domilea

@Fire Emblem Fan I think Thea's chances are better than you think, if only because she's the character closest to Klein... and Klein is the only one of the Sibling Bonds characters to not have a banner tied to him. Eldigan and Lachesis - The Genealogy banner was very heavily themed off of Chapter 7, but the choice in map theme, Lionheart Eldigan, establishes that Ares is the thematic heart of it. Reinhardt and Olwen - Received alts on the World of Thracia banner. Sanaki - Very specifically her Radiant Dawn version, too. She talks about her sister in her Castle dialogue... which connects her to the World of Dawn banner. This leaves Klein hanging. Sure, his sister was in the game at launch... but still. There's also the matter of map themes. Binding Blade has are 8 player-phase map themes. One of them, Beyond Distant Skies, is in Heroes already. Another one is used only during Trial Maps, and it's a remix of Alm Battle Map 1/March to Deliverance, so it's off the table, too. And two others, Scars of the Scouring and Shadow Approaches, are reused, in a higher-quality format, in FE7 - but since this coming banner is FE6's first-ever dedicated banner, it would be better if it used music that was unique to FE6. So that leaves us with four possible choices: For the Commanders, Within a Magnificent Nature, Beneath a New Light, and Path of the Divine Generals. Path of the Divine Generals is very approximately equivalent to Id (Purpose) and Twilight of the Gods, so I suspect, if Idunn is going to be a Mythic Hero, that they'll save this theme for her MHB. And to me, Within a Magnificent Nature is one of the weaker map themes in the franchise. I think it'll be passed over for one of the other two. If I'm right, that leaves two possibilities: Beneath a New Light, and For the Commanders.And if they choose For the Commanders, then the banner is likely going to be themed around the Western Isle chapters. Aka, the chapters where Klein and Thea are recruited. So Thea does have a marginal chance of getting in. That said, yeah, there are loads of other choices that have better odds. At the absolute maximum, we can only reasonably expect 4 banner spots, one TT, and one GHB (L!Roy already fills the optional Legendary/Mythic slot). So 6 new characters, tops, and that's assuming no alts. If I had to guess: I'd say Rutger is basically a shoe-in. 2nd most popular Binding Blade character during its official poll. 2nd highest-voted new face during CYL1, which was the CYL least affected by OCs, alt recency, or meta considerations (andhe was only behind Lot because Lot is a meme in Japan in a way similar to how Dorcas is over here). 2nd highest after Idunn in CYLs 2 and 3, and that's after the game went from full to flooded on infantry swords. Yeah, Rutger might not have the most fans, but he does have a significant number of pretty dedicated fans, which is a lot more than many other FE6 characters can claim. Plus, he'll have gen 3 BST... I think he's almost certain to be a banner unit. After him, it gets murkier. I'm assuming Idunn is going to be a Mythic down the road somewhere, so she won't show up here. If IntSys has no intentions of following up on this banner, they'll put all their eggs in one basket and put their most in-demand characters, other than Idunn, on this banner and call it a day. That would mean a banner with Rutger, Dieck, Lugh, and probably Sue (who is in a rarer class type than the other option, Perceval). But I'm hoping they throw us a couple of curveballs. I've long held the same sentiment expressed here by others, in that Guinivere seems like a good choice. She's plot-relevant and pretty, which makes her easy to market and easy to write/voice dialogue for; but on top of that, she wasn't ordinarily playable, putting her in much the same space as characters like Leila, Rinea, and Lilith. TL;DR, my hopes/expectations for the banner: Rutger, Lugh (the demote), Sue, Guinivere.

