Elemental Identities

Let's talk about the different elements that we can play and their identity within the game. The game has 6 main elements: Fire, Ice, Wind, Earth, Lightning and Water; and 2 secondary elements, Light and Dark.

Fire

It’s characterized by being an aggressive element. Within the cards of this element we can find may with abilities to deal damage to our opponents Forwards to break them. You will also find various cards with the Haste keyword, which allows you to attack with the Forwards the turn they were played or use their Dull abilities.

Playing with Fire cards we can take 2 different approaches. On the one side, the deck can be quite aggressive using cards with Haste and/or low cost to attack our opponents swiftly while complimenting the strategy with some damaging cards to remove potential threats or Forwards that are trying to block our path. On the other side, we can play cards to break our opponents Forwards until we can place one or two strong Forwards on our side and take control of the game.

All things considered, it’s a quite balanced element but runs the risk of lagging behind on card quantity or quality compared to other elements for its weakness comes from not having enough damage to destroy an opponent’s Forward with a single card and quickly exhausting our resources.

Ice

This element is of a disruptive nature. The abilities tied to this element look to incapacitate the Forwards that our opponent plays, whether by Dulling them so they can’t attack nor block, or by Freezing them so they can’t Activate on our opponent’s next turn. The other prominent skill found on Ice is to make our opponent discard cards from hand, thus denying him of the resources needed to play.

Generally speaking the Identity of Ice is basically the same as other elements, except on dull forwards. You want to deal damage? Deal a lot of damage... to a dull forward. You want to break something? Break a dull forward. You want dulls? you get them. You want to dull a forward that's already dull? freeze it! Mono Ice decks are often seen as tempo decks, using discard to run your opponent to run out of cards, and freeze effects to disable the ones that get played, winning before you opponent can stabilize.

Wind

Just like wind itself, the cards in this element are difficult to stop and quite versatile. Their two main strengths come from the ability to Activate our Dull cards and making it difficult for the opponent to get rid of our cards. The first ability allows use repeated use of our resources such as our Backups even to the point where we can play cards “for free” or being able to block with our Forwards after having attacked. Their second strength comes in the form of changing the power of the opponent’s cards combined with being able to deal widespread damage on the opponent’s Forwards.

Due to the great number of low-cost cards in Wind, it was primarily used as an aggressive element and difficult to stop efficiently. However, it also counts with a wide variety of different effects to Break or deny resources from our opponent. This allows it to bridge the gap in many other elements making it a great compliment to other strategies. Even though mono Wind decks have been rising in popularity, it’s still more common to see it working together with another element.

Earth

As a whole, it is a defensive element. The cards in Earth are, for the most part, high power and their abilities will allow them to raise that power higher. We will see cards that can increase the strength of the Forwards or that won’t allow them to be destroyed. Many effects support blocking forwards. Even being so defensive, several cards increase their power or effectiveness the more damage we have received. At the same time, as a proof of how defensive this element is, there exist several cards with Brave, which allows them to attack without becoming Dull, allowing them to attack and defend. Given that most Earth Forwards are of high power, there are several effects that allow your Forwards to deal damage to the opponent’s Forwards outside of combat.

By choosing to play Earth, we are ready for a long game. We have no rush to kill our opponent, for in most cases, our Forwards will outclass the opponent’s in combat, especially when playing defense. A good Earth player will know when they need to block and when to let damage through to get a better control of the late game.

Lightning

Lightning is the strike fast and strike hard element. This element also counts with a reasonable number of cards with Haste and can also deal damage to the enemy Forwards, although most of the time it required said Forwards to be Active or to have already been damaged. Lightning is also one of the few elements that can reduce the power of forwards. Another important characteristic from Lightning is the ability to Break Forwards. Finally, the First Strike ability can also be found on several of the Forwards in this element.

Another of the strong elements that can carry its own weight regularly. It counts with enough ways to Break opponent’s Forwards mixed with a decent number of aggressive Forwards to finish the job. This element can easily adapt to the speed they need to play in, being aggressive and playing several Forwards quickly or slowing down and Break anything that gets in its way.

Water

Just like the water currents, the cards in this element will help us keep the flow of the game in our favor. The main characteristic in Water is the ability to draw extra cards. This allows us to go through or deck in a quicker manner to get to the most useful cards or having more resources to play each turn. Another prominent ability is to bounce Forwards back to their controller’s hand. This can be used in several ways; we can save our own Forwards from breaking, or we can return our opponent’s Forwards to stop attacks, denying them the option to block or making them waste more resources in replaying them. Finally, this element has recently included a good number of cards that can lower the power of the opponent’s Forwards to be able to win in combat, which has made it one of the strongest elements as of late.

