Today one of the biggest sets in Magic: The Gathering‘s recent history makes its grand arrival at last: Final Fantasy, the first of Magic‘s at-times-controversial “Universes Beyond” crossovers with other franchises to be given the full standard-legal treatment. It’s a marriage of two of gaming’s most beloved fantasy realms, and with absolute legions of fans of both Magic and Final Fantasy to please, it has to hit the highlights and mechanical flavoring of 16 mainline game’s worth of viable cards. From everything we’ve seen of the set in the run up to today’s release, it looks like Wizards of the Coast and Square Enix helped build a match made in (seventh) heaven—but here’s some of our favorite nods to Final Fantasy‘s vast legacy that we love most from the set.
Naturally, some of these references are about key major story points in their respective Final Fantasy titles. If you’re not caught up with the 16 mainline games that have released over the past four decades, well, consider yourself very lightly spoiler warned here.
Tiered Spells Are a Perfect Blend of Final Fantasy and Magic
One of the new mechanical additions the Final Fantasy set brings to Magic is the “Tiered” rule: if a player pays an additional cost to the card’s initial mana cost, they can select from one of three tiers of power. More mana means more effects—just like how in Final Fantasy a lot of magic spells have three evolutionary steps: their base form, a more potent version of that form with the suffix -ara, and then its most powerful form with the suffix -aga.
The tiered spells in the set are spread across two different forms: some are given to represent various limit break attacks from Final Fantasy VII, reflecting the party’s ability to develop stronger special attacks over the course of the game. But the ones that represent some of Final Fantasy‘s elemental and restorative magics are each smartly attuned to the color identities they’re assigned to in Magic. Aggressive fire and thunder magics are assigned to red; ice, which instead of doing damage bounces cards back into an opponents hands or libraries, is assigned to blue, which reflects that color’s archetypal focus on interruption and control mechanics. It’s a very neat way to mechanically marry a Final Fantasy player’s understanding of the series’ base magic system to a Magic player’s understanding of its own colors’ archetypes and escalatory effects.
Suplex the Train, Dammit
Suplex, renamed to Meteor Strike in later versions of Final Fantasy VI, is one of the many martial abilities of Sabin the Monk, letting him… well, pick an enemy up and flip them in the air to slam them straight back down. But while Sabin can use the move on a great number of VI‘s big creatures, the most infamous victim of the attack—spurring years of internet meme history—is the fact that he can use it when the party encounters the Phantom Train after Sabin, Cyan, and Shadow flee the Empire’s invasion of Doma. The Phantom Train is, of course, a spectral haunted steam train, so it’s very absurd that Sabin can just pick it up and suplex it like it’s no big deal.
Suplex gets its own card as a sorcery in Magic, which lets you do three damage to a creature—pretty basic. Except, a player who plays Suplex could instead use its second ability, which allows it to specifically exile an artifact card. You know what’s an artifact in the Final Fantasy set? The Phantom Train.
Lightning’s Stagger
FF XIII‘s protagonist has several cards to her name in the set, but Lightning, Army of One has several cool mechanical nods to XIII‘s battle system. The first is that “Army of One” suffix, a reference to Lightning’s powerful combo attack of that name in the game—an aggression that is symbolically matched in the card by giving her several offensive keywords like Trample (which lets her deal excess damage from combat directly to a player) and First Strike (which lets her deal damage before anyone else resolves damage in combat).
But it’s Lightning, Army of One’s other rule that is the neater reference: she has Stagger, a nod to the mechanic of the same name in XIII that lets the party deal bonus damage to an opponent once they’ve maxed out its stagger gauge through steady, repeated attacks for a brief period of time. In Magic, it lets any other creature that attacks Lightning’s target, whether it’s another creature or a player, take double damage for the rest of the turn. Same hat!
Sephiroth Yearns to Kill Aerith
One of the most infamous moments in the original Final Fantasy VII is Sephiroth’s murder of Aerith as she prays in the City of Ancients. Like the synergy between Suplex and Phantom Train before it, Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier and Aerith have a synergy that grimly reflects his fated killing: Aerith’s rules let her gain +1/+1 counters every time you gain life, and Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier gives you life every time another creature dies. The fourth time that effect happens, you can flip Sephiroth over, transforming him into his powerful One Winged Angel form.
But he can also sacrifice any card, including one of your own, every time he attacks. Which, more often than not, triggers “dies” as a mechanic, advancing Sephiroth closer to his transformation… and Aerith herself has a special rule that, when she dies, her accrued +1/+1 tokens can be given to all Legendary Creatures you have in play. So, if you have them both in play, Sephiroth can sacrifice Aerith for his fourth trigger, transforming, and then reap the benefits of all the +1/+1 tokens Aerith had built up from his attacking. It’s mean! And very flavorful.
Or you could just play Sephiroth’s Intervention, a black Instant that destroys any target creature, if you just want to kill an Aerith for funsies.
