30 Casual Final Fantasy x Magic: the Gathering Decks
Final Fantasy is about to drop. If you're looking to build a deck around your favorite Final Fantasy characters but aren't sold on getting into Commander, we've got you covered. Today, we've got a bunch of lists built around some of the most iconic characters from Final Fantasy. All the decks are Standard legal, so feel free to try them in Magic Arena as well as paper, although you shouldn't expect to have success with them in tournament play. The goal of the decks is to keep them as cheap as possible, discounting the inflated price of the Final Fantasy cards themselves. I can't make Vivi or Sephiroth cheaper, but I can try to make sure the rest of the cards in your Vivi or Sephiroth deck don't break the bank! Anyway, let's get to the lists!
The Decks
Put equipment like Buster Sword, Leyline Axe, and Basilisk Collar on Cloud, Midgar Mercenary to build a massive creature. Chainsaw gives us removal that Cloud can tutor up, while cards like Raubahn, Bull of Ala Mhigo, Firion, Wild Rose Warrior, and Zack Fair help support the equipment plan.
Another equipment deck, but this plan is a little different. The idea is to use Firion, Wild Rose Warrior to make copies of equipment that make tokens when they enter, like Hexgold Halberd, Dragonwing Glider, and Samurai's Katana. Even though the equipment copies are temporary, the tokens will stick around, letting us use Firion's ability to make creature tokens!
Sacrifice creatures that make tokens when the die, like Infestation Sage and Nesting Bot, to Bartolome del Presidio or Zahur, Glory's Past, hopefully with a Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER and / or Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim and Vengeful Bloodwitch on the battlefield to drain the opponent out of the game and gains tons of life. If things go wrong, Raise the Past can reanimate most of our creatures, and Midnight Reaper gives us a steady stream of card draw as we sacrifice our dorks.
Play as many Chocobos as possible and use Choco, Seeker of Paradise to put a bunch of lands into play to trigger all of their landfall abilities a bunch of times. Things can get out of hand super quickly if we also have Traveling Chocobo to double up the landfall triggers. It's also cute that Bloomburro's Salvation Swan can not only save a Chocobo from a removal spell by blinking it but also return it to play with flying, making it even more powerful!
Play Tifa Lockhart. The next turn, use Titanic Growth or our other pump spells to grow its power up to at least five. Then, we can play a fetch land like Escape Tunnel, Evolving Wilds, or [[Terramorphic Expanse] to double Tifa's power twice, making it an at least 20-power trampling attacker that should be able to win the game in one attack, as early as Turn 3! Just make sure to use cards like Royal Treatment and Snakeskin Veil to protect Tifa from removal because your opponent is going to try their best to kill it.
Use cards like Town Greeter, Cache Grab, and Splitskin Doll to get massive Saga creatures like Summon: Knights of Round and Summon: Bahamut in the graveyard. Then, use Yuna, Hope of Spira or Abuelo's Awakening to cheat them into play on the cheap!
The deck has basically every card that can make a 0/1 Wizard token that deals a damage to each opponent whenever we cast a noncreature spell, including Circle of Power, Cornered by Black Mages, Black Mage's Rod, and, of course, Kuja, Genome Sorcerer. If we can get three Wizards in play and flip Kuja, each noncreature spell we cast will deal two damage, which means with enough Wizard tokens, we should be able to burn our opponent out of the game in just a turn or two by casting cheap card draw like Highway Robbery, Opera Love Song, and Wrenn's Resolve!
Play as many Towns as possible and then use The Wandering Minstrel to make Elemental tokens and eventually pump them into lethal threats. Felidar Retreat and Rampaging Baloths give us backup ways of making tokens as we play our Towns to make sure that we have enough bodies for The Wandering Minstrel to be lethal, all while drawing an absurd amount of cards with Travel the Overworld
Ramp up to seven mana. Use Fierce Empath to tutor up Jumbo Cactuar. Use Trailblazing Historian or The Fire Crystal to give Jumbo Cactuar haste and Ragged Playmate or Rogue's Passage to make it unblockable so you can kill your opponent with one attack for 10,000 damage.
