Category: Niko’s Soap Box

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It’s Getting Busy Around Here

Which is a good thing, but that also means we have less time to tell you what’s going. As well as “Character of the Week”, and our Wave 1 guide which will take a while to complete.

But, we are here to sell cards, so it’s a good thing.

Dissidia Final Fantasy Collection Set 2023 came, and we still have a few left. If you’re interested pick one up. We’ll also throw in a coupon code for you FIVE. You can use it on anything. Not just the Dissidia collection.

We also grabbed some Flesh and Blood – Bright Lights, but those flew straight out of our hands before we even listed them. We do have singles for Bright Lights available on our TCGplayer store. Why use a TCGplayer store? Well it helps us list singles faster, and we know that some people don’t like shopping at a lesser known store, so we use Tcgplayer as the middle man. Plus, it doesn’t slow down the website.

Going forward we shall turn our Character of the week into Character of the Month. Which will give us time to take care of business with Beyond Destiny just around the corner.

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The Weekend Is Over

I think I have it figured out.

Hopefully that is.

But first, We did have a busy weekend. Did two shows back to back, and as always we had a good time. First how was the Countryside Sports card show, even though we don’t do much sports cards, one of my sons likes going, so I figure, let’s just go and have some fun. We did for the most part, I’ve known the organizer for quite some time now.

Didn’t do much sales wise, but that was expected. It’s a Sports card show, only 5% of the people that go there are interested in anything that’s not Sports cards.

GCon was better, plenty of people there, and I noticed that things are slowing down in general. Only did a quarter of what we did last year. Not many people are out there spending extra money. And, we need that money to buy more trading cards.
Which brings me to what I think I figured out.

A way to list more cards on the site without having to make multiple listing of the same cards in order to have a regular version and the foil version.

Be on the lookout for that new update coming up.

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Wave 1 : Ranger 1-008C

Here we are again, with an easy card to distinguish whether it is Wave 1 or Wave 2. I present to you your Standard Unit Ranger.

But, first let me give you the links to these 2 guides.

“Distinguishing Final Fantasy TCG Opus 1 Wave 1 from Future Waves”

“Differences in Opus I Wave 1 Printing vs Later Waves”

First off you’ll say, these 2 just look the same, as all Opus I cards do. If you take a closer look, you can spot the difference. Take a look at the colon right after the Dull symbol.

Do you see where it is placed on both cards? One is lower than the other. And, if you said that that one is the Wave 1 card, you are right.

Now that we know that we have 2 different Waves on our hands, let’s take a closer look at the cards and spot some more, differences to help us with the other cards that don’t have a sure way to tell if it is either Wave 1 or Wave 2.

If you take a look at the Green coloring on the shirt and hat, you can can see that the Wave 1 Ranger is duller than the Wave 2. And, the Wave 2 is a different shade of green as well. More like a Forest Green if you ask me.

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Ever Crisis, and The First Soldier

We had a new Final Fantasy game come out last week. I haven’t had much time to play it, but I can tell you that it is another retelling of Final Fantasy VII. Is it worth playing if you’ve already played the original and the Remake? I’m saying that yes it will be.

Ever Crisis will be diving deeper into the characters backstories. I know for sure, we’ll be seeing Sephiroth’s rise through Shinra, as I believe we’re getting a whole part dedicated to Sephiroth. Part you ask? Yes, Ever Crisis is separated into 3 parts at the moment. Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core, and The First Soldier.

You’ll start off playing the story you already know, and when you reach a certain point in the story, you will be allowed to play the other parts as well.

So, far I’m still in Midgar.

I don’t know how fast I’ll be able to get through the story, but I’ll be telling you all about my thoughts when I get a chance to.
Like now.

Somewhat Spoilers.

The game does start off with the Bombing Mission. I was not excited about this part. I was hoping that they would just start the game at the very beginning. Only problem with that would be without Cloud, Tifa and the rest of the gang, Square Enix wouldn’t be making much money on the pulls, as no one would be spending money on getting a different costume for Glenn.

The game play is pretty similar to the original, but it’s hard for me to play games without a controller in my hands. I just can’t get into them for some reason. Maybe that’s just a sign of old age.

After the bombs go off, we all separate meet Aerith, buy a flower, run from Shinra, grab a drink with Tifa, tell Barret to bug off, and we head off to Bomb another Reactor.

In which we do.

Until next time, I’ll be laying down on the flower bed, in the Sector 5 church.

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Zack Fair

“Hey, would you say I became a hero?”

Shinra SOLDIER: Second Class. He left his hometown and came to Midgar with dreams of becoming a hero.

He tackles his assignments head-on as he aspires to one day be promoted to SOLDIER: First Class.

-taken from the website

We all know how this ends. If you don’t move along, nothing to see here.

Spoilers.

It’s raining, Cloud is useless due to the Mako poisoning, and Shinra is looking for the 2 escaped test subjects.

That is pretty much the ending to Crisis Core. Zack Vs the Shinra Army. I remember that battle. It felt like it would never end. The Soldiers just kept coming and coming, until they finally took Zack down.

Before all of that happened, Zack was a teenager, that ran away from home to join the Shinra army and became a SOLDIER. Angeal took Zack under his wings, and hands down the Buster Sword to Zack, who then passes it on to Cloud at the end of his story.

Zack met Aerith after falling down through the roof of the Sector 5 church. They began dating, but that all ended when Zack was sent on a mission to Nibelheim, alongside Sephiroth and Cloud. After the events that transpired there Hojo took Zack and Cloud for his new experiment the “Jenova Reunion Theory”. Zack escapes, helping Cloud escape as well.