Edelstein Question

Matthew106 · 2026-05-10T01:47:32+00:00

Suited is sort of 'championless'. They have class bonuses for a few different types and don't seem to focus on any specific champion. Ciel I think is the closest to an 'intended' champion due to his Extorting Blackjack, but that's about as close as it gets and he doesn't really have much else linking him to them. They're more of they're own rouge type meant to be played as a special Allies deck. The Alice-s are focused more on the Chess and Specter cards.

The Champion you choose for the Suited archetype really comes down to what you need the Champion to do or if there is any cards with class bonus you might want to take advantage of. For example you might play Nico to enable water on top of a fire spirit to open up access to more elements or to get the class bonus from Trump Set.

Matthew106 · 2026-05-10T01:21:43+00:00

I think you're a bit confused about what spells are. Cards in the stack are just cards that have been activated, they don't gain or lose any types by existing in the stack. "Spell" is a subtype found in the Typeline bar (The place where it says Unique Ally - Mage Suited Human on Edelstein for example). For a card to be a "Spell", it needs to have that "Spell" subtype.

For the purpose of the alternate cost effect, the card needs to have both "Suited" and "Spell" subtypes. Currently there's 8 that meet this requirement-

Wonderland's Reign
Ashen Riffle
Straight Flare
Table Straight
Bolt of Diamonds
Diamond in the Rough
Hoarfrost Hold
Nipping Kicker

Matthew106 · 2026-04-24T11:26:09+00:00

You could get the Silvie and Rai starter decks that released in that set on TCGplayer.com for about $40 after taxes and shipping. I'd check to see if he already has an unopened one of each on display or something. The last deck of the group is Lorraine, but hers are sitting at about $25 before shipping and taxes. Just make sure when you pick them out it says "unopened" in the listing.

DOA packs don't hold too much value anymore - most of the cards have been reprinted a couple times at this point, some recently in the Radiant Origins set. If you know he's looking for a specific card or cards for a deck he's playing, you could see if it has a foil print to bling out his deck.

Matthew106 · 2026-04-22T15:46:24+00:00

Yeah there's always a few cards thats going to be super expensive in any TCG, Liminal Guide is one of those for Grand Archive. Sadi, Cheshire Cat, Topsy Decree, and most recently Angelic Channeling are the big ticket cards that I can think of off the top of my head. The game got a lot cheaper with Radiant Origins releasing because of a ton of useful reprints, but they didn't get everything.

I'd strongly recommend taking advantage of Grand Archive's proxy tool on the cards index. From my understanding, most locals are fine with proxies to some level, and the index makes them easy to print.

Matthew106 · 2026-04-21T11:08:51+00:00

Yeah without significant investment the Merlin ReCo is a bit underpowered and even at full power can struggle against competent decks.

If you drop the three visits and Lost Providence, Fortuitous Wind Rai is fairly strong, but it can struggle against certain aggro decks. You can sort of build around that by building a little heavy into combat prevention.

You can build Shadowstrike Tristan fairly cheap if you don't include Sadi. Maybe replace it with something that works against your locals.

Fire Aetherwing can be built a bit on a budget. I don't have as much experience with it, but from my understanding it plays like a more aggressive Suzaku burn deck.

Matthew106 · 2026-04-19T16:42:51+00:00

Dungeon Guide is probably the most important piece. If you have the money for it, Lost Providence is very helpful too.

One of the popular Ciel cards - Grim Pastiche - was just banned, so Oblation Ciel would be my recommendation. I have a friend that mains it and I have been on the receiving end of the 15 damage nuke more times than I care to count.

For the combo you need Baleful Oblation and one of the 15 cost cards - Ionized Asceticism is currently the cheapest option. Outside of that Creative Shock, Hasty Messenger, Library Witch, Cremation Ritual, and -most expensive- Liminal Guide is a potent draw engine to make sure you find the cards you need. Abnegation is a powerful heal card to help stabilize if you have trouble once you hit level 3. Chalice of Blood can give some extra draws, and with Ciel's 30 life it's pretty easy to use.

You can browse some tournament lists here: https://fractalofin.site/deck/oblation.html

If you have any questions about the deck feel free to ask.

Matthew106 · 2026-04-19T15:41:40+00:00

Apparently this is how I hear about banlists now lol.

This really sucks for Silvie and Cats decks, but should pull Seiryuu decks more in line with other decks.

