Magic’s newest expansion takes us to the beloved Final Fantasy IP. A new set means new cards, and we’re continuing our review with the white, blue, and black cards.
Final Fantasy will release to Magic: the Gathering Online and Arena on June 10th, 2025, and to the tabletop on June 13th.
Last time we covered the multicolor cards, and this time as usual we won’t be looking at everything, but what we will be looking at we’ll be looking at primarily but not exclusively with an eye for Commander play.
Aerith Gainsborough
BPhillipYork: Kind of a weird set of interlinked mechanics, fun for something like a Jodah, the Unifier legendary goodstuff deck. Also kind of a weird trigger, because if you can use something like Malakir Rebirth, then Aerith will dump counters back onto herself, you could use The Ozolith or its cousins to double the counters. This isn’t like, good, per se, but it’s funny.
FromTheShire:Â This feels like you really want to have a sacrifice outlet or else it’s eating the first piece of removal or dying in a boardwipe so you don’t really get the trigger.
Marcy:Â Well, it only makes sense for her to have a death trigger, considering. Sorry if this is spoiling a 20+ year old game, but Aerith (or Aeris, if you’re nasty) dies in FF7, in a moment that became iconic to the series and the game itself. In fact, Aerith’s death has remained kind of contentious, to the point that the current remake trilogy is trying to grapple with what to do with it, and not super succeeding. She’s a great character though, although I feel the PSX version (and first localization) didn’t do her a lot of favors as a character; Remake Aerith is a lot better.
TheChirurgeon: That’s one of the wildest parts about the remake, given how much the original game is about Aerith’s death and moving on after losing a loved one. She’s a great character but it cheapens things if she doesn’t die in the story. Her death trigger here is perfect.
Ambrosia Whiteheart
BPhillipYork:Â There’s like sub-themes of Selesnaya Birds and landfall and triggers from ETBs and I mean, okay. It is what it is, make the deck around it if you want.
FromTheShire: I’m assuming this card gets kind of hosed by flavor since it can’t fly. If it could, it would probably be right at home in the Esper Pixies deck, but it can’t, so here we are.
Marcy:Â Named Chocobos are basically like named horses, in that they are generally important to the story somehow. This is Clive’s from FFXVI. The flavor has nothing to do with the card, though.
Ashe, Princess of Dalmasca
BPhillipYork:Â This doesn’t seem particularly impactful to me; it’s certainly fine in an equipment focused or artifact focused deck. It’s an attack trigger so the fact she has no evasion doesn’t really incentivize anyone to blow her up. Also kind of neat she’s a rebel, where’s my Orzhov Rebel/Mercenary search commander WotC?
FromTheShire:Â Seems unlikely you have artifacts you need to draw badly enough to spend 3 and wait an entire turn to get a random one of, before this instantly dies in combat.
Marcy:Â The (technically) main female protagonist of FFXII, Ashe is a pretty cool character in that she’s somewhat portrayed as a little bit more proactive and capable than some previous installments heroines. Not a ton, and frankly she gets a little forgotten compared to Fran and Penelo, so, I guess maybe it evens out?
TheChirurgeon: God the protagonist situation in FF12 is so weird. In theory, Ashe should be the main character along with Bosch, or it should be Balthier (who insists he is), but instead you spend all this time with Vaan and Penelo.
Battle Menu
BPhillipYork:Â This is a decently solid menu of options. Creating tokens at instant speed is still somewhat unusual, and destroying big creatures is probably going to be the default. The other two are so so, though I’m sure in Standard this is a playable card. Actually maybe, Standard is so pushed now.
FromTheShire:Â Yeah this might be flexible enough to see some play. 4 life is a big chunk against Burn and some aggro decks, and against the Monstrous Rage decks being able to let them stack multiple buffs before removing their creature means you can potentially get big value. The token is whatever and the toughness boost is largely the same in the current no blocking meta.
Marcy:Â More for the cool art, but FF games are (traditionally) turn based RPGs, and this recreates a battle from FFVI, the game that really put FF on a lot of people’s radars. For the sake of being a nerd, the party in FFVI could be in front or back rows, with this showing what looks to be Relm and Gau in the back and Cyan and Terra in the front row. The enemy is called Humbaba, if you even care.
TheChirurgeon:Â This is a great modal spell for white, especially at 1W for the cost.
Beatrix, Loyal General
BPhillipYork:Â There’s definitely some hilarious Voltron-esque commanders you can use this with, at 6 mana a cost reducer is kind of meh. It’s also a trigger your opponents can react to, which in my opinion is a huge downside. Oh you’re attaching everything to whatever to kill me, well I’ll definitely just kill your creature in response.
FromTheShire: We have about half a dozen of these now, and none of them see much play. Maybe if you have a bunch of them you’ll get to actually stick the Equipment on one of them, and when these effects resolve it’s powerful.
Marcy:Â A stone cold bad ass somehow attached at the hip to the lamest character in history (Steiner is fine before any Steinerheads jump on me), Beatrix is an antagonist for a good portion of FFIX, as she feels she is fighting on the correct side of things. She isn’t, turns out, because she’s not in your party! Beatrix having Vigilance is, I think, a nod to the numerous times you fight her (and lose to her) in the game.
TheChirurgeon:Â This is missing an ability where you spend five minutes kicking her ass and then she just ultimates and kills your party and reveals it was a scripted fight you were supposed to lose. It’s weird that she’s a Soldier and not a Knight.
Cloud, Midgar Mercenary
BPhillipYork:Â Really solid utility creature. My big get for this is just to grab the swords that ramp lands, and use it as a big ramp source in Equipment decks. I wouldn’t personally run this as a commander, seems boring, and also just a less good version of Godo, Bandit Warlord.
Saffgor: This is functionally Stoneforge Mystic, and while that doesn’t interest me in the Command Zone (as tutors in the CZ tend to get stale fast), Cloud is exceptional wearing swords or equipment that generates mana advantage. In specifically White, cards like Lost Jitte have huge stonks.
FromTheShire:Â Importantly Cloud doesn’t put the Equipment into play so it’s no Stoneforge. Still, it’s always nice to have another tutor, and if you ever connect with him things are going to pop OFF.
Marcy:Â Our second Cloud card, this one feels a little similar but slightly different to the other; I do like that they’re focusing on his ability to equip things, which feels like a nod to equipping (of course), but also Cloud’s numerous sword techniques.
Delivery Moogle
BPhillipYork:Â Well this is a bog standard artifact tutor. It’s a reasonable 3 mana, can be flickered, etc. Also really a solid statline, a 3/2 evasion creature that can connect if the artifact you go for cares about dealing combat damage.
Saffgor:Â Being 4 mana, this is just barely outside the realm of a staple tutor ala Imperial Recruiter. What it lacks in efficiency however, it makes up for in versatility, and being able to grab from the graveyard as well means key pieces being interrupted is less of an issue.
FromTheShire:Â Really solid tutor or recursion for artifacts in white.
Marcy:Â Moogles are kind of a mascot for FF games; in some games, they’re a fairy like race, in others they just kind of exist in daily life, and in even more they look like fuzzy demihumans (Seriously. Check out Ivalician Moogles. I’ll wait). This particular Moogle is the Delivery Moogle from FFXIV, which many players know is the one who delivers your in game rewards, or makes you wait 45 minutes after buying an emote you wanted to use to finally show up in your inbox. In FFXIV, it’s established that all mail is delivered by Moogle. Also most of them are assholes. Not making any judgements, just saying.
TheChirurgeon:Â I’m glad they went with the good moogle designs and not the creepy weirdos from FF7 Rebirth.
