Question regarding stats + Junction

[Iceglow]

See, Balamb Garden was great to get your cards, you had Ifrit and you get Diablos from beating him heres some other acquirable high power cards through carding alone in Balamb: Trauma (turtapod, caterchipillar), Shumi Tribe (T-rexaur, Grat), Jumbo Cactuar (wendigo, glacial eye), Elvoret (bitebug, ochu) to get one of these cards simply card the monster required repeatedly, I've highlighted them with bold font, shumi tribe is arguably the easiest to acquire because it is in the training centre alone. All of these cards are boss cards which early on help compliment your GF Ifrit card quite well, once you're playing with Diablos too then you're pretty much guaranteed to win just remember, never mix rules in Balamb, and you only need 1 flip to win so if unsure what to play next, play a card in a safe location e.g. a card (left, top, bottom, right) has 2, 7, 4, 6 for stats, you control the bottom left and the opponent has placed in bottom right, nothing in his hand can flip your cards 7 so place your card next to their bottom right card because you're safe from being flipped there. Heres some early cards you can pick up to bolster the hand even further: Minimog (GF), Quistis (character/player), Seifer (player), Angelo (I believe this counts as GF card) to get these cards is easy: Minimog is held by the kid running circles around Balamb Garden, he plays it after about his 3rd loss, just stand near the save point and ambush him as he goes past or if you feel reckless get it before even going to speak to Seifer after Dollet, though if you lose a hand here you suffer for it, they always take the most powerful card. Quistis is held by the black groupie or "treipie" to play him you need to find him in the back area of the canteen. Seifer is held by Cid himself, to get Cid to play cards, once acquired the Diablos lamp just run back inside Garden and play him (you can also acquire your battle meter item from him too at this time by speaking to him). You'll pick up other boss/monster cards in the process which is useful too. Angelo is a little more difficult to get, simply because it's your first experience of Timber rules. I'd advise you to mix rules since they play Same and One and generally open will spread to the region. However, Watts the contact for the Forest Owls has this card, best thing is he stands normally 2 steps or so from a save point so take advantage of that, if you're playing to eradicate rules you want to spread open at this point in time, since same will be used to eradicate other rules in Dollet and Gabaldia.

An early magic junction spell to collect is Water, this can be done by acquiring fasticalon-f cards, 5 refine in to 1 water crystal 1 water crystal with shiva's I-magRF is 50 waters I believe, this will boost stats to atleast around 40. Although carding Fasticalon-F will still allow fish fins to drop so use a water crystal on quistis for aqua breath and turn each fin in to 20 waters. Dino bones are acquired from T-rexaur (and his card refines in to them) in the training centre or forests on Balamb, though a rare sighting he's well worth carding for them as that gives you Quake, playing cards gives you the Gayla card for Meltdown and I believe the Mesmerize card for modification to acquire Regen. Drawing from Biggs, Wedge and Elvoret in Dollet gives you the following spells: Esuana, Blind and Double you can draw protect spells from X-ATM092 but the time limit lends itself to forgetting this one especially since you can get protect and shell in the next area of the story. The mini-boss where you save Ellone in the training centre provides more magic shell and protect to be precise. Drawing sleep and silence from Fasticalon-F and Grats saves time and hassle with modding cards, plus if you card the monster afterwards 0exp. The bigger your damage the harder it will become to damage things without killing them so remember not to go overboard on the str junction (or elemental - j)