Alright. So as not to bury the lede, this is about FF VIII’s implementation into the upcoming MTG set in particular, I just need to provide adequate set up first. Because believe you me, I have thoughts and they’re not especially favorable.
Now. Magic the Gathering. I’m not going to bothering explaining that to you — you should know if you’re here — but I am something of an ex-fan. I played heavily through college, but fell off on graduation more or less because I lost my play group and didn’t feel like finding a new one. Combined in to this was my distaste with the aggressive powercreep the game faced and my disdain with the direction the story went, but those were more the things that killed my interest in keeping up while I wasn’t playing rather than what truly kept me from playing in the first place. In short: as player archetypes went, I was / am a Social Timmy / Vorthos. For the uninitiated, I play to have a good time with friends rather than win; prefer big, splashy, cool cards to complex combos; and I cared a whole lot about the story and lore. Which, naturally, means that every interaction I have with Magic causes me emotional pain because the story is bad and has been for years.
Why is any of this important though? Because it speaks a good deal to how I interact with my hobbies and fiction in general. Particularly that Vorthos bit. I care deeply about the stories I interact with and want to absorb every bit of information I can about it. I care a good deal about consistency and making sure that things are coherent. I care that things *feel* right for the story and its world. Which naturally means I was always going to suffer when they announced the Final Fantasy set of Magic. Because Final Fantasy is also something that I care deeply about and have invested a good bit into. When I first heard about the set — well, when I first heard about it, I knew I was going to be disappointed, but I was still excited because I couldn’t help but think of what to expect. Couldn’t help but imagine what they’d do for some of my favorite characters and other bits from the story. Which leads us into the question: well what did you expect? And that’s a good question. Because as Final Fantasy goes, I broadly have three favorite games across the various eras of the series: III from the pixel era, VIII from the angsty era, and XII from the early modern era. I also rather like XIV, but that’s a bit of a different discussion. Now let’s go through those one at a time.
But first, I’ll note the two general things that I wanted from this set — the two ‘Final Fantasy’ staples I wanted to see. Namely, Dragoons and the Warrior of Light. Because the spirit of the floor tank lives in me and the Edge calls me tonight (and in every fight), I love Dragoons. They’re my favorite FF class — even with Paladin being more broadly my favorite fantasy class. Sure, Dragoons are very simple. Jump isn’t really that interesting of a mechanic. But there’s just something I find satisfying about it. Plus, the dragon knight aesthetic is just so cool. Ever since my first run of FF III with my Luneth-Dragoon, I’ve loved the class. And… MTG has delivered somewhat, but in a way that leaves me very whelmed. Making Dragoon cards a half-flier makes sense, but… Eh. It’s not much to be excited about. And then on the other hand, we have the Warrior of Light — the one from FFI with the blue armor and the horned helmet and the Coruscant Blade. Simply put, I will consider this entire set a failure if we don’t get him at Mythic Rare. I don’t know what I want him to do, but I know I want him to get the respect he deserves.
Now, with that out of the way, the individual games, starting with FF III. You see, for as much as I love FF III — and it’s probably my favorite — I didn’t ever really expect much from it in a MTG set. Quite frankly, for as great of a game as it is, there isn’t all that much especially iconic to it in particular. A lot of the very FF III things are just Final Fantasy things. Because while I started the series, III codified it. There are some things of course — I thoroughly expect we’ll see a Cloud of Darkness card and a Crystal Tower land by the time the reveals are done and wouldn’t be surprised by an Onion Knight — but there aren’t really that many characters to run with. Squenix tends to ignore the existence of Luneth, Arc, Ingus, and Refia which basically just leaves Unei, Doga, and Xande. Pretending like I don’t know about the leak for a moment, I would expect there to be a Xande card since he is ostensibly the main antagonist of the game, but I’d be surprised if there was anyone out there especially banking on good Xande representation. And this is coming from a guy who loves the Crystal Tower raids in XIV. Unei and Doga even less so since, while they’re probably the second most important characters of the story, neither of them have especially mechanically interesting features to bring to MTG.
