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Many characters were featured inMagic: The Gathering’sFinal Fantasy crossover set. One of these characters is Kefka, the primary antagonist of Final Fantasy 6, and one of, if not the most popular antagonists across the entire series. Like other popular characters, Kefka has both multiple cards and appearances with multiple artworks.
Kefka, Court Mage is the Kefka card available in the main set of Final Fantasy. Grixis (blue/black/red) Kefka plays into forced discard, and easily draws a ton of cards so that you keep your hand full while your opponents lose everything they have. Kefka plays a very controlling game plan, stopping your opponents before they can do anything.
Liliana of the Veil
Magus of the Wheel
Afterlife from the Loam
x5 Island
x4 Mountain
x7 Swamp
Underground River
The decklistcontains one planeswalker, 24 creatures, 12 sorceries, nine instants, ten artifacts, nine enchantments,and34 lands. Many of the cards force your opponents to discard cards, or support reanimation strategies.
Key Cards
Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler Of Ruin
Kefka, Court Mage isone of the main ways you’ll be forcing your opponents to discard cards. Depending on what your opponents discard, you can wind up drawing more than the number of cards discarded, sinceKefka draws equal to the number of card types among discarded cards.
You discard as well, but you’realways drawing one card minimum.
For commander damage, it keeps track of the card itself, not the name. So, attacks made with both sides of Kefka will count towards the 21 damage needed to take someone out of the game with commander damage.
For eight mana,you can transformKefka to Kefka, Ruler of Ruin. Once he’s on the backside, Kefkaconstantly refills your hand whenever your opponents lose life. With how much forced discard goes on with Kefka, Ruler of Ruin’s draw power is appreciated so you’re never discarding your best cards to your effects.
Y’shtola Rhul
Y’shtola Rhul is a unique card that blinks any creature you control at the start of your end step. This allows you toconstantly blink Kefka,so you’re able to keeptaking advantage of its enter the battlefield effect.
It is important to know that if you blink a transformed card, it will return to the battlefield on its front face.
Y’shtola blinks not only once, but twice. Its effectgives you an additional end step, allowing you to blink another creature (or the same one if you wanted). This only appliesto the first end step, so you can’t stack up multiple Y’shtola triggers.
Oppression
Oppressionturns any spell being cast into forced discard. It’s a pseudo-stax piece, as it canlock your opponent from playing spells if they need all the cards in their hand.
Oppressiondoes affect everyone, so you’ll need to be prepared to discard as well to play any spell. Luckily, Kefka helps to recover your card advantage.
Ifa player does not have any cards in their hand when they cast a spell, the spell is still cast. Oppression doesn’t counter the spell in any way, it onlyapplies a tax to the cost of it.If you’re able to’t pay the cost, you will still get the spell. The strength of Oppression comes from how quickly it drains hands, and how it won’t affect you since you draw so much.
Waste Not
Your opponents are going to beforced to discard constantly, making Waste Not extra powerful in Kefka. It gives you one of three effects depending on what kind of card gets discard. Waste Notbuilds aboard state with tokens, ramps you with black mana, and draws you cards.
Bone Miser is a creature with an identical effect to Waste Not. If both permanents are on the battlefield, both will trigger separately, allowing you to essentially double up on the effects that get triggered.
Waste Not is thestrongest tool in your deck. A natural weakness of discard decks is running out of steam yourself, but Waste Nothelps to counteract the downsides of playing forced discardby providing various forms of card and mana advantage.
How To Play The Deck
General Game Plan
A Kefka, Court Mage Commander decks should beconstantly forcing your opponents to discard their hands. You never want your opponents to have hands, andforce them to play in “top deck mode,“meaning the only cards they’ll get to play are the cards they draw for turn.
Most of the forced discard in the deck affects you as well, so cards like Waste Not, Bone Miser, Bandit’s Talent, and Kefka, Ruler of Ruin help to ensure your hand is full despite this.
The deckplays a control strategy, with both board wipes and counterspellshelping to keep your opponents off of any powerful creatures. Forced discard helps tomake your opponents get rid of their best creatures,especially in situations where they’re forced to discard their whole hand.
Since your opponents have to discard a ton, there’s areanimation sub-theme in the deck. Cards such as Rise of the Dark Realms, Reanimate, and Animate Dead all help toput creatures from any graveyard onto the battlefield under your control, letting you steal your opponents' best creatures if they ever end up in the graveyard.
Win Conditions And Flaws
Theprimary win condition of the deck is winning through combat. Kefka is a very damaging card, both in terms of power and in terms of affecting the gamestate drastically. Kefkadrains your opponents of resources while swinging in for damage.
You generallywant to flip Kefka when you’re ready to start closing out games, as it becomes much more evasive.
Thebiggest downside of the deck is its reliance on Kefka. Forced discard often affects everyone, and if you don’t have Kefka to draw your cards to refill your hand, you’ll find yourself running out of resources alongside your opponents. Waste Not and Bone Miser are helpful in acting as secondary commanders, but without these, forced discard becomes much more dangerous to commit to.
