Bottom of the Barrel in the FF/MTG Crossover

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? It’s been years since I’ve blogged, but with the renaissance of GB and some new topics that have inspired me, I’ve decided to come out of retirement! What has inspired me, you may ask? Why, those bastards at Wizard of the Coast have managed to make a Magic the Gathering/Final Fantasy crossover set. They managed to make a set that scratches my particular itches to such a degree that I just had to write about it. Those monsters have mixed peanut butter and chocolate, gosh darn it!

If you haven’t been paying attention to spoiler season for the MTG/FF set, it is currently going at a blistering pace. It should be another week or two before we have the full set. With that in mind, I don’t want to try to do anything too set review-y or definitive yet. There’s still too much uncertainty to try to prognosticate about what characters got the best cards or which game got the shortest end of the stick. So rather than try to talk about some of the flashiest stuff, I want to talk about one of the funnier things I’ve noticed in the spoiled cards. Namely, what do you do with the FF games that have almost no distinct personality? How do you make cards for FFI and III? So far the answer appears to be: do stuff for a few named characters and otherwise keep things generic. I’m not going to touch on every card that’s been spoiled for FFI and III. I’m going to focus in on the few funniest ones I’ve seen and shout out a few legitimately iconic cards for those games.

Let’s start where it all began: FFI, AKA a fun D&D campaign with the serial number filed off. FFI might have one of the most flavorful, powerful, and simple designs of the set: Starting Town. Starting Town is a Mana Confluence, but better as long as you play it during the first 3 turns of the game. That is super powerful and also flavorfully captures how starting towns in RPGs are great early and generally meaningless late. The thing I find funny about this card is that the name is so generic that it could have been made for almost any set. If you told me this was in the D&D crossover set from a few years ago, I would have believed it. The card could have been called Cornelia or something to fully capture the flavor of FFI. Instead, we got a completely reprintable card name and ability that can be used in another setting without batting an eye.

Going along with the generic D&D flavor of FFI we have another card: Town Greeter. Town Greeter plays nicely with the Town land type introduced in this set. It even references Cornelia in its flavor text. But boy, could this card name and flavor have shown up anywhere. Every plane in magic has towns! FFI also got a cycle of equipment for the starting jobs you can pick at the beginning of the game: White Mage’s Staff, Black Mage’s Rod, and Warrior’s Sword. Giving the original FFI jobs cards with FFI flavor rather than the other games with job systems makes a lot of sense. The later games that do the job system better have actually iconic moments that deserve cards. Though it is a bit funny that the common draft chaff version of job-based equipment largely was foisted upon FFI.

However generic you think the FFI cards I highlighted are, the FFIII cards make them look downright thoughtful. Adventurer’s Inn is a card that somehow didn’t already exist in MTG, yet feels as though it always has. If it wasn’t for its Town subtype and flavor text that mentions Gil, it wouldn’t have any FF theming at all. And even if you grant it’s a Final Fantasy themed card, it could fit in about half a dozen different games based on its art. The card says it’s FFIII, but I could be convinced it’s from any of the NES or SNES FF games. Speaking of cards that feel like they could go with multiple NES or SNES FF games, The Crystal’s Chosen sure fits the bill. Now this card at least has art that clearly shows Onion Knights, the iconic job of FFIII. However, the mechanics, creating 4 generic Heroes and then strengthening them, could fit with FFI or III pretty easily. The name could work for an FFI card as well. To be fair, this card is much more a victim of how similar FFI and III are than it is a generic card for generic card’s sake, but that doesn’t mean it’s especially iconic.

Finally, take a look at Item Shopkeep. What a card. It has that rare blend of completely generic name, art, and mechanic that it could go just about anywhere. This card could go into almost any MTG set ever and also, somehow, doesn’t manage to capture anything especially FFIII in its flavor. Where is this character supposed to be? What are the items they’re selling? What about its flavor text distinguishes it? I wouldn’t be surprised if this card was completely finished, art and all, and then someone looked at a spreadsheet, saw FFIII didn’t have enough cards, and assigned this to FFIII. It’s hard to be bad and forgettable in a set as hyped and referential as this one, but Item Shopkeep manages to get there. I look forward to its reprint in some random MTG set in the future.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my rundown of some of the more forgettable FFI and FFIII cards in the upcoming MTG/FF crossover set. I’ll be writing more about it in the coming week. It’s good to be back!