So it’s not like I really expected much from my favorite game in the series. Realistically speaking, and this mostly as an aside, what I hoped for most from the ‘pixel era’ was a card depicting Galuf’s Last Stand. Something like an aura enchantment that reads “Enchant creature you control. When this card enters the battlefield, place a finality counter on target creature an opponent controls. As long as your opponents control a creature with finality counters, whenever enchanted creature would leave the battlefield, immediately return it to the battlefield and attach Galuf’s Last Stand to it. When there are no more creatures with finality counters on the battlefield, sacrifice Galuf’s Last Stand and the enchanted creature.’ Or something like that. I’m not a game designer. Slap on flavor text of “This isn’t anger! Isn’t hatred! It’s–!” and you’ve got a winner of a card right there.
Then if not FF III, what about FF XII? Now I love XII. I love it a lot and it would take more time than I’m willing to give here to explain it all. But like III, I think it’s a bit too vague to really make interesting cards. I love the job system the license boards provide, but it means the characters are too modular. Any of them can do anything the others can (more or less) and their narrative roles don’t give much for what mechanics to expect in MTG. I would think there would be a card for the main six and Vayne — maybe add Gabranth in there too — but I have no real expectation of what those cards should be. Broadly speaking, you could expect Vaan’s a thief so maybe make him UB with something that gives card draw, Penelo is unofficially canonically a white mage so she could have some sort of life point manipulation in… let’s say mono-W, Ashe is a rebel driven by hatred and vengeance so she should have either some sort of lord effect or mass destruction in RB, and Basch (fon Ronsenburg of Dalmasca. Don’t believe Ondore’s lies. Basch lives.) is very much a royal knight dedicated to protecting his charge since that’s about all he has left, meaning he’s probably just a beater in either WU or WR.
There is, of course, still Fran and Balthier, but we already know about them. And their card is… fine. It’s fine. It does about what you might expect them to do and, sure, the sky pirates don’t have flying or give their vehicles flying — RIP Strahl — but that’s probably a balance concern. In discussing them with friends in one of my gaming groups, the consensus we reached is that their biggest problem is they’re just kind of boring. There’s nothing to get that excited about. They have no pizzazz. No charisma, which is a bit of a shame considering this is Balthier we’re talking about.
So are we moving on to VIII then? Not yet. We still have XIV. Now like I said, this is a bit of a discussion. Because unlike the two above, it’s not that I had low expectations so much as nothing particularly that I wanted. Like, sure, as per my discussion on Dragoons, I hope for a cool Estinien card. The Zodiark they’ve revealed is pretty cool and gives me hope that we’ll also get a good Mom card — but if I’m being honest, I don’t think they’ll be able to do Mom better than a fanmade, Landfall based planeswalker I saw a while back. If that card were real, I’d genuinely build that deck. I think that it would be cool to see Thaliak, my WoL’s patron and king of my ideal pursuit, or Halone, my favorite kind of archetype and queen of my heart, but I wouldn’t think we’d see the Twelve just because having a card for all of them would take up too much space. I am hopeful that we’ll see Elidibus / Themis, my favorite little justice emissary who’s really just doing his best — I like Elidibus a lot [Footnote 1] — because of the two separate Emmett’s, but I’m not sure exactly what I’d want him to be in the first place. Maybe something that puts counters on other creatures to buff them, flipping upon reaching a certain number of buffed creatures to become a big beater that draws strength from creature numbers. Otherwise… Eh. Yugiri and Zero would be cool, but I have little hope for either of them.
So finally, finally, we come to FF VIII. And I had high hopes for VIII. There’s a manageable cast of six, each one largely feels distinct enough that you could make some interesting cards, paramagic and the Stock-Junction system offer the potential for a cool set of unified mechanics… I mean, VIII had everything going for it. So of course they dropped the ball as hard as they could. I’ll start with my problems first, then go for a summary at the end.
