Fire Emblem Cipher – High-Hit Ike Primer
Ike is definitely one of the best-supported characters in Cipher when it comes to printed cards (being in two different mainline games probably helped with that). There are a total of 20 different Ike cards, not counting art variants, and between them all are a variety of different decks. The Path of Radiance Lord’s most popular play style is often called “tower,” since it involves Class Changing him multiple times throughout the match and using support cards that stack copies of Ike underneath him for his final promotion.
His set 12 variant’s attack is counted as 10 times the number of cards in his stack, so a properly-played Ike can hit triple digits very quickly and get himself outside of critical hit range pretty easily.
There’s also a gimmick variant of Ike that’s based around his other set 12 promotion that turns him into a base 100 berserker. The downside is that berserk Ike has to destroy allies, potentially including himself, at the end of the player’s turn equal to his stack count. It’ a hilarious anti-thesis to the tower deck since you want to keep his stack as small as possible instead of crating a 20-card paper weight on your side of the field.
Both of these builds are for another day though, today I want to talk about the latest Ike deck that came out of set-22 that the Japanese community has dubbed “high-hit.”
Ike received one final promotion in Cipher’s final set, a 4-cost/3-promote base 70 with 3 effects. The first grants Ike an additional +10 power for each other green ally on the field during the player’s turn.
Next is Aether. Which let’s Ike destroy any other enemy unit when he attacks the enemy main character while at 100 attack or higher.
And his last skill allows Ike to target the enemy main character for his Aether skill if there are no other enemy units in play.
High-hit Ike is a very offense-focused MC Option. Getting Ike up to 100 attack each turn is a lot easier than it sounds, as there are many ways to get there outside of just deploying 3 other green units. The downside is that he goes back down to 70 on the opponent’s turn, leaving him vulnerable to most other viable MC options without dodges in-hand.
There are 3 different 2-cost promotion options for Ike to make use of, but his most viable is probably his set 3. It’s a base 60 whose effect grants Ike a range of 1-2 on the turn he’s Class Changed into. Honestly, you could probably get away without needing a bridge given that Ike’s final promotion is a 3-cost, and you’ll potentially want your second turn to help establish your board, but some times you want to snipe a mage or other disruptor on the backline.
Ike has quite a few 1-cost options to choose from. The most popular for High-hit tends to be his alt-art from set 12. It has an effect that boosts another ally by +10 through the opponent’s next turn whenever he destroys an enemy. This let’s Ike get away with playing weaker allies early on since they’ll be harder to destroy, and hopefully survive until he hits his final promotion. Other good alternatives include his original set 12, which gives the +10 boost to himself instead, and his set 22, which gains +10 when attacking the enemy MC.
High-hit has a lot of really good support options, but Ike benefits the most off of extenders that can either play themselves for a reduced cost or pull other units out through their effects.
One of the best ones is set 20 Reyson. He’s a 20 power 2-cost that can play himself from hand whenever another ally is growthed or leveled-up. Class Change is type of level-up, so when you change into Ike’s final promotion you can slap Reyson into the backline for a free +10, but the benefits don’t stop there.
Reyson can exhaust himself to boost any number of leveled-up allies by +10. This puts Ike at 90 power, just one tick away from the 100 needed for Aether to trigger. Reyson also can’t be attacked by enemies with 50 or more attack while he’s in the backline, giving him decent protection in the mid to late game when your opponent is probably going to avoid wasting resources on low-cost deploys that could actually hit him over their own playmakers.
Next is set 16 Sigrun, a 5-cost base 60 that is a 1-card +30 for Ike. Her main effect is flipping 2 bonds to deploy up to two 2-cost or lower fliers from the retreat to the backline. The useful 2-cost or less fliers in green are a bit limited compared to some of the more popular colors, but there are certainly enough when you add in beast units like Reyson, his sister Leanne, who doubles as a healer, and Naesala who can help with additional retreat setup and hand disruption on your opponent.
Note that the ability isn’t limited to Green fliers, it can pull any winged unit as long as it has a cost of 2 or less. This makes it easy for Ike to splash in other options, particularly colorless, which has received a lot of great low-cost flying units over the last few sets.
Sigrun is more than just an extender though. She can rest flying allies in the backline to activate two different effects. The first gives Her a +20 boost until the end of the player’s turn, and the second moves any enemy unit in the backline to the frontline. This effect isn’t limited to non-MC options, so Sigrun can drag any enemy MC that’s trying to run away from Ike up to the front if need be. 4 copies of Sigrun and Reyson are generally always wanted in a High-hit deck when focusing on fliers. However, Sigurn is a very High-cost unit, coming out on turn 5 at the earliest, which delays Ike’s potential +100 swings for an additional 2 turns after his promotion.
High-hit Ike’s color-restricted boost can be a little limiting when it comes to splashing other colors, but he does have a few good options outside green. What you mostly want to be looking for are cards that will directly benefit Ike by giving him a boost, or grabbing other green units to fuel his total power. Fodlan cards have a lot of really good options for mixing with Ike.
First off, Mercedes is a great late-game extender for Ike that can easily get him to 100 attack with little effort. She’s a 5-cost/4-promote with two effects.
She boosts the player’s MC by +20 until the end of the turn when she is deployed or class changed into, and by exhausting her and flipping 2 bonds, the player can pull 1 unit that is cost 3 or less and 1 unit that is cost 1 or less from the retreat and deploy them.
Mercedes is another late game option like Sigrun, that can extend into other plays. Her boost on play makes up for Ike not getting a natural +10 off of her, and the fact that she can grab a 3 cost exponentially increases the pool of units the player can grab. Most notably, is that she can grab a dancers that can refresh Ike and give him another swing. Mercedes is also not color restricted, so she can easily splash into Ike with a very small engine of brown cards to serve as bond options for her.
Other good brown cards that mix in well include Edelgarde’s event promo, which can exhaust itself and flip a bond to boost up to 2 other allies by +20, a plethora of dancers that can recover Ike for another swing, or a gimmicky dancer like Sothis who can refresh a unit for free if their attack is dodged.
For this article, I’ve included 2 different High-hit builds, one that’s green/colorless and mostly makes use of the stuff I talked about, and then a green/brown mashup. While maybe not as interesting, the green deck will definitely give you more mileage than the green/brown deck.
Set 20 Mist gives Ike access to another extender for a total cost of 3. Mist can deploy any 1-cost ally from the retreat by exhausting and flipping 1 bond. While the cost limit on Mist is a little more restrictive than Sigrun, the breadth of what she can grab is much higher. Mist isn’t limited to a single sub-typing of cards, and Ike has some really good support boosters that Mist can get with her skill, namely set 22 Soren. Soren comes with a passive effect that boosts any allied Ike by +10 during the player’s turn, making Mist into a 3-cost +30 booster when she’s able to grab Soren. Even if Soren isn’t available, she can grab another booster like Tanith, albeit with a bit of an extra catch to said boost skill. Mist being a healer limits a bit of her usability outside of just being an extender though, so she’s typically ran at 2 to 3 copies instead of the full 4. Personally, I think 4 Mist is fine, just make sure you have the right amount of 1-costs in your deck to get the most out of her ability.
High-hit Ike fills a weird tempo-style void that the character lacked. Tower Ike is somewhat slower deck due to the length it takes to get Ike’s stack high, and Berserk Ike wants to go fast before he kills himself off or before his opponent can stabilize and deploy units capable of dealing with his high base attack. High-hit also plays a lot closer to a conventional Cipher deck in wanting to have 4 copies of itself, 4 copies of a potential bridge, and then 1 or 2 extra copies of a different Ike variant if the player feels the need for it.
