Final Fantasy Delivers First Major Cleric Support Piece in Years

Last updated on May 27, 2025

Giver of Runes | Illustration Seb McKinnon

Typal decks are all the rage in casual EDH, so it’s a big deal when new sets drop a bone for factions that don’t receive support all that often. Despite not really being a “typal set,” Final Fantasy‘s been doing this quite a bit, with a fully feathered-out birds theme, as well as random one-off support for demons, knights, wizards, and, uh, moogles. The Commander decks even have a few soldier support cards.

But the latest typal support piece goes to clerics, which haven’t been the main focus of a Magic set since Zendikar Rising and Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, where clerics were one of four creature types wrapped up in the party mechanic. Final Fantasy‘s not exactly putting clerics front and center, but they are getting a pretty powerful support piece from this set.

A Final Fantasy II Classic

Minwu, White Mage looks a touch out of place in the broader scheme of the Final Fantasy set. Cleric isn’t a heavily-supported creature type here, nor is there any sort of central lifegain theme for the Limited environment. It’s mostly a one-off, self-contained payoff card that’s here to get Minwu from Final Fantasy II onto a Magic card. White Mages are the healers of the Final Fantasy universe, so cleric is a perfect fit for them.

There are other white mages that exist as clerics in this set, though. Aerith Gainsborough, Garnet, Princess of Alexandria, Rosa, Resolute White Mage, and Yuna, Hope of Spira are all canonically white mages, and all either have lifelink or grant it to creatures in some way. And they’re all in green and/or white. Vanille, Cheerful l'Cie is the only cleric revealed so far that feels less “clerical,” but that card’s off doing its own meldy things.

Job Select: White Mage

There is another facet of the Final Fantasy set that makes Minwu way more exciting for the average Limited player, and that’s the new job select mechanic being introduced in the set. Job select is a living weapon variant for equipment that produces and auto-equips to a 1/1 Hero token. Each permanent with job select also changes the creature type of the equipped creature, and there are two job select cards that change things into clerics: Sage's Nouliths and White Mage's Staff.

That means the cleric count is slightly higher than it seems at first glance, especially at common, but there’s also the opportunity to be cheeky here and turn your non-clerics into creatures that’ll pick up +1/+1 counters from Minwu. Appropriately, White Mage's Staff is especially synergistic since it has a lifegain ability built in already. Simply drop Minwu on turn 5 and attack with a Staffed up creature for an immediate +1/+1 counter on everything you control!

Clerics in Commander

They’re not exactly dragons or elves, but clerics have their fanbase in EDH, which plenty of commanders focused on the creature type. Orah, Skyclave Hierophant and Taborax, Hope's Demise tend to be the most popular commanders for these decks, both of which support a more aristocratic version of the deck.

Clerics commanders that specifically care about lifegain include Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim and Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim, which also lean towards sacrifice synergies. There’s also Tymna the Weaver if you’re interested in partner pairings, though decks including Tymna rarely lean in the direction of lifegain-matters.

So that leaves the question: Where is Minwu, White Mage supposed to see play? And the answer might be that Minwu is supposed to pioneer its own mono-white cleric decks in Commander, ones that are much more focused on combat than the type’s known for.

Maybe this is the start of a true Soul Sisters deck in Commander, putting all those dorky 1- and 2-mana lifegain creatures to good use by actually beating down with them. And there’s no shortage of these creatures, from the namesake Soul Warden and Soul's Attendant, to more recent entries like Dazzling Angel, Guide of Souls, and Lifecreed Duo. Mono-white currently has nine creatures that cost 1-2 mana and have the Soul Sisters text, and a few others that put a spin on the ability.

Only about half of those are actual clerics though, so a deck built around Minwu’s going to have to scrap together some other clerics to make everything work, but if the engine gets doing, Minwu and a party of clerics in play can absolutely pop off. It’ll play like a build-your-own Cathars' Crusade once everything gets rolling, which each new creature that hits the board triggering your Soul Sister effects and dumping +1/+1 counters across the board. Don’t expect a tier-1, Bracket-4 strategy here, but at least it’s a reason to dig up all those old Draft chaff lifegain commons.