Yesterday’s installment of Weekly MTG was an absolute treasure trove of Final Fantasy spoilers. Over 40 cards were revealed on-stream, pushing us very close indeed to having the full set in our hands. Most of these were commons and uncommons, which helps a lot when trying to form a picture of what the set’s Limited environment will look like. Based on all of the MTG Final Fantasy spoilers so far, it seems like Chocobo decks will be the ones to beat.
The Gruul Chocobo archetype has tons of support at lower rarities. It’s also highly aggressive, which tends to work well in Limited formats. With so many clunky, overcosted legends in the set, this will likely be more true than usual for Final Fantasy. If you’re putting together a game plan for next week’s Prerelease, make sure it includes these chirpy yellow Birds.
New Chocobo Cards For MTG Final Fantasy Limited
There are plenty of new Chocobo cards to talk about from yesterday’s MTG Final Fantasy reveals. In particular, Chocobo Limited decks got two excellent pieces of removal yesterday.
X-damage burn spells like Choco-Comet are often worth playing on their own, regardless of additional upsides. Limited games tend to go long, and cards like this, that scale up with your resources, are invaluable. It can either take out a big threat or deliver the finishing blow later on.
On top of that, Choco-Comet also gives you a nifty Bird token with a power-boosting Landfall trigger. This is something we’ll see with a lot of today’s Chocobo cards, so keep it in mind. With a couple of these tokens out, your late-game lands become surprising sources of extra damage. The fact that you can cast Choco-Comet for just two and get the token is a big part of the card’s appeal for Limited.
At a baseline, Chocobo Kick is a classic green bite spell for two mana. That’s a playable card even without further text. The fact that it lets you bounce lands back to your hand, thus enabling more Landfall triggers, is a fantastic cherry on top. You even get to double your damage output if you do this, which means this card will punch well above its weight a lot of the time.
Welcome To Token Town
Adding more fuel to the fire, we have both Gysahl Greens and Call the Mountain Chocobo. Like Choco-Comet’s token, these are cards that produce 2/2 Birds that gain power via Landfall. They also both have Flashback, which means they’re essentially two creatures in one. Call is a lot more expensive, but it searches up a land for your Landfall synergies, and it also flashes back cheaper than Greens. Both are very solid in any kind of Chocobo deck in Limited, especially at common.
Moving on up, Chocobo Racetrack is expensive at five mana, but it turns all of your dead land drops later in the game into bodies on the board. It also snowballs nicely, since it’s a Landfall card that produces more Landfall cards.
Rounding out the new Chocobo cards, we got Sidequest: Raise a Chocobo, representing one of Final Fantasy VII’s most beloved time-wasters. This is just two mana for the standard 2/2 Bird token right off the bat, which is solid in Limited. If you can amass three more Birds using a combination of the cards above, however, then it becomes a truly terrifying threat.
The Black Chocobo buffs all of your Birds with its Landfall trigger, not just itself. It also brings in a land when it flips, guaranteeing you at least one hit of the ability. Assuming the four Birds you control are all Chocobo tokens, this puts eight extra power on the board once it flips. In Limited, that’s easily enough to end the game.
A Shot In Standard?
All of these new MTG Final Fantasy Chocobo cards look great for Limited, but these cards may have a shot in more competitive formats too.
Current Standard is very aggressive, sure, but Gruul Chocobos is shaping up to be a very aggressive deck in itself. With Sazh’s Chocobo on one and either Gysahl Greens or the Sidequest on two, you have a solid curve to work with. This deck also gets to make the absolute most of Traveling Chocobo, one of the best-looking cards in the set overall.
With Traveling Chocobo in play, Sazh’s Chocobo and all of your Bird tokens become explosive threats with just a single land drop. You can also leverage Bartz and Boko as a nifty board clear. A Standard version of the deck definitely won’t want the likes of Chocobo Racetrack or Call the Mountain Chocobo, but if you cap the curve at three, it starts looking like a pretty solid little Aggro deck.
Throw in some Gruul Prowess staples like Monstrous Rage and Questing Druid, and you have the makings of a potentially potent list. You could even add Loot, Exuberant Explorer or Hugs, Grisly Guardian for extra land drops and card advantage.
While it looked and sounded like a joke for much of preview season, there’s a real chance we see a Chocobo deck in Standard once Final Fantasy hits shelves. As perhaps the most recognizable icon from across the series, that would be a major flavor win for the set.
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