Latest news with #UniversesBeyond
Gizmodo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
How to Get Started With the ‘Magic: The Gathering' ‘Final Fantasy' Crossover
After years of waiting, next month Magic: The Gathering will release one of its most highly anticipated sets, and arguably one of the most significant additions to Magic in years: an entire Final Fantasy-themed expansion drawing together decades of one of the most venerable video game series of all time with one of the most venerable card games of all time. But if you're a Final Fantasy fan who's been gawping at all this incredible artwork (and even some of the more meme-tastic cards) but have no idea where to start with Magic, we're here to help. What Is Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy? Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy is the second significant entry into what Wizards of the Coast has called Universes Beyond, the catch-all terminology the developer uses to describe its crossovers with non-Magic franchises. In the past few years, to the occasional point of controversy with some Magic fans, Wizards has leaned heavily into Universes Beyond, releasing special drops of cards based around everything from Fallout to Doctor Who to SpongeBob SquarePants. Some of these crossovers have been more significant than others: the first major Universes Beyond release was the Tales of Middle-earth set released back in 2023, an entire Lord of the Rings-themed expansion. But what makes Final Fantasy stand out, beyond its leveraging of the 16 primary titles from the iconic RPG series (sorry Tactics or X-2 fans), is that this set will mark the first Universes Beyond set that will be Standard legal, a term that means it can be played in Magic's mainstay format of play, named, you guessed it, Standard. This is the default mode of Magic that you might be loosely familiar with: two players, 60 card decks, quick to pick up and play. What makes Standard so accessible and broad is that it pulls on the latest Magic: The Gathering expansions for its pool of legal cards, which the Final Fantasy set will join when it releases June 13. There are currently 14 sets that are legal in the Standard format, and once a year in the fall, the four oldest sets are removed from the pool. That means the Final Fantasy cards will no longer be legal to play in Standard in a few years, but that doesn't make them suddenly unusable altogether: you'll be able to play them in other formats too, like Commander (more on that later), or in other non-rotating formats like Modern and Pioneer (which are more similar to Standard, but without the rotating pool of legal cards). After Final Fantasy, every Universes Beyond collaboration will be Standard legal, and upcoming crossovers include the likes of Marvel (starting with Spider-Man this September) and Avatar: The Last Airbender later this year. Where to Start With the Final Fantasy Set The good news is if you're just interested in getting some Final Fantasy cards, you'll be able to start right on release day pretty easily: one of the several products launching with the set is a starter kit, featuring two 60 card pre-constructed decks filled with cards from across the Final Fantasy set. They include deckboxes to store them in, special exclusive cards of Cloud and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII, and all the rules you need to know to start picking up the basics of Magic. At around $20, it should also be one of the relatively cheaper ways to get some of the cards. If you want to be a bit more adventurous and get stuck in a little earlier, from June 6 you'll be able to attend pre-release events for the set. These events happen the week before the release of every Magic set, and are designed as a relaxed way for players new and old to come together and play a few games with the new cards. Depending on how your local game store handles things, you might have to specifically sign up to attend or just show up on the day, but typically participation sees you purchase a special pre-release pack which will give you a life counter dice, six booster packs from the set, and a special promo card. Then, you participate in a series of games. Pre-release events are played in the Sealed Deck format: you use the six booster from your pre-release pack to construct a 40-card deck to face off against other players in a tournament. It might seem intimidating if you've never played Magic before, but pre-release events are usually a very casual affair, because the playing field is relatively even: not only do they attract new players to try the game, and even experienced players are dealing with the random chance of whatever cards are in their booster packs from a set they've not had the chance to play with yet. The Final Fantasy set will attract even more people who are fans of the games but never tried Magic, so if you go to a pre-release, odds are you'll find a lot of people in a similar boat as you. Make friends and learn the game at the same time! Next Steps: Collecting Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy Like any good Warrior of Light, those humble beginnings can set you on a path to great adventure (and spending a lot of your hard-earned Gil on shiny things). As you might have seen over the