Now that we have the full set to pore over, it’s official: Final Fantasy has the most legendary creatures of any expansion in Magic: The Gathering history. With an eye-watering 99 new legends, it even surpasses Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth. That’s a lot of beloved characters to enjoy, and a lot of new options for heading up your Commander deck. For this reason, picking the best new Commanders from the Final Fantasy MTG set is no easy task.
That said, we’ve managed to whittle down the great lumpen mass of new legends until only five sparkling gems remain. These are the legends that, for one reason or another, make the best build-arounds for the Commander format. If you want to try out a new Final Fantasy Commander and you want to win a lot of games, then these are the cards for you.
5 | Ultima, Origin Of Oblivion
- Mana Value: 5
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Legendary Creature – God
- Stats: 4/4
- Card Text: Flying.
Whenever Ultima attacks, put a blight counter on target land. For as long as that land has a blight counter on it, it loses all land types and abilities and has “Tap: Add C.”
Whenever you tap a land for C, add an additional C.
In over 30 years of Magic: The Gathering, we’ve only had 27 creatures that can serve as fully colorless Commanders. Of this already small cross-section, only a few are really any good in the role. With this in mind, Ultima, Origin of Oblivion is a welcome addition from Final Fantasy.
This is one of the best colorless Commanders we’ve ever seen. Its passive ability, which essentially doubles your mana from all of your colorless lands, is absolutely terrifying. Colorless decks tend to rely on expensive Eldrazi as their big haymakers and finishers. With Ultima in play, you can start dropping them early on, even without any additional ramp or mana rocks.
On top of that, Ultima is also an answer to the many powerful utility lands in the format. Land destruction is so taboo in Commander that players running the likes of Shifting Woodland or Urza’s Saga tend to get away with it Scot free. Ultima removes the huge upsides of these lands while still leaving your opponent with a mana source to use. This makes it less of a feels-bad than most land destruction, and therefore more acceptable in most pods. Having access to an effect like this out of the command zone is fantastic, to boot.
4 | Choco, Seeker Of Paradise
- Mana Value: 1GWU
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Legendary Creature – Bird
- Stats: 3/5
- Card Text: Whenever one or more Birds you control attack, look at that many cards from the top of your library. You may put one of them into your hand. Then put any number of land cards from among them onto the battlefield tapped and the rest into your graveyard.
Landfall — Whenever a land you control enters, Choco gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
Bird Typal hasn’t ever really been a viable deck in Commander, but Choco totally changes that. Its first ability is so absurdly powerful that it makes cramming a deck full of mediocre Bird cards an attractive proposition, which is pretty impressive in and of itself.
Every time you swing with Birds with Choco out, you get to dig into your deck, draw a card, and drop (potentially) multiple lands into play at once. Any cards you don’t draw or ramp out go to your graveyard, which is a great cherry on top. Ramp and card draw are both staple features of pretty much every Commander deck, so getting access to them out of the command zone is great.
Bird is a type with lots of access to tokens, whether it’s Battle Screech or Murmuring Mystic. This means it’s easy for a Choco deck to go wide, and therefore get a lot of benefit out of its ability. Choco itself doesn’t even need to attack either, which is a major plus. This means you can get the ability going as soon as Choco drops, and can hold it back to keep your card advantage engine safe.
Factor in Choco’s Landfall ability, which lets it hit surprisingly hard if you drop a few lands mid-combat with its other effect, and you have an exceptional new Bant option for Commander. It may look niche at first, but Choco is definitely one of the best new Commanders in the Final Fantasy MTG set.
3 | Kefka, Court Mage
- Kefka, Court Mage
- Mana Value: 2UBR
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Type: Legendary Creature – Human Wizard
- Stats: 4/5
- Card Text: Whenever Kefka enters or attacks, each player discards a card. Then you draw a card for each card type among cards discarded this way.
8: Each opponent sacrifices a permanent of their choice. Transform Kefka. Activate only as a sorcery.- Kefka, Ruler of Ruin
- Type: Legendary Creature – Avatar Wizard
- Stats: 5/7
- Card Text: Flying.
Whenever an opponent loses life during your turn, you draw that many cards.
Kefka Palazzo is a real fan-favorite among Final Fantasy’s extensive cast of villains, known for his off-the-wall personality and his world-ending power. Wizards managed to capture both sides of the character in this incredible new flip legend.
