Potential Modern Playables in Final Fantasy
Happy Wednesday, readers! Today, we dive head-first into exploring the potential that a few singles from the upcoming
Following the trend of most recent Standard-legal sets, Final Fantasy offers a lot of fun and flavor, but looks to be relatively low-impact insofar as its cards extend to other 60-card, eternal formats. Having said that, there are a few standouts that might make an appearance in the Modern meta depending on how things shake out.
Let’s dive in!
Vivi Ornitier
Vivi is the most inconspicuous of Izzet legends from this Universes Beyond product if you were to judge it only by its artwork. Upon closer inspection, you’d find Vivi is likely the most impactful card from this set insofar as the value it provides goes.
It’s a three-mana 0/3 that gets +1/+1 counters for each noncreature spell you cast, while also pinging your opponents for one damage simultaneously. This effect on its own would be worth consideration in the main decks of Storm-style archetypes, but WotC went a step further with the design of Vivi and gave it an activated ability that allows you to ramp Izzet-colored mana equal to Vivi’s power, which can grow insurmountably large very quickly in Storm-style shells.
All these factors combine to make Vivi one of the most impactful cards from this Universes Beyond set. In Modern, Vivi is very much a potential inclusion in Ruby Storm decks, which benefited greatly from the printing of
So what’s the limiting factor for Vivi? As odd as it sounds, probably its mana cost, and Storm’s overall position in the meta. Don’t get me wrong, Storm is certainly a viable deck that plays very well into Amulet Titan and Eldrazi Ramp – both of which are exceedingly powerful meta decks – but its matchups against Energy and Orzhov Blink are both sub-par, which feels worse than it should because of how large of a meta share Energy Shells still occupy.
Beyond this, three mana for a permanent that doesn’t passively reduce the costs of your action spells may not be the most efficient use of space in your 60-card deck. This isn’t to say Vivi can’t slot nicely into Ruby Storm, but the cuts for it and the quantity of it you’re playing aren’t obviously clear. My guess is that we’ll see Storm split into a couple directions: traditional Ruby Storm and more Vivi/Curiosity-oriented Izzet Shells that have a lot of overlap but ultimately are leaning into two different play patterns to finish the game.
So where does this leave us financially? Like most cards in the Final Fantasy set, pre-order prices are kind of obscene, in part due to the increase in the prices of the sealed product associated with this IP. Beyond this, Vivi is getting significant speculatory attention due to its potential in cEDH as a Commander, but also as an auto-include in most Izzet or Jeskai shells like Krark/Sakashima, Elsha, and so forth. I still don’t think that Vivi’s price will linger above $25 once the products hit the shelves of game stores and online vendors, but it will likely take a couple months for the price to settle to that point.
| Vivi Ornitier | ||
| Vivi Ornitier (Extended Art) | ||
| Vivi Ornitier (Borderless) |
Traveling Chocobo
While Vivi may be the most playable legend in Modern from Final Fantasy, arguably the single-most impactful card is the sweet little Traveling Chocobo. Preordering at an astonishing $75+, this little Bird (by Magic’s typing) does a lot for just a green and two colorless mana.
Firstly, it allows you to look at and play lands from the top of your library, much like
If a land or Bird you control entering the battlefield causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control to trigger, that ability triggers an additional time.
Not only does this line of text give Landfall a little more love and brewing potential in the Modern metascape, it also gives Amulet Titan a new toy it will undoubtedly be testing and playing with. Doubling your Amulet triggers to get double untapped when a bounce land enters into play is insane. We all know how out of hand games get when there’s multiple Amulets in play… This Bird makes that gamestate possible with only one Amulet needed. Effectively, running two copies of Traveling Chocobo is at the very worst redundancy for your Amulet effects that scales with more Amulets. If you have one Chocobo and two Amulets, then a single bounce land entering will trigger an Amulet effect four times.
Traveling being in green means you can use
Similar to Vivi, the question with this card becomes “what do decks that want to play this card cut to make room for it?” My natural inclination is that Amulet Titan decks may cut back on
Financially speaking, as this is one of the chase mythics in the set, I do expect its price to outsize most other singles in the long run, but very clearly its pre-order price is hyperinflated at the moment. Beyond this, the sustainability of its price will depend very much on its adoption in Landfall-style decks in Modern, general adoption in Standard, and the degree to which this card sticks as a staple for Amulet Titan going forward into the future.
I could see this very easily being a $30-$35 card in the future, but even then that might be too high with how large Modern print runs are, although the higher-than-average MSRP associated with the Final Fantasy product might make the level or average prices of singles in this set sit above their counterparts from other sets regardless.
| Traveling Chocobo | ||
| Traveling Chocobo (Borderless) |
Cloud, Midgar Mercenary
The last, and probably least-impactful, but still interesting little card worthy of discussion is Cloud, Midgar Mercenary. This is an Equipment-centric white creature that tutors for an Equipment spell immediately upon entering – much like its non-legendary counterpart,
Why is this card interesting? Well, once upon a time, Hammer Time was a high-tier deck in the Modern meta. While Equipment-based decks got a little more gas with
While this sounds cool on paper, it’s tough to see if Cloud will really be that impactful given its narrow use. Hammer Time is less than 1% of the meta currently, but from what data there is available, it finds itself in an interesting position where it can beat a lot of middle of the pack decks in the meta, but may not back enough on its own grind with decks like Jeskai Energy or repeatedly push for win attempts like Amulet Titan. I expect Cloud to ultimately be a fairly cheap speculation after release, and as far as “best of the rest” cards go for Modern, Cloud offers some of the most potential.
| Cloud, Midgar Mercenary | ||
| Cloud, Midgar Mercenary (Borderless) | ||
| Cloud, Midgar Mercenary (Extended Art) |
Concluding Thoughts
Overall, Final Fantasy may not offer a boon to Modern by comparison to some more recent set entries, but it does have a couple cards that are almost unambiguously soon-to-be staples. There’s some hidden value in the more efficiently-costed legends, with Cloud being one of the many cards that raise eyebrows, and they may have a home depending on how the meta continues to evolve. Speculate safely!
Further Reading:
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Corey Williams
Corey Williams is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Shippensburg University in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. He considers himself a macroeconometrician with his research body reflecting work in applied macroeconomics and econometrics. Corey is an L1 Judge who started playing Magic around Eighth Edition. He enjoys Modern, Commander, cEDH, and cube drafting. Outside of Magic, he loves running, teaching, and the occasional cult movie.