Magic: The Gathering has been on a cross-over binge lately, and the next property up is Final Fantasy. The card set inspired by the Square Enix RPG series arrives in June, and Wizards of the Coast recently revealed four pre-constructed decks led by commander-style hero cards: Terra (FFVI), Cloud (FFVII), Tidus (FFX), and Y’shtola (FFXIV). They look gorgeous, the abilities seem cool, and I’m prepared to spend way too much money on the upcoming expansion.
The cards were revealed via an IGN exclusive that detailed how each commander-style pre-constructed deck will be themed around an entire game in the Final Fantasy series. Terra, Herald of Hope is a 3/3 red, white, and black wizard who can revive creatures from a player’s graveyard and will lead the deck whose 100 cards tell the story of Final Fantasy VI and its World of Ruin. Cloud, meanwhile, is a 4/4 red, green, and white soldier with haste who specializes in equipment and generating treasure tokens (colorless mana artifacts) and leads a deck based around the events recently re-popularized by the ongoing Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy.
The other two decks are led by Tidus, the peppy blitz ball player from Final Fantasy X, and Y’shtola, the feline-like Miqo’te helping players in Final Fantasy XIV from the MMO’s earliest days. The former is is a 3/3 green, white, and blue warrior that specializes in drawing cards and proliferating counters, and the latter is a 2/4 white, blue, and black warlock that deals out extra damage and heals every time a non-creature spell is cast. The decks release alongside the full sets on June 13 and will be $70 for the regular ones or $150 for the collector’s edition with surge foil treatment. And naturally the set’s symbol is the silhouette of a chocobo.
“I won’t deny that Cloud was a pretty obvious choice for the face commander of the Final Fantasy VII deck,” senior game designer Daniel Holt told IGN. “The others went through a few rounds of brainstorming though! In Final Fantasy VI, since we were focusing on the themes of the second half of the game, Celes was actually a big contender for the lead. And with Final Fantasy X, we know Yuna is a fan favorite and could have led the deck to success. We ultimately landed on ‘the main protagonist’ character for each of these titles, resulting in Terra and Tidus filling those slots respectively; though Final Fantasy VI is an ensemble cast, Terra is often portrayed as the face of the series.”
When it came to designing the cards and decks, Holt said the team wanted to try and capture major story beats of the Final Fantasy games in question while also keeping them consistent with the gameplay themes associated with the corresponding colors. Designing the art was a bit more complex, given the varied art references across Yoshitaka Amano’s original illustrations, the in-game portraits, and the characters’ appearances in more modern remasters and remakes. Narrative designer Dillon Deveney said the team tried to locate features consistent across each appearance and emphasize those.
So far it seems to have worked. If the rest of the set’s art looks half as good as the Commander cards I’ll be satisfied. And of course there’s whichever card Amano himself will be doing the art for.
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