For starters, the front side of Kefka is a totally fine Commander by itself. When it enters, it strips resources from the whole table while drawing you cards, sometimes enough to fully refill your hand. It gets to do this on attack, too, which means Kefka is a great value engine over time. A 4/5 for five with no evasion is rough body-wise, but you can easily suit him up with Auras and Equipment and grind your opponents out.
If you ever find yourself with eight mana to spare, Kefka can become one of the scariest card draw engines we’ve ever seen. Forget Griselbrand drawing you seven a turn, Kefka turns every source of life loss into a card draw spell. Lightning Bolt becomes Ancestral Recall, a single Purphoros trigger draws you six, the list goes on. Basically, if Kefka survives a turn on its flip side, the game is probably just over.
I’m most inclined to suggest a Voltron playstyle for Kefka, since both halves benefit from combat buffs, but honestly, you can build any deck around him. Card draw and hand attack are always good, so whatever Grixis strategy you’re running, there’s a good chance he can make it better.
2 | The Wandering Minstrel
- Mana Value: GU
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Legendary Creature – Human Bard
- Stats: 1/3
- Card Text: Lands you control enter untapped.
The Minstrel’s Ballad — At the beginning of combat on your turn, if you control five or more Towns, create a 2/2 Elemental creature token that’s all colors.
3WUBRG: Other creatures you control get +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of Towns you control.
While five-color Commanders have it a bit better than colorless Commanders, there are still only around 50 of them in the entirety of Magic: The Gathering. This makes Wandering Minstrel, a new option in the category, noteworthy right out of the gate.
Honestly, just being a five-color, two-mana pseudo-Amulet of Vigor in the command zone is probably enough for Wandering Minstrel to see heavy play. That ability lets you cut way down on the cost of your manabase, running bulk tap lands like Tangled Islet as full-on duals. Suddenly Evolving Wilds is a better Prismatic Vista, and Path of Ancestry is a better Command Tower. Minstrel is a total game-changer for budget players based on this element alone.
Of course, there are also less innocent ways to use Minstrel’s effect. You can create combo lines with the Ravnica bounce lands and Exploration effects, ramping into huge threats early on in a game. You can also easily abuse Lotus Field alongside Crucible of Worlds and friends.
We haven’t even mentioned the Town synergy yet, which turns Minstrel into a token factory and a Craterhoof-on-demand if you run the new Final Fantasy tap lands. There’s a ton to unpack with this card, and I can easily see it being one of the best MTG Final Fantasy Commanders in the long run, both for casual and cEDH.
1 | Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER
- Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER
- Mana Value: 2B
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Type: Legendary Creature – Human Avatar Soldier
- Stats: 3/3
- Card Text: Whenever Sephiroth enters or attacks, you may sacrifice another creature. If you do, draw a card.
Whenever another creature dies, target opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life. If this is the fourth time this ability has resolved this turn, transform Sephiroth.- Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel
- Type: Legendary Creature – Angel Nightmare Avatar
- Stats: 5/5
- Card Text: Flying.
Super Nova — As this creature transforms into Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel, you get an emblem with “Whenever a creature dies, target opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.”
Whenever Sephiroth attacks, you may sacrifice any number of other creatures. If you do, draw that many cards.
While some of the entries on this list were chosen for their widespread potential in multiple decks, Sephiroth does one thing very, very well indeed. He’s the best Commander we’ve ever seen for an Aristocrats MTG deck, in Final Fantasy or otherwise.
Aristocrats is often a tricky deck to build, since you need to balance fodder generation, sacrifice outlets, and payoffs. Sephiroth gives you the latter two out of the command zone, being a Blood Artist that can also cash your creatures in for cards. Like Kefka, Sephiroth would be playable with the front side alone. When you factor in the back half, things get truly outrageous.
Once Sephiroth flips, which is easy to achieve with an Accursed Marauder or any kind of Grave Pact effect, the Blood Artist effect becomes permanent, and you get access to a terrifying 5/5 Flier that can draw you several cards a turn. In Commander, it’s very much possible to stack up multiple emblems by replaying Sephiroth from the command zone, and once you’re at that point, the game’s probably over.
Being Mono-Black isn’t ideal in terms of color access for Aristocrats, but you still get most of the good support pieces. It’s hard to imagine Wizards ever printing a more perfect Aristocrats Commander than this. Given how good the archetype is in the format, Sephiroth was an easy top pick for that reason.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage!