Final Thoughts on the Opus 4 Meta

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, and I figured I’d get in a quick write-up during the downtime before the set gets spoiled and I can do a Legend review (and start brewing with Opus 5).

Let’s start with a quick rundown of some of the archetypes that saw play with the introduction of the new set, in (roughly) the order they came into the meta. I am not specifically talking about any region, but, as always, I mostly consume meta reports from Japan, and that is definitely reflected in the order of the list below. 

Mono Water Monsters

Ice/Lightning

Wind/Water Chocobos (Standard Units)

Mono Fire

Water/Earth Monsters

Ice/Fire Shelke

Ice/Wind

Mono Water IX

Water/Lightning (and Chocobo variants)

Earth/Wind (and Golbez variant, thanks Cid)

Ice/Fire VI

Mono Lightning

Mono Ice

Water/Lightning Fusoya

Tricolor Monsters

All of the decks I’ve just listed are competitively viable archetypes, and have been clearly demonstrated to be able to win at the highest level of play multiple times to great success by both well-known and unknown players alike. A healthy metagame, no? Plenty of room for innovation, tons of viable archetypes. However, I hold great confidence in saying that there are 3 or 4 archetypes here that vastly outclass the rest. Why is that?

The meta we’ve seen since the launch of the Opus 3 starter decks during the end of Opus 2 has largely been more or less the same. A water-based archetype (Wind/Water, Mono Water, in Opus 4 Water/Earth and Mono Water Monsters), a Lightning-based archetype (Mono Lightning, Ice/Lightning), and an Ice-based archetype (Ice/Lightning, Ice/Fire) have consistently remained in a position where their existence largely defines the meta we play in. None of the other archetypes I listed up there have the same level of warping effect on the core meta as Mono Water, Mono Lightning, and Ice/Fire. Archetypes can be aimed to beat 1 or 2 of these decks, but almost no archetype in the game can be built to have favorable matchups against all 3 of these at the same time. You can always build a deck that beats 2/3 and try to read the field for a specific tournament, and that is why we see so many different archetypes topping.

This is why we see a lot of high level players tend to “come home” to one of these archetypes when deciding what deck to take to an event. They could take their sick Earth/Wind deck they’ve been building for the previous month, but their Ice/Fire matchup can be pretty tough if they can’t answer an early Celes + Locke push or a Genesis + Sage play since they spend almost all of their tech slots dealing with the Lightning and Water matchups. This is just an example of course, you could certainly tech your Earth/Wind to deal with Ice very well (Wind has a lot of these tools!) but then maybe your Lightning matchup suffers from not dealing with Hildibrand well, or you can’t put on enough pressure to avoid the Cagnazzo inevitability Mono Water presents. These kinds of problems tend to loop around and around when deckbuilding with the decks that are not part of the “Top 3”, so to speak.

What I really want to say with all of this blabbering is that Mono Lightning, Mono Water, and Ice/Fire (or Mono Ice) have a gatekeeping effect on what can be viable for a long tournament setting in which every win is important. Make of this what you will. I’m sure some competitive players think this is great; if they can get a solid read on the likely archetypes in their area they can tech for it appropriately with the third deck and get some advantageous wins where their opponent’s deck is lacking. Personally, I find it kind of frustrating because, despite all of the cool new cards that have come out, the game I’m playing doesn’t really feel different, and the fundamental interaction we’ve had feels more or less the same.  

“But, eureka, what about Tricolor Monsters? That deck instantly climbed to Tier 1 status and it can totally wreck Mono Water and Mono Lightning!” I know, I know, that deck was a pretty surprising bit of fresh air the first time I got absolutely wrecked by it, and then proceeded to wreck every top tier archetype I knew with it. But the trick gets old, just like every new archetype we see have success. Tricolor Monsters is a good deck, but it isn’t going to be gatekeeping new archetypes from entering the game the way the top tier is; and realistically, the Ice matchup is not favorable at best and can be ridiculously one-sided if you miss early EX Bursts or can’t draw a 3^rd Backup at worst.

This pretty much concludes my thoughts on archetype evolution over the set, so I wanna talk a little more about specific engines that we saw enter and/or leave the meta over the set, what their purpose was, and why we can probably expect to see some of them again in the future. 

Chocobos

The Chocobo engine, which normally consists of Izana, Fat Chocobo, Haste Chocobo, and sometimes 6k give Haste Chocobo, can be really great tools against Water and Lightning, but they tend to roll pretty high and pretty low. In a best case scenario, you get the Izana out early and can start pumping out the pain with consecutive attacks your opponent has no hope to block because of Nono + Fat Chocobo combo or just them not having blockers. If you can’t draw Fat Chocobo or Izana quickly, on the other hand, your engine is absolutely horrible and would almost always be better as another set of cards. Additionally, the engine is pretty expensive for the power line it generates, and so if one part of it can be answered efficiently (Cid Randell to prevent Hasted swings, Zalera that clears a board of your weenies) the whole thing was pretty much meaningless. I expect we’ll see this engine continue to see play to keep the meta honest. 

The Earth Package

Normally this means 3x Shantotto, 3x Raubahn (Forward), and your choice pick of Earth card(s) including but not limited to Atomos, Hecatoncheir (both), Magic Pot, Opus 3 Rydia, and Masked Woman. Basically, we get to play a mono deck while having sufficient outs for The Emperor and an extra board clear. Water and Lightning have both seen some play like this, though Water to a much greater extent. The Earth Package as it exists now tends to cover weaknesses to a lot of universal threats, like early board floods (VI, Chocobos, Golbez), The Emperor, and Elemental booster Backups. I think this engine is going to be one of the first to go away, namely because I have a hunch that Shantotto will decrease in playability heavily in the upcoming set.

Hildibrand and Nashu

Lightning’s new Swiss-army knife. While he doesn’t seem so on the surface, Hildibrand is actually incredibly versatile. He can be a difficult-to-deal-with blocker, a potent attacker, and most importantly, he dodges a lot of the popular removal available right now. He came into play namely because of the popularity of Shantotto and Yuna-H/Chaos Walker combo, which Lightning’s blockers could have a lot of trouble with before his utilization.

Ranger and Arc

Arc has become the new hottest inclusion in a lot of decks dipping into Wind, but most specifically Wind/Water and Wind/Earth archetypes. Alongside him, Ranger has been one of the most-included 3-drops in the game, and without a doubt inside the Wind element. And it’s easy to see why; the card provides a lot of wide-spread protection from a lot of available threats in the meta, since they’re all attached to auto-abilities right now. I do think that Ranger will dip off in popularity compared to the other cards I’ve mentioned, however, since both Forwards with inherent resistance and the use of Summons will be rising in the upcoming set.

Yuna-H and Chaos, Walker of the Wheel

Not exactly a new combo, we’ve seen this since Opus 3 with Garnet + multicolor Summons, and throughout the set in Wind/Water Chocobos, Standard Units, and now Tricolor Monsters. I won’t waste my breath talking about it too much, but the fact that both of these cards are EX really tops of it off, and as long as Yuna-H’s auto effect can keep up with CP efficiency and her Field Ability is relevant in the meta, we’ll see her around, and Chaos Walker too a result.