The spoiler season for Tarkir: Dragonstorm is set to begin in a little over a week. Hype for the set has been steadily building for a while now, following the recent First Look and ongoing story. Finally returning to Tarkir after ten long years, it’s safe to say this hugely anticipated set has been a long time coming. Despite this, the unusual cadence of recent spoilers has continually threatened to overshadow the set’s release.
Ahead of next week’s Tarkir: Dragonstorm spoilers, a brand new Final Fantasy MTG card has been revealed. Debuted by the Final Fantasy Japan Twitter account, Final Fantasy VI’s Celes is coming to MTG as Rune Knight, Celes. Specifically, Celes can be found as the alternative Commander in the Revival Trance precon.
Rune Knight, Celes
Kouske-Kun
- Mana Value: 1RWB
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Type: Legendary Creature – Human Wizard Knight
- Stats: 4/4
- Card Text: When this enters, discard any number of cards then draw that many cards plus one.
Whenever one or more other creatures you control enter the battlefield, if one or more of them entered the battlefield from a graveyard or were cast from graveyard, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control.
Considering she only costs four mana, Rune Knight, Celes has a lot of tricks up her sleeves. For starters, when she enters, she’ll let you sculpt your hand, through discarding and drawing which is always a welcome benefit. Within the Revival Trance deck, Celes will even pull double duty since the deck clearly has a graveyard-matters theme.
On its own, this enters effect makes Rune Knight, Celes a compelling consistency engine that should provide repeated value. While this is undoubtedly useful, Celes’ second ability is where the bulk of their power comes from. Within the Revival Trance deck, this ability is bound to dish out plenty of +1/+1 counters to provide board-wide buffs to the deck’s creatures.
Unsurprisingly, there’s an obvious synergy with the deck’s main Commander, Terra, Herald of Hope, who is a capable reanimation engine herself. Having both of these cards in play together ensures that your creatures come back bigger and stronger than usual. Considering Battle Trance seems themed around low-cost creatures, Celes could provide an impressive supply of buffs.
Thanks to their relevant typing, these buffs can be amped up even further by Harmonic Prodigy. Doubling the discard triggers and buffs too, this Modern Horizons 2 card already seems like an easy upgrade to Revival Trance. This card even synergizes well with Terra, so it may well see a Final Fantasy-themed reprint in the deck if we’re lucky.
Currently, while Terra and Celes clearly have potential it’s unclear how strong the Revival Trance deck will be. For better or worse, we’re still quite a ways away from seeing the full decklist. Thankfully, both these Commanders will have legs outside of their original home, Rune Knight, Celes especially.
Persistently Powerful
As alluded to in the title, Rune Knight, Celes can go infinite with Persist creatures. At the very least, Celes allows Persist to trigger repeatedly since the -1/-1 counter will be counteracted. This is already exceptionally powerful and near-enough mandates Celes be removed. If she sticks around, you basically have an infinite supply of chump blockers, at the very least.
As if this synergy wasn’t powerful enough already, you can throw Goblin Bombardment into the mix. Alongside Celes, this simple enchantment allows you to sacrifice a creature with Persist an infinite number of times. Thanks to using Goblin Bombardment, this loop will ping anything and anyone for one damage. So, so long as you can get these three cards into play, you can end games of Commander on the spot. This is particularly nasty with Murderous Redcap, who can end the game in combination with any free sacrifice outlet, regardless of what it does.
Given the number of Persist creatures in MTG, and sacrifice engines too, building a deck around this infinite combo is definitely doable. Putting all your eggs in one basket like this may seem risky, but Rune Knight, Celes’ hand sculpting could make it surprisingly consistent. With just a little bit of ramp, turn three wins are definitely viable.
A Flavor Faux Pas
Between their combo potential, and their raw strength in reanimation-focused decks, Rune Knight, Celes is clearly strong. While this is all good from an MTG perspective, she’s somewhat lackluster through a Final Fantasy lens. While the card’s art is unmistakably Celes, from a flavor perspective, she’s missing her iconic ability.
In Final Fantasy VI, Celes’ Runic ability allows her to redirect and absorb an opponent’s spells. Given spell redirection exists in MTG on cards like Redirect, you’d expect to see this on Celes. While it can be argued that Rune Knight, Celes represents her story moments throughout Final Fantasy VI, no nods to Celes’s iconic ability seem like a glaring omission.
Justifying this problem, some MTG players noted on Reddit that Celes could also be getting a main set card. While this would allow for a more faithful representation of their character, there’s no guarantee we’re getting that. Since there are so many iconic Final Fantasy characters, there’s no way Wizards could give them all cards.
Ultimately, right now, there’s no telling whether or not multiple versions of Celes will exist in the Final Fantasy MTG set. Since she’s a popular character, Wizards may give her multiple versions, like Cloud. At the same time, however, Wizards may want to cut repetition so more characters can be shown off.
Sadly, we’ve got to wait and see what happens once the spoiler season for the Final Fantasy MTG set rolls around. Right now, spoilers aren’t due to begin until mid-May. Thankfully, we do at least have Tarkir: Dragonstorm to look forward to, to tide us over until then.