It’s now February, which means the Final Fantasy crossover Magic the Gathering set is only four months away. With the recent release of Aetherdrift on Valentine’s Day, that also means Wizards is now in full swing on Final Fantasy’s preview season. Here are the cards you should look out for.
The Final Fantasy Face Commanders
Let’s start with the four Face Commanders included in the Final Fantasy Commander Decks! Four of the entire franchise’s biggest names make their appearance as the leaders of their respective decks, which of course includes the series poster boy Cloud Strife. First revealed at IGN, check out the visual spoilers below:
Cloud, Terra, Tidus, and Y’shtola are the first four cards revealed for the crossover set. All four cards also look viable in competitive play, but Y’shtola’s value engine feels like the most powerful among the four. Terra plays around with a lot of recursions, Tidus plays around with buffs and counters, while Cloud, ever the giant sword-loving guy, cares about equipment.
As usual, the Commander Set will have 99 more cards included in the deck consisting of a mix between new cards and reprints with new, in-universe artworks. Past Commander Sets also included alternative Commander cards for each deck, but that hasn’t been revealed yet.
Final Fantasy Starter Decks
Revealed by Weekly MTG (who are also responsible for the rest of the remaining card reveals in this article), Final Fantasy’s most recognizable figures star in the Starter Decks, meant to be the starting point for any Final Fantasy fan touching Magic the Gathering for the first time.
As usual, these two cards depicting Cloud and Sephiroth aren’t exactly stellar, and they serve more as a stepping stone for new players to learn the game. However, I can imagine these two cards still being part of collections of superfans. Between these two cards, Cloud’s the more straightforward and more powerful card, but he’s directly countered by Sephiroth’s effect.
Two-faced cards depicting Final Fantasy’s Heroes and Villains
JRPGs are all about getting to your final form, and Final Fantasy isn’t any different from those games. Indeed, some iconic characters’ transformations are depicted in the cards as well with two-sided cards. The Dark Knight Cecil’s change of heart into a Paladin that protects others is depicted in one card, while the villain Garland’s transformation into the never-ending Chaos is depicted in another.
Chocobos and Moogles
It won’t be a proper Final Fantasy crossover set if we don’t see any of the series’ reliable sidekicks. Stiltzkin, the traveling Moogle merchant in Final Fantasy IX has a card that force sells items to opponents. Sazh’s baby chocobo from Final Fantasy XIII is also here, which grows so fast on the battlefield thanks to Landfall.
Iconic Final Fantasy Monsters
One of the reasons behind Final Fantasy’s longevity is its coherence across its titles, in spite of the games not being related to each other. Still, thanks to this coherence, we have recurring themes, similar archetypes for its characters, and of course, the iconic monsters that you get to fight in each and every Final Fantasy game. Two such monsters have been revealed so far: the Tonberry that slowly approaches you for a fatal stab, and the Jumbo Cactuar that insta-kills you with its Thousand Needles.
Summons Depicted as Saga Creatures
Finally, we have the creative depiction of the series’ powerful espers, eidolons, summons, and guardian forces as Saga Creatures. These cards effectively showcase the summons’ powerful abilities through the resolution of its effects, alongside the summons’ identities as celestial creatures that fight alongside our heroes. Just like in the games, summons perform feats of strength for a short while, before leaving the battlefield once the damage is done. This is a neat new design is very much welcome, and I’m excited to see how this design space will be explored outside of this set.
And those are the most hyped cards that were revealed so far for the Final Fantasy Magic the Gathering Set. Expect to see more spoilers to come out in weeks to come, leading up to the release of the set on June 13, 2025.