Shuffle or Boogie: Understanding Triple Triad

[Morbid Coffee]

With Golden Saucer less than 24 hours away, I've noticed a lot of excitement for Chocobo racing, but very little towards triple triad. Maybe people don't like the card game, or maybe it's just a nightmare to understand how to play the game. Hopefully I can alleviate one of those issues with this quick visual guide.

What is Triple Triad?
Triple Triad is a card game that originally appeared in FFVIII. Unlike a traditional card game, however, the game focuses more on territory control. Using your card's attack strength, you and your opponent fight over space by overtaking each other's cards, which claims that space on the board. The player with the most space in their possession at the end is the victor. It's easy to learn, but difficult to master, especially when rule variants are applied.

In FFXIV, there is no penalty for losing as there was in FFVII, so there's no longer a fear of losing your best rare cards!

Reading a Triple Triad Card
There are four major features on a triple triad card:

1. Background Color: This color represents whether or not a card/space is under your control. Typically, blue is reserved for the challenger (you), while red represents your opponent.
2. Rairity: The number of stars is equivalent to the rarity of the card, raging from one to five stars. Typically, common cards normally have only one high number, while the more rare cards can have up to three.
3. Character: The character that represents your card. This has no impact within the game whatsoever and is entirely cosmetic. Common cards will be typical, normal mobs while rare cards are usually important NPCs.
4. Attack Power: This is the most important part of a triple triad card. Each number represents a side of the card representative of how they're aligned in this area (top number represents the top of the card, etc) In this example's case, if the card touches another card with it's left side, it will attack with a power of 7. Card values range from 1 to A, with A being representative of the number 10. In elemental rules, cards can not drop their attack below 1, nor go over A.

Base Rules
Despite Triple Triad allowing a diverse set of rule variants to alter the flow of the game, there are specific rules set in stone throughout no matter what the variant is.

1. The starting player is determined by a dice roll.
2. Only one card may be played at a time during your turn. Early screenshots of FFXIV Triple Triad show your turns may be on a timer.
3. With the exception of rule variants, a card is only considered in an attacking state on the turn it's played. For example:
   
   In this situation, red placed their card in the upper right corner of the board. Despite the blue card below it having a higher number facing it (red's 5 versus blue's 7), the blue card has already been played, which allows red to safely play their card in this position.
4. If a card has been flipped to the opposite color once, it can be flipped again as long as the challenging card is both touching an open side and has a higher, winning number.
5. The player who controls the most cards/space in the end is the winner.

A typical Triple Triad game would play out as follows:


Rule Variants
This is the meat and potatoes of Triple Triad. It's easy to remember "higher number wins," but remembering what each ruleset entails and how to take advantage of each one is where the strategy of Triple Triad comes into play. For reference sake, I'll be going over which rules were in FFVIII, as well as what's already known to be in FFXIV. When we have more information on the new rules for FFXIV, I'll update this thread.

Visibility Rule
As the name implies, this is basically a set of rules that determines whether or not you and your opponent can see each other's hand. There are three types in FFXIV:

• Open All: Allows both you and your opponent to see each other's entire hand.
• Open Three: Only reveals three out of the five cards in each of your hands.
• Closed: You can only view your own hand.

Card Pick Rule
These rule variants determine how a player selects their cards to be played. These can either help or hinder you depending on which rule is in effect, as most are luck based. It's still unknown if these will make any appearance in FFXIV.

Free: You're able to choose your own cards.
Random: You and your opponent's 5 card hand is chosen at random from your entire card collection.

Same Rule Variant
The same rule is one of the most basic rule variants that can significantly change the flow of the game. When this rule is applied, when two values of the played card match the values of two cards adjacent to it, all opposing, adjacent cards flip to the played card's color. Confused yet? This is why this is a visual guide.


In this situation, red played first, with blue second. Rather than attack red directly, blue decided to take the top spot to force red to either waste a high card taking it, or waste a turn taking a different spot. However...


Red places a card with 3's in both the right side and the bottom position. Because the 3's on this card are touching the 3's on the other two cards, the same rule comes into effect because they're the same number.


Red is now in possession of blue's card without wasting a turn or a good card. This can be applied to numerous situations, and the two numbers don't have to be the same on each card. As long as the numbers touching are the same, and the active card is touching two or more other cards with one of them being an opponent card, the same rule applies.

The Plus Variant
The plus variant is similar to the same variant, where it relies on the values of the adjacent cards to the active card. However, instead of matching the numbers exact, you instead factor in the sum of the touching numbers. If the sum of each pair of touching numbers is the same, then all opponent cards touching your active card become yours. Confusing to describe, but visual example:


Blue played first while red played second. Typically, one would need a card with either an 8, 9, or A on the bottom to win red's card. However, when the plus rule applies:


With this third card, we add the sums of the adjacent numbers to see if they match.
5 + 4 = 9
7 + 2 = 9

Therefore...


With the plus rule, blue overtakes red's card with a smaller number.

Wall Variant
This variant essentially gives all 12 sides of the playing board, or "walls," a value of A. This is coupled with the Same/Plus variant to allow the rules to come into effect with only a single adjacent card as long as there's a value of A touching the wall.



Combo Variant
The most deadly of all the rule variants, and can essentially turn around an entire game with a single move. What this rule entails is that any card that's flipped during the same/plus rule becomes active again, with the ability to overtake any adjacent card as long as it's value is higher than the other.

I'm adding a placeholder for the visual example here, as I've been working on this for nearly four hours now and it's going to take the longest time to work on. I'll have one up in a few hours (most likely during maintenance time)

Sudden Death Variant
This variant essentially negates the rule that a game can end in a draw. When Sudden Death is in effect, the game will continue until one player is determined the victor, but with a twist. Rather than be returned the cards you originally started off with, each player is given back the cards they were in possession of when the draw occurred. This will continue on indefinitely until one player wins.

Closing
Hopefully I'll keep up to date with this guide and update it periodically as we find out more about how Triple Triad in FFXIV works. There are quite a few new rule sets that aren't covered here yet, and a few minor intricacies that I didn't include due to being unaware whether or not they're in the FFXIV version of the game. As usual, feel free to leave any comments or questions, or use this as a general TT thread for discussing the game.

[Gwen]

If you want to learn to play the Plus method, go against King Elmer III in the Gold Saucer. Your deck should be: Dodo, Ixal, Coeurl, Cactuar, and either Scarface Bugaal Ja or Godbert (Godbert is preferred, since he can be used in other configurations), and aim for this configuration to win:



The blue cards are yours; one of the Scarface/Godbert cards is yours, and the other is Elmer's Godbert.

Usually, he plays Y'shtola in the bottom left corner, in which case you play your Dodo first, which usually makes him play Godbert on top of it, so you play your Godbert/Scarface in the other square, then your Cactuar, Coeurl, and Ixal for the win. This should give a good idea how the Plus rule works.

Once you win reliably with this setup, you can also learn how to counter his other starting moves (such as Y'shtola in the bottom right corner).

Winning against King Elmer nets you 87 MGP, and a draw gets you 17 MGP. Plus, the extra Bahamut cards can be exchanged for 500 MGP, and the extra Godberts are 50 MGP, so it's a really fast way to get MGP.

Good luck!

[Zro]

I have no idea what you are talking about.

[E'hosmer]

I have no idea what you are talking about.