Today marks the penultimate day of preview season for Magic: The Gathering’s Final Fantasy set. You might expect reveals to be running on fumes by now, down to Draft chaff commons and janky rares. Turns out Wizards kept some heat back for the final days of MTG Final Fantasy previews, however, with some particularly spicy pieces of Equipment.
Both Genji Glove and Excalibur II look fantastic, bringing iconic gear from the series to Magic in fine form. Genji Glove is particularly exciting, granting an effect typically reserved for red to all colors. These cards are great on their own, but they’re even better in context. Final Fantasy is a set stacked with good Equipment support, which makes cards like these even more likely to see play than usual.
Genji Glove
- Mana Value: 5
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Artifact – Equipment
- Card Text: Equipped creature has Double Strike.
Whenever equipped creature attacks, if it’s the first combat phase of the turn, untap it. After this phase, there is an additional combat phase.
Equip 3.
Genji Glove may just be the most exciting new Equipment card in MTG Final Fantasy. Most of that excitement, unsurprisingly, comes from its second ability. Whenever a creature wearing Genji Glove attacks, you get to untap all of your creatures and take an extra combat phase after the current one.
This is an effect we’ve seen quite a bit over the years, but it’s typically confined to red cards. Weird exceptions like Finest Hour aside, this means most decks haven’t experienced the joy of the extra combat phase. Genji Glove, being colorless, opens up the effect to literally any deck. The condition here is very simple to meet, too, in contrast to other recent options like Anzrag. For Commander, the lack of color restriction here is a massive deal, as many players have already identified.
“Yeah this is fucking nuts for commander! Not necessarily power wise but just having that option in mono white voltron for example is HUGE”
DJ_Red_Lantern, via r/MagicTCG
Genji Glove is also part of a very small group of Equipment that grants Double Strike. This is a scary keyword on its own, and doubly so when you get an extra attack with the creature in question. As DJ_Red_Lantern notes above, this makes Genji Glove an easy addition to most Voltron decks.
Unfortunately, Wizards saddled this card with hefty mana costs on both ends. Three mana to Equip is steep enough, but five mana to cast really puts this out of reach for competitive formats. Unless you’re cheating the costs here somehow, Genji Glove will likely only be viable in Commander. Even then, with how fast the format is now and how prevalent removal is, you may have a tough time getting much use out of it.
Excalibur II
- Mana Value: 1
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Legendary Artifact – Equipment
- Card Text: Whenever you gain life, put a charge counter on Excalibur II.
Equipped creature gets +1/+1 for each charge counter on Excalibur II.
Equip 3.
Where the Genji Glove is a well-known recurring equipment piece from multiple Final Fantasy games, Excalibur II is one of the most ultra-specific weapons in the series. It’s found only in Final Fantasy IX, and only if you reach the game’s final dungeon in under 12 hours. The process of acquiring the sword is considered one of the worst side quests in the series, but the raw power it provides does balance it out somewhat.
Thankfully, that power translates very well into Magic: The Gathering, unlike The Ring of Lucii. Excalibur II is significantly more affordable than Genji Glove at just one mana to cast. This is important, since you need to build up its power over time. Every time you gain life Excalibur II gets a counter, which increases the stat buff it offers when equipped. This means it does literally nothing at first, but can quickly scale to become incredibly dangerous in the right deck.
Strategies like Aristocrats and Soul Sisters both gain small amounts of life constantly during games. This can quickly turn Excalibur II into a force to be reckoned with. Its equip cost is pricey at three mana, but once it’s granting +5/+5 or more, that won’t seem like a lot. It naturally plays well in Voltron decks, since they tend to feature Lifelink somewhere in their keyword soup, and in decks with access to Proliferate effects to build up extra charge counters.
The main downside to Excalibur II is that it’s an awful topdeck later on in a game. With how many ways there are to tutor cheap artifacts and Equipment these days, that shouldn’t be a major problem, but it’s worth bearing in mind before you add it to your Commander deck.
Huge Equipment Support In MTG Final Fantasy
Genji Glove and Excalibur II are both fantastic Equipment MTG cards from Final Fantasy. They’re both held back a bit by their clunky costs, however, which has been a recurring issue for Equipment in general across Magic history. Fortunately, Final Fantasy brings in a shedload of Equipment support pieces to help cards like this out.
This set has everything an Equipment fan needs. You have Cloud, Midgar Mercenary to tutor up the piece you want, and Freya Crescent as a one-mana mana dork to cast it. You also have a ton of ways to reduce, or even completely remove, equip costs. Raubahn, Bull of Ala Mhigo has already received a lot of attention for being an aggressive option in this category, as has Stolen Uniform. Firion, Wild Rose Warrior fills a similar role in an unorthodox way. There are even great support pieces at lower rarities, too, like Zack Fair and Weapons Vendor.
Is this new batch of support enough to make Equipment viable in Standard? Quite possibly. I don’t expect a fully-dedicated Equipment list to break out, of course, but we could see a modified version of Mono-Red Mice try a few of them out. Equip abilities trigger Valiant just as well as combat tricks, so Raubahn could easily see play there alongside something like Coral Sword or Blacksmith’s Talent.
Even if Standard falls through, Equipment-focused decks in Commander will have a field day with these new options. Pretty much every new Equipment in the set is interesting for the format, and it even adds some new Commander options in Giott and Gilgamesh. There’s never been a better time to suit up, in other words.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage!
