Final Fantasy’s Ridiculous Train Meme Makes its Way to Magic

Last updated on May 16, 2025

source: Final Fantasy VI

Magic: The Gathering's Final Fantasy set is hitting all the right story beats. The Universes Beyond crossover is in the midst of a slow-drip spoiler season, where players are being treated to Commander cards, mainline set spoilers, and Through the Ages bonus sheet cards all at once. And the Final Fantasy Greatest Hits are all there.

You've got Sephiroth's Intervention, where the Final Fantasy VII big bad is doing something that no one will see coming. You've got totally misunderstood antagonist Kefka from Final Fantasy VI adding a dash of spice to a town's water supply on Poison the Waters.

But bump all that nonsense; the Final Fantasy set has a pair of cards that captures the most iconic, heartbreaking, unforgettable moment in the entire series: That time Sabin suplexed and entire train in Final Fantasy VI.

Talk About Intense Training

To the totally unaware outsider, the correlation between Suplex and Phantom Train isn't obvious, outside of the artifact removal spell lining up against the artifact vehicle during gameplay. But wouldn't the lore implications be hilarious? Imagine that, suplexing a train! A phantom train, no less.

Source: imgflip.com

Well, Final Fantasy fans have been memeing on this moment since 1994, since this is something that can actually happen in Final Fantasy VI.

Sabin, like many characters from the Final Fantasy franchise, is a renowned martial artist, and even gets his own card in the Revival Trance Commander deck: Sabin, Master Monk. His signature move is Suplex, which tosses an enemy up in the air and drops them on the ground head-first. Makes total sense when you're facing off against humanoids or wayward goblins, but nothing's safe from Sabin's wrath, not even massive incorporeal locomotives. Even the flavor text gets in on the joke: “The time has come to put my training to use!”

Check out the iconic moment here, courtesy of MoogleBoss on YouTube.

Source

More Meme Than Dream?

Wizards isn't above memeing on their Magic cards, and between the Inspiring Call reprint depicting “That” moment from Final Fantasy X, the Clever Concealment reprint showing off Cloud's totally unrecognizable disguise in Final Fantasy VII, and now the suplex meme from FFVI, it's clear that they wanted to sneak a bit of the JRPG series' most humorous moments into the set.

But it helps that the cards aren't just memes, they're actually quite playable!

Suplex is a riff on the classic modal spell Abrade. You trade out instant speed interaction for better effects on both modes. The damage mode and the Shatter mode both exile, which can be a big deal if it's lining up against something like The One Ring outside of Standard. It also skirts death triggers, so it could be a handy way to take out Heartfire Hero without taking a chunk of damage in return. Though let's be honest, the mouse is usually an 8/8 or something by turn 2 anyway.

Phantom Train‘s less likely to matter all that much outside of Limited, but it showcases Magic's increased use of unmitigated sacrifice outlets lately. This vehicle can sacrifice artifacts or creatures at instant speed for no cost, which is always way more useful than it sounds.

It also must sacrifice something if it wants to be a relevant part of the game, since it has no actual crew cost to turn it into a creature otherwise. That downside is supplemented with the potential to just one-shot people out of games. Since it has trample, you'll sometimes have lines where you animate this and sac your entire board all at once to make it huge, and just roll over an opponent through blockers. And Suplex is a sorcery, so you're safe from dying to an instant-speed meme.

One More For the Road

There's another quirk here though that's less on-the-nose than Sabin's famous suplex moment. Phantom Train becomes a spirit creature when you activate it, and you know what's really good against spirits? Phoenix Down!

Phoenix Down is a recurring item in Final Fantasy games that helps you revive fallen party members, but it has a role reversal when used against enemies that are already dead. Throwing a Phoenix Down at an undead foe usually kills it immediately, hence the skeleton/spirit/zombie text on the artifact. So if your Phantom Train managed to dodge a suplex and you're going in for the kill, just peek around and make sure the opponent doesn't have a Phoenix Down sitting in play.