Final Fantasy’s Most Infamous Villain Spikes 300%, Aristocrats Cards Trending Upwards

Last updated on June 20, 2025

Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER – art by Wisnu Tan

Alright, enough with the financial fascination for Final Fantasy heroes. These last few days and weeks, we've lost track of how many long-forgotten Magic cards Vivi Ornitier and Y'shtola, Night's Blessed have turned from draft chaff into solid gold.

Time to focus on the other half of every good story: The antagonist. The adversary. The impossibly long-sworded, long-haired Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER:

A week after Final Fantasy x MTG has been officially released worldwide, Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER is the third most-expensive card in this Magic set when looking at regular versions (and even when considering cards from the Final Fantasy Commander precons!). It's beaten only by multi-format star Vivi Ornitier and Buster Sword. Ironically, Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER beats all copies of Cloud.

Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER is proving to be a very popular card in Commander, both in the command zone and as a black commander – and some aristocrat staples are going up in price thanks to him.

If It Glitters, It IS Gold

All That Glitters – art by Iain McCaig

First, let's set our eyes on our graceful, aristocratic commander.

Regular versions for Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER have slowly glided down from about $100 when he was revealed, to about $45-$50 today:

Source: MTGStocks

For those new to MTG finance, this is actually fairly rare: While pretty much every card drops in price between reveal and release, the rule of thumb is that they drop in price by a LOT.

Compare for example with Y'shtola, Night's Blessed, who's currently the most popular Final Fantasy commander (and currently ranked at #136 most popular among all commanders in Magic's history!). In spite of her massive popularity, regular copies of Y'shtola dropped in price by around 85% in June alone:

Source: MTGStocks

Fittingly for our gracefully aristocratic commander, though, the regular version is not where the gold is to be found. Wizards of the Coast seems to have learned a lot about how to keep regular versions (somewhat) affordable, while more chase versions like Tetsuya Nomura's borderless alternate art trades at about $100.

Source: MTGStocks

And the most sought-after of the chase versions, the borderless surge foil illustrated by Maji, went up by more than 300% since last week, from about $250 to over $700 at the time of writing (almost a whole Collector Booster box all by himself!):

Source: MTGStocks

That's what being a good bad guy is all about. Violent, rowdy henchmen are a dime a dozen. Beautiful, classy villains are a lot pricier.

The Court of King Sephiroth

Nether Traitor – art by Vance Kovacs

Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER is proving to be quite popular in the 99 of black-leaning commanders – he already shows up in about 7,600 decks. He's also getting a lot of traction in the Command Zone: He's currently the third most-popular Final Fantasy commander (behind Vivi and Y'shtola), again beating all versions of that moody, skinny mercenary with the big Buster sword.

Nether Traitor is a very well-known tool for black commanders, frequently showing up under the command of Yawgmoth, Thran Physician or Braids, Arisen Nightmare and historically never trading below $3-$4. Nether Traitor slowly started getting traction a couple of months ago, when the face commanders for the Final Fantasy EDH precons were revealed; it was already at around $6 when Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER himself was revealed a month ago. Now, it's included in more than a third of Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER decks, and has jumped to about $14 in US markets for its Time Spiral printing, including a notable a 50% spike since last week:

Source: MTGStocks

Near-mint copies for the Time Spiral: Remastered version are still at about $9, and in fairly ample supply, but according to TCGplayers there's about 15 listed copies of TSP printings, which strongly suggest the price will keep climbing.

Warren Soultrader from Modern Horizons 3 is another well-known aristocrat staple, strong enough to see top-tier cEDH play. It was a 5-bucks card when it was released a year ago, and had climbed to about $7 by the time the Final Fantasy commanders were revealed. Since then, it has rallied to around $12 nowadays, with a whopping 70% inclusion in new Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER decks:

Source: TCGplayer

Even a humble common like Outlaws of Thunder Junction‘s Forsaken Miner – who, humble as it may be, also punches up hard enough to make the cut into cEDH decks – is showing upward pressure.

After becoming another staple in Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER decks, and in spite of the massive supply, Forsaken Miner has doubled in price since last month, clearly proving the demand for aristocrat pieces.

Source: TCGplayer

Wrap Up

Sephiroth's Intervention – art by Joshua Raphael

Now firmly seated on the mono-black throne, Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER is proving that Final Fantasy villains can rock the market too. Premium versions of this slender commander are rocketing, and his graceful tide is lifting aristocratic boats.