In the trailer we saw that the Black Beast wielded a "Crest Orb of Gautier". Gautier is an area to the far north of Faerghus; it seems to be the place Sylvain is likely the heir to. Semi-baseless theory, but perhaps there are 21 Crest Orbs, one for each of the Crests that we saw encircling the Goddess here: On each route, Byleth has the opportunity to collect 7 Crest Orbs: one presumably from the Head of House, and six others during the course of the campaign. These Crest Orbs are required to seal the darkness that emanates from the Fodlan Falchion (what I'm calling that whip sword for now). Here is a shitty 3-second picture I mocked up to back this claim: https://imgur.com/v3FTpjw 7 is the minimum to bring the Fodlan Falchion to a usable state, at which point the route proceeds to its final boss map. After each route, these Crest Orbs can be viewed in a gallery from the main menu, and thus are in a sense "saved" between playthroughs. If the player's third playthrough (?!) would unlock all 21 Crest Orbs, however, the True Final Ending is unlocked. This is made possible because of Sothis - given how she seems to grant Byleth a Timewheel-esque power, she may have some sort of futuresight or other cross-dimensional manipulation at her disposal, allowing the combined efforts of these Byleths to complete the Fodlan Falchion. Upon doing so, Sothis reveals that unlocking the Fodlan Falchion also breaks the seal that had kept her trapped within that night-black space within Byleth's mind. Surprise, surprise -Sothis is the Goddess. That's all I've got for now. Maybe I'll add more later.

@Kiran_ Leaker goes by King Zell. Here's the original ResetEra post: https://www.resetera.com/threads/nintendo-direct-speculation-ot-a-thread-about-something-read-op.98257/page-24#post-17704098 As for the Direct itself, I'll unfortunately be working. And though my shift starts kind of late, there's little chance that I'll be able to hold off on my break until 5PM. I'll be eagerly checking this place and Reddit for updates though. Any last bets on the release date? I'm going to say... - Earliest: Apr 20, the franchise's anniversary - Latest, June 30, a week into summer, and soon after E3 - Least extreme: May 15, shortly after the FExpo

@Slumber Pretty sure that lower sword is the Ragnell. It has Ragnell's distinctive chappe: Ike is probably just holding it low, and the upper sword is Marth's Falchion. @Cysx Yeah. Not only CYL2, she's one of the characters IS considers marketable enough to get an independent alt (Fallen), and she also got into Warriors. She also gets a notable amount of attention through Cipher merch: So I'd be surprised if she wasn't on the expo banner... maybe she's just obscured. Ah, Leif. My poor, neglected boy... I'm dreaming of FE17 being an FE4 remake. If so, 5 would be right next in line for a remake, and all eyes would be on him then! Until then... I'll continue dreaming....

Curiously, I can't see the banner as you do! I can only see as much as I'd put in that screenshot. How irritating. But now I'm absolutely sure that that's Micaiah, and that's also definitely Feh up there as well. Now I'm not sure who it is in that in the place I'd originally labelled "Feh"... the handle jutting out the side looks a bit like a rapier's, but other than that, I can't make it out all that well. It's such a small part of the silhouette, too... And yeah, Alm has some pretty prominent armor pieces, esp. his pauldrons, so I'm fairly confident that's Sigurd. And Ephraim also wears gloves that go almost to his elbows, while Roy has bare forearms and gloves that look like those in the silhouette, so I'm very sure that that's Roy. I also agree, IS seems to have ignored Gaiden/SoV again, which, while upsetting, honestly isn't that surprising. The remake is the only reason Gaiden isn't still under a bus with Thracia, and now that IS has turned their attentions completely to Three Houses, it seems Gaiden has returned to roughly that same degree of importance. If not for the uniform theory, then the lack of FETH reps is IS just being super-secretive again, I'm sure. I'd be extremely surprised if the expo lacked any sort of coverage on FETH.

