Final Fantasy VIII

Triple Triad Rules

• Introduction to TT
• Rules
• Strategies
• Balamb Garden Card Club
• Queen of Cards Quest
• Card Mod Reference

Intro

Throughout the game you acquire cards through various means. You can “Card Talk” to a character by pressing the ‘A’ key (PC Version) or Square button (Playstation). If that character plays cards, you will be given opportunity to begin a game. The rules change from location to location, but the basics are the same. You win a game by flipping over more of your opponents cards than s/he flips of yours. Depending on the rules of the land, the winner gets one or more of the losers cards.

Trade Rules

The Trade Rule in force for the current region determines how many cards you’ll exchange with your opponent. When you start out, you’ll be using the ‘One’ rule. Possible trade rules are:

• One. With One, only a single card is traded. The winner chooses the card.

• Difference. This rule allows the winner to choose as many cards as he won by. If you win by 5 or more points, this is effectively the same as the All rule below.

• All. Yeah, you guessed it. Winner takes all cards. Ouch if you lose your good ones. Make sure you save your game before toying with this. When you pair all with random, you might end up losing several good cards because you can’t win due to the random bad cards being injected. In this case, use the trick below to remove as many bad cards from your hand as possible before playing with the All/Random combo!

• Direct. At the end of the game, whoever controls each card on the board wins that card. If your strategy in the game is to allow an opponent to flip a high value card so you can flip their other cards, you will lose the high value card they have flipped. Try to avoid this rule.

Different regions have their own combination of rules and trading rules, but if the Queen of Cards is in the region, you can get her to change the rules by paying her money. You can also get her to influence the trading rules by playing against her. See the Queen of Cards section below for more info.

Gameplay Rules

The variable rules are:

• Open. The open ruleCard RuleTriple Triad rule that reveals both players' hands. Very helpful and worth spreading early. means that you can see the cards your opponent will be playing with. Be aware that s/he can also see yours. The open ruleCard RuleTriple Triad rule that reveals both players' hands. Very helpful and worth spreading early. is very helpful for avoiding same/plus combos, and is an absolute MUST for beginners. Try to spread this rule early on if you’re a novice. If you’re a veteran player, you probably know what kinds of plays to avoid.

• Random. This rule makes it very tricky to win battles. With Random, the computer will choose 5 cards for you that you will have to play with. Since some cards cannot be Card Moded without up to 10 cards, it’s difficult to keep your deck stacked such that you control what cards are chosen. In fact, with the Difference and All rules, it’s virtually impossible! Try not to let this rule spread! If it does spread, you should can eliminate fractional reserves of cards (e.g., you have 1 Chimera card so you need 9 more to get a full set of 10 to card modGF AbilityRefines Triple Triad cards into items, which can often be refined again into strong magic. Learned by Quezacotl.) by acquiring 4 really low level cards, and losing on purpose. Your opponent will take the best card you played with, so if you play with 4 bite bug cards and 1 Chimera card, they’ll virtually always take the Chimera.

• Elemental. Some cards have an elemental symbol on them. If the square you play the card on matches that symbol, all point values on that card go up one. If you do NOT match that symbol, all points go DOWN, so be careful if you are used to just playing a ‘pattern’ game - cards that did not previously match for “same” may match now.

• Sudden Death. With this rule, if the game ends in a draw, you’ll swap a few cards with your opponent and play again. I recommend avoiding spreading this one.

• Same. When the Same rule is used, any card played with numbers that matches two or more numbers on adjacent cards will cause those cards to be flipped. When a card is flipped due to the same rule, all cards it can flip will be flipped, etc. Save your game and play with Same until you are comfortable with it.

• Same/Plus. This is identical to same, except that instead of just matching the numbers on the other cards, you can also match the value that their numbers add up to. So if you play a card where the edges are 2 and 5 next to two cards whose edges are 7 and 4, the values add up to 9 and 9, and thus the two cards matching those edges will flip instead of just the 7 (which would flip because 7>2). This can get tricky, so save your game before messing with it.

• Same/Plus/Wall. Treat this rule as the one above, but the wall now counts as a 10 (or ‘A’).

Abolishing Rules

When you first arrive in a region, you have a chance of either spreading a rule from a previous region or abolishing a rule from the new region. Or sometimes neither. For this reason, it’s generally considered helpful to use this aspect of the game to your advantage to abolish rules by bouncing back and forth between regions with dissimilar rules. Most importantly, you want to get rid of the Random ruleCard RuleTriple Triad rule that randomly chooses your hand. It is usually the rule you most want to abolish.. Dollet, Trabia, Centra, and Lunar all start out with the random ruleCard RuleTriple Triad rule that randomly chooses your hand. It is usually the rule you most want to abolish.. By going from a region with a rule these don’t have, you can possibly eliminate the random ruleCard RuleTriple Triad rule that randomly chooses your hand. It is usually the rule you most want to abolish.. Generally speaking, abolishing rules follows this pattern:

• Come TO a city where you want to abolish a rule FROM a city with a rule that isn’t yet spread.

• Save outside the target city

• Enter the city and challenge someone to a card gameSystemFF8's card game. Winning cards feeds Card Mod, which feeds items, magic, weapons, GF abilities, and all sorts of nonsense in the best way.. You should see a note about combining rules from both regions. If you don’t, you need to visit a DIFFERENT city first if you want to stand a chance of abolishing a rule.

• Accept the offering of a game using both rules, then press “quit” from the subsequent Rules screen. At this point you will either see no message, or a message saying a new rule has spread in this region, or a rule saying an exiting rule has been abolished. If the rule you wanted to get rid of is now gone, you’re home free. Otherwise, reload the game you saved outside the city and come back to try again.

Spreading Rules

Rules spread when you play games around the world. When you propose a game to a character in a new land, any rules from the previous land you played in may be new to him. He may suggest you play a game that combines rules from both area. Unless you just came from Balamb (includes Balamb Garden) I don’t generally recommend this. Keep proposing games and eventually s/he will not ask to play with combined rules. To spread open, but keep other rules from spreading, I usually go back and play in Balamb Garden after each new land I play in. In Balamb, I always say no to anyone who wants to play with combined rules. Then when I go somewhere else, I say ‘Yes’ if they ask to combine the rules from Balamb. If this confuses you, you can also pay off the Queen of Cards early on so she’ll spread the open ruleCard RuleTriple Triad rule that reveals both players' hands. Very helpful and worth spreading early., if it’s not already active in Balamb.

Emulator Notes

If you are using save states to nudge card rules or card RNG, I moved that out of the main rules explanation so this page can stay focused on Triple Triad itself. See Emulator Notes for the modern convenience version.