Dion, Bahamut’s Dominant / Bahamut, Warden of Light
BPhillipYork:Â For knight decks this is pretty solid mass evasion, and you can turn it into a Dragon and blow something up, so that’s solid enough. 4 mana is pretty worth it to hand out flying to several creatures, so this seems like a fine enabler. Probably not Commander material.
Saffgor:Â This is a fine 60-card playable piece, but it doesn’t really do anything interesting in Commander. Lacking that ‘wow factor’ means it’ll likely be forgotten, if not, only for its ability to flip.
FromTheShire:Â Disagree that it does nothing in Commander, there are quite a few Legendary Knights and I know people with typal decks built around creatures like Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir and Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale that will be stoked about this guy. More typal support is always more better in my book.
Marcy:Â One of the companions to Clive in FFXVI (it feels a little odd to call him a party member but that sort of works too), Dion is a character who is trying to make up for his father’s failures and flaws. I guess that’s hard to represent so they just kind of went for him being a stand up guy (which he is), and a leader.
From Father to Son
BPhillipYork:Â I mean it’s a tutor, for Vehicles, that you get to use twice. Solid enough if your deck for some reason cares about Vehicles.
Saffgor: If you can cast this with something that grants flashback, or otherwise avoid the full cost, suddenly this is quite a bit more appealing. Snapcaster into this could be a pretty huge swing for 4 total mana, it mostly depends on what Vehicles exist in the given format.
FromTheShire:Â Straightforward enough, you know if your deck wants this and if it does it’s quite good.
Marcy:Â Kind of a hilarious card because the relationship between Noctis and his father in FFXV is really important, which is represented here as… his dad giving him the huge ass car (called the Regalia) that became semi-iconic for the game.
TheChirurgeon:Â *Slaps the trunk of the Regalia* you can fit so many recipes in this bad boy
G’raha Tia
BPhillipYork:Â Kind of interesting to see new templating that artifacts now “die” as opposed to get destroyed or go to your graveyard. Anyway, solid enough especially because you get to draw off Treasures or Food or whatever. 5 mana is a lot for that but white traditionally hasn’t had great card draw and if you can afford the 5 it should net you a lot of cards.
FromTheShire:Â Yeah so many decks make so many artifacts these days, many even natively capable of sacrificing themselves on each players’ turns. Really great draw engine for them.
Marcy:Â The catboy that launched a thousand subs, G’raha Tia is an NPC in FFXIV who first appears during one of the best raid stories in the game’s early days, the Crystal Tower (Why is it the best, you say? Because Nero is in it. Who is Nero? Don’t bother me kid). G’raha Tia became more important 3 full expansions later in Shadowbringers, where his personality kind of completely changed (for spoiler reasons) and many a fan started commissioning art of of him marrying their Warrior of Light. It rules. Look up the picture of him eating a burger. It’s great.
Hildibrand Manderville
Marcy:Â I asked this card to be included because even though it is part of the Commander set, we aren’t likely to cover those cards separately I believe, and I wanted to talk about my favorite FFXIV characters/quest line. Hildibrand Manderville is a character that you encounter in FFXIV, and who actually appeared in FFXIV 1.0; in 1.0, he is last seen being rocketed into the moon Dalamud, assumed dead. He appears in the post MSQ storyline of ARR, kicking off a series of quests that accompanied every expansion except Shadowbringers (one reason why I dislike it). The Hildibrand quests are comedic and somewhat lore-bending, where the good-hearted and empty-headed Hildibrand tries to solve a mystery that often ends up somehow being both simpler and more complicated than it needs to be. The quest lines are some of my favorite things in all of FFXIV, as the character Hildibrand and his “helpful” assistant Nashu Mhakaracca (seen in the background of his card there) get into increasingly silly antics, which often rely on Hildibrand’s apparent immortality (which I chalk up to Cartoon Logic), thus the card’s mechanic. Hildibrand also serves as the vector for Gilgamesh to appear in FFXIV, where they take to calling him “Greg”, which he doesn’t seem to bother correcting. Ah, Greg, my beloved. Anyway, something I really love about the Hildibrand quests, especially the Endwalker one, is that they are some of the only quests that openly acknowledge that your character is a walking, somewhat talking god amongst mortals. It feels nice to be acknowledged, and nothing made me feel as cool as the scenes in EW’s Hildibrand quest did in all of FFXIV. Maybe that’s just me. There is a returning cast of characters in these, with lots of riffs on things like Detective Conan and other Final Fantasy games, and I really recommend giving them an honest try if you’ve never played them. As of Endwalker, you kind of have to, because you can’t get the Endwalker relic weapons without having done all of the Manderville quests… Skill issue for some, but not me. Anyway, Hildibrand, Nashu, Godbert, Julyan, and Greg rule. Back to the cards.
Machinist’s Arsenal
BPhillipYork: It’s fairly easy to get a lot of artifacts out between land ramp and utility so this is inherently kind of a dangerous card. 5 Mana is a lot though, you’d want to have at least 4 artifacts in play for this to be a real payoff. However there’s some real danger using this with things like Akira, Line-Slinger, where it would suddenly push it easily into one-shotting people territory.
Saffgor: 5 mana is a lot, and without evasion this is just getting chumped in most formats. Looks great, but Nettlecyst is going to be just fine most of the time.
Marcy: While Machinist is a Job in FF games, it isn’t always the most well represented one. Edgar in FFVI is probably one of the most famous, and the job has always been a little odd because Final Fantasy is often Final Science-Fantasy. This particular art is the Machinist Job from FFXIV. I have a slight bone to pick with this card’s art, in that SQE recently did a “fan design” competition for hair, of which natural hair for Black people was the winner. Square put it in the game, made it look nothing like the submission, and kind of just went “oopsies.” This card has the hair the game didn’t get, but could have. That sucks. Cool art though.
Minwu, White Mage
BPhillipYork:Â Pretty dangerous for cleric decks, which tend to gain and lose a lot of life as they are concentrated in white and black, so for those decks this is a solid add. You could also probably build a pretty aggressive go tall cleric deck based on life gain in monowhite with this as a commander.
FromTheShire:Â Really really nice for Clerics, and nice that it buffs itself up as well so you can actually be swinging with this and have at least 1 way to gain life at all times.
Marcy:Â A semi-deep pull, Minwu is from FFII, which is frankly a really cool game with some neat ideas but a lot of people (modern audience, anyway) have likely never tried. The game has a great storyline and one of the best villains in FF, but the wonky leveling system makes people find it hard to grasp at first.
TheChirurgeon:Â Minwu is a deep pull if you’re not from Japan but yeah even with re-releases FF2 never caught on the in the states. It has some neat ideas but it’s just a super weird game.
Moogles’ Valor
BPhillipYork:Â If this was cheap it would be amazing; at 5 it’s so so. Are you really going to have 5 mana to react to a board clear? You can end step this to double your creature count, which is pretty nice, and seems like the primary use case, in go-wide token decks, as protection or doubling when you’re ready to go.
FromTheShire: You really want Arachnogenesis or Rootborn Defenses, but in UW control decks or similar where you’re already holding up mana this is certainly powerful.
Marcy:Â These Moogles are from FFVI, noted mostly by their design (a bit more humanoid and larger) but also the flavor text; particularly, this set of Moogles is a reference to a trio that temporarily joins you as temporary helpers during a segment of the game that introduces a party splitting mechanic.
TheChirurgeon:Â The meme going around right now about moogles protecting Aerith from Sephiroth is pretty great.
Phoenix Down
BPhillipYork:Â This is super duper solid. 3 mana to bring back a 4 or less CMC in white is really nice. It’s an artifact so different set of tutors from standard reanimation. The 4 or less is obviously a big limiter, but there’s still plenty of good targets for that.
