WhileMagic: The Gatheringhas mostly focused on its own worlds, like Ravnica and Dominaria, 2020’sThe Walking DeadSecret Lair saw it branch out into other properties. The popular TCG then explored the likes of Warhammer 40,000, Arcane, and The Lord of the Rings, and even concluded 2023 with a set of Doctor Who commander decks.
This year, we’re gettingFalloutCommander Decks and the first “Beyond Booster” mini-set withAssassin’s Creed, but next year is fascinating. Headlining 2025 is multiple crossover sets with Marvel Comics, but in the excitement another crossover was forgotten. One that has more potential and intrigue for me isFinal Fantasy.
The only real information we have regarding the set currently comes from Magic: The Gathering’s head designer Mark Rosewater, who called it a “tentpole booster release” like that of Lord of the Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth. We can pretty safely assume this will include not just a full, draftable set, but also some Commander decks to go with it.
What Should Headline The Final Fantasy Universes Beyond Commander Decks?
Before I break down exactly what the themes of the Final Fantasy decks should be, I should quickly go over what games are up for grabs here. It’s already been confirmed that every numbered entry from the first game right through to FF16 is on the table, and it’s almost impossible to imagine a Final Fantasy release without a heavy emphasis onFinal Fantasy 7.
Cloud, Tifa and the gang are absolutely going to be one of the commander decks, so we can already mark down one of the four commander deck slots as being taken. It’s tough to imagine what such a deck would look like, let alone how it’d play, but it’s a given that Cloud Strife would be its commander.
Alternatively, we could see some partners, like Doctor Who, and have Cloud team up with Tifa, Aerith, or maybe even Sephiroth.
The second commander deck is actually probably the toughest to parse. I’d eat my Mako reactor if FF7 didn’t happen, and there are other games that are likely to fill out the other two decks, but it does leave this one as an unknown quantity. Do Wizards of the Coast look at the sheer popularity ofFinal Fantasy 14and make a deck based on that? Probably not, as cool as it would be.
I think they’re likely to look at eitherFinal Fantasy 10orFinal Fantasy 13as a potential deck theme, since both of those games have multiple entries that are set in their own world. Tidus and Yuna, or Lightning and Snow as the face commanders could help us revisit settings that have been somewhat marginalised thanks to the attention on the FF7 remakes and FF16.
Speaking of FF16, it’s likely that Square Enix will require Wizards for it to be in the set. Final Fantasy 16, as the most recent mainline release in the series and whose inclusion in the set was confirmed even before the game’s release, has a lot of potential as a commander deck.
It’s a shame that Wizards has reservations about printing double-sided cards in precons, as you could have the face commander be Clive Rosfield himself, and include an ability to have him transform into his Eikon. You can do the same thing mechanically to every other Eikon in the game, and you can depict the epic battles between them by using the Saga subtheme of enchantment.
The real question is, though, do the villains of the franchise get a separate deck or do they get placed into the deck that has the most to do with their game? The former was done in both Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who, and there are more than enough iconic villains and monsters in the series to carry its own 100 cards. Sephiroth would likely be the face commander and could have either a resurrection effect (referencing the events of Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children) or the ability to deal massive damage on a ticking clock, akin to the Meteor in the original game.
Final Fantasy is such a wide-spanning series that the specifics of what we see could be anyone’s guess. Maybe we’ll get a whole deck based on Food tokens headed up by Ignis, or the Chocobo Kindred deck we all desperately deserve. But this is part of the fun of Universes Beyond: a chance to take your favourite things and imagine how they’d look when they come to Magic.
Whether it’s Cloud and Sephiroth or Tidus and Yuna, I can’t wait to see more of Final Fantasy when it launches next year.
Next:Yoshinori Kitase and Naoki Hamaguchi On The Changing Face Of Final Fantasy
