Few video game moments are as impactful as the second half of Final Fantasy VI. The heroes have lost, and the only one who remains is Celes, who spends the rest of the game on a quest through a destroyed world to bring her allies back together.
While Magic: the Gathering can’t replicate this exactly, the designers were clearly inspired by Terra’s journey while developing her Commander deck. So let’s go over how to use her deck to defeat Kefka (and your friends) once and for all.
Revival Trance deck basics
The commander for this FFVI themed deck is “Terra, Herald of Hope.” She is a Red-, White- and Black-cost card with a Power and Life of three each. Her two abilities are “Trance” which lets you send the top two cards from your deck to the graveyard (called milling) and in return, Terra gains “Flying”, making her much more difficult to block. Her other ability allows her to pay two mana cost whenever she deals damage to an opponent to bring a creature with Power of three or less from the Graveyard onto the Battlefield. Thanks to the ease with which she can gain Flying, she should be able to slowly bring back her decimated team.
However, Terra was not the one who went searching for her friends in FF6, that was Celes, so of course she’s here too! “Celes, Rune Knight” allows you to discard any number of cards in your hand, and in return allows you to draw that many plus an additional card. This ability gives Terra ample fodder to scavenge the Graveyard to bring some powerful creatures onto the Battlefield which is even better given Celes’ secondary ability. Whenever a creature is brought from the Graveyard to the Battlefield, every creature you control gets a +1 counter to both Power and Life. Even better, this stacks so every turn not only do you increase the size of your army with Terra, but you then increase their strength with Celes.
Expedite the Revival process using these cards
Terra and Celes weren’t alone in their fight against Kefka, so there are plenty of other cards that can help restore the world from ruin. Here are a couple:
Cyan: Vengeful Samurai is not an easy card to get out given his high cost of 7 Mana, but this can easily be brought down as this number is decreased by one for every creature in the Graveyard. Try to use Terra and other cards like “Gogo: Mysterious Mine, which can become a copy of Terra to quickly get his cost down by adding creatures to the graveyard. Alternatively, since he has a Power of three, he is a candidate for Terra’s Revival. Once he is on the field, he will be incredibly lethal given he gets +1 to Power and Life for every creature that leaves the Graveyard—which we already established, you will do a lot of.
“Rejoin the Fight” is another powerful tool to fill your side of the Battlefield. This card has you mill three cards, then forces all of your opponents (since this is the Commander format, there is usually more than one) to choose one creature from your Graveyard. Those creatures then come back to your side of the Battlefield.
While you’ll be bringing back plenty of cards from Graveyard with this deck, “Anger” is perhaps the only card that should stay there. “Anger” is a pretty weak card, but it has a cool ability that only triggers if it is in your Graveyard. As long as you have a Mountain (which you should), all creatures you control have Haste, letting you quickly put out damage from creatures played from your hand.
Finally, if things start going really bad, just pull a Kefka and destroy the world using “Ruinous Ultimatum.” This card is incredibly high-cost but allows you to destroy all non-land permanents all your opponents control. Use it to help reset the board or pull even farther ahead.
These are just a couple helpful cards in this pre-constructed deck, but there are plenty of other interesting and fun options that help you move creatures from your hand or deck to the Graveyard and then to the Battlefield. Keep experimenting and try out all kinds of other cool combos and plays, and you will restore the world from Ruin in no time.
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