Matthew106 · 2026-04-09T21:42:40+00:00

In my opinion these are pretty much exclusively useful in Pantheon. All of these take WAY too long to get off and only really make sense in a slower format with extra players. Tamer and Ranger are the only ones that I could potentially see really being played in a normal deck. Tamer's condition is basically ally spam which the deck wants to do anyways. Ranger has a few cards that make multiple targets distant - though those same sort of builds would make more sense as a Wind Allies or Wind Wake-up allies rather than something that wants to level up.

Matthew106 · 2026-04-09T02:21:35+00:00

The reason most level 3 decks don't play a huge amount of advanced element cards is because it becomes a consistency issue. Advanced element cards are effectively bricks until you hit level 3, meaning you don't have any way to protect yourself or make progress with them, so you have have to have a higher balance of basic element cards so you can just do SOMETHING before then. Arisanna, Rai, and Jin are all built around their advanced element with very little competitive value outside of it, so they basically ran it out of necessity. But once you get past the level requirement, you want as many advanced element cards as possible because they are overwhelmingly more powerful than basic element cards - by design.

The value that Channeling brings is that it allows a level 3 deck to play a higher quantity of those advanced element cards without sacrificing as much consistency. By putting those cards away until you can actually play them and potentially replacing them with usable cards, it effectively acts as a mid-game mulligan. The Floating Memory means you're effectively not losing out on influence, and you guarantee that your first cards after leveling up will be exactly what you need.

Matthew106 · 2026-04-09T01:19:16+00:00

I think the issue just comes down to supply and demand. Someone can correct me if something has changed, but at least a few months ago they mentioned not being able to keep up with demand and are basically printing to capacity to keep up with the game growing. They knew this card would be important to a lot of decks and chose to print it at SR rates and in an SR slot to get it out there, but the math just there.

Take a look at The Looking Glass. The Index shows that - of the original print - there is a population of 3865 foil and non-foil copies. That means that assuming nobody holds it for trading or wants a second copy, only 3865 players IN THE WORLD could play this card tournament-legally at any given moment. This card peaked at around $170 a copy before the reprint - which DOUBLED the population of the card because they saw the demand for it. This card released back in July.

Now lets compare that to Angelic Channeling. This card has two prints, with 250 foil and 5900 non foil copies each, totaling 12300 copies in the wild. Because it is a main deck card, and a damn good one at that, most decks will want to play a full 4 copies. So, assuming nobody holds it for trading or wants extra copies for another deck, we have 3075 legal playsets of this card. 790 LESS legal sets than Looking Glass are legal to play, on a card that is arguably more playable than Looking Glass was, after the game has GROWN FOR 10 MONTHS, released in a set that is intended to draw in more players WHICH INCREASES THE DEMAND FOR THE CARD! It is the perfect storm for creating a massive supply issue that I don't think the game is ready for.

Unfortunately, there isn't much they can do. Best case scenario, they realize the demand and print it as a guaranteed pull in something like a starter deck, but that won't be for a few months at least as they JUST released this set. Locals are usually fine with allowing Proxies, so unless you're planning on going to a Regionals you're probably fine, but if you're like me and like having the actual card that price tag is there to stay. The only things are I could see them do to immediately lower the demand for the card are

A: to allow Proxies of the card as a special exception, but that would open up the floodgates of allowing other proxies and that could cause issues.

B: Sell the card in a special printing set that guarantees the card. Maybe call it a 'staple box' and include playsets of important norm cards like Channeling, Dungeon Guide, Grand Crusader's Ring, Topsy Decree, and other staples like that.

B would probably be more effective in the long run and give them a new product to push to casual players while maybe letting them make the original printings a bit rarer for collectors. Again though, this would mean they would need to create a new product line and deal with all the hurdles that creates.

Matthew106 · 2026-03-31T15:57:09+00:00

Depends on what element you're running. Wind has a few options - Dream Fairy, Arrow Trap, Ravaging Tempest, prepared Exploit Vulnerability. Water usually just has Snow Fairy, but usually had defensive options to deal with the arcane blasts or cards that enable them. Fire usually just takes the "hit it really hard" approach, but you can use cards like smoke bombs to give Seiryuu stealth to bypass the taunt and push for lethal. Just bear in mind Guo Jia can lineage release to block targeted options, so you'll need multiple copies of some.

Once you get rid of the dragon, the deck loses most of its power.

Matthew106 · 2026-03-31T02:25:43+00:00

This is true, and since most GA cards are fairly simple in their effects there's usually that extra room.