This is Squall. It’s been officially revealed, so I don’t feel any compunctions about putting this (and the other cards I’ll put up) on this site. Now where exactly does Squall go wrong? Let’s start with the color identity, because why is he WB? Or, more to the point, why is he Black? Because I get White. Traditionally speaking, White is the color that represents Order in MTG. Hierarchy. Obedience. And that fits for a SeeD as a soldier. It makes sense for Squall, who wants to be a consummate professional and follow orders to a t. I have no issues there.
But on the other hand, Black is MTG’s color for ambition and power through sacrifice, neither of which especially fit Squall well. Sure, you could make an argument that the memory loss caused by junctioning Guardian Forces is representative of a Black sacrifice for power, but I would contend that it’s more a Blue attribute in the first place since that’s the color of thought, memory, and the manipulation thereof. Otherwise, Squall never really shows himself particularly willing to sacrifice others. You’ll note that despite Squall’s reputation for being a loner, the rest of Balamb Garden broadly likes and respects him because he’s reliable and competent. They make him their commander because they know he can get the job done and do what’s best for them. Similarly, Squall is not a particularly ambitious person. He actively dislikes being put in command and just wants to do his job. He doesn’t even have much of a goal early on, except to do his job. Even when he does grow into his own goal, it’s still something he chooses for someone else. It’s a decision to protect Rinoa no matter what, which has nothing to do with furthering his own ambitions.
So then what color should he be? I would argue that WU makes far more sense. As mentioned above, the addition of Blue helps tie in Paramgic and Junctioning as well as representing the calm, collected front that Squall puts up. Tying in to a further discussion I’ll have down in the summary, putting Red in the card text for an activated ability could be cool too to show how the collected front is a front. That no matter how deep Squall’s buried them, his emotions still come through when pushed to the edge; particularly in intense combat. And when you look at the general color identity of Jeskai — representing extreme skill, finesse, and martial Prowess — it fits well with what we know about Gunblade specialists being the masters of combat who are trained in the hardest weapon the setting has to offer. Furthermore, this WU color identity would help contrast him to what I would paint Seifer as: namely, RB. Seifer is someone motivated by his amibitions. He wants to be seen as the best, so he refuses to follow orders. He has his Romantic Dream that he pursues, even when it means betraying his home and friends to someone trying to destroy the world. He’s hot-headed, refuses to follow orders, and only cares about himself. Incredibly RB.
Moving on, Rough Divide. This really is just a bland ability in both practice and theme. To the former, forcing a creature to attack alone in order to get any benefit from the ability is a pretty hefty hindrance. It’s not an impossible wall — it’s been done before — but even just looking at Squall, a 3/4 with double strike isn’t especially inspiring. Not, at least, when it’s the only thing you’re swinging with. But the biggest indictment against this choice is the fact that fits naturally with Exalted. This could work for an Exalted commander — and in fact has been printed on Rafiq of the Many before — but there’s just one problem with this: Exalted is traditional a WUG mechanic. Meaning that Squall, by his mismatched color identity, is largely locked out of the archetype that he was built into. Fully half (19 out of 38) of the Exalted cards printed cannot be played in WB alone. And most of the Exalted bombs are in that 19. Granted, you could argue that the overlap with Rafiq means Squall never should have been contending for a place as an Exalted staple anyway, but, to the left, if he had an interesting enough second half of the card, he could’ve provided a compelling alternative to Rafiq, who’s pretty much the Exalted commander right now. But we’ll get there.
Because the thematics behind ‘Rough Divide’. First off, playing on Squall’s loner attitude is just bad. It proves nothing more than a surface level knowledge of the character. Because, again, he is liked and respected for his competency and reliability. His attempts to force himself to be alone are entirely a front put up so he won’t ever get hurt again — he wants to be self-sufficient under the auspices that if he doesn’t need anyone, he can’t lose anyone. But. But. He never has any trouble working with others or following orders. Not really. Looking at the Deling City mission alone, he’s more or less the only one in the party that does his job, proving his competency, but that also proves the fact that he can’t really do anything on his own because it gets him stabbed in the shoulder with an ice spike. Squall’s entire character builds to the point that he really doesneed other people and comes to the conclusion that he would rather fight for Rinoa — someone he cares about — than any orders he was given. And I don’t even feel the need to make this a new paragraph, but if you’re trying to justify double strike as representing a gunblade, it’s lazy and doesn’t really do anything.