@Cysx If I'm not mistaken, going from top to bottom, left to right, it looks to me like it features F!Corrin, Sigurd, Lyn, Alfonse, Micaiah (?), Feh, Eirika, Lucina, Roy, Ike, and Marth. I attached an image below with what I'm seeing; tell me if anything seems out of place. In any case, I have to agree: the lack of FETH here is a tiny bit concerning. My theory is that the portraits we'd seen of Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude are of them in their "academy uniform" appearances, and that they'll have different art later, similar to the portrait changes we'd seen with Ike, Micaiah, and Sothe in RD, or Alm and Celica in SoV. Since IS is staying as tight-lipped as they can on anything related to FETH, it stands to reason that they wouldn't go revealing - or even hinting at - E/D/C's "official" appearances this early on, not with something as unremarkable as an expo banner silhouette. It's worth noting that Cipher's Set 17 pre-release campaign is expected to take place in May. The current consensus is that FETH's introductory Cipher set is going to be Set 17, which would align nicely with the May 4 Expo. But then again, the consensus has been wrong before....

My guesses: Pent: red infantry mage. Now, before you go ripping into me for "yet another male red mage", hear me out. Pent is notorious for his join chapter's scenario, where to get the gaiden, you have to "save the fragile mage surrounded by enemies" - except in reality, you're actually trying to prevent the "fragile" mage from taking all the exp. Pent joins with an Elfire tome, which also nudges him red, but that's not the real reason why I chose red. The real reason is because FEH!Pent stands a good chance at being the red equivalent to Ishtar's blue and Lewyn's green. Making Pent blue or green means he has to contend with these two; making him red means he fits the pattern they set. Does this mean IS'll have to make up a prf for him? Probably. Louise: I'm not sure what they could give Louise to make her stand out. A Link skill in B seems apt, but then, perhaps that would look too similar to Nina? Whatever the case may be, her kit had better be cohesive with Pent's. Perhaps IS could make her a coloured bow - I'm imagining blue. Renault: An interesting character whom I could see getting demoted, continuing IS's trend of adding desirable fodder into the colourless pool. He'd have a pretty odd statline, too; physically tanky, and with a rather low attack stat for a post-2017 new unit, but unlike Azama, he'd also be pretty fast. If Louise isn't made into a coloured bow, he would act to pitybreak people chasing after her. He would also work thematically with... The GHB will have either Sonia, Limstella, or Nergal, with my primary guess being Nergal if and only if Nils is a 4th on the banner (with Nils being the same colour as Louise? Lol).

The "face" of the banner is usually that banner's thematic "core": World of Holy War, as the first dedicated FE4 banner, naturally had Sigurd as its face. Ares was the face of the Genealogy banner (supported by the fact that the music for that chapter was his father's theme, Lionheart Eldigan), and Lewyn was the face of the most recent Doorway to Destiny banner (Disturbance in Agustria is the theme of the chapter he joins in). The "second" of the banner is usually thematically-linked to the face: Deirdre is Sigurd's wife, Lene's joining dialogue is with Ares, and Sylvia's is with Lewyn. The "third" of the banner may have little to do with the thematic core duo, besides being in the same generation. Tailtiu and Quan fit this bill. Ishtar at least has her first boss encounter in the same chapter Ares and Lene join in, but little other relation. The "free" unit(s) share traits with the thirds; Arvis is naturally Sigurd's antithesis, while Arden is a meme character, and when else is he supposed to join? Julius is the central character to Ishtar's arc, while Ethlyn is obviously Quan's wife. And since the last one was Gen 1, I'm guessing the next FE4 banner will be Gen 2. Thus, with all this in consideration, my guess is the face being Shannan, the second being Patty, and Altena as the third, with Travant/Arion as the "free" unit. Shannan, by having one of the remaining Holy Weapons - Balmung - and likely bearing Regnal Astra, will probably be 5\* locked. Whether he'll be able to stand out among the ever-increasing crowd of swordmasters is another issue entirely. However, if IS cared at all about accuracy to the lore and original game mechanics, Shannan should by all rights be stronger than Ayra; he canonically has major Od blood where she only has minor, and they are basically identical in terms of stats and skills... except that where Ayra has Nihil, Shannan has Adept. Balmung is also quite literally sword!Forseti. Hopefully, when they finally get around to implementing it, FEH!Balmung will synergize better with Regnal Astra than Ayra's Blade does. His art will probably be done by Asatani Tomoyo. Patty joins at the same time as Shannan, and of her two most well-known moments, it's her dialogue with Shannan that stands out the most. So naturally, she'd be the second on his banner. She'd probably continue the demotion trend IS has been doing for multiple banners this year, in their continued efforts to make the colourless pool less of the steaming pile of crap it was in 2017. She comes with the Sleep Sword in FE4, so maybe she could come with an interesting weapon for SI - maybe even a Firesweep dagger. But given how badly the healer pool has cut in to the dagger unit niche (I'm looking at you, Brave Veronica), I'd like to see daggers get a dig into the healers' niches. For instance, Patty could come with a weapon that induces status effects on top of the dagger debuff. I don't expect her statline to be all that spectacular, though; unless IS pulls a Karla with her, FEH!Patty should dump pretty much everything into HP and Spd. Altena as the banner's third, which, amusingly, matches how every other FE4 banner's third has been a blue unit. The base effect of Quan's Gae Bolg does not suit Altena, so its effect should be changed, if for no other reason than for better flavour. This means Altena will probably wield the "(adjective) Gae Bolg". Furthermore, given Quan, Ethlyn, and Leif's base kits, Altena's default A will almost certainly be Spd/Def-oriented. Being the Minerva of FE4 makes me think that kaya8's style would be ill-suited for her, so I'm not too sure who her artist would be. Probably the same one as for Travant/Arion, now that I think about it. My guess is on the former; but no matter if it's Travant or Arion, Gungnir's effect had better suit their matchup vs. the Gae Bolg wielders the way Loptous and (Divine) Naga have been set up in FEH. Note that Gae Bolg is defensively-oriented, while Gungnir is offensive. After all, the only differences between the sister lances was in how Gae Bolg granted Skl, while Gungnir granted Spd. However, major Dain holy blood is as focused into Spd as major Forseti blood. So to make up for their lack of IVs/merges, Travant/Arion should have significant bases in Spd. This also has the benefit of giving base Leif an even harder time against them....