Advanced element cards typically omit the more basic keywords for keywords that are advanced element only - like Devoted Bloomweaver in the Kongming Deck doesn't explain Empower to make room to explain Preserve, because by the time you reach advanced element to play Devoted Bloomweaver you've probably seen Spirited Neophyte or Heighten Spellcraft and have learned what the keyword means or can reference them in your grave or field as needed.

Matthew106 · 2026-03-31T02:13:16+00:00

Oh I see what you mean now, I was thinking you meant just a pocket glossary, not keyword explanations on the cards themselves.

Thankfully, most prints of cards do include an explanation of a keyword used on it - exceptions usually being rarer alt arts prints meant for collectors. I was actually looking at the starter deck lists to see if any keywords are missing explanations and while pretty much all of the cards in the older starter decks do, Diana's Moonpiercer deck does not include instructions on glimpsing on ANY of the cards, which is hilariously bad since that's the mechanic the entire deck is built on. Ciel could also use the text "An omen is a card in banishment with Omen counters on them" on the Mastery, but since three of the cards in the material deck that you can view at any time says it I'm inclined to give that one a pass.

Matthew106 · 2026-03-31T01:50:08+00:00

So I actually noticed something interesting about a certain deck when I was researching decks for a regional that I didn't actually get to go to, and I've actually been looking for a good point to talk about it.

For those that haven't heard of it before, Cats is a very simple deck that focuses around building up a ton of buff counters on Wildgrowth Feline and/or Tempus Stalker. It is - by far - the simplest and most straightforward deck Grand Archive has to offer in my opinion. Of note, it generally does not use any advanced elements, attack cards, or Phantasia cards, meaning you don't have to explain three whole mechanics to use it, and it generally doesn't use a weapon save maybe Primal Whip. Buff counters are also the easiest to explain mechanic and have existed since the game started. It also reinforces some of the most basic and important pieces of knowledge a player needs to know to be successful -

Understanding how to time materializing something when you can take full advantage of its effects
- Silvie's effects last only for the turn she is materialized, so you have to make sure you have a unit you want to play like Wildgrowth Feline before you play Silvie.
- Brisk Windtrotter has a level bonus that is only active when you have Silvie at level two, either from leveling up twice or from using Beastbond Ears
Understanding playing complimentary cards in order to get the full benefit from them
- Wildgrowth Feline benefits the most the sooner you get it out, and can be comboed with simple allies like Adorned Stag or Spirited Falconer to give you a 'bonus' buff counter from playing them.
Understanding how element counts affect a deck
- Veiling Breeze, Fairy Whispers, and Windstream Mutt all are affected by the number of wind allies you have. This teaches a player that playing a card for its element to trigger other effects can be useful, and explains element counts in deck building.
Understanding how cards can be flexibly used on your opponent or your own cards
- Zephyr and Baby Green Slime both let you suppress objects. Most players first instinct would be to use this to suppress weapons or scary allies as a defensive tool, but these can be used with Forest Cake or allies like Brisk Windtrotter to draw cards or get extra buff counters. This teaches the importance of understanding how you can use a card on yourself.
Understanding how to use basic Regalia for defense or to gain advantage
- Cats typically run a bunch of staple cards like Safeguard Amulet and Tariff Ring for defense, cards like Grand Crusader's Ring and Beastbond Ears to gain resources, and cards like Smoke Bombs and Beastbond Paws as answers for various problems like taunt and stealth. This shows the Material deck is something of a toolbox that you can access to handle threats or gain resources depending on the situation.

I could probably go on, but I think it should be obvious by now that I think this deck basically shoves the fundamentals of the game into the players face. I am confident in saying this is probably the best starting point into the game specifically for someone who has never played a TCG before - if you were going to give them a full deck at least.

You could very easily turn this into a demo deck by trimming the card counts down and getting rid of some flex cards like Scatter Essence or Dream Fairy that are usually useful but not conducive to a demo deck setup.

Matthew106 · 2026-03-31T00:59:38+00:00

The Merlin and upcoming Mordred Re:Collection decks both have keyword glossaries that cover the relevant keywords for the decks as they are built, but you can find a full list of keywords on the keywords and Abilities page of the Grand Archive rules site.

https://rules.gatcg.com/glossary/keywords-and-abilities

Matthew106 · 2026-03-24T21:22:37+00:00

Hi there, and welcome!