Which then brings us to the second half of his card. Reanimation. Why? Just why? There is nothing about Squall’s character that relates to bringing things back to life. I can’t even really muster up an argument for this one because it’s so far removed from his character that I can’t especially think of a justification for it. If forced, I could make an argument that since it triggers on hitting an enemy, it’s supposed to represent stocking magic, but… That doesn’t bring things back. If anything, that should take cards from your opponent’s deck. More than that, the conflict between Squall — and by extension SeeD — and Ultimecia is a matter of whether or not to let go of the past. Ultimecia refuses to let go of the past and tries to fix it, while Squall learns to accept that bad things happened to him, but he can’t let them get in the way of moving forward and living his life. So really, this feels contrary to the themes present in Squall’s character. Quite frankly, what this mechanic tells me is that the designers had a card they wanted to include in the set and just slapped Squall on it because they couldn’t figure out anyone better for it. Furthermore, I’d bet the only reason he has Black in his color identity is for this mechanic (or vice versa) when it doesn’t really make sense in the first place. All told, this card makes me feel like the designers never actually played FF VIII and just made assumptions about Squall from his design and a wiki summary.
Now I have one more complaint with this card, but before we get there, we have to talk about Rinoa.
As before, we’ll start with color identity. In this case, I can’t really justify either color included, so we’re already off to a great start. You will note, if you look at the card-type line, there’s that little word ‘Warlock’. And you should. Because in some ways, that’s the core of Rinoa’s character: the fact that she is one of the rare Sorceresses in the world. A woman who can use not just the vaguely psionic paramagic accessible to all of the cast, but true magic which outright defies the logic of the world. In a world of Arcanists, she is one of four Black Mages. Which of course, means that you would expect her to be UR. It writes itself, really. Angel Wing let’s Rinoa cast magic for free, but under a berserk state. Sounds a lot like, say, Possibility Storm. Or any number of spell-copying cards we’ve already seen in Blue, Red, or UR. Red, of course, being a card that would make a whole lot of sense for her, since she is the emotional core that forces Squall to open up and let other people in.
But what about the colors that she is here? What’s wrong with them? Well for White, remember what I said about how it represents order and hierarchy? How it’s perfect for a soldier like Squall? Do you know who’s the only member of the main cast that isn’t a soldier? Let’s look at that card-type line again. You see that little word ‘Rebel’ next to ‘Warlock’? You know, people who are actively opposing the common order? In short, I would say that there’s nothing about Rinoa that’s especially White themed. The only thing I’d give is that she’s in favor of preserving the world as opposed to destroying it, which is probably more White than not. I could — and would for a variety of reasons — make a justification for it being the cost of an activated ability, but it should not be in the main line of her CMC.
Then there’s Green. The color of nature. Not just the things in nature, but the primal forces of it. rejecting technology and advancement and relying upon the inborn strength of one’s body. Nothing of which especially has anything to do with Rinoa. Again, I could make an arguement that the Green is representative of the difference between a Sorceress’ natural magic and Junctioned paramagic, but it would be a lame argument. Because what that magic does is, as stated above, far more in the UR camp than Green. In point of fact, I would argue that the entire reason they made her Green is because of Angelo. This is going to be a common trend going forward. I would be willing to bet the Designers saw Angelo, decided to make her a WG card just based off of that, and never bothered looking into how much bearing Angelo has on Rinoa’s character and gameplay. Hint: not very much.
Admittedly, I don’t actually have all that much to say about Rinoa’s mechanics. They are perfectly fine and consistent within themselves. For a card that isn’t Rinoa. Sure, having her summon Angelo on entry is ostensibly thematically relevant. It’s just the fact that her entire character is wrapped up in her (yes, Angelo is female) is a bit superficial. Even ‘Angelo Cannon’, like, yeah, sure, whatever. I only have so many ways to say that Rinoa isn’t a summoner — at least no more than any VIII character — doesn’t care about ‘power of friendship’ buffing, and isn’t particularly suited to a support role by Angel Wing’s mechanics.