I actually didn't post this here, even though I really should have: We might not be in complete agreement about every name, but I am seeing some trends here. Adrastea has recurring references to water, as well as to vengeance. Also, for some reason, to monsters with a fondness for drowning people (merrows, rusalka, possibly lamia...). The names are often Norse/Greco-Roman in flavour, though there's an odd sprinkling of Slavic influences in there, as well. Meanwhile, Leicester makes multiple references to King Lear, and in general slants English whereas Fergus slants Gaelic.

It's at 12 pm EST, huh... I'll be working. Hopefully I'll be able to catch some of it during my lunch break, but otherwise... I'll hear it from all of you, I'm sure. I'm feeling this funny little knot in my gut. Excitement, mixed with a feeling of dread.... This is probably going to be my last post on this topic, too. Tomorrow will bring the forum a fresh wave of threads, and I'll see you all over on those. Hopefully the threads will be sweeter than they are salty.

The artist for that piece is Mayo, not Hidari.

Perhaps October, yeah. I'll try to be optimistic with you, even though it's contrary to how I normally am. I'm not heavily following the rest of Nintendo's IPs all that much, but from what I understand, the big one for this summer is Octopath. Smash is probably sometime this fall, and if Pokemon is also set for this year along with Yoshi, then Fire Emblem is perhaps going to round out what sounds like a fairly packed end of 2018. And it's going to have to be packed, since as I understand it, the first half was pretty quiet except for Kirby. And yet, Nintendo seemed to have some pretty hefty sales projections for the Switch this year. Thinking about E3 is giving me a stomachache. I'm full of anticipation, but also, dread... FE16 could not show up. That would be almost a confirmation that it would show up at December at the earliest. FE16 could show up, but I could end up hating everything suggested about it from its reveal trailer. I mean, it's really unlikely. But it's possible. FE16 could show up, and it could have a super hype reveal. But I'd still be anxious about the end product failing to meet all its potential. Well... the date-to-mark is only 17 days away. What's coming will come.