Play a bunch of sea creatures, which will play even more sea creatures if we have Kiora, Sovereign of the Deep. Play Summon: Leviathan to bounce all of our opponent's creatures and smash for a ton of damage!
Cards like Hinterland Sanctifier and Case of the Uneaten Feast gain us a life whenever a creature enters under our control. This life will put counters on Ajani's Pridemate, Essence Channeler, and Aerith Gainsborough, and if we have Minwu, White Mage, we'll put a counter on all of our Clerics too! Excalibur II can turn any creature into Ajani's Pridemate, which is especially scary with fliers like Resplendent Angel and Exemplar of Light.
Similar plan to the last deck, except with a legendary theme to power up Aerith Gainsborough's death trigger. Since all of our creatures except for Hinterland Sanctifier are legendary, if we can get some counters on Aerith and then have it die (which we can do by playing a second copy thanks to the legend rule), our team will get massive, maybe big enough to win with just one attack!
The goal of this deck is to get Terra, Magical Adept on the battlefield and pay six mana to transform it into Esper Terra. Then, we can use The Apprentice's Folly to create a non-legendary copy of Esper Terra, which allows this new non-legendary Esper Terra to copy itself with its own ability, giving us an infinite board of hasty 6/6 saga creatures to attack with!
Speaking of combos, the idea of this deck is to get Mindsplice Apparatus on the battlefield for enough turns to get it up to three counters so the cost of all of our instant and sorcery spells is reduced by three. This will let us cast Sorceress's Schemes for free, thanks to the red mana it makes when it resolves. With two copies of Sorceress's Schemes, we can loop them forever—cast one to return something random to our hand and then cast the second to return the first to our hand. This doesn't do anything by itself, but if we add Vivi Ornitier to the mix, we'll deal infinite damage and make an infinitely large Vivi! If we don't have Vivi, the Wizard token from Lindblum, Industrial Regency can take its place in the infinite damage combo.
A non-combo Vivi deck. Play Vivi and other threats that grow as we cast spells, like Red Mage's Rapier, Astrologian's Planisphere, and Monastery Swiftspear, and then cast as many cheap card-draw and removal spells as possible to grow our creatures. Turn Inside Out is notable since it can grow Vivi's power directly to let it make even more mana during our big spellslinger turn!
Get as many of our 15 copies of Cid, Timeless Artificer in the graveyard, either by cycling them or with The Tale of Tamiyo so they can grow all of the Hero tokens from our job-select equipment to massive proportions to take over the game!
Ramp into Clive, Ifrit's Dominant with cheap red permanents like Charming Scoundrel, Sunset Strikemaster, and Grabby Giant. Use Clive to refill our hand and eventually flip it to win the game. If that doesn't work, Koth, Fire of Resistance can also be very scary, especially if we can ultimate it to deal damage whenever we play one of our 24 Mountains.
Use Kefka, Court Mage and Emet-Selch, Unsundered to get big finishers like Summon: Bahamut, Sphinx of the Final Word, Summon: Primal Odin, and Ovika, Enigma Goliath in the graveyard, and then use Zombify to cheat one of them into play for just four mana! We can also just grind our opponent out of the game with card advantage and filtering from Kefka and Emet-Selch.
A Mono-Black Control deck built around Zenos yae Galvus, with the plan being to flip Zenos and win with the massive 8/8 flier on the backside while also killing everything our opponent plays!
Ramp into massive colorless finishers like Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut and Threefold Thunderhulk thanks to Ultima, Origin of Oblivion's ability to double our colorless mana.
Every creature in the deck is a Pirate, Scout, or Rogue to work with Vaan, Street Thief's ability, so we should be able to steal a card from our opponent's deck (and maybe make a Treasure) each turn! Basically a red aggro deck with a weird triple-tribal twist.