But of course, the worst part of all this is how she interacts with Squall’s card. Namely, that they don’t. Squall’s first ability cannot trigger with Rinoa’s second. The hero and main heroine of FF VIII are incentivized to be played separately. The two characters whose relationship is so crucial to the game that the game’s logo is them locked in an embrace have no synergy. More than that, they cannot be played in the same commander deck — a format that is heavily emphasized these days — unless they’re both part of the 99 in a BGW+ deck. That’s just bad design. Thmatically, mechanically, I don’t care what way you put it. It’s also rather insulting to fans of the game. And, oh yeah, it also is a bit silly that Rinoa wins in a straight fight between the two of them, as long as Squall isn’t attacking alone.
I really thought I’d have more to say here, but it was rather simple to sum up the fact that Rinoa’s card is more or less completely divorced from who she is as a character. So we’ll move on to the next one I have an issue with.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, the main villain of our game is a slow, expensive extra turn spell stapled to a bland beater. An extra turn spell that can be countered and killed before triggering, unlike most. I’ll admit, from the start, UB is a good color combo for her. She is a time mage, UB is fairly time based. Sure. I’ll give it that. Even Surveil makes sense as her peering through time and giving an extra turn on flipping is… thematic enough, I suppose. So what’s my problem here? Rather simply, she’s bad.
Like I said at the start, she’s an extra turn spell, but an incredibly limited one. In the first place, eight mana is on the upper end for what any extra turn spell would cost. And the ones that cost that much or more tend to do more than just give one extra turn. But Ultimecia’s extra turn doesn’t just cost eight. It also requires exiling eight cards from the graveyard. Compare to Temporal Trespass, which costs eleven mana, but can do this same exiling of cards from the graveyard to lower that cost. If you exiled eight cards, Temporal Trespass would cost three Blue. Cheaper than Ultimecia. And it’s not like exiling the cards does anything for Ultimecias. It only makes her more expensive and harder to recur, since you need to fill your graveyard on top of having the mana. Heck, in commander, you could only recur her twelve times if you used your entire deck to that end.
But the price isn’t the only problem. The fact that this extra turn comes on a body is a downside. Especially since it won’t trigger until your endstep. Your opponents aren’t limited to only countering the spell to stop this extra turn. They can also destroy Ultimecia, exile her, bounce her to your hand, take control of her, and they have plenty of time to do this instead of just while the spell’s on the stack. This isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world — it could be an upside if you managed to flicker her to more easily repeat the extra turn — but that assumes that the extra turn feature is good in the first place.
But what about her body? A 7/7 Menace is a decent beater, right? Well not for thirteen mana and eight cards removed from your disposal. For that cost, it’s rather pathetic. Honestly, she might give more value just on the front face, surveiling every turn. That way she can help fuel an actual strategy. Which is the most telling thing about Ultimecia: she’s just a combo piece for another deck. She can’t really do anything worthwhile on her own and that sucks for the main villain of the game. I mean, take a look at what she does in VIII? She reaches across time and mind controls a loving mother into assassination, global domination, and trying to kill her adopted children. Does this mean she can do any kind of creature control in MTG? Heavens no. She doesn’t just mess with time, she combos past, present, and future into one so she can deal with all her enemies in one fell swoop. Rather more dramatic than just giving an extra turn, no? Ultimecia is, fundamentally, a boring, bland card.
And there’s one more, though I have less issues with him.
Zell is fine. Red makes sense for him, since he is hot-headed and hasty. I;’d say he should have White in his identity, since SeeD, but some cards do need to be mono-color and it’s fine for Zell. I don’t necessarily agree with the effects on the card for a mon-Red card, but this isn’t the place to discuss WotC’s problems with the color pie. As for what those effects are… I mean, they don’t really have anything to do with Zell. You can make a thin link to gaining power from lands as junctioning them to strength, but… Eh… The biggest thing is that I don’t really know what I would do with Zell in the first place (kind of; we’ll get there). He’s a fist-fighter, but that’s not really something you can represent well in MTG. I might say he should probably have some kind of keyword like Haste or First Strike, but that’s not really anything hard and fast. I’d say my biggest complaint is that, as with the other three cards, there’s no synergy. There’s no incentive to play these characters that come from the same game together.