FromTheShire:Â Doesn’t let you do full Reanimate shenanigans, but there are a whole mess of useful things you can get for 4 or less.
Marcy:Â Ok, I really love the flavor on this. If you aren’t aware, Phoenix Down is an item that revives dead party members. However, players also discovered that in FFVI, you could also use it to kill undead enemies instantly (notoriously, a boss), and I really love that they replicated that here on the card.
TheChirurgeon:Â This is both an absolutely flavor win and just a very solid card. The added rider for killing an undead creature is great.
Rosa, Resolute White Mage
BPhillipYork:Â Handing out lifelink is potentially a powerful enabler for things that trigger off life gain, but 4 mana is a fair amount to pay for the privilege.
Marcy:Â The female protagonist of FFIV and Cecil’s love interest, Rosa is pretty baller but doesn’t often get a lot of recognition from the game’s legacy. Kind of a shame because she’s really good and pretty cool! I really like that despite her cleric job, they did pay homage to her skill with a bow in the card and her art.
TheChirurgeon:Â Shoutout to FFIV for having the one actual, requited, adult relationship in all of the games. Cecil and Rosa are already dating when the game starts, they’re in a committed relationship, and there’s never any question about their support and care for each other. She travels with him despite his protestations and she plays an important role in the story on several occasions.
Sidequest: Catch a Fish / Cooking Campsite
BPhillipYork:Â This is a weird card. Like, draw a card once, and then it flips into a land. It’s fine as a kind of weird pseudo ramp, but it’s a lot of steps to get through to put +1/+1 counters on your creatures. It feels like kind of a meme card.
Marcy:Â So, FFXV is essentially a road trip story, and a big part of that road trip is the way Noctis and the other guys interact and the moments they share on this road trip while working to save the world. It’s one of the first games where the sidequests feel a little natural, in the sense of ‘this is the time we went fishing while driving through X’, and was one of the more endearing parts of the game.
TheChirurgeon:Â It helps that the fishing game is reasonably fun.
Stiltzkin, Moogle Merchant
BPhillipYork:Â Giving away permanents is great to do for cards, and this slots really nicely into some weird decks that give away bad permanents. There’s also things like Trostani Discordant that let you get back your permanents and that would be a funny way to give something and get it back immediately.
Saffgor:Â This will only be used for evil, is all I can say. Any type of donate effect is ultimately going to be tied to permanents with horrific downsides, and this being a mini-Zedruu does slightly scare me at a mere 1 mana.
FromTheShire:Â Love donating shenanigans so I’m happy to see more enablers for it.
Marcy:Â Stiltzkin is yet another Moogle, this time representing FFIX; he’s an NPC merchant you encounter that sells ‘sets’ of items each time you meet him for increasing prices (333, 444, 555, etc.). Despite what it may seem, his items are actually pretty good and prices decently fair, and he isn’t trying to rip you off. Also, unlike most other Moogles, he doesn’t really say “Kupo” very often.
Summon: Knights of the Round
BPhillipYork:Â Dumping out indestructible counters is really something, but it’s after 5 mana and then waiting 5 turns. So if your plan is to dump out ramp to 8 mana and then have indestructible creatures there, that’s a pretty long term plan.
Saffgor: Cheating this out seems disastrous for most formats, as having an instant board, Indestructible blocker, and solid endgame is wicked in one card. That said, if you’re casting this fairly, you’re losing, and in EDH this doesn’t actually do very much and is rather telegraphed.
FromTheShire:Â Is this strong enough to be a backup target for Abuelo’s Awakening for when you can’t find Omniscience? My guess is no, especially with the speed of current Standard.
Marcy:Â A fairly fun interpretation of the legendary summon from FFVII. If you’ve never played FFVII, especially in the initial incarnation, getting Knights of the Round was quite the ordeal. In order to get it, you needed to go to a small island called Round Island. The problem? It is only accessible by flying, and the only option you had for that was a Gold Chocobo, which required fairly intensive labor in the Gold Saucer to raise and breed Chocobos to obtain a Black Chocobo, and then finding a ‘Wonderful’ Yellow. If that sounds like a lot of work, well, your reward was an insanely detailed summon animation in which the Knights of the Round would appear one by one and then all together decimate your opponent, killing almost anything in the game in a single summon, and most things in two; in fact, Safer-Sephiroth, the final boss of FFVII, has a secret mechanic where if you used Knights of the Round on Jenova (a fight before his), he gains a whopping 80k extra HP so you won’t one-shot him too.
The Wind Crystal
BPhillipYork:Â This reeks of being a cycle, and mono-cost reduction is interesting but white isn’t that color that really does a lot with it. Doubling life gain is potentially important for a deck that wants to gain a lot of life, but gaining a lot of life is generally not that hard.
Saffgor:Â As the resident Monowhite fan, this card whelms me in a way that is truly saddening. This does basically nothing for us, and is the archetypal card that makes people believe White is a boring color.
FromTheShire:Â There are definitely decks that theoretically would like this but coming down at 4 in the current game is on the rough side for your ramp cards. Mostly limited to decks that care about the life doubling.
Marcy:Â Final Fantasy games have often had a macguffin since the first games that take the shape of crystals. In most of the games these are a collection of crystals tied to elements (Wind, Fire, Earth, Water), sometimes Light and Dark, and in other times more abstracted.
Ultima
BPhillipYork:Â Well it’s Wrath of God plus artifacts, and that’s good.
Saffgor:Â Where this gets interesting is when it’s cast at flash speed, as ending the opponent’s turn with a wipe seems truly devastating. As it stands, doing so on your turn is decidedly mediocre.
FromTheShire:Â Um actually this allows for regeneration where Wrath doesn’t. One extra mana to hit artifacts is totally worth it though, and until later in the game the end the turn clause doesn’t really matter.
Marcy:Â Ah, classic Gaius. What a good flavor quote memed into immortality. Ultima is the, well, “ultimate” spell in Final Fantasy games, save for a few times when Meteo/Meteor replaces it for thematic purposes. The particular version shown here is being cast by Ultima Weapon from FFXIV from the Realm Reborn main story quest, where Gaius, leader of a genocide friendly arm of a murderous empire, is shocked to learn that using really powerful magic akin to an atomic bomb can kill a lot people.
Venat, Heart of Hydaelyn / Hydaelyn, the Mothercrystal
BPhillipYork:Â Great for legendary good stuff, Jodah, the Unifier or Captain Sisay, exiling a troublesome permanent for 7 mana is expensive and it’s okay once it flips to a 4/4 God creature. Kind of weird to me that a clearly flying or floating creature isn’t, you know, flying.
Saffgor:Â This is basically worse Gandalf the White, in terms of a Monowhite Legends Commander, and in being so it’s also less interesting.
Marcy:Â To try and keep spoilers to a minimum, Venat and Hyadaelyn are exceptionally important characters to FFXIV’s main plot, up until the recent Dawnbringer expansion that is the start of the “post crystal” storylines. A lot of players call her Mommy. Anyway, Venat rules, although I think they could have used a cooler quote. She has so many.
Zack Fair
BPhillipYork:Â So this is a strange bodyguard type card. Pretty nice to just have hanging out to protect something more important, which can cause a deterrent effect that keeps your stuff from being targeted. The thing about attaching equipment seems like kind of a nonstarter, but I’m sure there’s a use for it.
FromTheShire:Â Cheap way to protect something important, I like it.
Marcy:Â This feels like such a mean joke on Zack, but considering he is mostly known for dying and passing on his legacy (and maybe more, spoilers!) to Cloud, who interacts with equipment in this set, I think it’s a cool flavor card for sure.
