How a match works
🟩 The board
Three lanes of five squares. You place cards on squares you control; a placed card claims squares in its pattern and raises their rank. The player with the higher total power in a lane wins the lane; win more lane power than your opponent and you win the match.
♟️ Pawns and rank
Every square you hold has a rank from one to three. A card costs rank to place — a rank-2 card needs a rank-2 square. Cheap cards spread your territory; expensive cards need the territory first.
⚡ Effects
Cards buff, debuff, destroy or replace what is around them, often when placed and sometimes when destroyed. The late-game decks are built on chains: place a card whose effect triggers another.
🏆 Ranks and cards
Beating an opponent for the first time pays a card; the rank goes up after beating a set number of players and then a rank-up opponent. 145 cards exist, from shops, opponents, quests and the Card Carnival puzzles. New Blood is the trophy for the first rank up.
A deck that wins the first thirty matches
Spread first
Fill the deck with cheap cards whose patterns claim many squares. Territory is what lets you play anything else.
Then one big card per lane
A rank-3 card with high power, placed once a lane's squares are ready, decides that lane. Two of them decide the match.
Add a destroyer
One or two cards that lower or destroy enemy cards break the opponents who out-spread you.
Rebuild in Costa del Sol
The shop and the opponents there are the first real upgrade, in time for the tournament.
The tournament and the rest
- The Shinra-8 tournament in chapter 5 is the Card Royalty trophy. It can be won or forfeited; chapter select brings it back if you forfeited.
- Card Carnival puzzles are set positions with a fixed hand: solve them for cards you cannot win otherwise.
- A Rare Card Lost in Kalm and the moogle emporiums are the early sources people miss.
- The story of the card game runs through the whole game and ends in chapter 12; play it as you go rather than in one binge.
Still to verify
Cross-checked on 16 September 2026 against the trophy list and the guides of RPG Site, GameSpot, Game8 and PowerPyx. What is still unverified is the only thing reading cannot settle — nobody here has played it.