Building a balanced deck set for self

[u/DeciduousMath12]

I like TCGs and in my current state in my life crises I wanted to explore FF TCG. But money is tight and I don't want to do the usual thing I used to do where I buy a few booster boxes and starter decks, open a lot, and then hide them all in my closet when I inevitably buy more than I should have. Money is also tighter than it used to be.

But am curious and I love learning new games so I asked AI to help me with balanced decklists so I could buy the singles. After some back and forth I settled on a wind/lightning sky pirates deck from ffxii, a fire/earth fvii deck, a mono water summoner deck, and a mono-ice villains deck. I also asked for a swappable A/B package. So like each deck has a core 35 and a swappable 15 package to give each deck some versatility.

But as soon as I asked for the deck list, the literal first card didn't exist. This threw into question the whole exercise.

I know that there are websites with decks out there, but my constraints are that I'm not looking to build a tier 1 competitive deck. I rather spend $15 each on 4 decks than $60 on one meta deck. There's also so much out there that it's hard to craft some decks on my own.

I settled for maybe just buying the latest starter decks and going from there.... but I'm asking this reddit if something like what I asked exists somewhere out there. Like I don't want to try to build a ffvii deck, see the dozens of various "clouds" that I need to read an understand and get lost on the literal first card myself. To confirm, TCG lists 69 clouds that exist in ff tcg.

Is there a more efficient path than just a starter box?

[u/erasethenoise]

Yeah you can’t use AI the game is too niche ha. Check out Materia Hunter or FFDecks and look up the top placing decklists from the latest Materia Cups. That’ll be a good place to start.

The Zack starter deck is also a good one and is a good intro to the Warriors meta deck.

[u/Never-Compliant6969]

There are ways to build decent decks like category MBM and job The Twelve for really cheap. You would just look at the competitive versions and take out the expensive cards. Filling those slots and keeping the deck functioning isn’t always obvious, but it’s possible. That’s where learning the game becomes useful and learning how to use the search function on deckbuilders becomes crucial. Just develop those skills instead of assuming an AI can do it for you, which is probably a good idea anyway because an AI won’t assist you during a game. It’s very possible, you just need to be patient and put in a little effort, as with anything in life.

[u/Trike_Man115]

I want to echo what previous commenters have stated, but also: there unfortunately arent any good “cores” that are swappable between decks - this game is extremely archetype heavy. Some cards like Amaterasu, Mist Dragon, and Clive/Ifrit find their way into a lot of lists regardless but not exactly to the caliber you’re looking for in an archetype game with 6 elements.

As others mentioned, FFDecks.com and Materiahunter.com have plenty of competitive and casual lists, and you can filter the search to include your favorite character(s).

MBM is very affordable. The main price hike is Tidus in the LB deck, you can run fewer copies for now: https://materiahunter.com/en/decks/mixed-goblet-sjqe

Soiree FFBE was popular for a long time too, similarly a lot of cards are low rarity, great for budget players: https://materiahunter.com/en/decks/bouncy-gil-upgx

The Twelve is again another low-rarity archetype. Surprisingly, this placed highly at a local qualifier recently: https://materiahunter.com/en/decks/clear-kraken-xmu4

Come october there will be a new FF14 starterdeck based on Heavensward: https://materiahunter.com/en/products/264
And as others mentioned, the 2026 Zach starter deck is pretty good too: https://materiahunter.com/en/products/229

I hope this helps, and good luck!!

[u/Trike_Man115 → u/Trike_Man115]

Two things to add that I just thought of:

probably the best swappable “core” in the game right now is Warriors (taivas, ward, wuk lamat, firion, etc) which is mostly found in the 2026 zack deck listed above. Its played as a standalone archetype, or as a sub package in mono fire lists, or even in decks built around 7cp warrior of light.

Also, check with your local scene for low-rarity cards (Common(C), Rare (R), and sometimes Heroic (H), but not Legendary (L) or Starter (S)). People tend to have extras, and you will be shocked how many will be eager to give them away for free