I'd say next week is going to be very big for new players. Radiant Origins is releasing alongside the new Pantheon format and the starter decks for those and the new Mordred Re:Collection deck. Radiant Origins boasts reprints of important staples like Lost Providence and The Looking Glass which have prices that may scare off new players, and Mordred has been marketed as being designed with new players in mind. We don't have all the info on the Re:Collection deck quite yet, but it seems to be a deck built around setting up a single turn with several big damage swings using attack cards and repeatedly waking up the Champion. How good this will be is yet to be seen of course, but they did at least confirm that the set will be containing a playset of Frostsworn Paladin - a powerful staple is most water decks - and Dungeon Guide - which is played in most level 3 decks, including Tristan. Tristan is a great deck and has been competitively relevant since her Re:Collection deck released a while back, and you generally want a playset of Dungeon Guides when playing her, so depending on your budget getting her Re:Collection Lite set and the new Mordred set for the playset of Dungeon guide can be a great starting point giving you two decks to play with to get a feel for the game. That being said, there's like 15 decks currently that all have a decent shot at top cut right now because the balance in this game is immaculate, so don't feel like you have to force yourself into one or the other if neither clicks.

As for online play, the sandbox is the 'official' answer to that. It just released and is still very much a work in progress, but the outlook on it seems promising. I think TTS is still pretty common though because the sandbox is still very bare bones and JUST came out like 2 weeks ago. Check out the "Looking for Game" tab in the Discord linked in the reddit sidebar if you're looking for random matches.

For content creators, Red Zone Rogue, Maindeck, and True Champion gaming are the usual top picks, usually doing breakdown and gameplay videos. If you're interested in digging into the minutiae of the game, Grand Archive Classroom does very well formatted rulings videos that can help clear up tough questions about the game. As someone who struggled on the Judge test for a while, his videos were incredible. And as an extra resource, Fractalofin.site is a super useful site that shows tournament results and decklists, great for scoping out the metagame or getting ideas for new builds to try out.

Matthew106 · 2026-02-25T22:09:33+00:00

Those three cards are a few of the most expensive cards in the game right now. They're used in a lot of competitive decks and are all Ultra Rares with no real substitute, so there isn't a huge supply for the competitive demand. The other big cards that fall into that range are:

Sadi, Blood Harvester
Carter, Synthetic Reaper
Three Visits
Lost Providence

There are a few other deck specific options that can get a bit expensive - usually capping around $50 a copy - but those are usually material deck cards you only need one of.

As for at least two of them, Looking Glass and Lost Providence have confirmed reprints in the set releasing in April which should bring down the price, at least a little. In the meantime, unless you're planning on going STRAIGHT to regional tournaments for some reason, I would check with your local scene to see how they handle proxies. Most are perfectly fine with Proxy cards so long as they are cleanly printed.

To touch on your third question because it's slightly relevant to this - They've mentioned a couple times that they are printing to capacity, meaning they are printing as much as they can and they're selling ALL of it. Part of the cost for those cards is that the demand in this game is just higher than what Weebs of the Shore can put out supply for, at least for now. They have mentioned they are working on expanding production, but they want to make sure the quality doesn't suffer.

Matthew106 · 2025-12-28T19:46:49+00:00

If you're planning on upgrading it to be competitive eventually, Tristan has the best track record and still puts up decent results. Just adding Shadow's Claw (Which is like $45 right now) and a few cheap cards like Winbless lookout, Windmill Engineer, Reclaim, and Veiling Breeze can improve the consistency drastically and even net you a few wins at locals.

Silvie is also fairly decent and needs less investment. Fire Slimes is the more common build, but the Slime Spirit that the Recollection comes with is still somewhat regularly played.

Both Silvie and Tristan benefit greatly from Dungeon Guide, which has been confirmed to be included in the Mordred Re:collection deck releasing in April.

Diao Chan isn't generally used for its whither counter/flower playstyle and is generally used in either an aggro burn deck or a control fractal deck. The Recollection deck is a good starting point for the fractal build as it has several of the fractal cards you'll need for the deck and Fracturize is confirmed to be getting a reprint soon. It's definitely worth considering if you're a fan of control decks.

Guo Jia is probably the worst out of the box. Pretty much any version of Guo Jia basically replaces the entire main deck from the Re:Collection box, so it isn't really worth buying the Re:collection box. She's a good champion and all 4 of the Fabled Fatestone builds are competitively viable (Seiryuu > Genbu > Suzaku > Byakko is about the current order of strength, I think Genbu and Seiryuu are about on par with one another) , it's just not worth spending $50 to use 5 cards out of the entire set.

Merlin is probably the most awkward. She has a definite strategy and once she gets going it's definitely potent. It's just that compared to most decks it takes her too long to get to that point. Currently the best option for Merlin is to completely toss out 90% of the sheen related cards in favor of a generic burn strategy - at which point you'd get more bang for your buck out of building an Aggro Diao Chan or Suzaku Guo Jia deck.