Astrologian’s Planisphere
BPhillipYork:Â Pumping up a creature is potentially powerful, you could slap this onto a Walking Ballista or something that can really generate a lot of counters. This could also go right onto Vivi Ornitier, or into spellslinger.
FromTheShire:Â This feels like it could end up sneakily becoming a menace when you have access to a bunch of thing like Moxen and Mishra’s Bauble and all of the premier cantrips.
Marcy:Â Astrologian is a Job from FFXIV in which characters are able to foretell fortunes and read the stars, and I kind of feel like this card not providing any form of scrying is absolutely missing the point of the Job. Anyway, that’s a Lalafellian Astrologian; you may remember me ranting about Final Fantasy’s diminutive races in the last round up, but there were no Lalafells in that article, so here one is.
Cargo Ship
BPhillipYork:Â It’s an artifact mana dork that’s also a 2/3 crew 1 flyer with vigilance for 2 mana. That’s a pretty crazy package.
FromTheShire:Â Obviously it goes in an artifact heavy deck, and it’s a ton of value there. Would be fine as just a mana rock in that situation, and stapling a solid little flyer on is great.
Marcy:Â The iconic Final Fantasy vehicle (other than a Chocobo, which is more like a steed) is the airship. This particular airship is from FFIX. Knowledge can be a heavy burden.
Dreams of Laguna
BPhillipYork:Â MMM I’m dreaming of lasagna. Oh Laguna. Well, uh, yeah it’s uh, like a brainstorm type card, though interestingly for a game full of card that’ve gotten so pushed, nothing so good as Brainstorm has ever been printed again. So it’s really more like an Opt.
FromTheShire:Â I think the extra mana limits its usage, but there are certainly decks where putting the card into your yard instead of the bottom of your deck is a benefit over Opt, and being able to flash it back is great as well.
Marcy:Â Laguna is a secondary protagonist to Squall in FFVIII, and primarily appears in dream sequences and flashbacks of the past, which intersect with Squall in the present. You might remember I mentioned Ultimecia is a Time Sorceress; FFVIII’s plot deals with time and the flow of it, which this card flavoring does pretty nicely I think.
Edgar, King of Figaro
BPhillipYork:Â Yeah this guy is a bonkers enabler for a fun near or even cEDH deck, article will come out in a couple of weeks. Controlling coin flips is good, can be really abusive.
Saffgor:Â 6 mana is rough, but in the things he enables, this card is close to a Blue Godo-esque card, where the game ends with his resolution and an available piece. Really interesting card, deceptively strong, and not too cheap. Love the design here.
FromTheShire:Â So much power here, woof. Like either of those abilities could make for a playable card.
Marcy:Â The twin brother to train suplexing badass Sabin, Edgar is the womanizing king of Figaro, who is also a Machinist (thus the Artificer typing). The two-headed coin referenced here is one he used in order to allow Sabin to live the life he wanted without him knowing it was rigged from the start; it appears later to trick Setzer into helping the party as well by Celes.
TheChirurgeon:Â There are some very, very good cards you can combo this guy with, and you’re looking for times when you are told to flip multiple cards at once. Ral Zarek‘s ultimate being one of the obvious targets for this.
Gogo, Master of Mimicry
BPhillipYork:Â There are a lot of fun things you could copy with this, a big Saga’s ending ability, or really anything you want to trigger Esika, God of the Tree with the Prismatic Bridge effect.
Saffgor: I actually tried to build this for Commander, but kept running up against the wall of ‘goes infinite too easily with synergy pieces’. This is a Monoblue Ghave, Guru of Spores, where cards you want to play for value just also win the game at the drop of a hat, and for that reason he ends up less interesting than he could have been.
FromTheShire:Â Copying pretty much anything in the game X times tends to lead to infinite combos, and blue already has a ton of enablers for untapping things to combo with them. Gross.
Marcy:Â Gogo is kind of an interesting character, because he’s often mistaken as FFVI’s interpretation of a different character, Gilgamesh. Gogo and Gilgamesh are not the same character, but who Gogo actually is is also kind of a mystery. His gimmick is that he can copy the last ability used before him, even if he couldn’t normally use it, making him insanely powerful. He’s also quite difficult to recruit (or at least was back in the day) as he is a secret character stuck in a sandworm, meaning he’s very easily missable. There is another Gogo from FFV, but he isn’t playable.
Il Mheg Pixie
BPhillipYork:Â I’m sure this is a Standard card that’s doing well, a 2/1 flyer for 2 that surveils even if it doesn’t connect seems strong; I wouldn’t run this is in commander necessarily unless it was some kind of wonky Dimir deck.
FromTheShire:Â I don’t know that this has a home in Standard but it may well. I expect this to be remembered for a long time as a card that wins a ton of Limited games though, great rate for a flyer to begin with and then excellent card selection on top. Goodbye, fair Welkin Tern.
Marcy:Â I am a known Shadowbringers hater (I think the storyline was kind of whatever and felt very distracting from the actual main storyline) but I loooooooooooove Il Mheg’s rendition of the Fae. The pixies and fae beings in Il Mheg are absolutely terrifying and powerful, just as they should be, and the area is one of my favorites in FFXIV.
Jill, Shiva’s Dominant / Shiva, Warden of Ice
BPhillipYork:Â The payoff here doesn’t seem really worth it, returning a nonland permanent is a nice add on, but the 2/2 for 3 isn’t great and the flip side is just too expensive for getting unblockable onto a creature.
Marcy:Â Girlboss Jill from FFXVI is here to be a cool lady (sorry) in MTG. Clive’s partner and badass, Jill rules and is able to control the power of Shiva. Her narrative is one of the best for a woman in a Final Fantasy game, which… is sort of backhanded praise to the franchise I guess.
Louisoix’s Sacrifice
BPhillipYork:Â This is a really solid counterspell, the ability to counter activated and triggered abilities for 1 mana in a pinch is really solid.
Saffgor:Â This is a great ‘oh shit’ button in cEDH, as a means of stopping an early Ad Nauseum or similar, but in a fair context it having the modality of countering abilities as well is just great. I fully expect this to see play over a lot of the more common counterspells, at all power levels.
FromTheShire:Â Wildly powerful, highly flexible, what’s not to love?
Marcy:Â So, did you know that FFXIV launched as a completely different game? The one you hear your friends raving about is the second iteration of the game, dubbed “A Realm Reborn”, which is because FFXIV 1.0 launched as such a disaster of a game that the team essentially “ended the world” to reboot things. One of the key moments of that was Louisoix sacrificing himself to save the future, and FFXIV’s ARR begins with your character meeting twins Blue Alphinaud and Red Alphinaud (Alisae) Leveilleur, who are Louisoix’s grandchildren. The flavor text here is kind of confusing, though, as it comes from an ARR raid named The Coils of Bahamut, which is absolutely banger storytelling wrapped in a dungeon series no one ever wants to run.
You may also know this moment from the infamous “Minor Spelling Mistake” meme.
Magic Damper
BPhillipYork:Â Just a solid protective spell for blue. The art is pretty cool, reminds me of the original force of will.
FromTheShire:Â With Dive Down and Shore Up both already seeing some play, I’m curious if this hits some sort of annoying critical mass for prowess decks.
Marcy:Â Not a lot to talk about here but if you wanted to know who that is, her name is Fang and she’s from FFXIII, often paired with Vanille. They’re definitely NOT roomates.
TheChirurgeon:Â They’re just really close cousins, right?
Matoya, Archon Elder
BPhillipYork:Â This is approaching the point where it can be built around; there’s another source of replace scry with draw, and scry is very cheap, so getting that to the point where it’s just draw and running lots of scry seems fun.
FromTheShire:Â Does what it says on the tin, which is draw you a ton of cards. Not even limited to once per turn or anything either.