That's the thing. I know they commission the card art ahead of time. That's why we already have rough art of Master Knight Leif for S15... like normal. So, why didn't they give us the rough art for S14 back during the S12 livestreams, like normal? Why would they completely neglect to mention S14 at all during S12, unlike how they would normally go about it? Surely, they had to have commissioned S14's art in advance. They probably got the rough art for these months ago. But, how long ago, exactly? If they already had it at the S12 livestreams, why didn't they reveal at least one or two of these to us, like normal? They broke from all their normal conventions at S12's livestreams, which were back in February. And that was after they'd gone so far as to tease us with a keyword during the November 2017 livestreams. I think that falls under "spending months hyping up the set". Like, why bother, if all you're going to do is reveal it to be a "normal" set? There doesn't seem to be anything unusual or particularly special about S14, so why was it given such special treatment almost a year in advance? Was it because, back in November 2017, they had intentions on making S14 unusual (by Cipher standards)... but by ~Dec 2017 - Feb 2018, it became clear that those plans had fallen through? So then, during the window of time where the S13 commissions were finishing up and the S14 commissions had begun, they had to modify their commissions for S14, leading to only having the art for S13 ready for early reveal by S12's livestreams - and as such, S14's art ended up finished in the 3 months between the S12 livestreams and now. If you look at the pattern of focuses, it's very obvious that White and Black were going to get another set soon. But if it were always intended for S14 to simply be a colour-repeat of S12, but with some White thrown in, I can see why they didn't mention S14 at S12... because trying to hype up another Blue/Green set after literally just livestreaming the current Blue/Green set is stupid. But then, why did they bother to mention S14 at S11 at all? If you're familiar with Heroes, then let me make an analogy. S14's reveal, to be frank, is approximately equivalent to FEH giving us the silhouette for a mysterious new Hero at the start of Month 1, not mentioning them at all for the rest of Month 1 and also for all of Month 2, and then suddenly dropping the trailer for the banner at the start of Month 3, which features said mysterious Hero... who turns out to be Lyn/Ike/Lucina/Camilla/Chrom/Robin/Corrin/Azura Alt No. 7 or something.

Ugh... as much as I loved what they revealed at the livestream... They finally gave us S14's themes! And, like normal, they also gave us early card art for S15! S14 is Awakening, Hoshido, and Tellius. S15 is NMotE, Nohr, and Jugdral. The reveal of S14 like this seems pretty abrupt. Why did they beat around the bush so much, if they were only going to give us such an anticlimatic reveal? Was S14 originally intended to be FE16's, but then FE16's release ended up later than they expected, so they had to change things around? In any case, since we now know the card themes for the rest of 2018, the earliest FE16's cast could appear is for March 2019, for S16 (heh). So, assuming they keep to the 2018 release schedule, it seems that FE16 will come out for ~November/December.

Both of these are Cipher OCs - specifically, these are Nieve/Niamh and Valjean. If they appear in FE16, it'll be as DLC content, just as Emma, Yuzu, Shade, and Randal were DLC characters for Shadows of Valentia; and if so, I highly doubt they'll be at all plot relevant.

They just want their 15 minutes of internet fame, I guess. For whatever that's worth....