past few weeks while Wizards of the Coast has previewed oodles upon oodles of the over 300 cards that will be in the set, there's going to be a lot of Final Fantasy to collect, and you'll be able to do so in myriad ways: Play Boosters: The standard Magic: The Gathering booster pack, consolidated a few years ago from different varieties into one simple iteration. Each booster has 14 random cards in it, with one guaranteed rare card, and a chance for rare variants. Collector Boosters: 15-card boosters that are made up almost entirely of rare and variant cards: alternate arts, various foil versions, extended art cards. Some of these variants can only be found in Collector boosters, making them highly sought after for, well, collectors. More on these later, because one other thing you should know is that they are very expensive. Bundles: There will be two special bundles in the Final Fantasy set, a standard one available at launch that includes nine play boosters, a storage box, a life counter, two exclusive foil full-art cards, and 32 full-art land cards (the basic resource, or 'mana,' you use in Magic). There's also Gift bundle, releasing a little later on June 27. It contains basically the same things as the standard bundle, but costs a little more as it also includes one Collector Booster. Commander Decks and Collector Commander Decks: There are four, 100-card pre-constructed Final Fantasy decks being released for play in Magic's Commander format, which operates around usually 3-5 players fielding decks headlined by a special Commander card that 'leads' your deck. In Final Fantasy's case, the four decks are based around four of the most popular mainline games in the series: Revival Trance is themed around Final Fantasy VI, and is led by Terra; Limit Break is Final Fantasy VII, led by Cloud; Counter Blitz is Final Fantasy X, led by Tidus; and Scions and Spellcraft is for the critically-acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, led by Y'shtola. Each deck is specifically themed around its chosen game, so you won't see cards from any of the other mainline titles, and most (but not all) cards from each of the decks can also be found in regular boosters. These are great ways to start dipping your toes into one of Magic's most popular formats! There are also collector's edition versions of these decks. Speaking of… You Don't Need to Buy Collector Boosters and Collector Decks The temptation of a lot of the gorgeous artwork and variant cards that have been shown off in the past few weeks might have you licking your lips and eager to get your hands on the rarest, shiniest cards no matter the cost, like you're a member of the Tantalus troupe eyeing your next big heist. So grabbing the collector boosters and the collector Commander decks makes sense, right? Well, not really. Especially if you're a newcomer. Like we just mentioned, because of the guaranteed access to rare cards in Collector Boosters, they command a significantly higher price than a Play Booster: the MSRP for a Final Fantasy Collector Booster is a whopping $38, compared to the $7 for a Play Booster. The vast majority of the variant cards in the Final Fantasy set can be found in both Play Boosters and Collector Boosters, it's just that they'll be more difficult to come by in the former. The only true exclusives in the Collector Boosters for Final Fantasy are special foil variants of some of those alternate cards, and multicolor variants of the Traveling Chocobo card with special neon ink, including a numbered 'serialized' golden Chocobo, of which just 77 will be released. If you're just starting out with Magic, and you want the most bang for your buck as you fill out your collection, you probably want to avoid Collector Boosters—sure, pick up one or two as a treat, maybe, but don't treat them like the primary way to get Final Fantasy cards. The same can be said for the Collector Commander decks: in terms of cards, these are actually identical to the standard Commander Decks, it's just that every card has been given a special 'surge foil' treatment, and you get a two-card promo Collector Booster as well. But again, the price differential is staggering, especially as these decks are mechanically matched: a standard Commander Deck is $70, while its Collector variant is $150. And given how wildly popular this set is proving to be, that's if you can even find them at the suggested pricing right now! It's just not worth it. Next Steps: Learning Magic So, you've bought your cards: what do you do now? Well, you have a few ways to go about actually learning how to play Magic. The aforementioned Starter Kit is a great way to onboard learning how to play the game, and you can keep it within the Final Fantasy theming if you and one other player use just that. As a standard Magic set, Final Fantasy will introduce you to the broader rule set of Magic, including lots of abilities that you will see on non-Final Fantasy Magic cards from other sets (the Final Fantasy set does introduce some new unique mechanics on some cards, like Tiered, representing the various strength levels of magic spells from the video games, or Job Select, a variant of a prior Magic rule inspired by the Job systems of various Final Fantasy games). So you aren't just learning how to play the Final