Marcy:Â Matoya is a character who initially appears in FFI, where players are sent to find her help in searching for the crystals and to save the world. In FFXIV (which this Matoya is from), she is a reclusive mage who the players are sent to find help from in order to save the world. She has a gigantic hat and it rules.
Memories Returning
BPhillipYork:Â I kind of hate cards like this because in a game as complex as Commander it’s a lot to ask a random player to make decisions about your deck, and it’s usually fairly easy to know at a given table who to force this onto. This also seems like a card that will just eat up a lot of time as people debate what to do, and it’s 4 to draw 1 of 5 and then the 1 of the 3 left and then the last one, so 4 for 3 is pretty solid with some selection out of the 5.
Saffgor:Â This should have been an Instant, you cowards. Fact or Fiction is a fun, skill-testing card, and this being Sorcery-speed kills it dead.
FromTheShire:Â Yeah I hate this as a Sorcery.
Marcy:Â Featuring Squall and Selphie from FFVIII, this card’s a reference to the plot of FVIII, which again deals with time, the past, and the future.
TheChirurgeon:Â Specifically, this references the part in FF8 where the cast find out they all grew up together in the same orphanage, but had forgotten about that because the parts of their brains where summons (Guardian Forces or “GF” in that game) are stored for use later, and doing that messes with their memories. Yes, it’s easily the dumbest part of a game which otherwise has a pretty solid plot.
Quistis Trepe
BPhillipYork:Â It’s kind of strange card, but the ability to cast other people’s spells out of their yards is really solid, and get it exiled. Funny way to remove a wincon.
FromTheShire:Â It requires you to have the mana to do it though, and given that this costs 3 that’s not insignificant.
Marcy:Â Quistis is a teacher at SeeD in FFVIII who ends up joining your party as a sort of…chaperone, I suppose? The idea of SeeD as a school is a little awkward, but just go with it. She is a Blue Mage, which is a Job in Final Fantasy that learns and copies abilities from Monsters.
TheChirurgeon:Â SeeD is less a school and more a training academy for child soldier mercenaries, though you later learn it was created with the singular intent of waging war on a sorceress from the future named Ultimecia. Quistis is considered a prodigy and is initially Squall’s teacher. She travels with you at first as an instructor, then later joins up as part of a mission after the president of Galbadia is assassinated and a sorceress assumes control of the country.
Relm’s Sketching
BPhillipYork:Â Copying whatever is just solid. In a 4 player game there’s always going to be a solid card on the board, and if your opponent’s plan to defeat your copying them is to play garbage, well, you don’t need good cards either.
Saffgor:Â Really great rate here, and at uncommon, to the point where I expect this to just see play across a lot of the various value decks in Standard, and potentially Commander. If there’s nothing worth copying, you’re probably winning.
FromTheShire:Â Hitting lands is the real gem here with how many great ones exist. Enjoy your extra Lotus Field, tough do note the token still enters.
Marcy:Â Relm is from FFVI, and although her ability is to “sketch” monsters, she is not a Blue Mage, but a Pictomancer. To date there are three pictomancers in Final Fantasy: Relm, Krile from FFXIV, and Poppy from Brave Exvius; the Warrior of Light in FFXIV can also become one, depending on how you want to square the WoL as a canonical character or not.
TheChirurgeon:Â As a fun extra fact, Relm’s sketch ability notoriously breaks FF6, and can be used to try to load in things from memory that aren’t there, resulting in crashes, save file corruption, and for speed running purposes, duplicate items.
Sleep Magic
BPhillipYork:Â Funny way to lock down certain kinds of commanders, or just generally lock out a utility creature. There’s also some creatures you randomly wouldn’t want attacking, like Dragon’s Rage Channeler, and I could see wanting to keep it around.
FromTheShire: Seems like some premium Limited removal at the least.
Marcy:Â A cute card featuring the summoner Eiko from FFIX, who is a little girl that players either find adorable or annoying; for the record, she is adorable.
Stolen Uniform
BPhillipYork:Â Strange blue version of Magnetic Theft. I do think the idea of stealing someone else’s equipment to do something important is funny, especially to grab something to give your commander hexproof or shroud, like a Lightning Greaves when someone tries to kill it. Generally you should be running this with high equip cost equipment of your own to cheat onto something.
TheChirurgeon:Â This is Locke from FF6, during the part of the game where you’re trying to get back to your friends after splitting up. To navigate the Empire-occupied town of South Figaro, Locke has to steal clothing from merchants and guards to bypass areas of the town. On his way out, he runs into Celes, being tortured in a cell.
Summon: Leviathan
BPhillipYork:Â I like the concept of the from the deep deck, and this fits right into it, big weird expensive blue attacking creatures is a fun little sub-genre of magic.
FromTheShire:Â This style of bounce effect is common with these creature types which is great, cause you’re not dropping them in a hurry. Seems great for the deck it goes in.
Marcy:Â I actually think this should have been Leviathan from FFVIII, because that Leviathan is the one everyone infamously saw in the demo for the game that was made to promote how cool and different the summons were in it. That said, Leviathan is one of the returning Summons of the series, often one of the primary ones, since it is attached to water. The main Summons you’ll often see are Ifrit (Fire), Garuda (Wind), Leviathan (Water), Shiva (Ice), Titan (Earth), Ramuh (Thunder), and Bahamut, who is often the most powerful and unaspected.
TheChirurgeon:Â Leviathan was also in the FF7 demo. But I think he has the biggest presence in FFXV.
The Lunar Whale
BPhillipYork:Â Being able to see the top card of your library is a pretty useful ability, and then being able to play it gets real strong, 4 is fine for that a 3/5 flyer with crew one to get your ability to mass cast seems pretty reasonable.
Saffgor:Â Bad Reality Chip for Commander, but in Standard the rate is solid for a vehicle. At maybe 3 mana it’d be considered, but at 4 it’s probably too slow.
FromTheShire:Â I also don’t know that this has a home to try and fit into in Standard even if the rate is decent. Very good effect in Commander.
Marcy:Â This is, technically, an airship from FFIV, although it isn’t really the airship you use for most of the game, but one towards the end that is, well, a giant whale shaped ship that flies you to the moon. Yes, the moon. You can also buy this as a mount in FFXIV, where it holds a whopping (and frankly almost never useful) 8 people.
TheChirurgeon: One of two moons in FFIV. The other one is also a spaceship.
The Prima Vista
BPhillipYork:Â This costs too much, even if you’re repeatedly casting 4 cost noncreature spells, do you really need a 5/3 flyer, and for what?
Marcy:Â Another airship, although not one you pilot, but instead the home of a flying theater from FFIX; technically, it is named the M.S. Prima Vista. I always loved the design of the Prima Vista and the idea of a flying opera house is such a cool idea. This actually also makes a comeback in FFXIV, where a set of raids based on the Ivalice saga (Final Fantasy Tactics) appears; your character visits a theater group that is housed on a flying airship, also called the Prima Vista.
The Water Crystal
BPhillipYork:Â Mill + 4 is fairly nasty, and mill cards = to your hand amount (+4) is fairly nasty, and blue can do a fair amount with cost reduction. So this seems like a pretty solid card to enable certain kinds of decks.
Saffgor: There’s been talk of how this card interacts with things like Altar of the Brood and Mesmeric Orb, and how it ‘makes mill real’, but that’s the issue, it still doesn’t. Those rough 2-card suites will present a clock on the board, but in terms of making mill good, I doubt it highly. In decks that already want to run stuff like Orb or Altar? This is great, but I wouldn’t go and fear Bruvac any more than present with this around.
