Last updated on August 4, 2025
Starting Town (Final Fantasy) – art by Hristo D. Chukov
It's amazing how time flies in Magic. Between Edge of Eternities launching globally last weekend, and WotC deciding that's EOE's release is a great time to start bombarding us with Spider-Man reveals, it feels like Final Fantasy happened ages ago.
That was just less than two months ago, though – and some of FIN's best cards are starting to shine in Magic's new Standard metagame.
Leading the charge this week in the MTG card market is Starting Town, which pretty much everybody correctly predicted would see more play as soon as Edge of Eternities arrived, bringing with it the Standard rotation. With all Magic sets that came before Wilds of Eldraine moving out of Standard, the mana bases have received quite a hit… and Starting Town, alongside EOE's shocklands, are doing a lot of heavy lifting filling those gaps.
What few players predicted, though, is how much higher Starting Town‘s demand would be, which has seen its price nearly double since rotation happened last week.
Spike Town
Revel In Riches – Illustration by Eric Deschamps
Starting Town is definitely not a card that flew under the radar: After the usual pre-release spike-and-deflate, Starting Town never went under $10, and traded at a fairly flat $12-$14 while Final Fantasy was the newest MTG set. But Edge of Eternities changed the tradewinds, and quite sharply in this case: Demand for Starting Town heated up last Monday and never stopped going up, gaining more than 100% and now sitting at around $31-$32 according to MTGStocks.
Source: MTGStocks
Price and demand data from TCGplayer shows a similar story, also clearly showing the spike in demand early last week:
Source: TCGPlayer
There's still quite a bit of supply – very likely because Final Fantasy is the most-opened MTG set in history – but currently no listing under $31 on TCGplayer.
Standard All-Star
So, how good is Starting Town in Standard? Pictures are worth thousands of words in this case: In the MTGO Challenge 32 of two days ago, there was a single mono-color deck, the perennial Red Deck Wins. Well… that's the only deck in this Top 8 that didn't have several copies of Starting Town:
Source: MTGTop8
(And, as a RDW player myself, I can tell you that even us Mountain-lovers are kinda fond of a land that pings you when you tap it for mana. Same goes for shocklands – you may think we have no use of dual-color lands, but we love it when you shock yourself!)
The above Top 8 was not a fluke, by the way – here's another MTGO Challenge 32, with an even bigger player pool:
Source: MTGTop8
In this case, only the Simic player thought Starting Town was of no use in their mana base. All other decks – from pre-rotation staples like Dimir Aggro, UR Soul Cauldron, and UR Aggro, to returning archetypes like Golgari Aggro and Esper Pixies, to new archetypes like Naya Aggro – are all packing some Starting Town copies, and often the full playset.
In short: It's much faster to list the decks not using Starting Town in Standard, than listing those that do!
A New Competitor in Commander Town
Mana Confluence – art by Richard Wright
While it seems very clear that Standard is leading the Starting Town spike, Commander is probably contributing quite a bit.
“Starting Town is the latest riff on City of Brass or Mana Confluence,” notes Tim in our review of Final Fantasy‘s towns. “It’s a 5-color pain land with a colorless buyout, and it even comes in untapped for the first three turns of the game. It’s likely more of a big deal for Constructed than Eternal formats, but certain Commander decks will welcome another 5-color fixer.”
Among casual EDH decks, Starting Town has been widely adopted alongside Final Fantasy‘s five-color commanders like The Wandering Minstrel and Terra, Magical Adept…
… but thus far it doesn't seem to be a card that established staples are in a rush to play with: Relatively few decks with Jodah, the Unifier, Sisay, Weatherlight Captain, or Kenrith, the Returned King in the command zone have included Starting Town in their 99.
But here's the twist: While low-bracked Commander decks seem to be ignoring this land, it did catch the attention of cEDH players.
“I like to look at the ceilings of cards in this format, as it does reward pushing and being proactive so much,” wrote Callahan Jones for EDHREC when reviewing Final Fantasy's potential in cEDH. “The first three turns are easily the most important turns of a cEDH game and gaining access to rainbow mana during those turns makes your life so much easier, especially in a three-color+ deck.”
Jones' prediction is thus far on the mark: Starting Town is seeing quite a bit of cEDH play, including good results in top-tier tournaments.
What Will Happen With Starting Town's Price?
Tifa, Martial Artist – Illustration by Yumi Yaoshida
With our usual caveat that this is not investment advice (there's nothing like doing your own research, folks!), Starting Town looks like a card that has exceeded expectations. Pretty much everybody correctly guessed that it would see quite a bit of play once Standard rotated – but few seem to have expected it to become pretty much an auto-include outside mono-color decks.
It's also a FIN card with single variant, and as collectible it may not be as desirable for Final Fantasy fans as iconic characters like Cloud, Yuna, or Tifa. Or even as cool as iconic locations like Midgar, City of Mako.
If you're playing Standard you probably want a playset, though – and it looks like Starting Town may end up being one of the priciest cards in your mana base!
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