If you were a Final Fantasy fan in the late 1990s and early 2000s, then the eighth and ninth entries' in-game card games, Triple Triad and Tetra Master, probably ate up more than a few hours. After a nearly 25-year hiatus, has brought a🧸 third card game to the time-honored franchise: Queen's Blood.

Queen's Blood is captivatingly good, 💞and even if you're only in FF7 Rebirth for its story, you can capitalize upon some degree of skill in it to enjoy a fabulous event on a certain cruise ship - and a purely card-driven side quest. Here's how to play!

What Is Queen's Blood?

Queen's Blood is a competitive card game set in the world of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy. Introduced in FF7 Rebirth, it involves collecting increasingly powerful cards as you travel the world, battling opponents of steadily higher ranks.

There's serious depth to this game. Queen's Blood is played on a board with seven spaces (tiles) on each of three rows. You'll place (most) cards on empty tiles, but only tiles which are presently denoted as within your control.

With dozens upon dozens of cards, you will have at least as many potential strategies at your 𒊎disposal.

There are four types of cards:

• Cards with no rules. For these cards, the affected tiles and overall power ranking are your only routine concerns.
• Cards which enhance themselves or other cards. These may affect other cards only when played, while others will impact cards within their range for the whole game.
• Cards which weaken themselves or other cards. Similar to enhancement cards, different ones will either take the full game into account or just one action.
• Cards which replace other cards. These cards are most often affected by the cards they replace, or else by the current state of the game. They're relatively rare, and often game-changing.

Although you will only ever have one of each card, they are nevertheless sorted in rarity between common and legendary. As you probably assume, legendary cards tend to be quite powerful.

How To Play Queen's Blood

Time to dive right into the hottest card game ever to hit Gaia. Below, we'll detail each of the four main aspects of Queen's Blood, but you will need to read your cards while deckbuilding to see precisely what they do.

Queen's Blood is a deep, deep card game. As such, while cards fall into specific categories, and follow the same overarching rules, you'll discover a great deal of deviations in how they follow those rules.

Preparation And Opening Hand

Queen's Blood is played with 15-card decks. There are pre-constructed decks, but you'll generally want to build your own. At the beginning of the game, you and your opponent each draw five cards at random.

In order to craft a pre-constructed deck, you w🌜ill need to have the requisite card꧋s in your collection.

You can mulligan as many as you'd like, but what you get the second time around is what you'll have to keep. You and your opponent then take turns placing one card per round.

Taking a mulligan can mean a couple of things, depending on the card game. In Queen's Blood's case, it means choosing cards to return to your deck and replace others.

Starting Ranks

You'll always go first in Queen's Blood. On your turn, you choose one of your cards to place on the board in one of your three initially controlled tiles. These tiles will be the same for your opponent and yourself, but yours are on the left and theirs are on the right.

The first column to your left, with its three vertical tiles, will have a glowing green piece on each tile. Do note that your opponent's, with the final (righthand) column, will mirror yours, albeit with red glowing pieces.

Depending on the current rank of a tile, you'll see between one, two, and three glowing pieces on that tile. In the opening round, both players' controlled tiles have only one piece, meaning only cards of the first (of three) ranks can be placed.

You can check which rank your cards belong to by looking at the card's top-left corner. It's a good idea to ensure you have at least three first-rank cards in your opening hand, as you'll be stuck 😼playing first-rank cards early o💫n!

Raising Ranks

When a card is placed upon a tile, the representative diagram on the card informs you of which tiles will be affected.

The diagram's grid features five rows, rather than the three present on the game's board. This is because your chosen placement of each card determines how many of the board's tiles are actually impacted.

For instance, if a card is placed in the bottom-left corner of the board, and its grid shows that it will affect the tile beneath it, nothing will happen because there's no tile beneath the card.

When a first-rank card with no special abilities is played on a first-rank tile, the tiles that its grid demonstrates will be affected usually become two-rank tiles if they're already yours at first rank. If they aren't yours, th♔ey're freshly in your control, and will thus be only first rank.

Turning one-rank tiles into second-rank tiles means you can play second-rank cards on those tiles. Conversely, playing a card on a second-rank tile, should its affected tile range include something that's under your control, creates a third-rank tile designed for the most powerful cards.

Play continues until neither player can place any cards. This tends to happen the most frequently because both players have exhausted their controlled tiles.

If you aren't careful about ensuring that you're gaining tiles, you'll be unable to play a card. Sometimes, the board will fill up completely before the game ends.

Tactics For Victory

You want to deprive your opponent of opportunities to continue building control. The foes you face will be aiming to do the same to you. A critical part of this strategy involves cards that enhance or weaken (sometimes even outright destroy) targeted cards.

Some Queen's Blood cards are designed for the long haul, which is to say that, since they take the state of the game into account when played, they can reverse one's fortunes dramatically.

Cards that replace other cards are prominent in this regard, but there are also cards that enhance or weaken multiple cards already on the board based on current conditions when played. Dropping one of these onto a controlled tile several rounds in can be a total game-chanℱger.

Collecting Cards And Player Rank

There are two ways to acquire Queen's Blood cards. The first, and easiest, is by purchasing booster packs from participating vendors. Don't worry - these packs have established cards within them, so you aren't going to be buying severa🐼l to find the card you want. It's on the ti👍n.

You want to scoop these up whenever you see them, because this is the only way to obtain these cards. They can't be won, only purchased.

The other method, and the one pertaining to nearly every powerful card, is by winning the card from an opponent the first time you achieve victory. Every Queen's Blood opponent in Final Fanಌtasy 7 Rebirth has a new card for you to snag.

There is almost never a penalty for losing a game of Queen's Blood, and you can click Retry upon your defeat to keep at it until you win. You can even edit your deck to accommodate the other player's demonstrated strategy without exiting out of the match.

Queen's Blood Ranks

As you win matches against a rising number of NPCs, your Queen's Blood rank will improve over time. Most players have a minimum rank before you can challenge them, so there's an order to which groups of players can be challenged at any given time.

The exception to all this occurs during Chapter 6, aboard the Shinra-8. The luxury cruise ship hosts a Queen's Blood tournament, and you'll move on to the next round so long as you manage to win each match. You aren't required to emerge victorious, but you should tr🎃y!

It takes a while to manifest, but eventually, a side quest will emerge as you raise your Queen's Blood rank. It's good fun.

Queen's Blood Rewards

Queen's Blood can be rewarding all on its own if you have a challenging enough spirit and a burgeoning love for the game. But there are tangible rewards as well, and not just the cards themselves. (This isn't Final Fantasy 8 - you🐓 can't morph them into items!)

The aforementioned tournament aboard the Shinra-8 gets you exclusive cutscenes if you make it to the finals. Since failing to reach this point is only possible if you feel you're unable to defeat an opponent, you should come to Chapter 5 prepared with some good cards.

Occasionally, Queen's Blood will intersect with a side quest. To advance the side quest, you might need to win a match. But the greatest rewards come at the end of Queen's Blood's own side quest. We'll be sure to🌌 add other rewards as we ཧencounter them!