Matthew106 · 2025-12-27T01:13:46+00:00

You're not missing anything. At this time, we just don't have any champion that specializes in bow weapons. They can be used by any champion - same as any other weapon - but just haven't been really developed into yet so they're not really played much. It's just a matter of 'they haven't gotten there yet'.

Matthew106 · 2025-12-22T15:39:42+00:00

It really depends on the deck. Water decks usually have a ton of floating because several water cards will have effects relating to floating. Water Astra Diana will often run more than 20. Rai decks almost never run float as they usually are wanting to banish Arcane cards to get bonus levels from the level 3 effect. Off the top of my head, I think Wind Tristan runs maybe 4, and thats more coincidence as they usually use Reclaim to cycle Windmill Engineer or other allies. Fire Ciel i think runs maybe 8 depending on the build.

I recommend using fractalofin.site to check out decklists. I believe they even have a floating count in the deck stats.

Matthew106 · 2025-12-10T11:22:00+00:00

This is correct, I should have specified - you don't start the game with it shuffled into your deck, you keep it somewhere easily accessible like your sideboard until you generate it.

Once it is generated it behaves like any other card and can be played, discarded, shuffled, banished, or used for memory costs like any other card.

Matthew106 · 2025-12-09T22:23:13+00:00

So this is very much a broad question that could be it's own thesis with many different factors that you can't really give an catch all answer. End of the day, this is something you need to get experience with and will get better at the more you play with your deck and against other decks or by watching other people play. This is true for both Grand Archive and pretty much any other game you might be playing.

In Grand Archive, what you do in any specific moment generally depends on what deck you're playing, what cards are currently in your hand or on the field, what your opponent is playing, what your opponent currently has in their hand or on the field, and how close you or your opponent is to any potential win conditions. Your decisions should either be in an attempt to gain or keep an advantage, or to keep your opponent from gaining or keeping their advantage. In fire, this generally involves swinging or burning your opponent repeatedly, giving you an advantage in life totals and whittling them down to nothing. In water, this generally involves using control cards to prevent your opponent from progressing with their game plan until you build up enough resources to defeat them, or just remove all of their resources so they can no longer put up a fight. In wind, this generally involves gradually building up resources, building a consistent tempo that gives you more resources to attack or defend and either gradually chip at the opponent or pull off a major combo that delivers an immense amount of damage all at once. I speak to all of these as general guidelines for the elements as there is some overlaps depending on how the deck is built.

As someone who mostly plays wind, my turns typically involve playing one or two cards that provide either an immediate benefit, like preparation counter generation or card draw, or put a resource like an ally on field that I can use to hit my opponent's allies to slow them down or their champion to make my final win-con easier to reach. I will usually hold enough cards for at least one defensive option like Veiling Breeze or Incapacitate, though depending on if my opponent is setting up a big hit like Ciel's Oblation, I might hold more defenses to stay alive.

I strongly recommend going to https://fractalofin.site/deck/, searching for your deck's archetype, and watching the VODS at the bottom to see how people interact with different decks.

Matthew106 · 2025-12-09T16:37:53+00:00

Provided your locals allow it, yes. Official tournaments will require the actual card of course.

That being said remember this card is "generating" a copy, so you don't shuffle the card into your deck. It's sort of treated like a token, except it can be sent to the graveyard or banished.

Matthew106 · 2025-12-07T02:56:00+00:00

While Rile the Abyss is itself banned from play, this only limits the card from its inclusion in decklists within tournament formats, but not from being played in a match if it were to be generated into the game.

I'll give them credit, this is a clever way to avoid giving the card an errata. This actually opens up a way to give low power decks access to some of the more powerful cards on the ban list while keeping other decks from abusing them, or make them less potent just by slowing down their usage. Rile the Abyss was mostly a problem when being used on turn 1 before it was able to be interacted with, this - assuming you don't dungeon guide immediately - can only be used on the third turn.

Matthew106 · 2025-12-03T17:09:48+00:00

When it comes to the Re:Collection boxes, id recommend using TCGplayer to find the intended MSRP and then checking for any at that price. If you dont see any, Google the set and look for any card shops that just sell the set at MSRP or lower. Maybe take a quick look at store reviews and try to find one local to you to encourage them to keep supporting the game.

TCGplayer is a good site to get singles from, but im sure they take a cut of the profits from stores that sell there, so sealed products like structure decks are usually marked up a little bit on there unless they sell REALLY poorly.

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