Fantasy cards, you're learning to play Magic itself too, priming you if you enjoy it to broaden your horizons beyond the Final Fantasy experience. The other path would be to learn Magic's incredibly popular Commander format through one of the aforementioned pre-constructed Final Fantasy decks. Commander is a broader-scaled game than standard Magic; it features more players, bigger decks, and longer, more involved games. While there are specific rules to the format, again, the Final Fantasy cards are designed to be played, and mixed-and-matched, with cards from elsewhere in the pool of legal Magic cards. You won't be just learning Commander if you start here, but the tools and rules you'll need to play any number of other formats if you want to. Each of the Final Fantasy Commander decks is viable to play as is, and each is themed around different Magic playstyles—but that doesn't really matter as much if you're coming to this from the perspective of a Final Fantasy fan. Just pick your favorite game of the four in the themed offerings and go to town! The other way you can learn, once you're a bit more experienced, is grabbing a bunch of boosters and trying to build your own decks out of what you've got. Again, this might be a bit too much if you're diving into Magic completely new: you won't know what makes a good deck work, or what cards synergize nicely, and you won't really get a good grasp of learning how to play if you build an ineffective deck. Try playing around with the pre-constructed decks first to get an idea of how Magic works, and then dig into some boosters and figure out ways you could either enhance those decks with alternate additions, or build your own deck entirely. Where Can I Play My Final Fantasy Cards? As a Standard legal set, Final Fantasy, unlike some the prior Universes Beyond offerings, can be played in pretty much any current format of Magic, and against any cards from other Magic expansions. It will remain part of the rotation for Standard for at least a few years, but even once it does, you'll still be able to play the cards in formats like Modern (which uses any card released since the 8th edition of Magic began in 2003, including the sets that are still in the Standard rotation); Pioneer (similar to Modern, but with a smaller pool, starting with cards released since 2012's Return to Ravnica); or eternal formats like Legacy and Vintage (which allows you to use cards from every set of Magic, outside of curated banned lists, which differ by format). And, of course, you'll always be able to use them in Commander as well. But that's all the physical game of Magic. You'll also be able to play and collect the Final Fantasy set in Magic's digital versions, Arena (the more modern digital Magic) and Magic Online (which has been around for longer, and has access to a wider, older pool of cards). However, unlike some other card games, buying most physical Magic products will not net you the chance to claim a digital equivalent: Arena and Online have their own unique economies, and if you want to play with Final Fantasy cards digitally, you will have to buy them specifically through them when the set releases simultaneously with the physical one on June 13. There is one exception to this however: the Starter Kit includes two codes to unlock each deck's digital equivalent in Magic Arena. So you won't have physical cards, but you can more easily find other people to play against from around the world. Where to Go After Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy You can probably just restrict your Magic journey to the Final Fantasy set if you're really just here for the flavor of it all. But one big advantage of this being the first Universes Beyond set playable in Standard means there's going to be a higher chance of you being exposed to non-Final Fantasy Magic cards while you learn the game across various formats, or at least, as much exposure as you want there to be. The Final Fantasy set won't teach you to just play one specific kind of Magic, or just specifically with these cards; it will give you the toolset to broaden your horizons if you wish to do so, giving you familiarity with a whole host of Magic rules, combo ideas, and deckbuilding archetypes you'll be able to put to use with Magic past and present if you like what you see here. If you are just intent on sticking to the Final Fantasy stuff? You're getting what is shaping up to be a fantastic celebration of the franchise either way, with clever cards that will call back to specific moments in the 16 games, or ideas and themes that have existed across the whole franchise for the best part of the last four decades, and draw a host of legendary artists to craft new visions of iconic creatures, heroes, villains, spells, locations, and more from Final Fantasy's long history. There's a reason Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy is shaping up to be the biggest set in the game's history so far: it's drawing together two huge fantasy fanbases, and doing so pretty fantastically. But if the Magic bug bites, then you're well set up to venture beyond the lands of crystals and summons, machina and magitek, scions and sinners, and head out into a vast multiverse of card gaming potential. Go forth, and let the battles begin!
