As of today, the Magic: The Gathering x Final Fantasy floodgates are officially open! An epic three-week spoiler season sprawls out before us, and Wizards has decided to kick off the festivities with a bang. Among the deluge of new MTG cards revealed at today’s PAX East panel, Traveling Chocobo made what was perhaps the most striking impression. Not just for its capabilities as a card, but for its extensive range of inevitably valuable variants.
While it hasn’t been officially confirmed as the Headliner card for Final Fantasy, it looks like a likely candidate based on today. Not only is this the only Serialized card in the set, but it’s also getting a handful of neon-hued variant editions as well. Just like in the Final Fantasy games themselves, it looks like Chocobo hunting is on the menu for this set.
Traveling Chocobo MTG
- Mana Value: 2G
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Type: Creature – Bird
- Stats: 3/2
- Card Text: You may look at the top card of your library any time.
You may play lands and cast Bird spells from the top of your library.
If a land or Bird you control entering the battlefield causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control to trigger, that ability triggers an additional time.
Traveling Chocobo is essentially a less color-intensive Augur of Autumn. You don’t get to cast non-Bird creatures, but you do get a more aggressive body. Playing lands from the top of your library is a fantastic ability to have access to, particularly in Commander. In most games, it’ll essentially draw you a couple of cards, which is great for a three-drop. It also plays very nicely with deck manipulation effects, like Brainstorm and Sylvan Library.
Not only is Traveling Chocobo yet another Future Sight-esque effect, it’s also yet another Panharmonicon. While it’s in play, you get double triggers from all your lands and Birds entering. As above, the Birds part here is mostly flavor text. Bird Typal isn’t, and hasn’t ever been, a viable MTG archetype, so you’re unlikely to get much mileage here. The lands part, however, is another story.
There’s a vast range of applications and synergies for this effect. For starters, it lets you double down on lands with handy enters effects, like Bojuka Bog or Mystic Sanctuary. Even more crucially, it doubles on-board effects caused by your lands. This means all your Landfall triggers, all your Field of the Dead triggers, etc., are going to net you double value.
Lay Of The Land
Right off the bat Traveling Chocobo looks like a card with a ton of potential across a range of MTG formats. Both halves here, the lands-from-library effect and the trigger doubling, are historically very popular with players. Put them together, and shenanigans will almost certainly be afoot.
For Standard, a Landfall theme does seem to be forming in Final Fantasy, between Sazh’s Chocobo, Zell Dincht, and Gladiolus Amicitia. These join a few bangers already legal in the format, like Bristly Bill and Iridescent Vinelasher. Whether this deck ends up as Gruul, Golgari, or Jund, I expect players to test it out at least. Should such a deck be created, Traveling Chocobo is going to be a slam-dunk four-of in every list.
There’s probably an argument that the card is efficient enough for Standard even in a non-land-focused deck. The likes of Golgari Midrange and Domain can likely make room for a well-statted draw engine in the three-drop slot. It’s also worth noting that we’re getting a new Mythic Rare land cycle in Edge of Eternities, which may make the card even more viable.
There may even be room for the card in older formats. Modern Amulet Titan decks, for example, would very much appreciate a way to double their land triggers and their Amulet of Vigor untaps. Getting access to lands off the top is a nice extender for the deck, too.
That said, I expect this card to do the bulk of its work in Commander. Landfall Commanders like The Necrobloom and Lord Windgrace obviously love it, but it’s also just a generically good green value piece in the format. You probably need a good reason not to run it, honestly, which is great news for the card’s power level if not format variety.
A Bird Of Many Colors
Traveling Chocobo is a pretty sweet new MTG card all told. Wizards clearly know this, since they’ve dedicated a substantial chunk of special art to it. In Final Fantasy Collector Boosters, you’ll be able to open five different neon-colored variants of the card. This ties in nicely with the Chocobo breeding features in Final Fantasy VII, which this card is based on.
We’ve seen this idea before, with Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty and Cavern of Souls in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. As with those variants, it’s likely some colors will be rarer and more valuable than others. The yellow Cavern goes for around $41, for example, while the red one goes for a whopping $488.
That’s not where the Traveling Chocobo fun ends. There’s one last variant of the card to cover: the Serialized golden version. The Golden Chocobo is the endgame of the Final Fantasy VII breeding quest, so it makes sense to see it represented on such a rare card here.
The golden hue here is lovely, but even more notable is the fact that this is a fully textless version of the card. This is the first time Wizards has done this for a Serialized card, which should set this version aside as extra-special.
There will only be 77 copies of this card in existence, which is pretty low for a mainline Serialized card. The double seven is flavorful, to be sure, but 777 would’ve gotten that across too. Price-wise, this means the card will likely be even more expensive than the recent Serialized cards we’ve seen, such as Mox Jasper and The Aetherspark.