The Final Fantasy preview season has officially begun, and it’s time to dive deep into some fan-favorite characters. During the debut, we saw Traveling Chocobo, a powerful new lands-matter creature with bizarre incidental Bird synergy attached. At the time, this looked like glorified flavor text: the kind of design common in Universes Beyond products. When you factor in Bartz and Boko, however, an MTG card revealed a bit later on, suddenly Bird Typal doesn’t sound so silly.
With two excellent Birds-matter abilities on a single creature, there’s a very real chance that there could be a deck here. Doubly so when you consider the high chance of additional Chocobo cards as spoilers continue. Final Fantasy V may be the awkward middle child of the series’ SNES trilogy, but its protagonist could take Magic: The Gathering by storm if the winds blow right.
Bartz And Boko MTG
- Mana Value: 3GG
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Legendary Creature – Human Bird
- Stats: 4/3
- Card Text: Affinity for Birds (This spell costs 1 less to cast for each Bird you control.)
When Bartz and Boko enters, each other Bird you control deals damage equal to its power to target creature an opponent controls.
The first thing you’ll notice about Bartz and Boko, other than it’s weird-sounding ‘Human Bird’ Creature type, is that first line of text. This is the first card in Magic: The Gathering history to feature ‘Affinity for Birds.’ In the past, this probably wouldn’t have been keyworded, but recent changes by Wizards have pushed the mechanic into prominence. To humorous effect, in this case.
In terms of actual MTG gameplay, this means you can get Bartz and Boko out for as little as two mana if you have a decent flock of Birds in play. Two mana for a 4/3 is pretty great, even by modern Magic standards. Birds aren’t super-common as a type, but there are a lot of cards that generate 1/1 Bird tokens. Getting the full discount may not be as tricky as it seems, thanks to this.
Once you do get Bartz and Boko out, the party really gets going. A free bite effect for all of your other Birds is a pretty great deal, and can really let you get creative with the boardstate. You can focus multiple Birds on a single target to remove it, or spread the damage out to put opposing fliers in trade-down range before combat.
The fact that Bartz and Boko is a bird itself is obviously great for a Bird Typal deck. It also means it plays surprisingly well in multiples. With one copy out, you can play the second with a discount and use the trigger to have your original copy remove a creature. It’s not an ideal line by any means, but it’s more use than you get out of most duplicate legendaries.
The Birds Are Back In Town
Bartz and Boko is a pretty solid MTG card, that much is certain. The question is whether or not the Bird Typal shell that it needs to excel will be present in Standard or not. There are certainly hints that Final Fantasy as a set will have a bit of a Bird theme across its Chocobo cards. Sazh’s Chocobo is a solid on-type one-drop, while Traveling Chocobo is an incredible card for a Birds deck that plays very nicely with the former.
With these two cards alone, the foundations for a Mono-Green Chocobo/Bird Typal list are very much in place. We’ll need a few more cards to really get things going, but it’s a great start. Moving beyond green, Bloomburrow actually had a ton of Bird support too, albeit in Azorius colors instead.
You’ve got an efficient counterspell in Dazzling Denial, cheap lords in Valley Questcaller and Valley Floodcaller, and a powerful blink engine in Salvation Swan. At the top of the food chain, you even have Kastral, the Windcrested, which offers huge utility for your Birds that get through in combat. Going briefly beyond Bloomburrow, Tawnos the Toymaker is also a great addition to the deck, working particularly well with Bartz and Boko.
We’ll have to wait and see what the best overall color combo for the deck will be, but right now Esper is looking good as a catch-all. I suspect Final Fantasy will support a Mono-Green Landfall version as well, but Esper will give a lot more flexibility. Using any of these tools requires branching out into two or three colors, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Starting Town alone should make color splashes much easier in the coming Standard.
Higher And Higher
Standard aside, there’s real potential for Bartz and Boko to enable the wacky MTG Bird deck of your dreams in Commander. It’s not much use as a Commander itself due to the lack of good Bird support in green, but it makes an excellent addition to the 99 of an existing list.
As with Standard, Esper is your best bet here. There’s a ton of Bird support in white and blue, with Seaside Haven and Airborne Aid serving as powerful card draw payoffs for the archetype. You get access to a surprising number of lord effects too, including Soulcatchers’ Aerie and Kangee, Aerie Keeper. These play very nicely with Bartz and Boko, since they expand the range of creatures you can kill with the mass bite effect.
In terms of a Commander for an Esper Bird Typal deck, there are a couple of good options. Derevi, Empyrial Tactician is an Esper Combo classic, while Falco Spara, Pactweaver pushes you more towards a counters-matter theme. Of the two, Falco Spara definitely makes better use of Bartz and Boko. Stacking up counters makes the mass bite effect much better, and it’s a good plan anyway in a deck full of fliers.
Alternatively, you could cut white and go for something like Radagast, Wizard of Wilds or Tawnos the Toymaker. You lose out on a lot of options, but the extra consistency helps balance it out. You also save a bunch by not buying into a three-color manabase, if that’s an issue.
Overall, while Bartz and Boko isn’t enough to make Birds a contender in Commander on its own, it’s a great step in that direction. If we get a couple more solid Chocobos in the set, it could very well become a viable archetype soon.