Gizmodo
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
Magic: The Gathering's Final Fantasy Set Looks Like a Match Made in Seventh Heaven
io9 recently got a look at what to expect from Wizards of the Coast's biggest crossover yet—and found plenty to appeal to fans of Magic and Final Fantasy alike. Magic: The Gathering's crossover era has been a divisive one for longtime players. Although there's still plenty of original expansions to the venerable card game, the rise of 'Universes Beyond,' Wizards' umbrella for what has become a swath of licensed crossovers with everything from SpongeBob SquarePants to Lord of the Rings, has become increasingly prominent—and for as many intrigued fans of those other franchises it's brought in, there's pushback that Wizards has traded its original worldbuilding for the card game equivalent of a Fortnite match. That dividing push and pull among Magic fans and curious onlookers is on the precipice of facing its biggest test next month with the release of Magic's 105th expansion: Final Fantasy. It's arguably Wizards' most ambitious crossover yet, a collaboration with a fantasy world as vast, as long-running, and as equally equipped with a voracious, opinionated fanbase as Magic's. The first Universes Beyond set to be made legal in the game's standard constructed format, the barriers between what is a licensed crossover and what is 'normal' Magic aren't just thin, they've been sliced open with a buster sword. And it's already proving to be popular: pre-orders for the set are now difficult to come by, as parent company Hasbro anticipates that Final Fantasy could be one of the game's most lucrative sets ever. But the pressure isn't just coming from Magic fans. Final Fantasy is one of the most famous video game series of all time, 16 mainline games (and yet further myriad spinoffs, sequels, remakes, and re-imaginings beyond them) that have shaped the story of the roleplaying game genre for nearly 40 years. That legacy, of course, includes its own card game, but a Magic crossover is like meeting tabletop royalty: what's included and what isn't, how and why this should all happen, and how much Final Fantasy should be in it has been a hot topic of debate ever since the set was first tentatively teased back in 2023. But the story of the set has been in the works for much longer than that: Wizards of the Coast and Square Enix have been pondering a Magic/Final Fantasy crossover for five years, basically almost as long as knowledge of the Universes Beyond crossover format has been public. 'There were a couple of factors,' Zakeel Gordon, Magic Tabletop Product Architect at Wizards of the Coast, told press at a recent briefing ahead of the Final Fantasy set's first major public preview at PAX East this weekend. 'One is that we built this set simultaneously in English and Japanese for our partners at Square Enix—that included multiple trips over to them for play tests, worldbuilding workshops, Final Fantasy mini-schools to figure out what was important to them. We would come up with design iterations, fly over, and they would say 'we really like these things, we would prefer if you tweak this like this.'' 'But this is also the second ever Universes Beyond tentpole release [after Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth]. We wanted to make sure we were doing everything correctly. We wanted to make sure that the final product met our expectation, and was done in a way that we really think would excite players… in order to do all of that right, it just takes some time.' Just as the pressure on the Final Fantasy set to live up to expectations is coming from Magic and Final Fantasy fans alike, passion for the project is echoed across Wizards and Square Enix. 'It's so fun, any time we get to work with another game studio, many of them are also really passionate about Magic,' Gordon continued. 'Our main producers [at Square] are also lifelong Magic players. We would finish up our meetings, and then we'd go play Commander, or they'd talk to us about Legacy and show us their collections.' The passion on both Square Enix and Wizards' behalf doesn't erase the fact that the new set faces a daunting prospect: encapsulating 16 mainline games (sorry, Tactics, X-2, or Dirge of Cerberus fans, there's no spinoff representation here) across hundreds of cards, each one filled with famous story beats, locations, characters, spells, and creatures to draw inspiration from. 