Christmas is getting closer and also our community spoiler for the upcoming set, Resurgence of Power, brings us a beardy man, bearing gifts from the Break Zone.
But he has a bitter rival...
The Card
Cid Sophiar
2 CP, Lightning
Backup
Job: Engineer
Category: XV
Code: 18-077R
EX BURST
Damage 3 - When Cid Sophiar enters the field, choose 1 Character in your Break Zone. Add it to your hand.
Character Background
Cid Sophiar is the owner and operator of a garage in Hammerhead. The player encounters him quite early in Final Fantasy XV.
While his granddaughter Cindy takes care of the manual labour, he supports Noctis's group with weapon upgrades and does not hesitate to spread some unpleasant truths.
He is a very supportive and useful character, how fitting his second entry in the FFTCG is another Backup card!
Cid and Cindy, as we had them in the FFTCG so far.
Playability
On first glance, Cid Sophiar is a generic solid card. A 2 CP Backup with the potential to bring another character from the Break Zone back to your hand, if you have received 3 points of damage.
If you have not received enough damage points while playing him, he will just not triger his ability, but at least you managed to play a Backup.
The Rival
This is definitely not the first and only Lightning card with such an ability. Especially one other card comes to mind, who does a very similar job to Cid Sophiar: [13-077C] Zemus.
His card text reads as follows:
When Zemus enters the field, choose 1 Forward in your Break Zone. Add it to your hand.
Damage 3 -- When Zemus enters the field, choose 1 Backup in your Break Zone. Add it to your hand.
At first glance, the Lunarian with his 4 CP costs, is a bit more expensive than Cid Sophiar. But even without a third point of damage, he can bring a Forward back from your Break Zone. After 3 points of damage, he even brings a Backup on top, making him just as cost efficient as Cid Sophiar.
While Zemus brings a Forward back at 0-2 points of damage, Cid Sophiar retrieves nothing, making them both cost 2 CP in this scenario.
Zemus is just missing the EX Burst. Other than that, category IV comes with some interesting Backup synergies, giving him an advantage in those decks.
In the end it is highly dependant on your deck and gameplan, which of the two cards may work the best for you.
Having the option to retrieve both a Forward and Backup opens up a few more possibilites for your game plan and also enables colour fixing, as you are getting 2 cards back.
Just keep in mind, that an early game Zemus forces you to place a Forward in the break zone, to make use of him. Without that, he is just a pretty slow and expensive Backup. Cid Sophiar instead does not mind what you discard early, as he will just be a blank 2 CP Backup. This way we are less limited in the decision of what to discard.
Cid Sophiar has the ability to retrieve a Monster from the Break Zone as well. Zemus can only do this for Monster cards, that also count as a Forward or Backup in all situations.
[9-068H] Mist Dragons ability to remove the opponents Break Zone is also less impactful if used on Cid Sophiar than Zemus.
Synergies
Cid Sophiar has quite a few nice synergies. While none of them are super unique, compared to his generic useful ability, we still felt compelled to list a few of them:
So far Engineer is not an archetype that has seen the light of day and Cid Sophiar is not really changing it. Even with [13-038H] Cid Haze activating all Engineers when entering the field or attacking, it's still just not enough to build a whole deck around this small synergy.
Kingsglaive are benefitting a lot more from Cid Sophiar: [15-098C] Pelnas cost being reduced to 1 CP and also [16-093R] Noctis becomes 1 CP cheaper for any category XV character.
And surely [12-038H] Althea has the potential to make some interesting turns by bringing herself and Cid Sophiar back to your hand. Giving you the option to play him again and gain some important resources from the Break Zone. But this is not really limited to Cid Sophiar only. It could also be done with Zemus or any other character card.
Thanks to his 2 CP cost, there are also a few other interactions possible: [2-049H] Asura (returns him from Break Zone to hand), [11-009L] Shadow (plays him from hand to field) and [13-115L] Golbez (Search) would be a few examples.
There are a lot of potential synergies for Cid Sophiar, we will see how many of them will actually end up in a deck
Conclusion
A pretty solid card with no real drawback. We are very curious to see in what decks Cid Sophiar will see play. Kingsglaive being one of our safer bets, but maybe also some other Lightning-based decks.
What do you think? Would you play Cid Sophiar or rather stick to Zemus? Or have you given up on your Break Zone by now, as it is constantly being harassed by Mist Dragon?
Tell us on Facebook, Twitter or the German FFTCG Discord!
Thank you very much SQUARE ENIX for giving us the chance to show this community spoiler!