FF7 Rebirth: How to beat the Shadowblood Queen in Queen’s Blood
Queen’s Blood is a surprisingly fully-featured card game that you can participate in throughout Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and the final battle is particularly difficult. For the most part if you slightly adjust and adapt your starting deck with the cards you buy and win across the world, you’ll probably have a strong strategy to take down your average opponent with a few good moves. That’s not the case with the Shadowblood Queen.
The Shadowblood Queen is by far the toughest Queen’s Blood challenge in the game, and she only becomes available to fight after you’ve taken out the other 29 ranked combatants. But when you finally take ‘em all out and start Chapter 12, the Shadowblood Queen will be available, and she cheats. She cheats hard, meaning you’ll need a special deck in order to take her down.
In this guide we’re breaking down the exact deck and strategy that we used to take down the Shadowblood Queen in FF7 Rebirth’s Queen’s Blood. Make sure to read through our list of all Queen’s Blood cards, and don’t ignore events like Costa Del Sol’s Card Carnival where you can earn some incredibly valuable and powerful cards.
The Shadowblood Queen cheats – FF7 Rebirth
You can beat the Shadowblood Queen with only three cards on the field.
Square Enix, GLHF
If you’ve read through our essential Queen’s Blood tips and played a few battles yourself, you’ll already be fully aware that a rank one card can be placed on a rank one pawn, a rank two card can be placed on a rank two pawn, and so on. The Shadowblood Queen doesn’t care. She can freely summon cards of any rank on seemingly any pawn she owns, and she even starts the game with the Shadowblood Queen card already placed.
All of her cards spawn spaces that enfeeble the cards of both players, and that will also power up the Shadowblood Queen. But that’s okay, because we can use that sneaky strategy to our own advantage, too. Since the rules for this battle have been seemingly thrown out the window, we’re building a deck specifically designed to counter her strategy.
Deck build to beat Shadowblood Queen – FF7 Rebirth
This is the deck we use to defeat the Shadowblood Queen.
Square Enix, GLHF
We used the following deck build to take down the Shadowblood Queen in Queen’s Blood. Don’t worry too much if you don’t have every card included here: the most important cards are the two Rictus cards, Chimera, and Gi Nattak.
- Death Claw
- Skeeskee x2
- Reapertail
- Bahba Velamyu
- Rictus x2
- Loveless
- Bomb
- Chimera
- Joker
- Emerald Witch
- Midgardsormr
- Griffon
- Gi Nattak
Rictus raises its own power by 1 everytime an ally or enemy is enfeebled, and with the Shadowblood Queen’s strategy, this puts you in a good position.
The Chimera card has a similar feature, where its power raises by 2 for every enfeebled enemy. While that’s not quite as good as allies and enemies, it’s still incredibly useful in this battle.
The final important card, Gi Nattak, replaces a card on the field, but grants that card’s power to the allies directly above and below it. This is key to triumphing against the Shadowblood Queen.
Strategy to beat Shadowblood Queen – FF7 Rebirth
As mentioned above, two of the key cards in this build are Rictus, Chimera, and Gi Nattak. The two Skeeskee cards are also very useful to set things up, but they’re certainly not our primary focus for this strategy.
This is the ideal first three moves.
Square Enix, GLHF
The ideal starting draw features at least one Rictus and a Chimera – you might need to restart a few battles before getting the draw you need. Your first column should start with a Rictus at the top, followed by a Chimera in the middle slot, and the best bet is having the second Rictus in the bottom slot. This is good because the Shadowblood Queen’s encroaching enfeeblement rarely reaches your rear row, so these cards should be safe.
That’s the most important part out of the way – with your rear row reinforced, it’s a matter of playing your best until the right moment strikes. Use cards like Skeeskee to try and win back spawn on the board, while Emerald Witch and Loveless can give your rear row some necessary buffs. If you somehow manage to get enough pawns, Midgardsormr is a great addition to any row, and Bomb can, of course, blow away enemy cards, when in the correct position – make sure not to harm your rear row!
Give it some time, and eventually replace Chimera with Gi Nattak.
Square Enix, GLHF
You will eventually draw Gi Nattak, and you shouldn’t necessarily play it immediately – though you might be pushed into a situation where you have to. With each passing turn, the two Rictus cards and the Chimera will be building in power thanks to the enfeeblement debuffs the Shadowblood Queen places down. The Chimera will build power at twice the rate, and when the time is right, you can use the Gi Nattak card to replace the Chimera, giving its power to the two Rictus cards.
In the final battle our Chimera had a power of 12 – though it could potentially go much higher – and when added to the totals of our two Rictus cards, it amounted to totals of 19 in the top row, and 17 in the bottom row. That’s just with the one card in each row, and in our battle, Gi Nattak immediately succumbed to enfeeblement.
Continue to buff your first row while enfeebling enemies and you'll win.
Square Enix, GLHF
Bahba Velamyu is only rank one but can enfeeble enemies on death, meaning it can further stack the power of Rictus. Reapertail also works similarly, and both are useful in staving off the Shadowblood Queen until she runs out of cards to play. Eventually, with two supercharged Rictus dominating the top and bottom rows, you should have them powered up enough to trump the opponent’s Shadowblood Queen card in the center row. We finished the game with 23 in the top and 22 in the bottom row for a total of 45, beating the middle row’s 33.
