Summary
With 16 games to pull from,Magic: The Gathering’sFinal Fantasy set has a ton of legendary creatures ready to be the face of your next Commander deck. Heroes, villains, Chocobos, Moogles, and whatever the heck Quina is are all up for grabs, and some could well become top-of-the-format decks.
These commanders have unique abilites, or surprising levels of efficiency that will make you want to build around them. Maybe one of them will even be your favourite Final Fantasy character, making the decision to make a deck for them a total no-brainer?
10Y’shtola Rhul
Blinking Is The Least This Card Does
At first glance, Y’shtola might look like amono-blue flicker commander. Exiling and returning something to the battlefield to retrigger its enter effects is always powerfull, and Y’shtola gives you a way to do that for free every turn. Having a Conjurer’s Closet in the Command Zone is good, but that second sentence is where she reallyrhuls.
Y’shtola gives you a second end step, which includes a second free blink every turn. More importantly, everything else that triggers on the end step also goes again. Fraying Sanity’s mill effect is doubled, Artificer Class makes another token copy, and if you’re the monarch you’ll draw an additional card.
9Kefka, Court Mage
Niv-Mizzet Is At It Again
The front face of Kefka is all well and good. Forcing your opponents to discard cards is always nice, and then for eight mana you can also force them to sacrifice something. It’s a good enough alternate commander to hide Tergrid, God of Fright in, even if it isn’t the most powerful or oppressive ability ever.
The back face, on the other hand, is a combo killer. Whenever an opponent loses life, you draw a card. Stop me if you’re heard this before, but it combos off with Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius and Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind. Draw a card, ping them for one damage, draw another card, rinse and repeat.
Kefka takes things a bit further by giving you access to black in your deck, though, giving you access to creature reanimation and tutoring straight for a Niv-Mizzet to combo out quickly.
8Tifa Lockhart
Bristly Bill’s New Bestie
Landfall deckscan be scary to deal with the best of times, but here comes Tifa with the potential to outright kill an opponent in just a few turns. Every time you play a land, Tifa’s power doubles until the end of the turn, which makes practically any ramp a big threat.
Ancient Greenwarden is gnarly in this, thanks to doubling landfall triggers. Throw Bristly Bill in, Tifa’s doubling goes even further. Add an Ashaya and any other creature you play will trigger Tifa, too. Then, when you’re ready to win, just cast a Reshape the Earth to double her power ten times in a row and smash someone’s face in with commander damage.
7Yuna, Hope Of Spira
A New Best Enchantress Commander?
‘Enchantress’ deckshave always revolved around playing as many enchantments as possible, and then drawing off them with cards like Enchantress’s Presence and Sythis, Harvest’s Hand. While Yuna doesn’t give the card draw that makes these decks run so well, she offers enough other abilities to make her one to consider.
You’re going to be running enchantment creatures, and Yuna gives enchantress decks a bit more of an aggressive playstyle by giving them lifelink. You’ll also be able to regularly retrigger enchantress abilities by returning things to the battlefield with finality counters on them. Just make sure one of those enchantments is Solemnity to keep everything coming back as often as you need.
6Aerith Gainsborough
She Just Loves Dying
What Yuna is to enchantress decks, Aerith is to the tried and tested beginner strategy of Ajani’s Pridemate and a ton of lifegain. The plan is simple: build up those Ajani’s Welcomes, Impassioned Orators, and Case of the Uneaten Feasts and build up as much life as possible, putting +1/+1 counters on Aerith each time.
Aerith does differ slightly in that she has a legendary subtheme, giving you a way to put those counters on all your other legendary creatures. Ideally you’d be putting this on something withy lifelink to keep the gains going, or even Qala, Ajani’s Pridemate to increase the buff when it swings with other creatures.
5Terra, Magical Adept
Don’t Wait For Your Sagas
Sagas have had a few commanders, but nothing that ties them together as comprehensively as Terra. Thanks for the mana pips on the back face’s final ability, this is a WUBRG commander that lets you play just about any Saga ever printed.
It’s worth noting that, when you put the three lore counters on copies you make with Esper Terra’s first three chapters, you’ll also trigger the first three chapters all at the same time. This could completely clear a Saga for you, or it could help you zip ahead to the best stuff near the end of a longert one instead.
4Lightning, Army Of One
Hit Twice As Hard
Between Army of One and her reprint as Isshin, Two Heavens As One in the Through the Ages bonus sheet, Lightning has some excellent combat-focused commanders. This version wants you to either deal damage later in the turn, whether that be through extra combat steps, or non-combat damage in your seconds main phase.
Notably, if you’re able to give Lightning double strike, the first hit will trigger Lightning’s ability and double the damage of the second attack. You could build it up as a Voltron commander and make use of this to commander damage your way to victory, or fill it up with other ways to dish out damage like Roiling Vortex and Guttersnipe.
3Cloud, Midgar Mercenary
Wield The Buster Blade, And The Colossus Hammer, And The Sword Of Hearth And Home, And The Helm Of The Host…
The question on everybody’s lips has been is Cloud good enough to replace the many already terifying mono-white Equipment commanders like Sram and Balan. And the answer to that is, shockingly, yes it is. Tutoring for an Equipment when it enters is ripe for abuse with blink and flicker effects, and then doubling the effects of Equipment could easily bring the game to a close before it even started.
Probably the scariest play you can make with this is Blade of Selves. You’ll make six copies of Cloud, which then go and search for six more Equipment (before being removed due to the legend rule), and repeat the process every single turn. There’s also Helm of the Host for a more permanent alternative, Sword of Feast and Famine to untap all your lands twice for peak combat trickery, and Sword of Wealth and Power for lots of spell copying and Treasure tokens.
2Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER
An Unremoveable Blood Artist
Emblems are the only thing in Magic: The Gathering you can’t remove. Normally they’re confined to the ultimate abilities of Planeswalkers, and an opponent getting an emblem often spells the end of the game. Sephiroth is a bit different, and getting a hold of his emblem is as easy as sacrificing a few creatures.
Once at least four creatures have died, you don’t ever even need to play Sephiroth, as every death will drain an opponent for one life. Of course, you’ll want to replay Sephiroth to do it all again for a second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth emblem and make every death hurt as much as possible.
1Vivi Ornitier
Nobody was expectingFinal Fantasy 9’s Vivito the chase card of the set, and yet here we are with a red and blue commander that could very easily shake up not just Commander, but just about every format it touches.
Vivi does everything a spellslinging deck loves. It grows bigger with each spell you cast, pings every opponent, and then turns into a colossal amount of mana ready to cast yet more spells. The best bit is it is so easy to get around the once-each-turn limitation if you just blink it with Displacer Kitten and start the whole thing off again.