'One of the challenges of balancing the slots in the set—what do we need to fill, what is the mechanical need for a card, what is the flavor reason that we need a card—was that we wanted to get a certain amount of cards per game in the set,' Dillon Deveney, Magic principle narrative designer, explained. 'We started there, and then we decided 'well, how much do we expect to see from this game? How many fans of this game, that are going to want to see X, Y, Z? How big is this game, right?'' Wizards modulated its approach for each game further beyond that into what it considered a kind of tier system. After consulting internally among Final Fantasy fans at Wizards' own offices, and with Square Enix for insight from developers who worked across the series, the Magic team broke down potential inclusions across three tiers of fandom. 'Tier one was 'we have to include this, it's evergreen, it's the baseline expectation,' like Chocobos and Moogles,' Deveney said. 'Tier two is for a fan of a specific game that would go 'Oh yeah, I totally remember that'… these could be iconic minigames, sidequests and powerful weapons, or a super boss you remember struggling against. Tier three is the superfan, diehard Easter egg moment that's like 'no way, they got this in the game, that's crazy!' We wanted to use that as a system to make decisions and choices to figure out what from all the games would fit into our game.' That sorts out the Final Fantasy element of the set. But at the end of the day, this is still a Magic: The Gathering expansion—an important one too, as the first Universes Beyond set to be officially legal in the standard play format. The set doesn't just have to execute on a referential standpoint, it has to push Magic mechanically, and include a wide swath of card archetypes to make it appeal to regular players. Thankfully, it seems like Final Fantasy will deliver on that aspect too, from what was shown to press of the set so far. The set includes evolutions of certain Magic mechanics, like Job Select, a riff on For Mirrodin or Living Weapon that creates hero tokens that players will then attach equipment cards to inspired by Final Fantasy jobs from the original game (and ones added down the line, like those included in Final Fantasy XIV). There's also Tiered, an entirely new mechanic that reflects Final Fantasy's own magic system, where spells grow in power across three levels of strength, letting players pay more mana to amplify the card's damage. It includes clever uses of Magic game mechanics to retell flavorful plot beats from various games, like Kain, Traitorous Dragoon swapping player control on damage and creating treasure tokens, reflecting the moment in Final Fantasy IV where he's brainwashed by the villainous Golbez and turns on the party. Or, for fans of Final Fantasy VII and generational trauma, Aerith Gainsborough's card gaining counters whenever her player gains life… only to pass those counters around to other legendary creatures you control when she dies. The whole set is littered with details like this. A regular mechanic throughout the set is Transform—used to both show villainous transformations of iconic characters like FFVI's Kefka, IX's Kuja, or XIV's Emet-Selch as they go from their primary forms to their final boss identities, but also to reflect a character's long arc over the course of their respective games, like FFIV's Cecil being able to switch from Dark Knight to Paladin, or FFVI's Terra being able to transform to her Esper form for a limited time. There's also the use of the Saga card archetype—a card that enters the battlefield, progresses through a series of 'chapters' turn after turn, and then expires—to represent the various Summons from across the franchise, like Bahamut or Valigarmanda. Not all of the references are just for Final Fantasy fans, either. Throughout the set, fan-favorite Magic cards will be re-printed with classic artwork from across Final Fantasy to reflect the connection between the set's source material and the games, like FFIX's Zidane being used to re-flavor Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer; FFII's Firion re-flavoring Sram, Senior Edificer; or FFVII's Yuffie taking on the powerful Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow. And some are just plain goofy, like multicolored variants of the Traveling Chocobo card to reflect the rainbow of options seen in Final Fantasy VII's Chocobo racing minigame, or the fact that there are 15 variants of the Cid, Timeless Artificer card: all with the same rules (including one that lets you field as many versions of Cid in a deck as you'd want), but each with different artwork celebrating each version of the character that existed from Final Fantasy II all the way through to XVI. Suffice to say, it's clear looking at the cards Wizards have shown off so far that the Magic team's passion for the source material is shining through clearly, perhaps more than any of the Universes Beyond material we've seen from the game so far. 