Final Fantasy VII Rebirth features a plethora of minigames, but the one you are likely to spend the most time with is Queen’s Blood, a unique trading card minigame that sports a surprising amount of depth.
Queen’s Blood is introduced as soon as you are able to explore Kalm during Chapter 2, but it may take some time to wrap your head around it, as it also sports mechanics inspired by real-world games like checkers that complicate the game considerably.
Queen’s Blood Basics
Queen’s Blood in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a card game where players take turns placing cards on three horizontal lanes. Cards can only be played on tiles marked by pawns of the player’s color. Once played, the card will add its value to the lane total score and will place additional pawns depending on the diagram seen on the card itself. Having a single pawn on a tile, however, may not be enough to play a card, as the most useful cards come with Position Ranks of 2 and 3, meaning you will either need 2 or 3 pawns on a tile to play it. Increasing pawns on a tile simply requires overlapping position titles with a position that you control.
Once no more positions are available to both players, the game will end. The score is calculated by lane, but only the player with the highest score per lane will see it tallied to the total score. The player with the highest score wins.
How to Win Consistently In Queen’s Blood in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Understanding the Queen’s Blood’s basics is not too difficult after playing a couple of matches, but winning consistently is another matter entirely. Not only will your opponent try their best to prevent you from placing pawns and stealing your positions, but they will also effectively use cards with special abilities and unusual position tiles to mess up your strategy. And yet, there are a few things you should be looking to do, no matter which cards are in your deck or what the opponent is attempting to do.
While the in-game tutorial seems to suggest you should be focusing on increasing your lane score, winning a Queen’s Blood match is more of a matter of being able to secure your positions so that you can play more cards than the opponent. The key to doing this is securing the position right in the middle on the board, the third tile on the second lane. This central position is extremely important to hold, as it allows you to control the flow of the game unlike any other position on the board.
As the opponents are mostly focused on doing the same, you need to think ahead to be able to secure that position and play any card on it before it is taken away from you. Do keep in mind that any position in its vicinity could be used to do this, so plan your moves accordingly so that you can place a pawn and play a card before the opponent can do anything. Additionally, you shouldn’t rush to try to get to the center as quickly as possible. Build up your side of the board evenly, playing both position rank 1 and 2 cards as needed. If you rush, you may end up leaving unplayed tiles on your board, which could be stolen by the opponent. Once any player has managed to play cards on the opponent’s side, the game is essentially over, so beware.
Obviously, this is just one of the strategies that can help you win in Queen’s Blood consistently in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but it is one that can be applied with pretty much any deck. Once you get some unique cards that can specialize your deck, such as cards that increase their value by fulfilling certain conditions or that can damage or destroy opponent cards, you will have to switch things up a little, although conquering that central position will still continue to be extremely important.