The goal of this deck is pretty simple: win with Summon: Primal Odin. We have Insatiable Avarice to tutor up Odin, plenty of removal to clear the way, and Swiftfoot Boots to protect it from removal, to help ensure that we can hit our opponent with Summon: Primal Odin the turn it gets to the second chapter. Coiling Rebirth is also pretty sweet in the deck. If we don't win with Odin the first time, we can reanimate it and, if we gift our opponent a card, get a second 1/1 copy to double up our chances of getting in that one lethal hit the second time around!
Use Jenova, Ancient Calamity to put counters on our creatures, with support from cards like Ornery Tumblewagg and The Earth Crystal to double our counters, while Hollowmurk Siege draws us cards. Thanks to their counter-adding abilities, creatures like Quirion Beastcaller and Wildborn Preserver can get super big, super quick, while Kami of Whispered Hopes makes oodles of mana.
Final Fantasy has a lot of Knights. This deck puts them together, with cards like Dion, Bahamut's Dominant, Cecil, Dark Knight, and Squall, SeeD Mercenary being especially impactful. We back up the new Final Fantasy knights with a bunch of old Magic-themed Knights like Elenda, Saint of Dusk for lifegain and Werefox Bodyguard for removal. Oh yeah, and don't forget that Battle Menu can always make a 2/2 Knight token!
Play Balthier and Fran and use it to crew various Vehicles to get additional combats. Chandra, Spark Hunter gives us a way to turn our vehicles into creatures without crewing. And keep in mind that if everything goes wrong, cards like Defend the Rider, Rocky Roads, and Wild Roads can make Pilot tokens, which are really good at crewing Vehicles.
A bunch of Demons, along with Ardyn, the Usurper giving us a massive finisher to reanimate any of our Demons that our opponent kills. Yes, I know that Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber is a full 25% of the deck's $40 budget, but it's also the best Demon card in Standard by far, so it's worth splurging a bit.
The idea of this deck is to play Demonic Pact or Greed's Gambit and then use Stiltzkin, Moogle Merchant or Harmless Offering to donate them to our opponent. Demonic Pact is our best "gift." We can play it, keep it for three turns to use all of its good modes, and then give it to our opponent on the turn before we'd have to choose "Lose the game," leaving them with only one super-painful choice. Greed's Gambit doesn't kill our opponent on the spot, but it's still very powerful. We can play it, make three 2/1 fliers, gain six life, draw three cards, and then immediately gift it to our opponent so they'll have to sacrifice a creature, discard a card, and lose 2 life on their end step!
A Boros Aggro deck headlined by Lightning, Army of One. If we can build a board and get in a hit with Lightning, its first strike damage will happen first, which will then double the damage from all of our other creatures when they connect for normal damage!
This deck is overloaded with creatures with enters triggers that either bounce our opponent's stuff or draw us cards. We can play cards like Pond Prophet, Aether Channeler, and Solemn Simulacrum early in the game for value and then eventually stick Y'shtola Rhul to blink them (twice!) on our end step to reuse their enters abilities. If we have Virtue of Knowledge on the battlefield, all of our creatures' enters abilities will trigger twice, giving us even more value. Eventually, we win by beating down or by our opponent giving up in the face of our endless stream of annoying value.
Final Fantasy has an artifact theme in Esper led by Noctis, Prince of Lucis, which lets us cast artifacts from our graveyard, and supported by cards including Golbez, Crystal Collector, Ashe, Princess of Dalmasca, and Edgar, King of Figaro. We back them up with artifact removal like Braided Net, Perilous Snare, White Auracite, and Spring-Loaded Sawblades. Eventually, Thousand Moons Smithy will make some massive Construct tokens to lead us to victory!
Conclusion
Anyway, hopefully these decks are helpful! Make sure to check out the MTGGoldfish YouTube channel for even more sweet brews! If you have any questions, leave them in the comments, and I'll do my best to answer. And as always, you can reach me on Twitter or Bluesky @SaffronOlive, or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
