Official Final Fantasy Debut Previews New and Familiar Mechanics Roster

Last updated on May 10, 2025

Sephiroth, Planet's Heir | Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

Final Fantasy is here. The Universes Beyond set that Wizards has been hyping up for months, which has presumably outsold mega-hit Lord of the Rings before even hitting shelves, has kicked off its official spoiler season with a massive reveal at PAX East.

While various set mechanics have already been revealed (or leaked!) over the months leading up to the debut, we now have a full picture of what to expect from the set. As usual, WotC discussed all of the new and returning mechanics tied to Final Fantasy and its accompanying Commander decks.

Job Select

Job select was already known due to some untimely leaks, but here it is officially fleshed out as a retrain of the living weapon/For Mirrodin! mechanics. Job select appears on equipment and comes with its own 1/1 Hero creature token when it enters, which it auto-equips to.

The quirk with Job select is that the equipment adds creature types to the equipped creature. That’s not part of the mechanic itself, just something flavorfully tied to permanents it appears on. It remains to be seen how important creature types end up being to the set overall, but it’s a fantastic nod to the job systems that appear across most of the Final Fantasy entries.

Towns

Town is a new land type that doesn’t have any inherent rules meaning, but will likely have cards that interact with the subtype. They’re much like gates, where “gate” doesn’t actually mean anything, but opens the door for special interactions with other cards that reference them. Adventurer's Inn was used to showcase the card type, basically being a Radiant Fountain with an extra subtype.

Adventures

It was confirmed that there would be a single cycle or rare lands in the set, each of which is a land with an adventure tied to it. These are the only adventures in the set, though you’ll notice these also have the town card type.

Tiered

Tiered is a kicker-like mechanic that represents the “leveled-up” Magic that appears across nearly every Final Fantasy game. Mechanically, you can add one of the options to your spell as you cast it, with stronger effects requiring more mana.

Unlike spree from Thunder Junction, you can only add one effect to the card, though it seems like the baseline spell doesn’t cost anything extra.

Transforming Double-Faced Cards

Double-faced cards return in Final Fantasy, showing the transformation of various heroes and villains. In some cases this is showing the heroes journey, at a pivotal moment in their respective stories (think of it like “character development”). On other cards, it’s a way of depicting the “final boss transformation,” where the big bad turns into the even bigger bad.

Safe to say these are some of the most anticipated cards from the set, given that these are representations of everyone’s favorite protagonists and antagonists. Kefka, big bad of Final Fantasy VI, was showcased to much applause. It’s got Nicol Bolas, the Ravager vibes, but a very splashy ability tied to its back half.

Sidequests

They didn’t mention anything about Sidequests during the PAX East panel, but previous looks at the set revealed a cycle of uncommon double-faced cards that represent some of the mini-games across the franchise. It’s previously been confirmed that there would be five of these in the set, and they’ve confirmed multiple times that “Blitzball” from Final Fantasy X will appear in the set, likely as one of these sidequests.

Equipment Matters

Equipment is an overarching theme to the set. Obviously, we’ve got the job select mechanic to pull this together, but there are tons of other cards that reference equipment.

We saw Firion, Wild Rose Warrior and Gilgamesh, Master-at-Arms as explicit payoffs and enablers, but there will be much more to pull the whole theme together.

Summons

Summons were a known factor from the set, and represent one of the most unique mechanics from Final Fantasy. Summons take the form of saga creatures. That means they can attack and block like a creature, but they also have chapter abilities like a typical enchantment saga. And just like a normal saga, they’ll sacrifice themselves as the final chapter ability resolves.

Since the creatures are only temporary, that presumably allows the designers to pack a lot of power into the cards. There’s also some room for counter manipulation; if you can move counters around with something like Nesting Grounds, you can keep your summons around for longer (and even speed up your other sagas!).

We even got the reveal of Terra, Magical Adept, which combines the summon saga blueprint with a double-faced transforming card. Note that there are some other legendary creatures that transform into saga creatures, but transform back into creatures after their final chapter. These are mostly linked to Final Fantasy XVI, in which characters turn into summons themselves, though Terra from Final Fantasy VI uses the mechanic too.

Birds?

The PAX East panelists mentioned a “bird archetype” for Final Fantasy multiple times, showing off cards like Bartz and Boko and Traveling Chocobo as part of the archetype. Affinity for birds shows up as a one-off mechanic on Bartz, and players previously got a look at Sazh's Chocobo.

Cids

Yes, this is a thing. There are 15 different Azorius versions of Cid, Timeless Artificer, a name attached to a character in every mainline Final Fantasy game since Final Fantasy 2. These are all reskins of the same card (a la Nazgûl), and they have the “relentless” text of “a deck can have and number of cards named Cid, Timeless Artificer.”

Landfall

Landfall is a deciduous mechanic in Magic now, and appears frequently across new sets, but Tifa Lockhart is the third landfall creature we’ve seen in the red-green spectrum, following Zell Dincht and Gladiolus Amicitia, so it looks like it might be an archetypal theme of the set for Gruul.

Meld

Meld makes a cameo return on a single set of uncommons, meaning it’s something achievable in the Limited format. Even better, there’s no Graf Rats in the pairing, as both Fang and Vanille look perfectly playable on their own.

Ragnarok, Divine Deliverance looks like a phenomenal dream to live in Limited, and having both these cards at uncommon makes this much more likely to happen than meld pairings we’ve seen in the past.

Devotion

Devotion appears on exactly one card, Clive, Ifrit's Dominant from Final Fantasy XVI.

More to Come

It feels like so much of Final Fantasy has already been revealed, and yet today marks the start of spoiler season. There’s much more to come, with the full gallery reveal on May 30. The set officially releases on June 13, with pre-release events happening the weekend before. It’s on track to be Magic’s biggest set ever, coming off the heals of the beloved Tarkir: Dragonstorm.