect?

So, for the rest of the article, we are going to answer these questions for Runda and see what our answers will be.

How much does it cost?

This one is the most obvious question, and we won’t spend long on the topic. Runda cost 2CP with no text on the card for reductions or other shenanigans. 2CP backups are some of the easiest to evaluate in our opinion because 2CP for a backup is a good rate, even if the card was blank. You can play this turn 1 without much issue and it is easy to meet its cost requirements. As a deck builder, there is a bit more room to gamble with 2CP backups since they can just be played for CP generation easily and not the effect. Overall, its cost isn’t its problem and would be rated as a positive outcome.

Does it have a job with known support?

This question requires more leg work on our part to answer. The best way to answer this question is to head over to FFDecks and search for job Mech. Let’s see what those results are:

As we can see, there are only 3 cards with Job Mech in the entire game! Unfortunately, that all but guarantees there are no support cards for the job itself. Now, for hypothetical sake, lets say there was a large result coming from our query of job “mech”. What would we do next? A lot of cards with the same job does not always mean it has support. We need to look for abilities that support the Job as well. For this, we would head back into FFDecks and search for job “Mech” in the abilities of cards as well. This is the query that will determine if true support exists or not since it is abilities that provide the support, not the job itself. In our case, that query will return zero results. Perhaps someday, we will have job Mech support. However, we would see different situations for job “Samurai” and “Scions of the Seventh Dawn” with the same query. If you are new to the game, I encourage you to see what jobs have the most support and which ones are basically flavor text.

Is it searchable?

Searching is one of the more powerful effects in FFTCG. The ability to have a curate draw is incredibly strong and allows FFTCG to have less bricky games. Cards that are searchable are often given much more consideration in deck building because deck builders MUST find consistency in their strategy. A card can technically be underpowered but still see competitive play just because it can be searched by a card relevant to the deck. A good example of this is King of Concordia (9-110C) | FF Decks. With a job King, it is searchable by Sara (13-093H) | FF Decks and Clarus (11-068R) | FF Decks which also have other relevant targets in certain decks. This means the card just being a 2CP backup is good enough to see play because it is consistent.

In our case, Runda isn’t searchable by any, non-generic means. Cards like Shinryu (20-127L) | FF Decks and Thordan VII (6-108R) | FF Decks can search Runda, but do we want to waste 5CP on a 2CP backup that doesn’t have synergy with our game plan? In this case, the answer is no but, I can easily see a world this sees plays if we ever get a backup searcher for job “Mech”.

What is the Real CP value of the effect(s)?

Ok, this is where the rubber meets the road in determining the viability of a card. How much does it cost me to use the effect for this card? What is the Real Cost behind the ability since there may be more to the effect than meets the eye. If you are unfamiliar with RealCP, please go check out our previous articles in the Lets Talk CP – The Bear Den (fftcg.online) series.

Runda is a good example of a straightforward ability that doesn’t have much text to evaluate, Runda’s only effect to use the ability is 1CP since he is required to dull himself. This means he is unavailable to use for CP outside of decks that reactivate him. However, there is another way to look at this effect. For 1 additional CP, he grants a forward the damage reduction ability. This means you evaluate this by looking at it through the lense of the forward it protects. Would I pay an additional CP for this forward, if it included this ability? Is Bismarck better as a 6CP forward with a 3k protection effect than a 5 CP forward without the protection? If your answer is no, then the card itself isn’t worth it. If the answer is yes, the card is worth further evaluating.

We should also look at the cards only restriction. This restriction limits us to summons/abilities-based damage only making this useless in combat as well. Combat has taken somewhat of a back seat in FFTCG since removal is getting so efficient but still, it is completely unnecessary. The card still wouldn’t see competitive play even without this restriction.

Finally, the last cost of the card isn’t CP driven at all, but opportunity driven. Runda must be on the field AND active to use his effect. This means your opponent knows it’s coming and can be prepared for it. Additionally, this also means that if you wanted to use Runda every turn, you will never have more than 4 backups in your economic gameplan. That is basically playing with one hand tied behind in your back against an opponent with all 5. Much harder to win a game on economy when your opponent always has 1 extra CP at their disposal.

Overall, there are simply too many hidden costs both in CP and opportunity for Runda to be a viable card.

In Conclusion

Runda isn’t going to set the meta on fire, nor will it most likely show up; however, perhaps with some mech synergy or a search card, it could see the field one day as a synergy piece. Its restrictions simply prevent it from having any major impact in a competitive game.

I hope you enjoyed our spoiler article and a big thanks again to SE for the opportunity to spoil Runda. I guess as a first, I have to get 3 foils don’t I?

Anyways, back to my den of hibernation