MTG’s Final Fantasy: The Characters We Wanted To See In Magic

Magic: The Gathering’s latest set has whipped fans into a frenzy, with the crossover with Square Enix’s iconic JRPG series Final Fantasy quickly becoming not just its best-selling, but also one of its most beloved sets of all time.

The set covers all 16 of the numbered games, with popular characters showing up in droves. Despite that, there are a few characters who were either relegated to the preconstructed Commander decks, or skipped entirely. These are the characters we wish we could’ve seen in Final Fantasy, and should definitely get an outing when we inevitably come back for more.

Cindy

Final Fantasy 15 is one of the least-represented games in the set, with just the main four characters and antagonist Ardyn getting unique cards. Cid is featured alongside all the other games, but where is his granddaughter, Cindy?

Cindy could have been an excellent artifact-matters commander, just like her grandpa. Though Final Fantasy doesn’t have many Vehicles to speak of, there are enough that she could have played to her strengths as a great mechanic to lead your Vehicle-centric decks?

Kimahri Ronso

Kimahri is only found in the Final Fantasy 10 Commander precon, which is a shame as he’s one of the most interesting and memorable characters in the whole game. A stalwart protector to Yuna, his Commander can become a copy of any of your opponents’ creatures.

Maybe his main set card could have leant into his role as a bodyguard, giving creatures shield counters whenever he attacked? Or let him sacrifice himself to give another creature indestructible? As one of my favourite FF characters, I was very sad to have no chance of pulling him in a booster.

Laguna Loire

Only seen in flashbacks throughout Final Fantasy 8, Laguna Loire is a big mystery that is alluded to in the card Dreams of Laguna. His tragic story unfolds through sequences throughout FF8, but his lighthearted personality is what really stands out, serving as a good contrast to the moodier Squall.

Laguna could have been a great mono-white Soldier commander, playing in to the Equipment themes of the set. He may have been left out due to having a similar role to more established characters like Zack Fair and Cloud Strife, but I would’ve liked to have seen him none the less.

The Onion Knights

Final Fantasy 3 was unique among the series in that its main characters weren’t locked in to a specific role. Instead, all four of the Onion Knights can be specialised however you like, giving them different jobs to go to battle with.

This modular style of character building would have been very interesting to play with. Maybe you could have up to four copies of it in your deck (regardless of format), and freely move equipment between them as and when you choose.

The Meteor Survivor

Final Fantasy 14 is by far the most-played game in the series, and so has tons of cards to represent it, both in the set and in its own Commnader deck. However, one character who doesn’t get his own card is the Meteor Survivor, also known as the original Warrior of Light.

This character is the mysterious face of Final Fantasy 14, serving as the stand-in for your own character. His evil doppelganger appears in the form of Ardbert, Warrior of Darkness, so having an inverted version of him that perhaps nerfs white or black creatures whenever you cast spells could reflect his role in vanquishing the evil of Eorzea.

Cait Sith

Despite being the most famous Final Fantasy game, Final Fantasy 7 has quite a few missed faces from the main set. One such absence is the mechanical cat Cait Sith and his chunky toy Moogle.

Toy is a creature type in Magic, so perhaps a legendary Toy Cat creature would fit best here. To reflect meeting him at Golden Saucer, yhe could incorporate games of chance, like rolling dice and flipping coins?

Lunafreya Nox Fleuret

Another of Final Fantasy 15’s women absent from the set in Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, the princess of Tenebrae and Noctis’ betrothed. Though she plays a supporting role in 15, she’s still a major player in its events, driving much of Noctis’ actions for the second half of the game.

Without spoiling too much of Lunafreya’s story, she has the unique ability to commune with the Gods of Eos, and wields powerful healing magic. Much like Kimahri, her being able to protect other creatures would fit her best – maybe with a bit of God-matters synergy thrown in there for extra measure.

Yuffie

It’s wild to think Yuffie isn’t in the main Final Fantasy set, being relegated to just one card in the Final Fantasy 7 precon and one card in the Through the Ages bonus sheet. And yet the Ninja treasure hunter is absolutely nowhere to be found.

Like her Commander card, Yuffie absolutely needs the ninjutsu keyword to dive into battle. However, instead of caring about Equipment, I think she’d fit better as a Treasure-matters commander, making Treasure tokens whenever a creature with ninjutsu deals combat damage to an opponent. Or maybe even letting you sacrifice Treasures to ninjutsu any creature in?

Red XIII

Admittedly, this is purely a vanity pick, as Red XIII is my favourite character in the entire Final Fantasy series. A staunch companion throughout Final Fantasy 7, he’s the driving force of one of its most emotional moments at Cosmo Canyon, as he learns his true history.

Younger and more naïve than he makes out, but still trying to do his best, I love Red XIII a whole lot, and would have loved for him to get a proper card in the main set. His Commander deck card gives modified creatures vigilance and trample, which is mighty powerful, but I’d have liked to have seen something of his ending scene from FF7, which is set 500 years after the events of the game. He’s seen with cubs then, so using a mechanic like Offspring or even Mobilize to make tokens would have been excellent.

Magic Colour Identity and Final Fantasy Roles

It’s fun to dream up how your favourite Final Fantasy characters would look in MTG, but it’s also really interesting to take a look at what Wizards actually did. With its five colours, each have a few consistent character types:

• White creatures tended to focus on Equipment, like Adelbert Steiner and Cloud, Midgar Mercenary. It was a very artifact-heavy colour, although it did have some of the usual mainstays like the lifegain of Aerith Gainsborough.
  
  
• Blue was all about spellcasting. Quistis Trepe let you cast an instant or sorcery from your graveyard, and who can forget how much Vivi is tearing up just about every format? It was also secondary in artifacts, thanks to cards like Scorpion Sentinel and Valkyrie Aerial Unit.
  
  
• Black was an uncharacteristically combat-heavy colour this time around, with lots of ways to force combat damage through. Jecht, Kain, and Ardynn all either have or grant some kind of evasion, and Sephiroth wants creatures to die to help drain your enemies out.
  
  
• Red focused on noncreature spells. This isn’t strictly the instant and sorcery theme of blue, though, as it also had lots of Equipment cards with Job Select to help fill the board. Mages draining opponents for life whenever you cast noncreature spells was also a big theme of black/red decks.
  
  
• Finally, green was all ab out lands. It wanted to to play lands to double Tifa Locklhart’s power, or to buff up the numerous Chocobos you throw into play. Gigantoad got bigger with more lands, and Summon: Fenric has become an excellent way to ramp extra lands out in your turn.

Where To Buy Final Fantasy

Even if we didn’t get these dream characters, Final Fantasy is still an incredible set. It captures the essence of the series, evoking the moments, characters, and places that made us all fall in love with it.

With how popular it is, you won’t be shocked to hear Final Fantasy is in high demand. Fortunately, Magic Madhouse has you covered. Not only do we have Play and Collector boosters available, we’ve also got Booster boxes and all four of the Commander decks!

We’ve even got the Starter Kit, so if you’re hoping to learn how to play Magic thanks to this all-timer set, that is the best way to begin.