Final Fantasy XIV‘s Final Days
One of the biggest pieces of background lore in the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV is the “Final Days,” a cataclysmic apocalypse that happened thousands of years in the past that saw the world of Etheirys, the realm of a precursor race called the Ancients, break into 14 shards during a battle between the gods Zodiark and Hydaelyn in an attempt to stall the Final Days’ arrival. Much of Final Fantasy XIV takes place on the primary of those reflective shards, the Source, while some of its expansions have seen players travel to the worlds of other shards, like Shadowbringers.
This event comes up in several poignantly thematic cards in the Magic set. Zodiark, Umbral God sees a player sacrifice half of the creatures they control, as a reference to the sacrifice the Ancients made to summon Zodiark and delay the Final Days in the first place. Meanwhile, Emet-Selch, Unsundered—one of the few surviving Ancients, haunted by his desire to restore the world to what it was in his lifetime—can transform into his godlike form of Hades once 14 cards enter your graveyard, and can play cards from your graveyard once he’s done so.
Phoenix Down Can Heal… and Harm
Phoenix Down is an iconic item from across Final Fantasy, the simple revival medicine that lets you bring back a dead party member in battle. In Magic, it can only bring back cards from your graveyard with a mana value of four or less, reflective of its relatively basic form of restorative magic. But even better is the fact that it has a second ability: you can use it to exile undead creatures, a nod to the fact that healing items in Final Fantasy can be used on undead enemies to do damage instead.
Fear the Tonberry
Tonberries may look oddly cute with the dainty little knife and their big yellow eyes, but every Final Fantasy player knows that these green critters mean business once they get close to you. In most of their appearances, Tonberries take several turns of combat to slowly inch towards your party—and once they do, they instantly kill you in a single attack with their chef’s knife. This is wonderfully translated into Magic with a mix of two mechanics: a Tonberry enters play tapped and with a stun counter on it, which means it takes two player turns to be ready to attack. Once it does attack though, it has First Strike and Deathtouch, meaning no matter how much damage it does to a creature, it will always do lethal damage.
Galuf’s Sacrifice
Galuf’s death fighting Exdeath in Final Fantasy V is one of the game’s most iconic moments, made all the more bittersweet by the fact his abilities are passed onto his granddaughter Krile, who joins the party in his stead. That inheritance is naturally reflected in Galuf’s Final Act, which not only briefly boosts a creature’s power (a nod to Galuf going all out as he takes on Exdeath 1v1), but lets it pass on +1/+1 tokens equal to its power when it dies.
Fight or Flight
An infamous gag moment in Final Fantasy VII comes when the party goes to rescue Aerith from Shinra’s HQ ahead of the climactic escape from Midgar. You’re given a simple choice, in both the original game and in Remake: take the elevator up to the 60th floor, which stops multiple times for a series of fights, or the “quiet” route… having to control Cloud as he runs up 59 flights of stairs.
The Magic card Aerith Rescue Mission encapsulates that choice perfectly: you can either take the elevator, giving you three 1/1 Hero Tokens (representing Cloud, Tifa, and Barrett being ready to fight), or you can take the stairs, which lets you tap and stun up to three creatures (representing their cardio-induced duress).
The Cycle of Sin
Final Fantasy X is built around the cycle of Sin, a massive creature that rises to cull civilizations that grow too large or too advanced—but whose slaughter can be paused for a period of “Calm” years when a Summoner sacrifices themselves in a final battle against Sin to summon a final aeon capable of defeating Sin… albeit only temporarily, locking the world in a cycle of destruction.
That gets a pretty spot-on mirror in the card Sin, Unending Cataclysm; it not only removes counters from any number of creatures on the battlefield (to represent Sin’s limitation of technological advancement), but also returns to your library when it dies rather than dying, meaning it can’t be conventionally defeated. Its own bonus counters created from removing counters can be given to one of your other creatures… you know, so Sin can inherit them twice over when it returns.
Champions From Beyond the Rift, Heed My Call!
Champions From Beyond is a multilayered reference for Final Fantasy XIV players: the name and the art represents the climactic moments of the Shadowbringers expansion, when the player is aided by Iconic Catboy G’raha Tia, who summons heroes (aka, other players) from across the 14 shards of the world to battle Emet-Selch. That group-content focus is reflected in its rules, which lets you create any number of Hero tokens while also offering bonuses for attacking in either groups of four or eight creatures. Those are references to the two standard group sizes for FF XIV‘s multiplayer content: Light Parties, groups of four for standard dungeon content; and Full Parties, groups of eight typically used in more challenging boss fights or endgame raids.
Quistis’ Blue Magic
Final Fantasy has all sorts of different magical archetypes across the series, but Blue Magic is one of its most arcane trademarks in the various schools of color-themed magics. Black Magic is primarily damaging elemental spells, White Magic is healing and support, Red Magic blends the two, while Blue represents an ability to absorb and learn the skills of an enemy opponent. Blue Mages exist across multiple Final Fantasy games, but FF VIII‘s Quistis it perhaps one of the most famous. It’s fitting then that not only is she slotted into Magic‘s blue color archetype, but that her Blue Magic ability lets her cast spells from any player’s graveyard, be it yours or your opponent: and that she cast them with any mana, regardless of their original cost.
