Tifa Lockhart EDH Shakes up Market for Classic Combat Cards

Last updated on May 4, 2025

Tifa Lockhart (FFVII) designed by Tetsuya Nomura

The Final Fantasy x MTG crossover is approaching fast, with a major preview debut happening on May 10 at PAX East. The hype is unreal, with Final Fantasy outselling Lord of the Rings before people have even seen the entire set. And of course that level of anticipation means an increased chance of leaks, like the Tifa, Martial Artist leak that hit Reddit a few weeks ago. There's a chance the card is officially previewed in a few days (Tifa Lockhart's birthday is May 3), but this one must have celebrated a few days early.

Source

And you know what they say: “With great leaks comes great opportunity for speculation on the secondary market.” Oh wait, shoulda saved that one for the Spider-Man crossover…. Mixing major IPs aside, there seems to be some movement on quite a few pieces related to this Tifa card.

Tifa Recap

Cloud, Planet's Champion | Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

A couple quick refreshers on the card, since it sparked some confusion with players.

• Melee gives an attacking creature +1/+1 for each opponent you attacked that turn, which can go up to +3/+3 if you attack all opponents in a 4-person game. This obviously gets Tifa up to the requisite 7 power to trigger her own ability.
• Melee stacks, so it will trigger again during extra combats and further boost the attacker.
• Tifa can net you at least three combats per turn, once for each opponent dealt combat damage by at least one 7+ power creature. This would require three large creatures hitting three opponents all at the same time. Hitting the same player with multiple 7+ power creatures doesn't stack any extra triggers.
• The untaps are tied to Tifa's combat damage trigger, not the extra combats. That means your creatures won't naturally untap at the start of each new combat, but they will untap if one of your large creatures connects during any combat.

And some non-gameplay tidbits:

• This Tifa card is from the Limit Break Commander deck, featuring Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER as the face commander (the chocobo set symbol is the Commander precon symbol).
• This is likely not the only version of Tifa in the Final Fantasy set, especially considering she's not given her full name here.
• Much like Zell Dincht from Final Fantasy VIII, Tifa Lockhart's classified as a fighter with martial artistry moves as her main form of offense in Final Fantasy VII (hence the human monk creature typing).

What's on the Move?

Full Throttle | Illustration by Benjamin Ee

Tifa's a Naya Commander that promotes high power and extra combats, and a couple of cards that fall into one or both of these buckets have seen a slight bump in price recently. Remember that many of these will not be reprinted in the actual Commander decks, since everything has to adhere to the Universes Beyond settings, though they could appear on the Through the Ages bonus sheet with reskinned Final Fantasy flavor (Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow has already been revealed as a Yuffie reskin).

Moraug, Fury of Akoum

Source: MTGStocks

Moraug, Fury of Akoum has breached the $10 mark for the first time since mid-2024, though this one's always held a respectable price. It fits both the “Tifa buckets,” being a creature that grants extra combats and attacks with 7+ power (while putting other creatures within range too).

Moraug's actually kind of busted with Tifa. Remember that the legendary minotaur‘s static ability is cumulative, so all attacking creatures get +1/+0 during the first combat, and another +1/+0 per subsequent combat. Also remember that Moraug's landfall trigger is all sorts of wonky, and you actually want to trigger it after combat to actually untap your creatures.

Aggravated Assault

Source: MTGStocks

Aggravated Assault already saw a pretty big uptick in early March, likely in response to something revealed for Tarkir: Dragonstorm, though the card's always at the ready when new combat-oriented commanders get revealed. This enchantment can pull off some infinite combos with the right set-up, or you can do what it was intended to do and just activate it a few times to keep beating down. Not hard to see how this might slot in with Tifa and the gang.

Elturel Survivors

Source: MTGStocks

Elturel Survivors took off basically exactly when Tifa was leaked, so this has more of a 1:1 correlation. To be fair, it's the borderless, extended art version that's climbed a few bucks, where the standard Baldur's Gate version is only up a quarter or so, but the synergy's on full display here.

This trifling tiefling scales in power with the number of lands your opponent controls, so it'll naturally hit the 7-power threshold at some point unless opponents want to intentionally sandbag lands. Myriad also means it essentially attacks everyone at once, so it's a 4-drop that can max out Tifa triggers on its own. Also, it just kinda looks like a less-pixelated gang of enemies you might have a random encounter with in FFVII.

Dogmeat, Ever Loyal

Source: MTGStocks

If you don't mind getting your universes crossed a bit, Dogmeat, Ever Loyal might be something to keep an eye on over the next month. This Fallout face commander checks off a lot of boxes for a Final Fantasy-related spec:

• Currently very, very cheap (less than $1 a copy)
• Overlapping Naya colors with the FFVII deck
• Cares about equipment, just like Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER
• He's a good boy

It remains to be seen if the Limit Break precon is leaning more on equipment or the 7+ power matters theme, or if they'll both be equally represented. The more equipment-focused it is, the more sense it makes to throw a copy of Dogmeat in the pile, though it admittedly has little direct synergy with Tifa. And while we're here, any chance we can get an Inventory Management reprint in the Limit Break deck?

Lucky 7s

All it'll take is a few extra previews from the set to really start seeing some card-price shake-ups, but for now there's just a steady climb on a few speculative cards. Some are a bit more of a slam-dunk than the ones linked to the Limit Break deck (did you see Helm of the Ghastlord‘s recent rise to fame?), but characters as popular as Cloud and Tifa are bound to stir things up.

If you're looking for some pre-game inspiration before the actual reveal of Tifa, check out some other 7-power matters cards, like Sarkhan's Unsealing, Fight Rigging, and Not of This World. Or stock up on all that equipment before the team actually arrives. Finally, a home for Mage Slayer, right?