So then, what could they have done instead? How could this have been better? Well, first off, I’ll go for a general theme that I think would’ve been flavorful, interesting mechanically, and — perhaps most critically — not parasitic and synergistic with other MTG sets. Rather simply: exiles matter. FF VIII’s key mechanic conceit involves using spells for things more than just their intended purpose, at the lore-based cost of memory. So make it so all these cards can both fuel exiling and interact with cards in exile. Let’s say something like this:
Squall: 2WU; Stock — when Squall deals damage to an opponent, exile the top card of their library. Junction — whenever Squall attacks, pay 2R and return a card from exile to its owner’s graveyard; Squall gains +X/+X until end of turn where X is the card’s CMC. 3/4.
Seifer: 2BU; Stock — whenever Seifer attacks, exile the top card of your library. Junction — pay 2R and return a card from exile to its owner’s graveyard; target creature takes X damage where X is the card’s CMC. 4/3.
Rinoa: 3UR; Angel Wing — whenever Rinoa enters the battlefield or attacks, exile cards from the top of your library until you reach a noncreature spell. Cast that spell without paying its cost. Tap and pay WXX; return X cards from exile to the bottom of its owner’s library (representing how she brings Squall back from Time Compression). 2/2.
Zell: 2R; Haste. Stock — whenever Zell deals damage to an opponent, exile the top card of their library. Junction — pay 1W; take a card from exile and place it under Zell. Zell gets +X/+X where X is the number of cards exiled under him. When Zell leaves the battlefield, return all cards exiled under him to their owner’s graveyard. 3/1.
Selphie: 2U; Stock — pay 1B and flip a coin. If heads, exile the top card of your opponent’s library; if tails, exile the top card of your library. Slots — pay 1R and flip a coin. If heads, cast a spell from exile without paying its mana cost. If tails, return a card from exile to its owner’s graveyard and give target creature +X/+0 until end of turn where X is that card’s CMC. If you have flipped heads five times this turn, return target creature to the bottom of its owner’s library. If you have flipped tails five times this turn, gain 20 life. If you have flipped the same result ten times this turn, exile all creatures on the battlefield except for Selphie. 1/3
Quistis: 3RB; First Strike. Stock — whenever Quistis enters the battlefield or attacks, exile cards from the top of target opponent’s library until you reach a noncreature spell; exile that spell under Quistis. Return all other cards to the bottom of their owner’s library. Blue Magic — Tap and pay 2UU; cast a spell exiled under Quistis without paying its mana cost. 2/2.
Irvine: 2W; Reach. Stock — whenever Irvine attacks, exile a card from your hand. Junction — pay 1U; return a card in exile to its opponent’s graveyard; tap up to X creatures where X is that card’s CMC. 3/3.
Ultimecia: 3UB; Whenever Ultimecia enters the battlefield or attacks, look at the top 2 cards of your library. Exile any number of them. Put the remaining back in any order. At the beginning of your endstep, you may pay 8UUBB, replacing any of the 8 by exiling cards from your graveyard. If you do so, transform Ultimecia into Griever. 2/2.
Griever: Menace. When this creature transforms into Griever, take an extra turn after this one. Time Compression — you may cast spells from exile, using mana of any color to cast them. 8/8.
And there’s one option. It gives them all synergy, it puts them all in common colors — albeit with no green representation — and, like I said, there could be a good amount of utility for them outside of this specific set. And, especially, Ultimecia feels like a threat. But hey, maybe this is too much exiling. What’s another option? Well, glad you asked. Here’s a sample for Squall and Seifer (though I won’t go through all of them). How do you feel about counters?
