In case you were somehow worried that Final Fantasy preview season was getting off to a slow start, Wizards decided to reveal all four of the set’s new Commander decks earlier today. That’s a huge chunk of new cards, not to mention reprints with new art, to sift through. Each of these decks is exciting in its own way, but it’s hard to deny that the Final Fantasy VII Commander deck is especially hotly anticipated.
As the game that really brought the series into the Western limelight, Final Fantasy VII is a favorite among fans. Its Commander deck is excellent too, packed with beloved characters and top-notch Equipment synergies. You’ll find plenty to love here, even if you’ve never played the game before, as long as you enjoy stacking up buffs and getting right into the red zone.
Lock And Load
As mentioned above, the big theme of the Final Fantasy VII Commander deck is Equipment. Most of the cards here, new or reprinted, support this idea in some way. Yuffie, for example, gets to equip something for free on entry. Pair that with her Ninjutsu ability, and you can turn an unblocked 1/1 flier into 13 damage with a Colossus Hammer in play. Hammer is, handily enough, reprinted with sweet new art in this deck. You can cast it for free, too, if you get Cid, Freeflier Pilot out first. His Flying is also a great way to enable Yuffie’s Ninjutsu.
There are plenty of ways to sneak your way around Equip costs in the deck. At the cost of his own life, Zack Fair can move his counters and Equipment to another creature for one mana, which can be exploited via certain Equipment like Mithril Coat. Professor Hojo offers a nice flexible discount that also applies to Equip costs, while also offering card draw if you use it. Helitrooper has a similar effect, but it can only be used on itself. Selfish, but the fact that you can use it multiple times per turn makes it potentially very powerful, especially given Helitrooper packs built-in evasion.
There are also some spicy new legendary creatures that care about your creatures being equipped. Red XIII offers a nice Vigilance and Trample boost, which pairs well with any raw stat buff from an Equipment. Sephiroth, Fallen Hero sets your modified creatures to beefy 7/5s at base when he swings, which is fantastic if you manage to go wide. Finally, Barret, Avalanche Leader gives you a stream of tokens and free Equips for them. This makes Sephiroth’s go-wide plan fairly feasible, which is unusual for an Equipment deck.
Shiny New Toys
Of course, no Equipment deck would be complete without some spicy Equipment. The Final Fantasy VII Commander deck comes with three all-new pieces, all of which are interesting in their own ways.
Conformer Shuriken looks innocuous, but it’s actually incredibly powerful. It taps down your opponent’s biggest blocker, and brings your creature up to par with it in the process. You can even use it on an already-tapped creature if it happens to be the biggest in play. An Equip cost of two makes it easy to attach, too, given all the discounts available in the deck.
Wrecking Ball Arm is a similar story. It sets your creature to 7/7 in stats, which means it gets worse the bigger your creature is normally. It does grant evasion as well, mind you, and it Equips for cheap if you’re targeting a legend. All the sevens here are pretty flavorful, and actually play into some potent synergies we’ll cover later.
Summoning Materia is the most out-there of the new Equipment in this deck. When equipped, it’s essentially a Vizier of the Menagerie effect on an artifact. It also offers a nice stat boost and mana production, both of which you can use in the same turn thanks to Vigilance. This one hits on a different angle to most MTG Equipment, so I expect it to see play far beyond decks like this one.
Tech Savvy
Beyond Equipment and Equipment synergies, the Final Fantasy VII Commander deck also packs a number of more general artifact synergy pieces. These obviously play quite nicely with all the Equipment in the deck, but have applications beyond that too.
Elena, Turk Recruit is a great example. She recurs any Historic card on entry as long as it’s not an Assassin. This is probably intended to stop some kind of infinite loop, but it’s also a hilarious way to snuff out some synergy with last year’s Assassin’s Creed set. Elena gets counters from all of your Historic casts as well, so she can get big fast and wear Equipment very nicely indeed. This is a card with a lot of potential in other decks thanks to how broad it is, but it’s not a knockout in terms of power level.
Avalanche of Sector 7 is more of an anti-artifact card, but it’s pretty great in Commander nonetheless. It scales up in power based on the total number of artifacts your opponents collectively control. Given how many decks play a handful of mana rocks and utility artifacts, it’s not hard for this to be swinging for four to eight damage in the early game.
The incidental burn for using artifacts is nice too, especially since it doesn’t exclude mana abilities like these effects often do. Your opponents are going to suffer for tapping those Sol Rings, which is bad news when a chunky Menace creature is on the scene.
Power To The People
Artifacts and Equipment aside, the Final Fantasy VII Commander deck has a bit of a power-matters sub-theme going on. This makes a ton of sense, given how easy it is to jack up a creature’s power with Equipment cards.
Vincent, Vengeful Atoner is a great example of this. It’s a reasonably-priced scaling creature on its face, but nothing fancy. Once it hits seven power, however, it gets to damage each opponent whenever it connects with one of them. It’s not hard to engineer combo wins with this ability, so don’t underestimate it across the table.
