I got through my first Magic The Gathering commander match thanks to years of experience playing Final Fantasy 10

Like many others I jumped right on the Magic The Gathering: Final Fantasy hype train and gorged myself on ripping packs to discover the phenomenal art inside. I’m a huge Final Fantasy fan and a lapsed MTG player and I hadn't touched the game in a decade until this set came along.

At first I was happy to just collect the cards and revel in the nostalgia of it all. So many of my favourite characters and moments in various games have been captured lovingly in the set such as Vivi casting his iconic Fire magic, or being able to equip the Buster Sword. I took part in the prerelease event and played a few matches, forming my deck around a lucky Jumbo Cactuar pull, and that kicked off the itch to play more.

Having not played in so long I grabbed myself the preconstructed Final Fantasy 10 Commander deck and while I enjoyed looking through it all, it wasn’t until I got a chance to play it that I got a true appreciation of just how much this set feels like playing the game. Heading down to my local TCG shop and playing it using Wizards Of The Coast’s Final Fantasy specific Commander party rules then elevated the whole experience.

The FF10 commander deck centers around the hero Tidus and is all about creating loads +1/+1 counters on your creatures which you can then shift around. It feels a bit like swapping party members in and out as you can change the star of your lineup depending on the situation you face. Tidus basically uses Cheer and gees up his team mates by keeping the counters flowing and boosting their power. Pair him with the Sphere Grid Enchantment which gives you a counter every time you damage a player, and it really starts to feel like the game. You’re basically levelling up like you would using the game’s actual Sphere Grid.

Unlike playing with the set generally in a game of standard or creating your own Commander deck, this one being focussed solely on FF10 it has more concentrated moments from the game. From playing with the heroes such as Yuna, Wakka, and Auron, to even finding uses for the minor moments such as the traveling shopkeeper Oaka constantly asking you for money (though in MTG he’s after your counters to exchange for drawing more cards).

My particular favourite is Yuna’s Whistle – a heartbreaking moment in the game meant to help Tidus find her again even over great distances, but here it’s used to call a creature from your deck, making you search for it until you hit one and actually being able to call it forth unlike poor Tidus in game…

Listen to my story…

The Commander format already lends itself well to the FF setting being a multiplayer version of the game so it feels a lot like forming a party with an unlikely band of heroes and dealing with some particularly vicious villains. Being able to attack or ally with anyone in your group makes the whole thing feel like an adventure, with the WOTC FF Party rules taking it one step further.

Unlike normal Commander where you just whittle each other's life points down, the event rules give you a blank card to create and summon your own 1/1 hero token, and a list of quests to tick off as another way to win. Enter Steven, my hastily scribbled token with the first name that popped into my head. He was just lucky I didn’t name him ‘Poohead’ like I did to Princess Garnet in FF9 the first time I played it as a kid.

I’ve played MTG before, but this event was the first time I’d played Commander, so much like Steven I was an extremely unlikely hero – but isn’t that what Final Fantasy is all about? Going on a journey and facing evils beyond your understanding and power, while doing a lot of quests along the way?

My knowledge of the videogame helped a lot more than I expected – by being so familiar with FF10’s world and characters it was easy for me to understand the intention of the cards I was playing. I was never going to be a threat to the more experienced players on my table, but that knowledge helped me hold my own.

While others were amassing their forces, getting combos going, and throwing horrifically powerful beasts at each other, I dutifully worked away at the quest list so no one saw my most powerful move coming… an onslaught of Blitzballs from a Walking Ballista.

Like in most Final Fantasy games, it’s not the final boss that gets you – it’s one of the random ones along the way that becomes your nemesis and I embraced that role for the table.

One guy was clearly more powerful than I was and would have won on his next turn if not for the Blitzballs and Steven. I used all of my mana to summon the Walking Ballista with 12 counters and its ability meant that I could then get rid of those counters to deal 1 damage to any target. In one go I mowed down the defensive line of goblins of another player leaving Steven free to complete his final quest – knocking a player directly for one point of damage and winning the entire game.

The strongest player was basically my equivalent of the super hard secret boss that I was never going to complete, but I could still beat the game without facing him. Much like beach babe Tidus is the underexpected hero of Spira in FF10, Steven is my hero of MTG. Just like a true Final Fantasy game.

Magic: The Gathering really understood the assignment with its Final Fantasy set, and it's going to financially ruin me