Editing Fire Emblem (section)

== Cipher ==
''Cipher'' is the second attempt at a TCG. While it has not been translated officially, there is a decent-sized English community for simulator play and all cards have been translated for such. It is unusual among TCGs for two reasons.  

Firstly, all cards represent characters, with no land, sorcery, spell, energy, item, instant, or trap cards to be found. Instead, deployment is fueled by setting characters down from your hand once a turn as '''Bonds'''. To deploy a character you need to spend Bonds equal to their deployment cost and have at least one Bond with the same symbol (or both symbols in the case of cards with both Hoshido and Nohr symbols). Expended Bonds return to normal during your next turn. In addition to spending Bonds to deploy, certain cards also '''Flip''' Bonds as a cost. Flipped Bonds can not provide symbols, but can still provide points. Very few effects can unflip Bonds and so far only yellow cards can unflip a net positive number, so this payment is largely final.

Secondly decking out does not lose the game; it only causes the discard pile to be shuffled into a new deck (and this happens instantly so you don't even miss drawing a card) unless you have no discard pile as well, which is extremely unlikely. Pulling cards from the discard pile, known as the '''Retreat Area''', is actually relatively easy and doable by multiple series with low-cost clerics. Exile, known as the '''Boundless Area''', was introduced later in the game's life.

Each deck consists of a minimum of 50 cards (including the main character) with no maximum. Each card (determined by serial number) can only appear 4 times and each deployed character must be unique. Some cards representing generic monsters, faceless enemy units and, in one case, a guy who can multiply have exceptions to this rule. At the start of play each player chooses a character from any card with a cost of 1 and deploys it over a special marker identifying it as the main character (Also known as "Lord" by English fans, since the terms were synonymous when discussing ''Fire Emblem'' before ''Cipher'').

The objective of play is to destroy the five cards an opponent has deployed as orbs, either by defeating their main character 5 times or using skills that destroy orbs, then attacking them again. So far, the only other way to win is to destroy all five orbs and activating a skill found on a particular Marth (B13-051SR). When an orb is destroyed, that player adds it to their hand. (The reverse of [[Pokemon]] TCG, and a change for the better since in ''Pokemon'' you can end up in a death spiral if you're screwed enough to have all your deck's key cards as prizes.)

In combat, an attacking unit's attack is compared to the defending unit's attack, with the defending unit destroyed if the attacker has a higher power. This sounds simple, but it is complicated by a few other factors. Firstly there are two zones, front and rear, for deployed units with most units having limited attack range. Second are supports, criticals and evasion. During combat, the top card of each player's deck is revealed and the support value of the revealed card added to a character's attack and activating their support skill ''unless'' the revealed character has the same name as the supported character (in which case the support fails, doing nothing). After this the attacking player may score a critical hit by discarding a card from their hand with the same name as the attacking character, doubling their attack. A defending player may discard a card from their hand with the same name as the defending character to evade and nullify all damage (even critical hits). If the attacking unit's attack is higher and they haven't been evaded, the defending unit is sent to the retreat zone or (if they're a main character) an orb breaks.

Support for the game ended in October 2020.