Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth - Queen's Blood Guide: How to Play, strategies and best cards

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth is upon us, Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase's long-awaited sequel has been four years in the making since FFVII: Remake began this new journey into the unknown in 2020. And just as it was then, Rebirth is much more than an epic story about a group of characters out to save the world, it's a vast, grand and colourful world, full of nooks and crannies to explore and things to see (and enjoy). And just as it did 26 years ago, the story of Cloud and company had its dramatic moments and its light-hearted moments. And there are few things more fun and addictive than the great new Queen's Blood mini-game.

Queen's Blood, the collectible card game for Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

First of all, no one should be nervous or think that this is a necessary milestone to complete the story. Queen's Blood is a card game popular throughout the regions we visit in Rebirth in which each player builds decks of cards representing monsters and other enemies (and even summons) from this and other titles in the Final Fantasy series.

When you start the mini-game (which spans the entire game, through the various Queen's Blood players you encounter) in Kalm, you receive a starter deck with 15 cards you need to play. These first cards are pretty basic, but they serve as a great example of how the game works.

How do you play Queen's Blood?

The Queen's Blood board is a rectangle of 5x3 spaces, and (with a few exceptions with special rules) we always start on the left side, with a green pawn to drop a card in the first column. Our aim is to score more points than the opposing player in each of the three rows, either by counting cards, or by drowning the opposing side so that they cannot play cards.

Once you receive your first pack of cards, you must familiarise yourself with them, and there is only one way to do this. Find one of the three opponents you'll find in the city of Kalm and take him on. The cards have different parts:

• Top left: pawns. If we translate this to other collectible card games like Pokémon TCG or Magic, we could say that these are the "lands" or energy needed to put that card into play. If, for example, a Shrieker card has a value of three pawns, the space you want to place it on must have three pawns of your own colour.


• Top right: Value of the card. The number that appears is the value of the card and is added to the count at the end of the game. If you score more total points in a line at the end of the game, you take that value into the final count. If both players have the same value in the row, neither adds up. There are special abilities on some cards that allow you to raise or lower the value of cards that have an area effect, so having more value doesn't always mean you can relax.


• Middle section - area of effect: On each Queen's Blood card is a representation of the game board that indicates the spaces that card's influence goes up (spaces coloured yellow) or where it affects with its special ability (spaces coloured red). With this small mini-map of the game board you can decide in which space the card is most useful and strategise how to maximise the effect of its ability (if it has one).


• Card Ability: Not all cards have special abilities (they will appear as you progress through the game), but most of them include a change in the value of cards placed on the spaces they influence. Certain cards also have effects on your hand (for example, Mandragora will automatically grant you another identical card when you put it into play), and others can even "summon" other cards that you don't even have in your deck at the time, but we'll leave those Legendary cards aside for now.

How to get more cards for Queen's Blood?

You'll soon realise that the cards you've used to win your first few victories are starting to fall short for the next few opponents, and you'll have to find more. There are only three ways to get cards:

• Buying the packs sold by merchants in settlements, cities and in the Gold Saucer for 500 Guiles. These packs usually consist of three or four different cards, and one or two units of each, depending on their power.


• Defeat the Queen's Blood players in your path. When you win, they will give you a special card that they have previously used in the game, so you will have suffered its effects and will know how to use it in your deck.


• Completing certain side quests.

Card types in Queen's Blood

Depending on their ability or rarity, cards are classified in different ways:

• Normal cards: As the name suggests, these are the most common cards in Queen's Blood. Aside from having a specific value or number of pawns and a distinct influence range, normal cards can be found in any player's deck in Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth. Normal cards may or may not have an ability.


• Legendary cards: These are unique cards (there is only one of each type that you can get) and each one usually represents more well-known or unique characters in the game. The most common or the ones you might encounter first are the summoning cards, such as the Chocobo and Moogle summoning card. Every legendary card has a very useful special ability depending on the type of game you are playing, so it never hurts to practice with several of them in your deck until you find an optimal sequence of plays.


• Substitution cards: Substitute for a card already on the board. These cards are useful because they can trigger abilities of cards that operate when destroyed, which can make for a victorious outcome to the game. They are also the only cards that can come into play even if all other spaces on the board are occupied, so they are the perfect definition of "ace in the hole".

Personal Choice: The best cards to have in your Queen's Blood deck

As a final note, I'd like to recommend the use of a few cards that you will encounter on your travels in Rebirth. These cards don't always have to be Legendary (although most of them are), but they are the ones that I regularly carry in my deck and that I've used to achieve victories across the Prairies, Junon, Costa del Sol, Corel, Gongaga, and so on.

• Shiva (Legendary): Summoning Shiva is a very useful legendary card when facing a mid to high level opponent. Generally, the attacker's strategy will always start by "saving" you by taking possession of empty pawn squares, so Shiva's ability will come in handy right away. When it comes into play, the card places three diamond dust counters that block the advance of the opponent's cards and add values of 2, 4 or 6 to your empty positions.


• Chocobo and Moogle (Legendary): This card is available early in the game, if you pay attention to the side quests in Kalm and the Grasslands. Chocobo and Moogle increases in value by 1 for each additional boosted card, which can put a game in your favour if you take advantage of combining it with Cactuar, a normal card you also get early. This Choco/Moog and Cactuar combination will be one of your favourite starting strategies.


• Mentalis (normal): Powerful offensive card, whose ability is that it lowers the value of allied (be careful with this) and enemy cards in its area of effect by 1. Very useful if you want to place it in the middle of the board to act as a "barrier" to your opponent and prevent him from placing low level cards.


• Archdragon (normal): A vanguard card, with which you get to level up pawns in the squares behind it, while lowering the value of the square just to its right by 3. Good to use when you want to eliminate opponent's cards and gain that space for your own cards. And it only needs one pawn to come into play. Very versatile.

I hope this guide to Queen's Blood will help you win many victories and realise the potential of this wonderful Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth mini-game. And who knows, maybe one day Square Enix will decide to release it as a standalone title. I'm looking forward to it.