Squall(2): 2WU; Stock — when Squall deals damage to an opponent, reveal the top card of their library. Squall gains X +1/+1 counters where X is its CMC. Place that card on the bottom of its owner’s library. Junction — pay R and remove a +1/+1 counter from Squall. Squall gains +1/+0 and Double Strike until end of turn. 3/4.
Seifer: 2BU; Stock — when Seifer deals damage to an opponent, reveal the top card of your library. Seifer gains X +1/+1 counters where X is its CMC. Place that card on the bottom of its owner’s library. Junction — pay R and remove a +1/+1 counter from Seifer. Seifer deals 2 damage to target creature. 4/3.
But what if we just focused on the two most important characters? How can we make Squall and Rinoa fit better thematically without changing too much of their cards as currently printed? How about this:
Squall: 2WU; Partner with Rinoa. Whenever a creature attacks alone, it gains double strike. Whenever Squall deals damage to an opponent, the next noncreature spell you cast is X cheaper where X is the amount of damage you dealt. 3/4.
Rinoa: 3WG; Partner with Squall. Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, put a +1/+1 counter on Rinoa. Whenever another creature attacks, you may pay GG to give it +X/+X where X is Rinoa’s power. 2/2.
Or.
Squall: 2WU; Partner with Rinoa. Prowess. While Squall is on the battlefield, Warlocks you control have Hxproof. 3/4.
Rinoa: 3UR; Partner with Squall. Pay XUR and reveal X cards from the top of your library. You may cast a noncreature spell from among the revealed cards without paying its mana cost. Return the remaining carsd to the bottom of the library. While Rinoa is on the battlefield, Knights you control have double strike.. 2/2.
Not, by any means, perfect — maybe even a bit too tuned and powerful in the first case — but at least they have solid synergy with each other. And there’s still another one I want to visit a bit more. Chiefly, Ultimecia. So let’s look at a few other options for her.
Ultimecia: 1BU; Bestow (3BU). Enchanted creature gains +2/+2. Gain control of enchanted creature. At the beginning of your end step you may sacrifice enchanted creature and exile four cards from its owner’s graveyard or pay 4UB and exile four cards from your graveyard. If you do, transform Ultimecia into Griever. 2/2.
Griever: Menace. When this creature transforms into Griever, take an extra turn after this one. Whenever Griever attacks, you may return a card from exile to its owner’s graveyard. If you do, place target creature at the bottom of its owner’s library. At the beginning of your endstep, if there are no cards in exile, you may transform Griever into Ultimecia. If you do so, you may pay 1BU to Bestow her.
Or:
Ultimecia: 3BU; Whenever Ultimecia enters the battlefield or attacks, Surveil 2. At the beginning of your endstep, you may pay 8UUBB, replacing any of the 8 by exiling cards from your graveyard. If you do so, transform Ultimecia into Griever. 2/2.
Griever: Whenever Griever attacks, you may return a card from exile to its owner’s graveyard. If you do, place X Time Counters on target permanent, where X is the exiled card’s CMC. Whenever Griever deals damage to an opponent, exile cards from the top of their library equal to the damage done. 8/8.
Or even just:
Ultimecia: 3BU; Whenever Ultimecia enters the battlefield or attacks, Surveil 2. At the beginning of your endstep, you may pay 8UUBB, replacing any of the 8 by exiling cards from your graveyard. If you do so, transform Ultimecia into Griever. 2/2.
Griever: Menace. When this creature transforms into Griever, take an extra turn after this one. Time Compression — you may cast spells from exile, using mana of any color to cast them. 8/8.
So there you go. A few options. Again, I’m not a game designer and these aren’t fully thought through. They’re very much hasty, back of a napkin concepts meant to give an idea of what could have been done in a more interesting way.
Footnote 1: How much do I like Elidibus? Enough that I did a little rewrite of Flow as ‘what if the roles were reversed; Themis took Venat’s spot and Zodiark was the ‘Father Crystal’ while Hydaelyn served the role of Ascian’s savior: behold The Emissary’s Refrain. I’ve been lazy about posting this mostly because I do want to put it to voice, but I’ve just been lazy about trying to sync it up to music.
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