Magic: the Gathering – Final Fantasy Review, Part 1 of 4: The Mechanics

Magic’s newest expansion takes us to the beloved Final Fantasy IP. A new set means new mechanics, and we’ve got some good ones. In this article we’ll talk about the mechanics and offer some thoughts on what they mean for Commander and other formats and how they’ll play.

Final Fantasy will release to Magic: the Gathering Online and Arena on June 10th, 2025, and to the tabletop on June 13th.

In a similar fashion to Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons, the Final Fantasy series arguably already matched up aesthetically with the Magic universe very well. This means that although the new set has a lot of top-down designs intended to evoke mechanics from the Final Fantasy series, these tend to look and feel like Magic mechanics, and we expect to see at least a few of these concepts return some day.

New Mechanics

Job Select

Job select is a triggered ability found on some Equipment in the set that creates a 1/1 colorless Hero creature token and then attaches the Equipment to it. After that it functions exactly like any other piece of Equipment.

FromTheShire: Nothing crazy here, this is just an upgraded version of things like living weapon from Phyrexian cards such as Batterskull. It really comes down to what the actual equipment does, though it’s kind of nice that the token sticks around to chump block or serve as sacrifice fodder.

TheChirurgeon: Equipment with a creature is a solid concept whenever it happens, and getting an attached 1/1 Hero is solid even before you change their type to something relevant.

BPhillipYork:  This isn’t really a new mechanic per se, we’ve seen it before with germs and other equipment that creates a creature.  I’m sure it’s very much a callback to the game, but I’m a bit disappointed that job select doesn’t let you select a job for the token, rather than having it come from the equipment, that would’ve been somewhat new.  It does make equipment more viable, and it is somewhat different from living weapon specifically since the token will survive on it’s own.

Marcy: Flavor wise, this is cute, as Final Fantasy games often have a focus on Jobs (either defined to a specific character or selectable), but I do agree with Philip in that it is a little odd you can’t ‘select’ a Job, it just makes a token. I actually think the Role enchantments would have been a better fit, letting you pick a role from them.

Tiered

Tiered is a new variant of modal spell that increases in effectiveness the more you pay. Unlike some other modals you are not choosing multiple modes but rather how much you would like to pay in total, and you will receive only the corresponding benefit.

FromTheShire: I’m always a big fan of modal spells; being able to choose what effect you want at what point in the game is an interesting decision point and the flexibility is great for not making your cheap card be a dead draw later in the game. We have only seen five of these, of which one is in the Commander decks, but there is a lot of potential. Restoration Magic seems almost certain to see play alongside or in place of Shardmage’s Rescue, Fire Magic is an interesting tool both for and against decks like Izzet Steel-Cutter, and Thunder Magic at least has upside over Shock, though the inability to target noncreatures means it seems unlikely to supplant Burst Lightning.

TheChirurgeon: This is a great way to provide extra value on higher costs in a way that multikicker and kicker just don’t provide. The flavor fit for Final Fantasy specifically is great here but I’d be shocked if we don’t end up seeing this mechanic again in the future.

BPhillipYork: I like this in the sense that it helps to smooth out one of the big problems of Magic games, which is drawing early game cards late or late game cards early; since you can just pay more to do more, it scales up pretty nicely.  It’s not really all that different from X, other than having distinct levels you can pay, and therefore rather than being constantly increasing in efficiency has some weird breakpoints.

Marcy: Very much on brand for how Final Fantasy treats magic scaling, you go from a weak, cheap spell to a larger, expensive spell (that often hits multiple targets). Very cute card and I do kind of wonder if we’ll see it in sets beyond this one!

Saga Creatures

Representing the iconic summons of Final Fantasy we get Saga Creatures, combining storytelling and combat power. These function like any other Saga or creature, able to attack and block, progressing through lore counters, etc.

FromTheShire: This seems pretty solid mechanics-wise to represent summoning, giving you that big splashy play that isn’t going to stick around for too long. We’ll see if they actually see much play outside of Commander; a lot of them are pretty expensive.

TheChirurgeon: I love these so goddamn much. The idea of making summons into creature Sagas is so absolutely perfect. The big drawback here is the cost, though the temporary nature of Sagas makes these equal parts drawback in some ways.

BPhillipYork: Not too shocking to see saga creatures, though they are a neat new thing to have; hopefully they return in future sets, as they play really nicely with Tom Bombadil and other saga focused decks.  Also the ability to reanimate them vs having to Replenish them or the like, having them trigger both creature and enchantment deaths generally just makes them better.

Marcy: Probably one of the things people know about Final Fantasy that haven’t really even played any of them, Summons really came into their own in Final Fantasy VII, becoming big cinematic set pieces, one of which is the above-named card. People who played FF7 back on the PSX know how much of a pain in the ass this summon was to get.

Returning Mechanics

Transforming Double-Faced Cards

A very popular mechanic returns with TDFCs, cards which enter on their front face but can then be transformed and flipped over to their powerful back side by fulfilling certain conditions.

FromTheShire: Another one it’s always fun to see return, these usually heavily depend on how easy they are to flip to dictate their play.

TheChirurgeon: My favorite of these is the Cecil Paladin/Dark Knight combo, which is the first thing that came to mind when someone suggested there’d be double-faced cards in the Final Fantasy set.

BPhillipYork: So there’s a lot of transforming cards in this set, which is fine; I do vaguely recall playing Final Fantasy II and like a dark knight becomes a paladin, I think that theme probably returned… a lot.  It’s a fine mechanic, sort of gives you a intro creature and a payoff into something else.

Marcy: As a returning mechanic, it certainly still fits. You’ve got characters swapping jobs, roles, and lots of bosses that go from Phase 1 to Phase 2. Certainly a flavorful returning mechanic here.

Adventures

Adventures return on a cycle of Towns, again functioning exactly as you are used to.

FromTheShire: Kind of neat to see Adventure be applied to lands for the first time. Again there aren’t many of them though.

TheChirurgeon: Adventures make a lot of sense in this set, and it’s a strong mechanic. The application here to lands means you have a lot of extra utility if you end up with too many lands in your hand, but the lands themselves tend to be a bit slow.

BPhillipYork: At least there are a lot of them.  With new sub-types of lands usually they only introduce a few and it’s kind of meh, if there are enough towns you might be able to do neat things with them, there’s already an obvious town commander in Wandering Minstrel, but they’ll probably end up being pretty inconsequential there.  I do really like the idea of adventure lands, I think that’s really cool, aside from the whole Town thing.

Marcy: Wouldn’t really be Final Fantasy without quests of some sort, would it?

Landcycling

Landcycling also returns, allowing you to pay the cost to fetch a specific basic land.

FromTheShire: These can be really great for making sure you hit your land drops consistently which is obviously a plus, I would be surprised if one or maaaaybe two of these see play in ramp or reanimator decks since this is a Common cycle, with the power level that entails.

BPhillipYork: These are just good for smoothing out decks, which is important, and also great if you can cycle a big fattie into the yard to cheat out later.I would say this Cloudbound Moogle for example does not fit that category, it has the cost of a fattie but no junk in the trunk.

Next Time: The Set’s Multicolor Cards

That wraps up our look at the mechanics of Final Fantasy. We’ll be back later to look at the most noteworthy cards in the set, starting with the multicolor cards in the main set, then in the following articles we’ll cover the monocolor and colorless cards before moving on to the set’s Commander decks.

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