Cait Sith, Fortune Teller is a great synergy piece for Vincent. Each turn, it impulse draws you a card and grants a power boost equal to its mana value. This can easily push Vincent, or any of your creatures, into the realm of huge threats.
Bugenhagen, Wise Elder carries on the ‘power matters’ theme nicely. It lets you draw an extra card on your upkeep, provided you have a creature with power seven or greater. That’s not hard to achieve at all in this deck, so for two mana, it’s a great deal. Bugenhagen is also a very passable two-mana mana dork, too, so it has a lot of utility even if you can’t stick a big creature.
In a similar vein to Cait Sith, Heidegger, Shinra Executive is a four drop that provides a variable power boost at the start of combat. It also offers some nice token generation, though only when you’re behind. This feels like a card better suited for a Soldier Typal deck, in all honesty, but the power boost can get Vincent and Bugenhagen going when needed.
As The Prophecy Foretold
One unexpected element of the Final Fantasy VII Commander deck is the small batch of new Foretell cards it contains. This isn’t a mechanic we see every day, which makes these new designs intriguing right out of the gate.
Ultimate Magic: Holy may be the best of the bunch here. It grants all of your permanents Indestructible for a turn, which can essentially counter most board wipes. It also shuts down damage to you if you cast it after Foretelling it, which can stop huge aggro swings or burn combos in their tracks. At three mana, this is reasonably priced, so I can see a lot of decks running it as a budget Heroic Intervention.
Ultimate Magic: Meteor is a bit more disappointing. For the most part, this is just an overpriced board wipe, with some artifact hate built in if you’re willing to pay even more for it. Hitting one land per opponent when you’re already at six mana is unlikely to make a difference, so that mode isn’t great either. Overall, this pales in comparison to classics like Blasphemous Act and is an easy cut from the deck when upgrading.
Lifestream’s Blessing is potentially quite a powerful draw piece, especially in a power-matters deck like this. At five or six mana, it’s on par with the likes of Return of the Wildspeaker and Season of Gathering, which is a good start. The extra lifegain when Foretold is a pretty great bonus, however, which could push this over the top. In a lot of cases, this is going to feel like a green Sphinx’s Revelation with how it single-handedly gets you back in the game.
The Final Pieces
To close things out, let’s take a look at the cards from the Final Fantasy VII Commander deck that don’t really fit into a specific category. Aerith, Last Ancient feels like a particular curveball here, since lifegain is a pretty small part of the deck overall. She does enable herself thanks to Lifelink, which is certainly welcome, but Aerith still very much feels like a card from a different deck.
Summon: Kujata is less egregious, since it’s really just a generic value piece for the most part. It’s great at clearing the way for attacks with its first two chapters, before offering one last burst of damage with the last one. Being a 7/5 Hasty Trampler for six is pretty notable too, and makes this card scary as a reanimation target. Again, in a different deck, this could really shine.
Cloud’s Limit Break is one of the best removal spells we’ve seen for Commander in a good while. Destroying a tapped creature for two is boring, but solid. Destroying up to three tapped creatures for three is a fantastic rate. The final mode, which is essentially a one-sided full board wipe when played right, is also excellent at six mana. Put all three together, and you have a card most white decks can easily find a home for.
SOLDIER Military Program is also pretty great. It’s an endless army in a can for Aggro or Aristocrats decks, in a similar vein to Bitterblossom. Sure, it’s one turn slower, but it also gives tokens right away, so it balances out. The counter option is nice in Soldier Typal, or just as a bonus if you have your Commander out. With how much support Mardu Tokens just got in Tarkir: Dragonstorm, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this one take off.
Notable Reprints
As with every new Commander precon, the Final Fantasy VII Commander deck is also packed with reprints. In this case, these reprints are more exciting than usual, since they all have new, on-theme art to boot. There are some real bangers in here, which helps boost the value of the deck for seasoned Magic players.
Far and away, the biggest hit in the deck is Clever Concealment. This sits at around $20 right now, on account of being one of the very best protection spells in the format. The new art here also portrays an extremely iconic scene from early on in Final Fantasy VII, so there’s potential for this to be an especially pricey version.
After Concealment, we have some classic Equipment pieces. Darksteel Plate, which sits at $10, and Skullclamp, currently at around $5.50. The former has been power crept by Mithril Coat, but it’s still a great way to keep your Commander safe. The latter is probably the best card draw engine of all time, and the fact that it’s still over $5 despite a ton of reprints fully supports that assertion.
Rounding out the value reprints in the deck is Professional Face Breaker. At around $5, this is a must-play in most aggressive red decks in the format, as well as every single Treasure deck. The rest of the reprints in the deck are mostly bulk, but this is a solid value floor on which the new cards can build.