Lord of Vermilion: Part 2- The Cards

by Sean Mitchuson on November 7, 2008 at 9:35 pm

Welcome to the second part of my write up on the currently Japan only Lord of Vermilion. In the last piece I discussed the basic overview of how the game worked and what’s involved. Today I plan on going a bit more in depth with the cards that are the focus of the game. Just like any other card game there are factions, interesting artwork, rarity, and a few surprises. So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

Factions

There are currently seven factions found in Lord of Vermilion. These aren’t direct translations but basically they are: The Beasts, The Demons, The Angels, The Devils, The Undead, The Underwater, and Mechanical. Each of course have their own upsides and downsides, creating balance in the game. You are also allowed to use any combination of each faction you like, you don’t have to stick to a certain one unless you want to. Your character can also wear gear and choose an affiliation with a certain faction to boost it’s power but that is always up to you, and a choice you get to make for each match.

The Beasts

The cards in this category are pretty simple to understand they are animals, or people like animals, or animal like people. If they made joke cards I think this is where you would find Man-Bear-Pig. Japan likes to use the names of mystic characters from other lore and the first one I’ll mention is in this set. Grendel is a rather powerful monster card in here and more than likely one of the bosses in game (though I haven’t gotten that far). Though his art work doesn’t seem to make him to be anything near the same as in the story of Beowulf. He is listed as a super rare so I doubt I’ll be running across him anytime soon when I play.

The Demons

Dark magic includes well witches, orcs, trolls, and goblins. The name that really sticks out to me is Mephisto. Sometimes this guy is known as the lord of the underworld or what not. These cards are designed after monsters that cause problems for people, but so far it’s all really just in the name. Yes I know I’ve listed Demons and Devils as two seperate groups, which they are but you could probably merge these two groups of cards together and no one would really notice.

The Angels

The holy cards. All creatures in this set are based of mystic holy people or assumed “good guys.” I say assumed here because Zeus is listed in this set and while he was the god of the gods, he wasn’t really a good guy like most of the angels that are thrown in here. Odin also makes an appearance for good measure.

The Devils

We talked about demons, now time for devils. These guys are a step up from their demon couterparts causing a bit more damage as far as I can remember. Ifrit is in this group as well as Beelzebub. Now if you are some what up on your reading you know that Beelz is literately translated as lord of the things that fly, or lord of the flies. But if hes/she/it is in this group we’re calling it a devil.

The Undead

Zombies, skulls, dead monsters, Oh my! Anything thats dead or undead is in this group. Nothing of noteable popularity is named, there is a generic vampire lady as a rare card. One that seems awkward for me and perhaps I should research some more is a card called Rich or Ricchi in romaji. The art on the card is clearly the grim reaper and there is a very well known Japanese word for grim reaper, but I guess they just didn’t want to go in that direction. Other cards in this set are pretty generic with specters, ghosts, and sprits.

The Underwater

There really isn’t much to say about these cards. They are all creatures from the water, big fish, mermaids, mermen, and the Kraken! I haven’t seen many of these cards myself so maybe they aren’t making it to my arcade. I also haven’t seen many people use this area’s cards in PvP. This creates the assumption they aren’t popular, but I’ll ask around.

Using the Cards

So now that we know the factions what types of cards are there, we need to know how to use them on our team to achieve ultimate victory! The first thing to know is that each card has score. Your team can spend 90 points in cards for each match. For best results you want to of course get to the 90 point mark without going over, but you also can’t stockpile 10 point cards, well you can, but you can only have a team of four out at one time anyway so that is sort of a crazy idea. Cards range from 10 points up to 30 points in increments of five and ten. This allows you to balance your playstyle and card type you want. Cards also come with special abilities, some come with two other cheaper point cards come with one.

The ability that all cards come with is a battle ability, something they can use during the fight to help either boost your time, weaken the other team, or hurt the other team. This ability has a range and can only be used when they are “charged up”. For instance one of my favorite cards has a really nice damage ability attack. When she is charged up she shoots magic at any enemy in her range which is shaped like a T, now the damage will go through other monsters into any in range as opposed to one target, and if there is a target at the top of the T they get an extra hit on them. Pretty useful, but somewhat slow.

Higher point cards come with another ability listed as Gate, Search, or Arcana. These are all abilities that affect the strategy side of the game. The Gate ability allows them to destory enemy gates and repair your gates at accelerated speed. The Search ability (from what I understand) allows you to see stats of your enemy better, and allows you to take out their search eye and repair your own at a quicker pace. Finally and my favorite, the Arcana ability allows you to destory the enemy stone sheilds really fast. The downside to this ability usually is that the monsters are slow, which slows down the rest of your team so if you want to go this route be prepared to get attacked easily by the other team.

Lastly all monsters can fight, they have an attack power, a defense power, and hit points. As you use the cards over and over they level up and these stats get stronger you see before pvp matches what level the opponents cards are and this usually is a pretty good sign of how the battle is going to go. After every battle win or lose your cards gain XP which allows them to do a little bit better in the next match. In another part I will get more into fighting with your cards.

Attaining the Cards

So now you know about all these awesome cards and you wanna go buy some? Sorry. You can’t go out and buy booster packs of the cards like other trading card games, you have to earn them. Every time you play the game win or lose you get a card. I am both for and against this system. I like it in that it doesn’t allow people to spend a ton of money before they even learn the game and let them stockpile every card in the game. The con is that this makes the cards somewhat more expensive. The game costs around three dollars US to play that will net you your first card, then you can contiune for two dollars more. To be smart you always want to play to get two cards, if you don’t you’re spending three bucks for one card. After each game or set of games is over a single card is dispensed in its packaging and you get the thrill of seeing if you got a super rare or another Mandrake…..

Popularity

Some big name artists were brought in on this project to really make it shine. The one that stuck out to me at first was Todd McFarlane. The spawn creator himself drew one of the monster cards for the game. Another name you might know is 天野喜孝 or Yoshitaka Amano. For those of you who don’t know he’s the guy that does all that interesting art for the final fantasy games. It makes sense for Squre Enix to get him to do artwork since he has done such great artwork before. The link to a listing of many of the cards is here there is English so it’s somewhat easy to follow, you might notice an artist I didn’t, let me know in your comments who is worth mentioning and why.

Check back soon for part 3!

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Tags: Arcade, card, collectible, game, Japan, lord, vermilion

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3 Comments »

Tomonoatmeal Cookigaki
on November 8, 2008 5:01 pm

Japan only? Even Cookigaki knows that is plain silly.
The Whaler
on November 9, 2008 2:09 am

Yeah it is silly. But then again SE suck at fan service and sharing.
Sean Mitchuson
on November 9, 2008 2:12 am

I think mainly is that arcade’s generally don’t appeal to as many people in the US or other countries than in Japan. I doubt you’ll see this game in a Dave and Busters, but there is a type of game like this with a focus on soccer and another on baseball, so you get to collect player cards and play a game, that I could see making it to the states far before this.

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Lord of Vermilion: Part 2- The Cards

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