Honestly, where do I even start...? Under the Smash Bros description, it's worded "characters reveal" instead of the grammatically-correct "character reveals". Under the Star Fox description, "NPC" isn't capitalized. Splatoon's description uses "Octoling" instead of the grammatically-correct "(the) Octolings". Yoshi's description capitalizes it as "Co-Op mode" (not "Co-Op Mode"). Luigi's Mansion's description then does one worse by not capitalizing "boss rush mode". Furthermore, Luigi's Mansion doesn't even have a subtitle. There are numerous other typos and odd word choices, e.g. "Guest and speaker" instead of "Speaker and Guests". On the whole, the vocabulary is several steps down from what is to be expected from a professionally-handled internal document (refer to Nintendo's investor reports for comparison). Columns are arranged from left-to-right according to what would be most interesting to the audience, and not what would be most important to the event organizers. If they were arranged correctly, the Schedule column should be on the far left, with the Event column (not "Title" - another weird word choice) next, then the VIPs, with the Description column coming dead last. All of the "Descriptions" are too vague for the fanbase to glean anything meaningful from them, which is suspicious; but, more importantly, many of them are also too detailed, and in the wrong way. Event organizers don't care about what is being displayed, only where and when events are being held. For example, a more realistic "description" for "Fire Emblem: Memories" might go, "10 minute reveal trailer, followed by 10 minutes of gameplay footage guided by (insert speaker name here), concluding with 10 minutes on the stage with the speakers. Exit with orchestral recording (track no.)." The organizers need to know about which microphones to turn on, and when; which stage lights need to go on, and when; what tracks to play from the speakers, and when; etc. There should be no mention of details like "the trailer focuses on the game's second mission'... because this information would be totally irrelevant to the organizers. Related to this, it should be noted that Fire Emblem almost always refers to these as "chapters" or "maps." "Missions" sound like something you might see for a game like, say, XCOM, not Fire Emblem. This odd wording seems to indicate that the person who mocked this up doesn't play Fire Emblem. Also related to this is the disparity in the amount of detail in the descriptions. The person who mocked this up is clearly familiar with Metroid and Star Fox, since Metroid's description is oddly specific about mentioning something as lore-bound as "a renegade Chozo", and SF's mentions "Corneria". Why mention Corneria, but not Hyrule? Why are Smash and Fire Emblem given vague descriptions like "showing some... mechanics" / "introducing the new... game mechanics", while Metroid and Star Fox get such weirdly specific descriptions like, "gameplay of the new flight system" and ""exploring the surface of a planet"? The document looks like it was printed from a really outdated version of Microsoft Word. It's using 12-pt Times New Roman with 1.0 line spacing, a standard Microsoft Office dropped more than a decade ago. Newer Word documents (newer as in, post-2007) default to 11-pt Calibri with 1.2 line spacing. And Nintendo, just like Apple, almost never uses serif fonts. As part of their company's image - and therefore, as a company policy to uphold that image - Nintendo nearly always uses sans serif fonts. Everywhere. TL;DR: Whoever mocked this up couldn't even be bothered to fake it properly. ...E3 really can't get here soon enough, huh....

I generally dislike the idea of minigames in my Fire Emblem. My reaction to the inclusion of Tap Battle in Heroes was pretty... lukewarm. That said, I'd be so down for a Gwent-like Cipher port in FE16. An officially localized form of Cipher, in a format that's easier to use and more visually appealing than Lackey CCG? Yes, please. I don't even care if it includes FE16 characters in it. Just make it an idle diversion, totally irrelevant to the plot. Heck, it'd probably be the only format of multiplayer Fire Emblem that I'd actually care to play. Smash doesn't count. It even makes sense from a business perspective. It it's successful enough in the video game, it can only make the physical TCG more popular. Then, make it a mobile gacha and really rake in the yen. Darn, now I've gone and needlessly hyped myself up for disappointment. Tch.

That's possible, too. They introduced a new OC last set - Nieve? Niamh? idr - so now, with there being so many OCs, perhaps they'll give these guys a mini-focus, too, and just run that with White/Black as the major colours. But, if so... why the secrecy? Why not just market it the same as any other set?