'If there was something awesome we wanted to do [in the set], we got to do it,' Gavin Verhey, Magic's principle game designer, said. 'You'll see all kinds of fun surprises as you go through the set, it's really special.' 'We recently got the first booster boxes in the offices, and we got to get the team together to do a draft, and after years of working on it, just sitting around a table the way all our players are going to do… every single card in this set is like a carefully handcrafted gift,' Verhey concluded. 'We've put so much time, and energy, and research into it, and I just really hope that as you see the cards you see some of that come through.' 'When it comes to Universes Beyond, there's a lot of different sentiments among the player base about how they feel about certain cards, and certain sets,' Deveney added. 'This one was made for you: if you're a fan, you want to get into the franchise, if you just really like Magic sets… this was made for you, by people who really just want you to have a great Friday night with your friends… that's kind of the ultimate goal, just to reconnect and have a great time.' Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy releases June 13.
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Magic: The Gathering's Spider-Man Cards Look Cool But Prices Have Gotten Out Of Control
Magic: the Gathering recently revealed some of the cards coming to its comic-book-inspired Marvel's Spider-Man set, including Venom, Green Goblin, Doc Ock, and of course the webbed wall-crawler himself. The cards look cool and seem like they'd be fun to play. They're also very expensive, continuing a recent trend of Wizards of the Coast's trading card game charging fans a ton for crossover sets, even before they sell out and get flipped for unconscionable sums by scalpers on eBay and elsewhere. In addition to teasing the first six cards in the upcoming set, slated to arrive in the second half of 2025, Wizards of the Coast parent company Hasbro also recently confirmed the Marvel's Spider-Man set is a booster-based expansion, meaning no pre-constructed Commander decks. But even without the recent 40-percent markup on those hot-ticket items, the set's baseline booster packs will still be $7 each, and a whopping $38 for the Collector packs sporting special card designs. That's in-line with the recently revealed Final Fantasy set for Magic: the Gathering, whose prices similarly shocked long-time fans. 'Play booster boxes are $200, Collector boxes are $455, the decks and bundles are $70, this is actually ridiculous,' an MTG player wrote last month about the Square Enix collaboration. 'I get this is Universes Beyond and all that but this is absurd.' The discourse around the new Spider-Man set has echoed similar sentiments. Two points often brought up by players are that these crossovers remain legal in the Standard Format, so dedicated players who want to remain competitive and not miss out still need to partake. Also, the cards themselves haven't changed. It's the same machines printing designs on the same cardboard as in-universe sets which retail for $5.50, just with extra licensing fees attached. MTG lead designer Mark Rosewater recently confirmed the resulting $1.50 mark-up for Universes Beyond sets will be standard moving forward. And it's easy to see why when the cards still immediately sell out after becoming available for pre-order. Collector Booster boxes for Spider-Man retailing at a whopping $455 are already out of stock on Amazon, as was immediately the case with the Final Fantasy set once it was revealed as well. Pre-orders for Final Fantasy collector boxes are now listed for around $650 on eBay, while the Spider-Man ones are upwards of $700. It's a bummer that MTG prices are spiking at the exact moment when Universes Beyond crossovers might bring in new or returning players. Some of my friends are lapsed fans and I lobbied them to go in on a play booster box of Final Fantasy for a chill draft when the set drops in June. The universal response upon sharing a screenshot of the BestBuy pre-order page prices in the group chat was 'hell no.' I imagine it's even tougher for any kids without tons of pocket change or who aren't secretly playing MTG like a stock market in their spare time. . For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
