Love it or hate it, it’s hard to deny that the Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy set is a hugely ambitious undertaking. Compressing 16 full games into around 300 cards is tricky enough. Consider the fact that every game has its own die-hard fans who hang on to every character and lore tidbit, and things get even tougher. No matter what they do, Wizards isn’t going to be able to include everything. For this reason, the sheer number of Blitzball-related cards we’ve seen spoiled for MTG Final Fantasy recently is surprising.
The mini-game is a beloved element of Final Fantasy X, which is one of the more popular entries in the series. The fact that Wizards dedicated a whole Commander deck to it proves as much. Even so, we’re now at four Blitzball cards in total, which is a lot of slots to dedicate to a sub-section of one game. Luckily, the cards themselves are pretty spicy, with potential in multiple archetypes in new Standard. Even if you never got round to it in-game, you may end up playing Blitzball in Magic soon.
Tidus, Blitzball Star
- Mana Value: 1WU
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Type: Legendary Creature – Human Warrior
- Stats: 2/1
- Card Text: Whenever an artifact you control enters, put a +1/+1 counter on Tidus.
Whenever Tidus attacks, tap target creature an opponent controls.
While Tidus, Blitzball Star may just be an uncommon, scaling up whenever an artifact enters is undeniably a powerful effect. This counts tokens like Food and Treasure as well as full-on cards, so it’s quite easy to get Tidus to an imposing size quickly. Just one Officious Interrogation will pump him up considerably, for example.
Handily, he’s in Azorius colors, which means he can easily slot into the existing Azorius Artifacts deck in Standard. When you’re dropping the likes of Simulacrum Synthesizer and Nesting Bot, Tidus is going to get scary very fast.
On top of that, he also comes with pseudo-evasion thanks to his tap ability. This lets you take a big blocker out of combat in advance, forcing your opponent to take bad trades or heavy damage. Current artifact decks in Standard tend to go fairly wide with tokens, so a card like this can really help pile the pressure on.
Unfortunately, Tidus is probably doomed right out of the gate thanks to his low stats. a 2/1 for three is a terrible rate in current Standard, to say nothing of other formats. Unless you can Flash artifacts in, he dies to every removal spell under the sun from the get-go. Even if you could, the overall mana investment likely wouldn’t be worth it. This makes sense for an uncommon, but it’ll sting for Final Fantasy X fans and MTG-playing Blitzball fans alike.
Sidequest: Play Blitzball
- Sidequest: Play Blitzball
- Mana Value: 2R
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Type: Enchantment
- Card Text: At the beginning of combat on your turn, target creature you control gets +2/+0 until end of turn.
At the end of combat on your turn, if a player was dealt 6 or more combat damage this turn, transform this enchantment, then attach it to a creature you control.- World Champion, Celestial Weapon
- Type: Legendary Artifact – Equipment
- Card Text: Double Overdrive — Equipped creature gets +2/+0 and has Double Strike.
Equip 3 (3: Attach to target creature you control. Equip only as a sorcery.)
On the front side, this card is pretty underwhelming. Three mana for a deeply mediocre combat trick every turn isn’t great, even if you do get it the turn Play Blitzball comes down. It is worth noting that this ability targets, however, which means it can get you your Valiant triggers for the likes of Heartfire Hero and Emberheart Challenger.
Once you flip over onto World Champion, things get considerably more interesting. An Equipment that grants +2/+0 and Double Strike feels reasonably costed at an Equip cost of three. You might never have to pay that, mind you, since it attaches for free when it flips. While your opponent does get a turn to deal with the equipped creature, that’s a lot of extra damage if you get to swing in.
World Champion, Celestial Weapon is a worthy reward, then, but getting it, like in Final Fantasy X itself, is fairly tricky. To do so, you need to hit your opponent for six or more combat damage in a single turn. This means you can’t use the likes of Burst Lightning to flip it, but you can use pump spells like Monstrous Rage.
In current Standard, decks that rely on Prowess/Valiant creatures are everywhere, and these are the decks that have the best chance of flipping this early. Playing a Heartfire Hero on one into a Monstrous Rage on two, then following up with this should get you the flip fairly consistently. The problem at that point is that World Champion is fairly superfluous. If you’re hitting for six on turn three, you’re probably winning even without it.
Blitzball Shot
- Mana Value: 1G
- Rarity: Common
- Type: Instant
- Card Text: Target creature gets +3/+3 and gains Trample until end of turn.
Blitzball Shot is a Giant Growth that also gives Trample, in exchange for one extra mana. Not only is this fairly unexciting in the era of Monstrous Rage, but it’s also an effect we already have in Standard. Several times over, in fact.
Both Staggering Size and Fanatical Strength offer the exact same effect, at the same cost, and both are Standard-legal right now. On top of that, Bloomburrow also gave us Overprotect, which adds Hexproof and Indestructible on top of Trample for no extra mana cost. Overprotect sees sparing play in Gruul Prowess lists, but the other two see none whatsoever. It stands to reason, then, that Blitzball Shot won’t be seeing much Standard play either.
Every set needs Limited filler cards, of course, and this falls firmly into that camp. You’ll run this in your Prerelease deck no problem, but beyond that, pretty much never again. One edge this has over its Standard contemporaries is its theming. Those who pick up the Final Fantasy X Commander deck and really want to go all-in on the Blitzball theme may run this MTG card for its flavor alone.
Final Fantasy will undoubtedly draw in a ton of new players who prioritize flavor over function, so in that sense, the card is a win. A little extra juice would’ve been nice here, but at that point, we’d likely be asking too much from a Standard-legal common.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage!