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that the May livestream will be about FE16. In fact, I'm 99% certain that it won't be. The livestreams are always primarily about the next release, which in this case is Series 13. This upcoming May livestream likely won't mention S14/FE16, either; but they might drop us another vague hint or two. However, please note that the only other time Cipher livestreams have been so opaque about future sets has been for the first Shadows of Valentia set - which was funny, because nearly everyone who followed Cipher knew it was going to feature Alm and Celica, meaning the opacity wasn't at all necessary. But now, they're doing the same thing again... but this time, the fanbase really doesn't have a clue about who or what S14 is going to be about. Hence why everyone believes S14 is going to be "the" FE16 set. Now, it's one thing if they refuse to tell us anything about S14 at either of the S13 livestreams. But it's a totally different thing to try to avoid telling us about S14, at S14's own livestreams! Unlike other Trading Card Games, Cipher only has one card type, the unit cards. So hence, if S14 has FE16 as a focus, then there's literally no way for them to hold livestreams for S14 without revealing characters from FE16. And, as I've been saying... it would be super lame if, of all the possible places - Smash, Heroes, an E3 reveal trailer - IS chooses to reveal FE16 characters through a Cipher livestream. Anywhere else, and at least the characters would be voiced. Anyway, let me rant to you a bit about Cipher. Cipher has 8 colour types: red, blue, purple, green, yellow, white, black, and colourless. Each colour is themed around a different set of games/continents: Red: Archanea and Valentia Blue: Ylisse Purple: Elibe and Magvel Green: Tellius Yellow: Jugdral White: Hoshido Black: Nohr Colourless: crossover media, which right now means Aytolis and Zenith (Warriors and Heroes) You may be wondering why I'm talking about this. Well, each Cipher set tends to release cards for multiple colours at a time. Earlier sets only had 2, but, with the addition of more colours, more recent sets tend to be split 3 ways, and even up to 4. But if your main deck doesn't use any of those colours, that means that there won't be anything to interest you. Hence, the colours tend to take turns, and the livestreams tend to reveal both the next set and the one after. That way, even if you aren't interested in the current set, you'll tune in to the livestreams anyway, just to get that tidbit of news regarding the next set, or the set after that. S12 was primarily Green, with Blue and Yellow as secondary colours. S13 is going to be primarily Purple, with Red and Colourless as secondary colours. This leaves only White and Black.I think it's quite likely that S14 is going to use these two as its secondary colours. But what about the main colour? The smallest casts in the franchise are from Shadows of Valentia and Sacred Stones. When these games were introduced into Cipher, they were fitted into an existing colour: Red for SoV, which makes sense given that it takes place concurrent to Marth's games; and Purple for Magvel, rounding out all the GBA games into a single colour. But each time a continent with a large cast was brought in, it came with its own colour. So, unless FE16's cast is small, it's probably going to get its own colour. Why am I bringing this up? Well, when a person goes to buy Cipher cards, there are 3 primary reasons behind their purchase: To strengthen their deck Because they're a fan of the game(s) featured and want to collect relevant merch They're hardcore collectors Now, a new colour isn't going to have the depth in card variety that older, better-established colours will have, which weakens motive no. 1. And unless FE16 comes out before S14, S14 won't have motive no. 2, either. Connect these with the fact that, again, it's kind of hard to see the first reveal of FE16 characters being done through a TCG livestream, and you can see why I think FE16 could be here as early as late summer/early fall. Of course, they could reveal FE16's cast in a trailer/other promotional event this summer, such as at E3, and then use S14 as a vehicle to continue the hype train for a late fall/early winter release. But, if our guesses about S14 are true, I have a very hard time seeing Fire Emblem Switch being released too far from S14's release date....

If FE16 doesn't show up at E3, then Cipher's Series 14 will look so out of place this year, lol. (Assuming it is FE16's set, that is.) Imagine the poor livestream host? Trying to just do his job and promote S14's cards, when the only responses he's going to get are a flood of, "That's nice and all, but where is FE16?!" And that's ignoring the cards themselves. Not only would revealing the cast in this way be kind of lame... the cards themselves also feature character quotes, referential skills, etc., and hence could be seen as massive spoilers. Spoilers, before the game was even launched. A new low! Tsk, tsk.