Ultimecia, Temporal Threat
BPhillipYork:Â That is crazy hair. Coastal Piracy is 4 mana, so this is only 2 more, but it’s also 2 more and there’s several 4 cost copies of Coastal Piracy, so this just seems mostly unplayable. Unless maybe you’re going to flicker it to get through or something like that.
FromTheShire:Â Seems alright as a finisher, though that defeats the purpose of the card draw.
Marcy:Â This is the less powerful version of Ultimecia from FFVIII, which is funny, because in terms of MTG cards, this one seems way scarier when she hits the table.
TheChirurgeon:Â Ultimecia is the ultimate villain of Final Fantasy VIII and that’s not her hair but actual horns. It’s a headdress, though – Sorceresses in FF8 wear horns as part of their aesthetic. Or possibly because all the ones you see in the game are possessed by Ultimecia. It’s unclear, actually.
Ultros, Obnoxious Octopus
BPhillipYork:Â These octopus things that care about 8 are okay; if there’s ever enough of them you could make a deck around it. Stun counters are pretty obnoxious but most Commander things don’t care that much about being tapped down.
Marcy:Â Final Fantasy loves recurring characters, and Ultros first made his appearance in FFVI, where (perverted octopus jokes aside), he showed up as a recurring nuisance boss throughout the game. His battles can often be gimmicky or semi-serious, but a few times he appears as an actual threat or challenge. A version of Ultros has appeared on and off in most later Final Fantasy games since, often accompanied by Typhon, who is Ultros’ “brawn” to his “brains”. A version of Ultros that sucks called Orthos will only appear in XII if you have a party with 3 female members. I don’t like that version.
TheChirurgeon:Â Even in FF6, Ultros is more likely to attack the female characters in your party. Yeahhhhhh…
Valkyrie Aerial Unit
BPhillipYork:Â I’m sure affinity for artifacts will never cause problems. But seriously, I don’t think there’s really enough support (like artifact lands) to generate crazy artifact affinity synergy decks like Mirrodin had.
FromTheShire:Â A flyer with affinity that also surveils? This feels destined for play somewhere. Fortunately I don’t think it immediately jumps to menace territory at least.
Marcy:Â Not super interesting lore wise but this is a good illustration of how Final Fantasy often weaves in sci-fi into the games themes; many times, technologically advanced groups in FF games are the villains, versus groups who stick closer to magic, which is implied to be more natural. This gatling gun thing is from FFVII.
Y’shtola Rhul
BPhillipYork:Â Cool, more end steps sounds fun. Also generating multiple instances of a creature entering each turn has a fair amount of potential. Really sad it’s a monocolor legend though, building a pure blue deck around that seems too limited.
Saffgor:Â Great design, but at 6 mana it feels like it’s doing not enough for too much mana. If this was supposed to be End Step typal, the fact there’s blink attached muddies the theming, and likely bloats the mana cost. If you see this removed once, and have to cast it for 8, you’ll learn why Commanders like this don’t see a lot of play.
FromTheShire:Â Neat. Probably not great unless the table lets you go off, but neat.
Marcy:Â Y’shtola’s first costume from early on in FFXIV when she is a Conjurer (which is NOT a White Mage, to be clear). If you’ve seen Y’shtola before in black garb and a more badass attitude, that’s her from later down the line in FFXIV’s storyline. Y’shtola (and G’raha, above) are from a catlike race known as Miqo’te, who are vastly overrepresented in the FFXIV player base for reasons I probably don’t need to spell out, right?
Al Bhed Salvagers
BPhillipYork:Â Well another instance of this, jumped up and including artifacts now, but it’s only 1 opponent instead of all of them.
FromTheShire:Â Not breaking new ground here but these effects are always playable, and tacking on caring about artifacts as well is really great.
Marcy:Â The Al Bhed are a race in FFX, who have a few unique genetic markers and traits, such as their blonde hair, green spiral eyes, and proficiency underwater. Probably the most interesting part of the Al Bhed as a casual note is that they have a fully working and unique language; it would have been cool to see it on the card here. You can look up how to write in Al Bhed if you wish to relive being on the internet in gaming spaces around 2001, along with l337.
Ardyn, the Usurper
BPhillipYork:Â I love these big swingy black reanimator type things, so I like that this exists, it’s both a reanimator and a reanimation target, so great for decks that dump to yard to cheat back out.
FromTheShire:Â Well it’s quite the Reanimate target if you can get it going.
Marcy:Â The Hat Man, Ardyn is the antagonist of FFXV. I find it hilarious they omitted his absolutely ATROCIOUS fedora because it is the most iconic part of his design that helps you know he sucks as soon as you first see him. I really dislike Ardyn and kind of dislike how the FFXV saga kept trying to make me not hate him. I mean just look at this dude.
TheChirurgeon:Â Ardyn is a better villain than people give him credit for. He’s extremely hateable, and he’s just much more involved as a villain than most of the FF baddies. Which makes taking him down all the more fun.
Cecil, Dark Knight / Cecil, Redeemed Paladin
BPhillipYork:Â This seems strong to me, like super strong in Standard — a 2/3 deathtouch for 1 that turns into a 4/4 later and gives indestructible and has lifelink. I thought Savannah Lions was good.
Saffgor:Â I’ve had people talk about brewing this guy since he was spoiled, and the idea of a life-paying Orzhov Death & Taxes Commander is certainly appealing. Part of my issue is that if you’re boardwipe typal, with a life paying subtheme, you’ll be walking a tightrope between dead and in control of the game, but it remains to be seen if that’s a real deterrent.
FromTheShire:Â Can confirm that this guy is annoying to play against in Standard. Not like problematic or anything, just annoying. Especially once he flips.
Marcy:Â FFIV’s protagonist, Cecil transforming here makes total sense, as it’s the main narrative drive behind his character arc. Final Fantasy games do often deal with concepts of warfare and the toll it takes on the people who are affected by it, both those on and off the battlefield, and FIV’s story of Cecil seeking redemption for what he did as a Dark Knight is one of the reasons IV has remained a mainstay in the series.
TheChirurgeon:Â This is the perfect representation of Cecil and he’s a windmill slam into any knight tech.
Deadly Embrace
BPhillipYork:Â It’s a neat effect but it really feels like it could’ve been an instant for 5 mana.
FromTheShire:Â It also feels like it could have been a board wipe at 5. One creature and one card unless you’ve been sacrificing a bunch of stuff maybe? At that point I’m not sure that you need this but who knows.
Marcy:Â This is FFXVI’s interpretation of Garuda, whose summoner was named Benedikta Harman.
Evil Reawakened
BPhillipYork:Â Seems overly expensive reanimation unless you really need the counters to hit some threshold, then it’s worth it.
FromTheShire:Â It at least gives you an option in Standard.
Marcy:Â The Evil Tree returns, here at the moment of his re-awakening in FFV. Exdeath is such a cool villain.
Fang, Fearless l’Cie
BPhillipYork:Â I like meld cards. That being said, this playable on it’s own in many kinds of decks. Pretty solid for 3 mana.
Marcy:Â As I said, Fang and Vanille are not just roommates. Even if the game doesn’t want to openly admit it, these two ladies are very, very much into and about one another, which makes total sense considering the meld card here. Fang and Vanille rule.
TheChirurgeon:Â So some fun backstory on this – Fang was originally scripted to be a male character during the early stages of Final Fantasy XIII’s development, but was later rewritten to be female. Lightning was supposed to be much more lighthearted and flirty as a character, but when they made Fang female they moved those traits to her instead so Lightning could just be Female Cloud. A lot of the VERY OBVIOUS romance between Fang and Vanille is likely left over from that change, and likely less a desire to do anything cool or interesting.