Kain’s Mind Control
Kain Highwind is a fascinating foil in Final Fantasy IV, his lingering jealousy towards FF IV‘s main character Cecil making him an easy target for the game’s antagonist, Golbez, to corrupt him and brainwash him multiple times over the course of the story. Kain’s almost-comical ability to be forced into betraying you is delightfully woven into Magic with his card, Kain, Traitorous Dragoon—whenever Kain does damage to another player, they can choose to take control of him and he does mirrored damage to his original owner, meaning that Kain can bounce back and forth between ownership over the course of the game!
Ashe’s Temptation
A major turning point in Final Fantasy XII comes when Ashe, the exiled princess of the kingdom of Dalmasca, finds herself confronted with a dangerous temptation: fulfill her destiny as Ivalice’s generational ruler and use the power of the almighty crystal called the Sun-Cryst to destroy the Archadian Empire that attacked Dalmasca at the start of the game, or destroy the Sun-Cryst and free Ivalice from the machinations of its creators.
On the surface, the Instant Fate of the Sun-Cryst is a pretty typical Magic card, paying five mana to destroy any non-land permanent. But it has a bonus twist: it only costs three mana if you target a tapped creature, ie… a creature that’s already attacked you. It’s a very flavorful way to incorporate Ashe’s temptation towards revenge.
Of Course Ignis Cooks
Ignis’ card just wouldn’t be Ignis if it didn’t include an ability based around cooking. “I’ve Come Up With a New Recipe!” lets a player tap Ignis and pay some mana to exile a card from your graveyard—and if it was a creature, you can create a food token, letting a player regain health. It’s named, of course, for Ignis’ meme-worthy repeated catchphrase from Final Fantasy XV: the party’s cook whenever they camped, Ignis could learn various recipes throughout XV to grant the party various buffs and status effects when they rested. Specifying the bonus for exiling a creature is itself a cute reference to the fact that Ignis can cook various meals from the materials you get from killing creatures across XV‘s world, to boot.
A Smile Better Suits a Hero
Multiple cards throughout the Final Fantasy set give new themed art to already established Magic cards. Relic of Legends, a simple mana-generating artifact introduced in Dominaria United, is one of them, but its inclusion in the Final Fantasy XIV-themed Commander Deck, Scions & Spellcraft, is given a painful twist. The relic of legend in the new art refers to a traumatic sacrifice from Heavensward, XIV‘s first expansion, when one of your allies in the kingdom of Ishgard, Haurchefant Greystone, attempts to deflect a magical attack intended to strike the hero… only for his shield to buckle and for the strike to run him through instead, killing him. Cue the waterworks!
Ifrit vs. Titan
Clash of the Eikons refers to one of the standout moments of the latest mainline Final Fantasy, XVI, in which protagonist Clive Rosfield, transformed into the almighty summon Ifrit, scraps with rival summon Titan in an epic battle. Aside from looking as cool as the fight in XVI does, this sorcery lets you manipulate the amount of lore counters on a Saga card under your control: the card archetype that represents Final Fantasy‘s various summon creatures across the games in the set to reflect their status as powerful, but limited-time forces in battle.
It’s not only flavorful in that sense, it’s particularly flavorful to Final Fantasy XVI. The fight between Ifrit and Titan is really the first time that Clive truly comes into his own as Ifrit’s “Dominant”, embracing his transformation and pulling out all the stops to defeat Titan—so it’s only fitting that that clash represents the ability to manipulate Sagas in this way!
The Warrior of Light Unites All
The Warrior of Light is the name of the character created to represent the generic party members of the very first Final Fantasy, who had no set characters and could be given any of the series’ iconic jobs over the course of the game. Now a quasi-mascot of Final Fantasy as a whole, oddly enough the Warrior of Light doesn’t actually have a unique card representing him in the Magic set (he appears on some, but none are specifically centered around him as a character).
He is represented, however, on the “Through The Ages” bonus sheet, a series of cards that reprints classic Magic cards with artwork drawn from across Final Fantasy history, from character concept work to promotional imagery from each game. The Warrior of Light is represented in this set of cards with a reprint of Jodah the Unifier, an iconic card that is popular in Magic‘s Commander as a “WURBG” archetype: having a cost that utilizes one mana from each of Magic‘s five colors, a deck with Jodah as its Commander can be built out of cards from every color in turn.
On top of that, Jodah the Unifier’s abilities are built around synergies with Legendary Creatures and spells, buffing the more of them you have in play and getting more of them in play as quickly as possible. Across the Final Fantasy set most main characters are represented as Legendary Creatures, so it’s fitting that the Warrior of Light can bring together heroes and villains from across the whole series to stand together!
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