It's great to see IS is on-track. I still hold the fact that the mysterious Cipher S14 is set for a September release to be highly indicative of something; it would be very odd to try to market those cards without establishing a fanbase for the characters first. So perhaps we'll see that August/September release, after all. You may think that a June reveal for a late summer/early autumn release seems improbably short. But IS has been on a trend of shortening the time between reveal and release; there had to have been a reason for why they chose to say nary a word about SoV until February, when the game itself was available by April! Now, I'm no marketing major, so maybe I'm talking out of hat here... but this maneuver seems to make business sense. To maximize the number of new buyers (i.e. not the established fanbase), it makes sense to try to cash in on the hype that is generated soon after a game's reveal. With the prospect of a global release on the horizon, or at least, a very short timeframe to overseas launch - perhaps only 1-3 months of a delay, at most - the timing of FE16's release date(s) can only be so flexible. It takes time to manufacture and ship goods, after all. So perhaps their line of thinking is, "We want the delay between reveal and release to be as short as possible. But if we can't move the release date any closer, then instead, we'll push the reveal date further away"? Perhaps I'm being too optimistic. But even now, I get the feeling that IS has already passed FE16 over to the localizers, and is already in the process of starting on FE17. The investor report's near-confirmation of a 2018 release seems to quell the suspicions that IS is/was suffering development issues bad enough to cause a delay, which makes this decision to wait until almost halfway through 2018 before revealing the game seem intentional.

Assuming a trend of 3 banner units (one "star", one "co-star", and one "demotion"), 1 related TT/GHB unit, and 1 Legendary Hero per game/theme, so far we've had: FE10 (Radiant Dawn) Banner: Micaiah ("star"), Zelgius ("co-star"), Sothe ("demotion") GHB: Oliver LH: Vanguard Ike FE8 (Sacred Stones) Banner: ("Lyon route") Eirika alt ("star"), Myrrh ("co-star"), L'Arachel ("demotion") GHB: Lyon LH: promoted Ephraim FE13 (Awakening) Banners: - (Grima) M!Robin alt, Hardin, possessed Celica alt - Exalt Chrom alt ("star"), F!Morgan ("co-star"), M!Morgan ("demotion") TT: Gerome LH: (Grima) F!Robin alt I should also note that the first banner for FE4 (Genealogy of the Holy War) fits this pattern, if imperfectly: Banner: Sigurd ("star"), Deirdre (the only "co-star" listed here with a 4/6 base kit), Tailtiu ("demotion") TT: Arden "LH": Ayra (isn't a part of the elemental blessing system) The other two post-CYL banners, Farfetched Heroes and Children of Fate, either lack a dedicated GHB/TT, or lack the addition of the minimum "fifth" character who has at least 1 nonweapon uninheritable skill, a base kit that uses 5 out of the 6 slots, and is put on a banner separate from the main new character banner. Predictions are that Thracia is going to continue this trend. If so, then my wish/predictions are: FE5 (Thracia 776) Banner: Leif ("star"), Nanna ("co-star"), Finn ("demotion") TT: Eyvel; or else GHB: Ishtar (even though her presence in FE5 is very minimal, I write this latter guess only because of that figurine silhouette) LH: Ced (evidence suggests the next one will be green, but nothing says it has to be Thracian) After Thracia, some other banners I'd like to see... excluding laguz/beastshifters, because we still don't know when or how IS plans to implement them: FE6 (The Binding Blade) Banner: Guinivere ("star"), Rutger ("co-star"), Lugh ("demotion") GHB: Jahn. Or Idunn. M!Robin already took the title of "first male dragonstone unit", but I'd still like to see more of them. And the only f2p dragonstone unit we've ever gotten was that F!Corrin months ago, and that was for Android users only, anyway. LH: The realistic answer here would be a Hector alt. Still, part of me wishes they could give the attention to someone else. Like FE6 Karel. Or even Elphin. After FE6 finally gets its own dedicated banner, though, every game in the franchise will have had a turn. At that point, I really hope we finally get some FE16 news... because otherwise, we're probably looking at a whole crapton of alt banners. Not the worst thing that could happen, for sure; but boring.

Yeah. The best we can do right now is to look at the most recent projects and to try to discern IS's mindset from that; which is why so much of my "prediction" post was just listing the features IS has been experimenting with lately (freeroaming, turn mulligans, fatigue). But it's quite possible for IS to head in a totally different direction.