FF7 Rebirth Queen’s Blood Guide: The Best Cards, Decks, and Strategies to Win the Tournament
The heart of the cards.
So you want to be the best Queen’s Blood player in all of Gaia in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Or more likely, you’ve run into the card game while completing the main questline and you don’t want to forfeit the tournament you’ve stumbled upon, but your opponents are quite possibly beating you senselessly. Well, Inverse has got you covered. I’m not one to brag, but I did win the Queen’s Blood tournament in Chapter 5, Blood in the Water, and regularly defeated locals in regions like Cosmo Canyon.
At first, weirdly enough, I did lose confusingly to a few beginner opponents on the Shinra-8 cruise ship.
While Rebirth may walk you through the general instructions for Queen’s Blood, it doesn’t help you with more strategies and tips. But after I enlightened to a few tricks, I never lost a game again — especially not to my eager rivals. Let’s dive right in and, with time, this just might become your favorite part of Rebirth like it is mine. If only we could duel Sephiroth in Queen’s Blood...
How to play Queen’s Blood in FF7 Rebirth
Who explained it better, Rebirth’s tutorial or this guide?
Rebirth’s tutorial for Queen’s Blood may leave a little to be desired, so we’ll break it down for you here as simply as possible. There are three lanes in the game, and your goal is to win lanes by placing powerful cards down. The game automatically adds up the powers of each card in each lane and compares your score to your opponent’s. Both place cards down on their side of the board until they run out of space. Then the game ends, and whoever scored higher wins.
Sounds simple enough, right? Well, it’s also important to note that each card costs a different amount of pawns to play. In a three-by-five board, you start with three spaces available to you to play cards in. Each of these areas has one light on them, indicating you can play 1-cost cards, for now. To increase the number of lights on these spaces or to gain more spaces on the board, you’ll need to place cards strategically.
Note that each card depicts a little Tetris-like visual. Those different shapes on these cards demonstrate what benefits you’ll get when you place the card down on the board.
A cross shape on a card, for instance, means the space above, below, left, and right of the card will get an extra light, so if you play that card, you’ll have expanded your territory and gotten more lights on the board in a cross formation. If you place a card down that has a shape that indicates tiles to its right, then you’ll be able to seize a right space on the board, bringing you one step closer to seizing the enemy’s side.
If any of this gets confusing to visualize, have a look at the photos above and below.
Most of the strategy and fun of Queen’s Blood comes with thinking about how to get as many lights across the board as possible so that you may play higher-cost cards and crush your opponent.
Queen’s Blood Guide: How to Win
Now that you know some basics, here are a few vital strategies to keep in mind.
Mulligan your darlings: When discarding cards at the start of the game, be sure to toss all three-cost cards (look at the top left of the card to check its cost.) This will set you up for success, as you’ll hopefully get replacement cards in your hand that are worth playing.
Mulligan your higher-cost cards.
Dominate the board: Take up as much space on the right as possible. Think of this almost like when you begin a game of chess. In chess, I set up traps for my opponent and try to space out my pieces across the board. In Queen’s Blood, it can be easy to look at the cards, get distracted trying to play powerful cards, and suddenly realize your opponent has won several lanes by claiming more territory. That’s why I recommend prioritizing putting cards down that claim the most spots on the board, even if their power is not the highest.
Strategically destroy your enemies and build yourself up. This brings us to a good question: What cards should you be playing? You only have 15 cards in a deck, so you’ll have to choose carefully.
The Best Queen’s Blood starter card in FF7 Rebirth
A great starting move.
You get a starter deck to start, but not all the cards are worth using. Some are actually downright terrible. You’ll want to play Security Officer, though, and have two copies of him in your deck. He’s your guy for controlling the board as soon as possible. Whenever I play him, it’s a nearly guaranteed win. He’s also only a 1-cost, so while he makes for a great beginning, he’s less useful late game, though if you’ve got nothing better to play, he’ll still help you capture enemy territory. What an OG.
While the other cards in the deck are not particularly great, they’ll do the trick for getting you through some early opponents. Levikron and Grasslands Wolf contain particularly useful shapes for buffing the spaces next to them.
The best Queen’s Blood cards to obtain in FF7 Rebirth
Magic Pot can be a game-changer.
Magic Pot: This card is legendary, and it’s also included in the starter deck. It’s a three-cost so you’ll need to prep the board with lights to play it. What’s great about Magic Pot is that it buffs the cards around it by 2, in an X formation, so it can quite literally be a game-changer if you find the right place for it.
This card is aggressive and that’s good.
Archdragon: I can’t emphasize enough how good this dragon is. It’s also not too hard to get, you’ll have to buy the “Weird and Wicked” booster pack from Thorin in the Under Junon item shop in the Grasslands region. Possessing the “Enfeeble” side effect, Archdragon reduces the power of the space to the right of it by three. Three! You can guess what happens next: you can often destroy the enemy card on the right, which is an exhilarating thrill, or you at least claim the space on your right as your territory. This card is aggressive and that’s good. It’ll hasten your victory.
Don’t let this little plant’s low power fool you.
Mandragora: This one’s also sold by Thorin, in the booster pack called “Ruffians.” Don’t let this little plant’s low power fool you. It’s actually the shape on the card that matters more. This one is an upside-down L shape, which is useful for inching your way closer to enemy territory. And the card has a bonus side effect: when you play it, another card, “Mandragora Minion,” is added to your hand. That’s a card with the inverse shape depicted on it, convenient for easily slotting into small spaces on the board, as you march your way to dominance.
Even more amazing cards for your Queen’s Blood deck
As you progress through the story of Rebirth, you’ll either love Queen’s Blood or you’ll hate it. But with these tips, you should have a solid foundation to crush any rivals. If you choose to keep dueling, you’ll encounter some extremely interesting cards.
The fun just keeps ramping up in Queen’s Blood
For instance, from the Card Carnival in Costa del Sol, you can win cards like Tonberry King, which gets its power raised by two for every allied card that’s destroyed. This opens the door to a whole different kind of strategy, where you aim to destroy your own cards to obtain more power. Posh Chocobo is also a great one for adding bonus points to your lane. And Moogle Trio works like a fancier version of Mandragora. Playing Moogle Trio adds Moogle Mage and Moogle Bard to your hand, which are both great: one of these nerfs your opponent while the other one buffs your other cards.
I don’t know about you, but I have a feeling that Queen’s Blood is the Rebirth side content I’m going to return to again and again. If I do, I’ll be sure to report back with more recommended cards.