Vanille, Cheerful l’Cie
BPhillipYork:Â I like meld cards. This half of the meld is less good, too expensive and the meld is really pricey too, it’s hard enough getting 2 creatures and then you have to pay a bunch of mana? I’m sure if you’re doing this it’s because you really want to, because you’ve used 2 cards and paid 12 mana for a 7/6 with vigilance, menace, trample, reach, and haste, which is a nice combination of keywords; and a death trigger that reanimates something and kills something, but still, 12 mana for that? You can’t even repeatedly reanimate it because it will unmeld.
Saffgor:Â Deathlooping Vanille as a means to mill yourself by returning a reanimation aura or similar is kinda sweet, but the meld side is utterly lackluster. Keyword soup is not an adequate payoff, and you’re not in the color to clone it and have the clones die to the Legend rule. Baffling card, honestly, and it’s very important one builds around Vanille’s front side rather than the actual meld.
Marcy:Â Vanille appears for the first time! If it wasn’t obvious their dynamic is Gruff and Butch Fang to Bubbly and Femme Vanille. The two of them combined form the most powerful thing lesbians can become: Omega level threats.
Credit: Wizards of the Coast
Ragnarok, Divine Deliverence
Marcy:Â See? This is what happens when you try and stop two lesbians.
Gaius van Baelsar
BPhillipYork:Â Solid entrance sacrifice trigger, more expensive than most of them but it’s modal and lets you get rid of stuff you don’t want to deal with, or you can avoid having to sacrifice anything yourself.
FromTheShire:Â Absolutely paying the extra mana for Fleshbag Marauder to be able to hit these extra card types, especially enchantments. Black has more ways to deal with them than they used to, but it’s still a very short list.
Marcy:Â Gaius’ third appearance in the set (one as just flavor text), the long list of choices here is a nice homage to Gaius’ infamous (and now shortened, rip) speech in ARR where he forces you to listen to him any time you run the dungeon.
Hecteyes
BPhillipYork: Well, this is solid, and basically just an ooze horror version of a rat, but having several of these is pretty solid, and this definitely breaks parity if you’re trying to play that well, but is mostly to be used if you’ve got ways to benefit from people discarding like Waste Not, or to punish them.
FromTheShire:Â I’m curious to see if this cracks Esper Pixies lists to supplement Hopeless Nightmare or if that card is so good you’d rather just have more ways to flicker it.
Marcy:Â I think sometimes FF doesn’t get a lot of credit for the very cool and out there monster designs. Dragon Quest certainly has more iconic monsters due to Akira Toriyama’s art, but I think FF has some really, really cool fantasy monster designs.
Jecht, Reluctant Guardian / Braska’s Final Aeon
BPhillipYork:Â This is fine. It’s a bit slow and pricey, but 4 mana nets you a 4/3 with menace which turns around and forces a couple cycles of discard/draw, and then forces two sacrifices. At that point you’re probably reanimating it, and doing it all again, and it’s a huge out-value engine.
Marcy:Â Perhaps the Worst Dad of All Time, Jecht is here from FFX after leaving for milk and never coming home. The fact that they included his very stupid attack names (because he was also a Blitzball player) is on brand; Jecht is Tidus’ wayward father and a guy who could have probably solved a lot of problems if he learned how to communicate like a normal human being. Take notes, guys.
TheChirurgeon:Â Pffft. Jecht was fine. Tidus turned out OK.
Kain, Traitorous Dragoon
BPhillipYork:Â I think these kinds of cards are fun, but not really like, good. They keep forward momentum in games, which can break out of a deadlock, but paying 3 mana for that is not a “good” decision.
Saffgor:Â This is the most inadequate version of Slicer/Alexios we’ve seen thus far, and you’re going to see Kain given away, and then sat on. He doesn’t have to attack! Thanks for your Commander, you utter buffoon.
Marcy:Â This is a really cool implementation of Kain’s character trait. During the story of FFIV, Cecil is able to escape his life as a Dark Knight and tries to atone as a Paladin. Kain, unfortunately, spends much of the game a jealous and unwitting pawn to Golbez, being mind controlled to betray the party at various times in the game.
TheChirurgeon:Â A lot of it comes from Kain’s unresolved feelings for Rosa, and the dude ends up flipping sides half a dozen times during the game. So this is a perfect implementation of that.
Ninja’s Blades
BPhillipYork:Â This is fine, but it’s not very ninja. Like, it’s not getting any kind of evasion, so you’re creating an effectively 2/2 and then swinging with it. The discard a card life loss being chosen is potentially pretty powerful, Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow is one of my favorite decks to play, and it plays a lot of deck order manipulation to slam opponents with Draco sized life loss. Where I could see this being fairly nasty is with double strike, you’re potentially looking at hitting the whole table for 32 life loss, which is pretty impressive. All that being said, it’s got a high ceiling and a low floor, and is probably over costed.
Saffgor:Â The ninja gimmick being big life loss based on mana value is interesting, and there’s an obvious callout to Yuriko with this. For 3 mana, though, with no evasion, I doubt this sees play.
Marcy:Â Ninja is a Job in FFXIV, but it has been in a lot of other FFs as well; this particular version looks way, way cooler than Ninja ever looks in game in FFXIV, I hate to say.
Overkill
BPhillipYork:Â Well, yeah okay, that’s cute. It’s an over costed kill spell really, but I guess it’s a meme thing and, yes there’s probably some dumb combo but, meh.
Saffgor:Â First of all, yes this does work with Jaws of Defeat in the way you’d want. That being said, because Jaws is only target opponent, I doubt we see this seriously considered, otherwise it’d be an absolutely neat combo kill in Black.
FromTheShire:Â Oh we’re one million percent seeing this for the bit.
Marcy: The ‘max damage’ amount that became synonymous with Final Fantasy, 9999 is often the highest allowable single target damage you can do in the game; it will often also one-shot most things, but not everything. This changed quite a bit as the games evolved and enemy hit point pools ballooned into the 100s of thousands, but it still looks pretty cool to hit something and a big 9999 appears on the screen.
Poison the Waters
BPhillipYork:Â Clearing only 1 toughness creatures is probably not good enough to be worth playing, and the discard is too singular, but for standard this is probably a good card.
FromTheShire:Â I can certainly tell you my Goblins deck hates this card existing, since the Duress+ is borderline playable enough for this to actually be in lists.
Marcy:Â Kefka’s an evil clown freak, and this card represents his poisoning the waters of Doma and wiping out the entire kingdom. Considering what he does later, this is almost small potatoes for his death toll.
Reno and Rude
BPhillipYork:Â This is decently solid, it’s going to just swing through a lot and be ignored, but occasionally you’ll probably get solid utility or value cards out of it. Occasionally you’ll get something spectacular, and it certainly will stop people from using sorcery speed top tutors.
Marcy:Â Two members of Shinra’s group known as the Turks, Reno and Rude were consistent B-grade villains who kept showing up to mess with (and even work with) your party throughout FFVII. Of all the Shinra members, Reno and Rude became the most iconic fan favorites, most of which is due to the bananas amount of gay shipping fiction created for them. Reno is the guy with red hair, while Rude is the bald one.
TheChirurgeon:Â Just so we’re clear, these guys get treated like fan favorites and comic relief later in the game and in the Advent Children movie, when they are directly responsible for collapsing the Sector 7 plate and killing thousands of people. Like imagine a buddy comedy about two guys who literally did a 9/11 and you’ve got Reno and Rude. Fandoms are weird, man.
Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER / Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel
BPhillipYork:Â Solid for aristocrats decks, emblems are really nice because these decks want to run board clears occasionally. It’s really too bad you can’t just immediately sacrifice Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel to himself so you can reanimate again immediately, but oh well.
