As of today, we’re about halfway through the epic three-week spoiler season for Magic: The Gathering’s Final Fantasy set. So far it’s looking like a slam-dunk, with excellent flavor and some powerful new designs to boot. That said, players also have their concerns. With the reveal of Omega, the Heartless today, many have started to point out the glaring disparity in representation for each of the series’ 16 games in MTG Final Fantasy.
Issues like this were almost inevitable when taking on a project this ambitious. Even with that in mind, however, the current stats are fairly worrying. Some games have over 20 cards at the time of writing, while others have under five. For fans of those further down the list, the set could end up missing despite the best intentions. There’s still another week and a half to turn things around, of course, but there’s a real chance that Magic’s first Standard-legal UB set is marred by lopsided representation.
Omega, The Heartless In MTG Final Fantasy
- Omega, the Heartless
- Mana Value: 5GU
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Type: Legendary Artifact Creature – Robot
- Stats: 8/8
- Card Text: Wave Cannon – When this creature enters, for each opponent, tap a nonland permanent that player controls. Put X stun counters on those permanents and you gain X life, where X is the number of nonbasic lands you control.
Before we get into the meat of the discussion, let’s look at the spoiler that really got it going. Omega, the Heartless is an MTG card pretty much every Final Fantasy fan saw coming. Omega is one of the series’ most prolific superbosses, appearing in seven different mainline games and even more spin-offs. It’s typically one of the toughest encounters in the games it appears in. Wizards has done an admirable job of capturing that power here.
When Omega enters, you get to shut down a nonland permanent for each player for a number of turns equal to your nonbasic land count. This is actually the first card in Magic: The Gathering history to reward you for playing nonbasic lands. We’ve seen plenty of cards that do the opposite, like Blood Moon and Price of Progress, but never anything like this. Omega also provides lifegain equal to your nonbasic count too, really hammering the point home.
Unless you’re playing casual Commander, chances are your manabase will be made up largely of nonbasic lands. This means Omega will essentially remove whatever you target with it, given games usually run to about 10 turns on average. It’s an interactive take on removal, since it lets the targets stick around for abilities etc., but it is still very powerful. Combined with the lifegain, it’s a great way to stabilize in a hostile boardstate.
Because it scales up with your land count, Omega is one of the rare big creatures you don’t really want to cheat into play. It is a fantastic blink target, however, so definitely keep it in mind for those decks. Outside of Commander its impact is much lower, so don’t expect it to do much in constructed Magic.
An Unbalanced Affair
Omega, the Heartless is a great MTG card, and a solid representation of a Final Fantasy icon. What players have been taking issue with is the specific version of Omega Wizards chose to use here. Though it debuted in Final Fantasy V, the Final Fantasy XIV version of the character was chosen for the card.
“Man they really hate FF5 don’t they? First Shinryu and now Omega are their FFXIV versions and not their originals. Big sadge.”
pm_me_shit_memes, via r/MagicTCG
As the comment above notes, this continues a trend of Wizards using Final Fantasy XIV an awful lot. Shinryu also debuted in V, yet the XIV version is what we got in the set. Similarly, Matoya, a character from the very first entry in the series, is shown here in her XIV incarnation.
This sounds like a minor problem on the surface, but when you break down the stats it exposes a major imbalance. Barathesh put together a breakdown of the spoilers so far by game, and the results are striking. Final Fantasy XIV has 25 cards right now, while Final Fantasy II only has four. Final Fantasy V, which could easily have had Omega and Shinryu, is sitting at only eight.
“Look, I love ff14 as much as the next player but I’m literally playing thru FF5 now, which is now my first time, and the fact it’s one of the literal best ffs with so little representation, it feels a little frustrating. This slot could’ve been for Lenna, Hiryu, or even 5’s Omega.”
jasiad, via r/MagicTCG
Other games are guilty of hogging the limelight, too. The three runners-up to the top spot are VII, X, and VI. Interestingly, this means the four games getting the most representation in the main set so far are also the ones with dedicated Commander decks. As some players pointed out, Wizards could’ve reduced the number of cards for these games in the main set given they all got a ton in their decks. They went the other way, however, which makes the whole thing feel a bit unbalanced.
Factor in the current rarity unbalance and things look even worse. For a set purporting to celebrate all of Final Fantasy, there’s a lot going neglected here.
Within Reason?
All of that said, there are valid reasons for pursuing this path. The reason VI, VII, X, and XIV were chosen for the Commander decks is because they’re the four most popular Final Fantasy games overall. They have the largest fanbases, and they’re likely to draw the biggest crowds if well-represented. Wizards is always citing the virtues of delivering what the majority of the audience wants, and this is just an extension of that mindset.
“They play a big part of the story in FF14, rather than just being superbosses. I do agree that FF5 deserves more though.”
apstrac2, via r/MagicTCG
There’s also the fact that the reused characters in Final Fantasy XIV get a lot more development in that game. Omega, for example, is really just a powerful, enigmatic robot in Final Fantasy V. In XIV, however, it’s a fully-fledged character with a raid series built around it. The fact that XIV is a bit of a melting point of elements from across the series makes things a little awkward, but ultimately its higher representation does make sense.
We also haven’t seen the entire set yet. Right now we’ve seen about 174 cards, which leaves 135 to go. If these are well-distributed, Wizards could easily address the main set imbalance by the end. Every game might not get its fair share of rares and mythics, but they could at least get some cards for fans to enjoy.
As a big fan of Final Fantasy V myself, these snubs do sting a little. As long as Wizards sticks the landing balance-wise and throws in a good Exdeath card, however, Final Fantasy as a set should be able to please all fans of the series alike.
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