Image Via Wizards of the Coast
The Final Fantasy x Magic: The Gathering crossover panel at PAX East revealed some of the mechanics from the video game that are being adapted into the tabletop card game, including some surprising ones.
Some of the Final Fantasy cards revealed for Magic: The Gathering make use of existing mechanics, such as Cecil utilizing Transform to switch between his Dark Knight and Paladin forms. Other cards are new iterations of existing mechanics, such as the famous Final Fantasy summons being Saga Creatures.
The Magic: The Gathering crossover will feature cards based on all sixteen mainline Final Fantasy games. During a panel at PAX East, it was revealed that some of these cards will emulate mechanics and story beats from specific games.
Final Fantasy Jobs & Story Beats Are Coming To Magic: The Gathering
Image Via Square Enix
Some Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy 14 cards will feature the “Job Select” keyword. Job Select cards spawn a hero token and attach themselves automatically, reflecting the Final Fantasy job mechanics.
These Job Select cards include White Mage’s Staff, an Artifact Equipment card costing one white and one mana of any color, which spawns a 1/1 Hero and attaches itself automatically, giving them +1/+1, the Cleric subtype, and giving the owner 1 life when they attack. The staff can be equipped to someone else, leaving the poor 1/1 Hero token alone.
Terra’s mechanics reference the World of Ruin section of Final Fantasy 6, as she can Mill cards, and when she damages players, her owner can pay two to summon a 3 cost or less creature from the graveyard, emulating the party reforming in its second act.
Image Via Square Enix
There are cards that reflect specific moments, such as Aerith Gainsborough giving her +1/+1 counters to other Legendary Creatures when she dies, or Zodiark requiring all players to sacrifice half their non-God creatures, buffing it in the process, as happened before the events of Final Fantasy 14. There’s also a single Meld card in the set, with Vanille and Fang from Final Fantasy 13 melding into Ragnarok, like they did in the game.
While summons being Saga Creatures is well-known, the Final Fantasy crossover has the first ever Adventure Lands, with Zanarkand from Final Fantasy 10 being one of them. Not only does this act as a Land, but it has an additional six mana effect that can be used as well, one that creates a Hero token with +1/+1 tokens for each additional Land in play.
There are a lot of things going on in the Final Fantasy x Magic: The Gathering crossover set that longtime fans of the video game franchise are going to be excited about. It’s those little nods and bits of fanservice that have already made this set so popular.