Saffgor:Â This transforms easily, is an incredible aristocrats payoff, and goes bonkers with cards like Strionic Resonator. Truly an insurmountable control finisher, if built up to, and if you manage 2+ emblems, the game is probably in the bag.
FromTheShire:Â Yeah big shock, he’s nasty as hell.
Marcy:Â Sephiroth the Aura Farmer is back again, this time with the version of him that you fight at the end of FF7 (sort of, they didn’t have the pre-transformation version be his shirtless form. Cowards.). One-Winged Angel Sephiroth is very scary in game, so it makes sense he’s scary here too. Make sure you cue up his boss theme on your phone when you transform him.
Seymour Flux
BPhillipYork:Â Too expensive.
Saffgor:Â Why is this guy named like a Power Rangers villain?
Marcy:Â Because he is the main villain of Final Fantasy X! Seymour is a Dude Who Sucks (a big trait in most FF villains), and this version of him is when he’s pushed to his limits. Like a lot of FF villains in later titles, he isn’t the ultimate threat, but the person responsible for creating many of the problems you face.
TheChirurgeon:Â This card doesn’t really communicate how annoying he is.
Summon: Primal Odin
BPhillipYork:Â What does Primal Odin even mean. He’s a Norse god. This series makes some really baffling lore choices at times, especially to someone who has no intention of playing it. So for 6 mana you get to destroy a creature and then virtually guarantee someone kills your saga creature because nobody is going to want to just get aced. Which means it’s a 6 mana creature removal spell unless you can protect it.
Marcy:Â Because Primals are the names of Summons in FFXIV! Primals exist a little differently from other Summons in previous Final Fantasy games; they aren’t directly summoned by players, for one, and second, they semi-subconsciously brainwash people into supporting them and worshiping them, thus sustaining their powers. This version of Odin is pretty cool. His fight is very fun, and his lore is essentially that unlike other Primals that are stationary, Odin wanders around, and also has only one follower at a time: a person seduced by the power of the sword Zantetsuken, who carries it around (and thus, Odin) from place to place.
TheChirurgeon:Â The recurring flavor of Odin in the FF games is that he tends to be a boss fight you have to win in a certain amount of time or he’ll just instakill you with Zantetsuken. So it’s cool to see that replicated here.
The Darkness Crystal
BPhillipYork:Â Black is big on cost reduction, and Tendrils of Agony exists, and this certainly goes very well with K’rrik, Son of Yawgmoth.
Saffgor:Â Perhaps the best or second best crystal, as grave hate in Monoblack is a niche they enjoy having additional tools for. It’s just gravy that you get to pull a Dauthi Voidwalker-lite if you’re out of options.
The Final Days
BPhillipYork:Â This sure seems like a card intended to be milled, but even then how good is it really? 6 Mana for a bunch of 2/2s, but only if you have filled up your yard? Too expensive and unreliable.
Marcy:Â It is kind of hard to explain what is going on with this card except to say that it has massive spoiler connotation for the main story of FFXIV, and that it is a major component of the plot of Endwalker, which ends the first major “arc” of FFXIV. The monsters you’re creating in this card are meant to represent the people who succumb to “despair”, transforming into hideous monsters.
Tonberry
BPhillipYork:Â I get the point here, and as pushed as Standard is I don’t think it makes the cut there, and certainly not in a Commander unless I guess you have some kind of salamander or horror deck.
FromTheShire:Â I actually would kind of like it if Unstoppable Slasher wasn’t already a deck.
Marcy:Â Another iconic Final Fantasy monster design, Tonberries are scary, slow moving monsters that will kill you if you can’t stop it from ‘reaching’ your party. I like the way they play into that with the stun counters. In FFXIV, they create a lore reason for what Tonberries are, which is a pretty cool quest line in the Sage job quests.
Vayne’s Treachery
BPhillipYork: A lot of times -2 toughness will be enough, and if you need more, you need and it will be wiling to pay. Sometimes sacrificing is a feature, not a bug, and it’s useful for those sorts of decks, which often have fodder available to feed into it.
Marcy:Â Vayne is the actual villain of FFXII, a duplicitous man out for his own needs and goals at the cost of everyone else (even his brother). I’ll give you a guess as to what he did to that guy in the chair there.
Vincent Valentine / Galian Beast
BPhillipYork:Â This seems pretty decent if your deck is heavy on creature control or you know creatures will be dying, and then you’re swinging with a 3/2 trample lifelink with the ability to return to the field. It’s also somewhat usable as a sacrifice fodder that just pops back. There’s also some things you could do like put The Ozolith out to keep the counters around, and have it keep getting bigger.
Saffgor:Â Vinny’s fursona is a solid enough card, with the keywords you’d want to see on something that gets absolutely massive. I think this is a great alternate take on Voltron, as a more insulated form of Grismold, the Dreadsower in one fewer colors.
Marcy:Â Vincent is funny because he is a totally optional character in FFVII, yet probably one of the most iconic in the game next to Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, and Sephiroth. He even got his own spin-off game, Dirge of Cerberus, which fucking RULES, by the way. Vincent is a victim of Hojo (the real actual villain of FFVII), a man experimented on and turned into a weapon. He’s really, really emo, if you didn’t guess. Also kind of a cutie.
TheChirurgeon:Â Earlier in this article a Goonhammer author made the mistake of saying that “Dirge of Cerberus fucking RULES.” It does not, and we at Goonhammer regret the error.
Zenos yae Galvus / Shinryu, Transcendent Rival
BPhillipYork:Â You could certainly build around this; most likely way to do it I would say is Aetherflux Reservoir so you can can quickly transform and just instagib someone. Other than that it can just be thrown in as a sort of chump board clear that potentially can do something big. At 4 mana it would be a bargain, but at 5 it’s a bit pricy for just the -2/-2 effect on a 4/4 body.
Saffgor:Â How you’d want this to play, where you nominate one opponent to have the other two foes protect, is neat; in practice this is just going to get you killed.
Marcy: Oh, Zenos. Hailing from FFXIV’s Stormbringers expansion, Zenos is an antagonist who becomes obsessed with your character, the Warrior of Light. The fandom is often divided on how they perceive Zenos, but I always liked him. His card gimmick is a reference to his referring to you as “his first friend,” which he expresses gratitude to you by constantly trying to kill you. I almost wished they had given him an ability or card with his iconic line, “A test… of your reflexes!” but this is cool too. Shinryu is a Primal Zenos decides to control/become simply to fight you harder. Shinryu also makes an appearance in one of, if not the, coolest moments of Endwalker; sorry for the minor spoiler.
Zodiark, Umbral God
BPhillipYork: It’s definitely fun in a God-typal deck, or popping out of the Prismatic Bridge or as a World Tree pay off. Other than that it adds 5 black to devotion which you might care about, and is also a 5/5 indestructible which will probably come into play and get a bunch of +1/+1 counters immediately, so somewhat dangerous, but only if you can consistently cheat it out or generate all that black mana.
Saffgor:Â Unironically this may be the best Monoblack Devotion option in the format, but rounding down means this is never a board wipe. Alas.
Marcy:Â Zodiark is the big bad evil of FFXIV, the opposite of Hydalaen. Final Fantasy games often have this sort of dynamic, with a Light and Dark entity, or Order and Chaos, etc., and Zodiark is meant to represent the dark aspect of things. In FFXIV, you fight him on that green circle you see in the card, and one of his abilities more or less cuts the stage in half, thus the trigger. Cool fight.
Next Time: The Set’s Red, Green, and Colorless Cards
That wraps up our look at the White, Blue, and Black cards of Final Fantasy. Join us next time as we begin reviewing the Red, Green, and Colorless cards, picking out our favorites, and talking about the future build-arounds.
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