MTG Final Fantasy Commander deck precons are here, bringing the beloved JRPG to one of the best card games for the first time. There are four to choose from, so which is best for you and your playstyle?
Unfortunately, this crossover comes with a difficult question: how am I even going to be able to buy one of these decks? In rare cases when you can get your hands on MTG Final Fantasy stock, the precons are still pretty prohibitively expensive. So, if you’re splashing the cash on MTG Final Fantasy Commander decks, you’ll really want to make sure you’re picking the most worthy of the bunch. Choosing which deck you’re buying based on your favorite entry to the Final Fantasy series can really only get you so far.
To help you on your quest for the best MTG Final Fantasy commander precon, I’ve ranked all four decks from the set. By considering everything from power level to upgrade potential, that's allowed me to figure out exactly which precons are worth adding to your party.
As a former member of the GamesRadar+ tabletop team who has since spread her wings and gone freelance, Abigail knows a thing or two about the industry - and Magic: The Gathering in particular. She always has at least one MTG deck with her at all times, and has written about the subject extensively with us.
Best MTG Final Fantasy Commander decks
Counter Blitz is focused on Final Fantasy X, and is a Bant deck (green-white-blue). This deck is led by face commander, Tidus, Yuna’s Guardian: a three-mana 3/3 that allows you move counters across your creatures, and to draw a card and proliferate (add additional counters) when your counter-enhanced creature deals combat damage to a player.
Meanwhile, the alternate commander, Yuna, Grand Summoner serves a different but complementary role. Yuna is a four-mana 1/5 that can be tapped to generate mana and give your next creature cast that turn two additional +1/+1 counters. As if that’s not enough, Yuna also makes it so your other creatures can inherit the counters of their fallen friends instead of them fizzling when they hit the graveyard.
This deck is a banger out of the box, but like any precon, it could do with a little polishing through upgrades. Branching Evolution is a top-notch choice thanks to the enchantment’s counter-doubling effect, but Freed from the Real is helpful in how it allows you to continually untap Yuna and spam her tap-activated ability.
Limit Break is a Naya (red-green-white) deck based on Final Fantasy VII. The face commander is Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER: a five-mana 4/4 with haste and three triggered abilities. When Cloud enters the battlefield, you can attach a piece of equipment to him for free, which is helpful given how costly Cloud himself is and how you’ll want to have him swinging the same turn he’s cast. If you do have Cloud attack, you can benefit from his card draw ability. Finally, Cloud also has the capacity to generate Treasure tokens, helping to offset the cost of casting/attaching more equipment.
This is a heavily equipment-focused deck (as if having 16 equipment cards didn’t give that fact away already). However, it’s not a deck that benefits all that much from being played like a Voltron deck – that’s to say, you probably want to spread your equipment across your board to get the most benefit. Not only does Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER incentivize this "everybody gets some equipment" approach, but other legendaries like Barret Wallace and Sephiroth, Fallen Hero reward having multiple equipped creatures on the field.
There are a couple of upgrades you can pop on Limit Break to quickly transform it from a pretty good deck to a pretty great deck. For example, Forge Anew is a gamechanger for this and all equipment decks; you being able to equip and unequip at instant speed spells a total nightmare for your opponents. That once-a-turn free equip is great to see too.
Revival Trance is a Mardu (red-white-black) deck that features characters from Final Fantasy VI. Among these characters is the face commander, Terra, Herald of Hope. Both she and the alternate commander, Celes, Rune Knight focus on milling cards to the graveyard and then reanimating creatures to fill your battlefield.
While Terra provides a continual means of milling and a mana-activated ability that brings creatures back from the graveyard, Celes only offers milling as her enter-the-battlefield effect. Celes also opts to buff reanimated creatures instead of actually reanimating them herself. In this regard, Terra needs less support from the 99 than Celes does, and is an easier commander to pilot.
However, no matter which legendary creature from Revival Trance you decide to pop in the command zone, you’d benefit from adding some upgrades. Unless you fancy leaning into the (fairly random) vehicle subtheme that Revival Trance is sporting with cards like Setzer, Wandering Gambler, I’d recommend cutting that fat and adding some more solid reanimation-focused picks like Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate or Caesar, Legion’s Emperor.
Scions & Spellcraft is an Esper (black-blue-white) deck centred around Final Fantasy XIV. Its focus is casting non-creatures spells but it also carries plenty of secondary subthemes that just aren’t as fully realised.
Unfortunately, Scions & Spellcraft is one of the most unfocused precons in the set, and as a result, it could do with a good bit of chopping and changing. For one, there are a good variety of noncreature spells worth 3 mana or more but to support all that big spending, the deck requires a little more cost-reduction than what is offered here.
When considering upgrades for this deck, Grand Arbiter Augustine IV is worth a look-in owing to how it reduces the cost of your blue and white spells, and (rather cruelly) taxes your opponents for every spell they cast. Tidal Barracuda is another card that’s great for making your flashy spell-slinging a little easier while simultaneously giving any control-focused opponents a hard time. Slaughter is a perfect card to pop in the deck too – it not only delivers some really targeted removal but also triggers Y’shtola’s damage-dealing ability thanks to its mana-cost and allows you to draw a card when you decide to buy it back for 4 life.
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