Magic The Gathering x Final Fantasy - Spoiler Season Part 24 (17/05/2025 & 18/05/2025)
Yup, 2 days in one. That weekend was basically a no spoiler weekend, aside from what Square Enix themselves wanted to show, so we only have 4 cards to talk about! Let's get started with You're Not Alone!
1 mana for an instant that says: target creature +2/+2 until end of turn. If you control three or more creatures, it gets +4/+4 until end of turn. So a very solid combat trick that can catch people off guard. Mainly great during Limited, but can also be great in 60 card formats and/or commander.
Now for the art. Credit to Ignatius Budi. Link to their ArtStation. What an awesome shot to use as the base of this and it references an absolutely stellar track in FF9, "Not Alone." Very cool and quite chaotic with Garnet/Dagger standing right beside Zidane, while Quina is running away from things and Steiner is standing his ground. Absolutely an awesome art.
Next up Ice Flan!
Blue for an Ice Flan makes sense. Ice = Water = Blue.
6 mana for a 5/4 is quite behind rate and it won't get better on its own. Its abilities are:
When this creature enters, tap target artifact or creature an opponent controls. Put a stun counter on it. Neat, so you basically say to someone's thing that they aren't allowed to use them during your current turn, their own turn and your next turn, unless they have a way to untap it.
Islandcycling for 2 mana, so you can discard this card form your hand to search of an Island card. Neat, always a good option to have if you draw this too early.
This is not a fantastic cycle creature. It is behind rate and while the tapping of an artifact or creature is good and putting a stun counter on it is also nice, it mostly matters if you are able to to basically finish the game in two turns or if you can put your board state together in those two turns instead. That makes it better, but you're also paying 6 mana for this, so hard to do it unless you are mana flooded. In 60 card formats... no. In commander, the previous applies.
Now for the art. Credit to SHOSUKE. Link to their pixiv. That sure is an Ice Flan, neat!
Let's talk about Quina, Qu Gourmet next!
Quick thing right away: I'm using s/he for Quina's pronouns since that's a reference to the original FF9. In later appearances, mainly Dissidia Opera Omnia, people use they/them when talking about Quina. The Qu are weird and genderless, so... go with whatever.
Green is fine for Quina. Why the hell does s/he have the creature type Qu? Please that me that Quina won't be the only Qu, otherwise this is just kind of a worthless creature type to add, since s/he will be the only one that benefits from it. I get that it would've been weird to think of another creature type that fits Quina, but this is like Vexilus Praetor being the only Custodes creature type in the game. I'm afraid the s/he will probably be unique in this creature type, since the article that revealed Quina mentioned that Square Enix couldn't compromise on anything that Magic already offered... damn it.
Anyway, my relatively minor annoyance aside, let's talk about the card itself. 3 mana for a 2/3 is slightly behind rate, but you'll manage. Quina's abilities are:
If one or more tokens would be created under your control, those tokens plus a 1/1 green Frog creature token are created instead. Neat, you get a singular extra creature token for every burst of creature tokens that you create.
2 mana and sacrifice a Frog: put a +1/+1 counter on Quina. A bit slow, since 2 mana is not an insignificant amount of mana, and requires you to have many Frogs to sacrifice, but can make Quina kind of scary.
So... this card is hard to rate. On the one hand, you'd want Quina into a token deck and one that consistently pumps out a small amount of tokens, so s/he can make Frogs (or just put Quina into a Frog deck, or even better, a Frog token deck). On the other hand, you'd want Quina in a +1/+1 counters deck so s/he grows quicker. You can combine the two to get the most out of Quina and that's probably the way to go, but s/he is just still slow in growing. That's also why I'll say that 60 card formats won't bother with Quina and for the most part... neither should you as your commander? In the 99, s/he is a lot better
Now for the art. Credit to Fajareka Setiawan. Link to their ArtStation. That sure is Quina chasing some frogs. I do like how there is one gold frog running away for its life in the background. I do like the art a lot, it makes Quina kind of look horrifying and honestly? Yeah, fair enough, the Qu are terrifying in their own way.
Last, but not least, we have PuPu UFO! Yup!
I'm actually so happy that they made this a thing. Colorless is an interesting angle, mainly good to show that this thing is a genuine alien to the world.
2 mana for a 0/4, as stupid as it looks, is perfectly on rate. Flying, so this will be a depressingly good flying blocker for a good amount of the game. Its abilities are:
Tap PuPu UFO so you may put a land card from your hand onto the battlefield. Ramp! This allows you to bypass the one land per turn restriction, since this is an effect that allows you to do so. Very nice. Even better with tapped lands, since you can do this on instant speed at the end of someone's turn if PuPu blocked something and is still alive.
3 mana: Until end of turn, this creature's base power becomes equal to the number of Towns you control. Can be good, but does require you to spec into running a good amount of Towns for this to become actually threatening enough. Honestly, kind of better to just ignore this ability, unless you really need the damage to finish the game.
So... this is actually a pretty great card. It doesn't search for lands for you, but just having out for a couple of turns to get some more lands on the table quickly is actually really good. Genuinely pretty good, it just won't replace most ramp pieces in already existing decks. This goes for both 60 card formats and commander btw.
Now for the art. Credit to Racrufi/Raúl Cruz. Link to their ArtStation. That sure is PuPu, in its UFO, stealing a whole pyramid. I genuinely love how whacky this series can get sometimes. 10/10.
And that's it for this part! Only 4 cards! Next part will be around double in length in terms of the amount of cards. Anyway, thanks for reading and have a nice day o/
Flans are a reoccuring monster in the Final Fantasy series, appearing in every single mainline game. They typically have very high defenses except for one weakness that you'll have to exploit to defeat them.
They are called Flans in reference to the black pudding creature from Dungeons and Dragons. In Japanese they are called プリン/Purin, but I assume the first translators missed the DnD reference and since Japanese pudding is more similar to American Flan, that's what they're called now.
Ice Flans first appeared in Final Fantasy X and have high defense but are weak to Fire. They attack by casting Blizzara, which deals ice damage.
As I've already mentioned, Blue isn't allowed to deal direct damage in Magic so instead this card taps and stuns something, an effect often used to represent freezing.
I am a bit confused that this creature has more power than toughness, since I mostly associate Flans with their high defense.
