FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Triple Triad Guide and Tips

This is a guide for beginners and intermediaries on the triple triad on how to play the game well to scoop some wins. I placed first multiple times on the bi-weekly tournament and got all the triple triad related achievements including the “place 1st in 50 open TT tournaments” which i guess qualifies me a little bit.

Basic Rules

Triple Triad, the movie, ゲーム:

You can skip this if you know how to play the game
But basically 2 players make each a deck of 5 cards and take turns placing them on a 3×3 ボード, the cards have numbers on their sides and if you place a card next to an opponent card and your number is higher, then you flip the card and it becomes yours, whoever finishes the game with the most cards on their control win.
There are alternative Rules that i’ll later which can change the game in major ways.

Deck composition:

の 5 deck card has some limitations, there are different “希少性” of cards by the number of stars they have, from to 5 星, 5 being the best/rarest cards.
Each deck can only have one 5 star card and one 4 star card at the most, therefore leaving three slots for 3 star cards. (npcs dont have to follow this rule)
The number o stars on the card indicates its general strength and although it varies according to distribution it has a cap on how strong a card can be
The strongest a 3 stars card can be is 8, at most on 2 sides, so you’ll never see a 9 on a 3star card or such card with 3 sides being an 8.
The strongest a 4 star card can be is a 9, at most on 2 sides, and the strongest a 5 star card can be is a “あ” (10) also same distribution, 2 sides at most or lower numbers to more sides (例: 3 sides having a 9, or one side having a 10, one side having a 9 and one side having an 8.

戦略

おすすめ:

Create your deck manually, do not use the recommended feature, depending on which cards you have available the recommended deck can be significantly worse than one you built yourself. And while you are at it, build a reverse deck and an ascension one

So my general strategy is the following:

keeping your cards safe is more important than taking over the enemy card, therefore I almost always try to use corner cards, in which if I place them in a corner the only exposed sides will be its strongest, this way I can maximize the value of the number/rarity and therefore be safe of being taken by the opponent 3-star’s and then considering your opponent have a strong deck, leaving only 8’s or above exposed you going to have to optimize your 4-star and 5-star card placement to flip the most.

Another strategy is to leave 2 weaknesses on your card, 例えば, if you can capture a card from your opponent but not leave only your safe sides exposed, 出発できます 2 very weak sides, assuming your opponent will take one of those and then you retake the other weak side keeping the card and closing its weakness. However if your opponent doesn’t act on that right away you might have a weakness exposed that might allow them a double flip in the future, and if you try to cover it then they can have the last say by covering the last weakness and taking the card. It’s a risky strategy that can be necessary when your deck is weaker (like as a result of a bad swap)

An ace is sometimes not worth it

Considering if people generally try to only have 8’s on their 3-stars, and 9’s on theirs 4-stars, there will be a 3:1 ratio of 8’s to 9’s, so on your 5-star decision, you might wanna sacrifice an ACE (または2つ) for two or three 9s, this way you might not be able to flip their 4-star card but you have one additional side in which you can flip their 3-star which are more numerous.

Last is not always the best

I guess it’s a general instinct of people to save their best card for last and that can be good but that’s not always true. Sometimes getting an early flip and getting into a safe position in which your opponent can’t flip back without big risks can be worth more than saving it for the last play and maybe having a good spot to place it and maybe not. Without some optional rules if some cards have all their sides covered then they cannot be taken anymore being guaranteed to end on the side in which they are, setting this up can be worth more than a normal flip and therefore worth using a higher value card.

Optional Rules

All open: You can see your opponent’s hand and they can see yours

Three Open: You can see three (ランダム) of your opponent’s unplaced cards

Fallen Ace: 1 beats an A, simple rule, doesn’t change much most of the time

Swap: ゲームの開始時に, a random card of yours is swapped with a random card of your opponent. This can make into some really unbalanced matches but there’s not much you can do, all RNG

注文 The cards in your hand must be played in the order in which they were placed in the deck, this allows for some extra strategy, you probably will want to open with a 3-star card and leave a 3-star card to last, for it will not be played if you are second to act. But also try to think how your next card can interact with your previous one, like is there a way in which they are strong if played in succession (even if required opponent specific action), or is there a way in which they can be weak?

カオス The cards in your hand must be played in RANDOM order, RNG glhf it really limits the options

Sudden Death No draw is allowed, if both players end the match with the same number of cards then get back to their hand the card which they control and the game restart alternating who go first until there is a winner

上昇 Some cards have a symbol on the top right corner to indicate they are from a certain “タイプ”, if a card with a type is played all other cards of the same type (including the opponents) will get a +1 on all sides. Note that they can’t go above an A (10) so if you have a 9+5 そして 5+5 these are the same.
Strongly encourage you to make an Ascension deck to beat NPCs

Descension Same as Ascension but the cards get a penalty of -1 to all sides

Same: People get a bit caught up on this, basically this means that if you TIE twice with a card placement, then you win, this can be a TIE with 2 (以上) opponents’ cards or 1 opponent card and 1 of your own card. This allows combos, in which if you flip an opponent card this way and then such card would be able to flip another card then it will combo and keep flipping being able to flip the entire board, possibly

プラス: Now this is where people really get caught up, this is a really strong rule that can make or break games anytime and lots of people don’t bother learning it. It’s similar to “same” as in you have to consider the placement against 2 or more cards, at least one of which has to be opponents, and also if you TIE 2x with a card placement you win, but the rules say that if the sum of 2 of the touching sides of the newly placed card are equal, then they flip
that means you might have to do some head math,
so if you place a 3 against 6 it will add up to 9, if any other sides of your cards are gonna be placed in a way that adds up to 9 then you’ll flip, and also that allows combos. Lots of people like getting cards of all sides being the same (all sides 6’s) for this to simplify the math, but generally try to avoid leaving 2 sides with the same number being able to be touched by the same card because most people try or at least should try to having 8’s and 9’s mostly then they will have lots of matching sides allowing for an easy PLUS. But also before placing a card do some quick maths and see if maybe you placing it on the bad side of the card will give you a win.

逆行する: the lowest number wins, so basically the same game but upside down, fallen ace doesn’t work, ascension makes such cards worse while descension makes it better
You should definitely save a reverse deck to play NPCs

Roulette: Selects one of the previously mentioned optional rules at random AFTER deck selection, maybe you can try to optimize for this by having a High-Low deck in which you try to have the best good sides of a card and the worst bad sides in case of reverse and maybe try to prioritize 1’s over 2’s just in case of fallen ace, but I think the best bet is to just play your best deck

練習する

Besides getting the cards from the NPCs across the world, I recommend hitting up the gold saucer open tournament, which happens every 2 hours and can be registered for 30 minutes past the start allowing you to possibly play multiple times.

You draft from cards that it gives you as options so your deck will be much weaker than usual and it’s much harder playing with a bad deck, so you know it’s good practice.