Given its adaptable nature, Water can be used for all sorts of strategies, although it excels at midrange and control strategies, assuring the balance is always at our favor. Even more in a midrange deck, this allows to seize opportunity at temporal advantage that the cards provide by being able to deal damage with hard to deal with Forwards while we delay our opponent’s plans.

Light and Dark

We will talk about both elements at the same time given they have the same characteristics. They don't particular act as different elements. According to the rules, you can't play another Light or dark card, while you already control one. This means that f you have a light card on the field, each light card you draw is as dead as each dark card you draw. Yet this lumping is a bit superficial. It would be irresponsible to recognize the synergy that dark cards have that allows 6-8 dark cards to be played in decks, and multiple on the field. Yet, there still isn't any way to have both a light card and a dark card on the field yet (we are ignoring the color changing abilities of Kam'lanaut and princess Sarah). In essence, we can split these elements into colorless 1 and colorless 2.

These colorless cards don't produce CP but they can be play with any CP. Light and Dark cards are often stronger than colored cards, both in number values and effect strength, but that is to be expected from cards that have heavy restrictions. Yet, there is no distinctive qualities for either. The only distinction are the flavors from which the game pulls its inspiration. Protagonists are light, and antagonists are dark. There are no mechanics that are exclusive to either. It may seem reasonable that some qualities would be attributed exclusively to either side, there is none. While we regard the heroes of the story to be brave, the brave mechanic is on both light and dark cards. While we regard the villains to be underhanded and dishonorable, the back attack mechanic isn't printed on any dark card.

Unlike the source material, FFTCG doesn't like to blur the lines between these elements. The heroes will always be heroic and villains will always be villainous. In Dissidia 012 Duodecim, Tidus, Terra, and Cloud are warriors of Chaos, and fight for darkness while Jecht is summoned by cosmos for the light. Yet, I wouldn't expect a dark Cloud for a very long time. On the contrary, expect a 4th Light Cloud.

Strengths and Weaknesses.

On the surface you would think that because of their traits certain elements would simply obliterate others. For example, Ice is know to discard and attack dull forwards. This should be a terrible against earth. Earth can return cards that have been discarded, and give brave to their forwards. These superficial advantages mean that ice will have a hard time defeating earth. Yet... it doesn't. Wind likes to activate their characters, so lighting decks that dull should have a hard time breaking through a line of defenses that is backed by activation support. Yet... it doesn't. The game is deep enough to balance these superficial advantages. All these elements have really intricate play styles that are flexibly geared to be played by newer and veteran players. Do you like playing big strong cards? play Earth. Are you afraid of getting destroyed by wind's efficient removal? Worry not, there are many cards in the element that protect from breaking (titan/mist dragon).

The elegance of combinations

Yet, the best part about talking about the elemental identities is how they work well together rather than how they work against each other. Despite the fact that each element can claim a small corner of the game, you'd be hard pressed to find elements that have nothing in common. For example, the Lightning element uses the word break more than any other element. In opus 1 there are 14 cards that break your opponent's characters. Of those cards, 1 is light (Cloud), 1 is dark (Sephiroth), 1 is earth (Hecatoncheir), 1 is fire(Jecht), 2 are wind (Alexander/Archer) and a whopping 8 are lightning. This heavily indicates that breaking forwards is a lightning mechanic. Since then many other cards that break have been printed for each element but each other element has found unique ways to include it. Wind has a plethora of cards that break forwards that cost 5 or more. Fire has many cards that break monsters. Ice and earth break forwards that are dull. Earth likes to break backups. While Lightning is the dominant breaker, there is overlap with other elements. These overlaps can be found in almost every element. Wind and Fire tend to deal damage to forwards as a form of removal. Earth and Ice attack forwards that are dull. Ice and lightning have enormous dulling abilities. Power reduction is usually reserved to lightning and water. Both wind and water like to activate cards and return cards to hand. This makes it so that you can combine elements seamlessly, to boost each elements strengths and cover each others weakness. If you wish to play an earth card that breaks a forward, but your opponent only has active forwards, you could use an ice or lightning card to dull first. This is a testament to the design of the game. You can play whichever elements you want, together.

I can't stress enough the beauty of these identities. Each element has has unique traits that compliment other elements. It does this in ways that seem very intuitive, with style and ease. This makes each element fun to play, and interesting to learn. As a whole this helps to enjoy FFTCG.