CGMagazine got the chance to sit with the main party of designers behind Magic: The Gathering Universes Beyond Final Fantasy, and they discussed why it’s so important for them, the fans of both franchises and beyond.
Final Fantasy is one of the biggest video game franchises in the world, and like it, Magic: The Gathering is equally massive in its own domain. For decades, these two behemoths have dominated their respective genres, with timely releases that keep both franchises moving forward. Now more than ever, both have not only maintained their relevance—they’ve become household names.
When Magic: The Gathering – Universes Beyond: Final Fantasy was announced, I rifled through my closet for the nearest wizard hat and staff, ready to get in line for the wave of hype that Magic: The Gathering and Final Fantasy were about to receive. Before that, though, I was invited to join the Party of Creation as a guest member, gathering around the proverbial campfire to speak with the four set designers about all things Magic: The Gathering and Final Fantasy.
The team shared why they’ve long been fans of Final Fantasy, what this new set means to them, their favourite titles, and how they approached designing the cards. While many details were revealed during our conversation, two things are certain: Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy Universes Beyond is in good hands, and these creators genuinely want to play the game they’re building.
These four designers are just like the fans. They each have personal stories and deep connections that make their experiences with Final Fantasy a journey to remember. Now, the design team hopes fans can continue that journey within Magic: The Gathering.
First things first, who is the design team behind Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy? Let’s do introductions!
Zakeel Gordon: I’m Zakeel Gordon, an executive producer for tabletop magic. I’m also the Product Architect of Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy.
Gavin Verhey: I’m Gavin Verhey. I’m a principal game designer on Magic: The Gathering, and I’m also the lead game designer for the Final Fantasy main set.
Daniel Holt: Alright, I’ll go next. I’m Daniel Holt. I’m a senior game designer for Magic: The Gathering tabletop, and I was the lead game designer for the Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy Commander Decks.
Dillon Deveney: I’m Dylan, the principal narrative game designer for the Universes Beyond creative team. I am the narrative lead for the Final Fantasy set.
It’s like a party in here, isn’t it? So, I guess I’ll start with the most embarrassing question that I have. Final Fantasy XV has four main party members so, if you guys had to choose, who would be who?
Dillon Deveney: That’s such a good question! Who has the nicest car among us?
Gavin Verhey: I’ve got an opinion.
Daniel Holt: Here we go!
Gavin Verhey: You want me to tell you who I think everyone is, alright! I think Zakeel’s Noctis. He’s our fearless leader. Of course, he’s the architect of the whole project. I’m Prompto, obviously. Taking pictures on social media all the time, just selfie-ing like it’s nobody’s business.
Daniel Holt is the big, strong man, Gladiolus! He keeps the coast clear, and of course, Dylan, is the man of flavour baby, making a spicy stew for everybody! So, it’s pretty obvious in my opinion!
Dillon Deveney: (laughs) I agree with Gavin.
I love how that was almost a rehearsed answer!
Gavin Verhey: (laughs) I’ve been thinking about this for years, you gotta do better than that!
In the years of working as Magic: The Gathering game designers, what would you guys say individually was the most important thing you brought along from designing just Magic: The Gathering, to designing Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy?
Gavin Verhey: I guess I can speak to that a little bit. So, I’ve been at Wizards [of the Coast] for 14 years. I’ve worked on tons and tons of Magic sets. This was the most challenging and also the most rewarding project I’ve ever been on. I’m a lifelong Final Fantasy fan, FF1 was the first game I’ve ever purchased. This is the case for the whole design team, we are all lifelong Final Fantasy fans.
To come onboard with all the knowledge of how to design a Magic set and the cards we have to make, to make a compelling set, and try and combine that with Final Fantasy was a task. It meshes together in many ways, and we had to find some solutions. What is a summon going to look like? This is where we did a lot of work [answering these questions] and came up with the Saga creatures from the previews.
How are we going to show transformation? We’ll do these double-faced cards! How are we going to do the different levels of magic? We came up with Tiered spells. A lot of things can be translated across with a bit of work. The big question to me, one of the hardest ones to answer, was what we’re going to do about our characters, because Final Fantasy is such a well-written story.
Every game has these great epic stories, where at almost every different point, a character could be any of Magic‘s five colours. So, trying to distill any given character down into a single colour or two colours is really tough. So, what I did was what I call “the snapshot method,” where you take a picture of a character at a specific moment in time, and then you design a card around that. So that was the solution. Cloud is a great example.
In the main set, you have a mono-white Cloud; in the starter kit, there’s a red-white Cloud, and in the Commander Deck, there’s a red, white, and green Cloud. I think it’s awesome that if you’re playing the Commander Deck Cloud as your commander, they [all Cloud card variants] can all go into that deck. They do kind of show Cloud at a few different points during his evolution. So, throughout the set, you’ll see these snapshots in time of what a character was doing at the captured moment. I’ll let Daniel speak a bit on how the Commander Decks approach this.
Daniel Holt: Gavin has access to all five colours in the main set. He can do whatever he wants with any of his characters as he spreads out development across his 300-ish cards. Once I selected the Commander Deck themes and colours, I was then limited to those colours. Gavin just mentioned Cloud is white, green, and red so every character from Final Fantasy VII that’s in that deck now has to be white, green, or red. A good example I use is Celes from the Final Fantasy VI deck. When she was revealed, I had fans ask me, “Well, why isn’t she blue?” The simple answer is that the deck is white, black, and red. We don’t have access to blue.
We did that ‘snapshot moment’ where the deck is focused on the second half of the game [Final Fantasy VI], where the world’s in ruin. She’s a bold, daring, and determined character to get the party back together. She leads that effort at the beginning, so that brings her into the Mardu colours at that moment, and we took that approach to any characters that had to be stretched a little to fit their colours. Specifically, the Commander Decks.
Dillon Deveney: One of the things from the creative perspective that we also tried to keep in mind was we are speaking to Final Fantasy fans who want to come in to play Magic. We’re also speaking to Magic players who maybe don’t know Final Fantasy yet. So when we wanted to approach things like flavour text and card names, we were balancing a needle of ‘this is very referential to the title that was coming from,’ but, when we had the opportunity to, we would make the name something a little bit more approachable. Flavour text that we picked as well, the quote that’s very emblematic from a famous scene, and so on.
Maybe we try to put that reference in the context of a card, or maybe a Legendary Creature, where it aligned to the scene. So even if you didn’t know that particular character, the card might make sense to you. Final Fantasy has a lot of ostentatious character designs and cool, interesting creatures! Just like Magic: the Gathering does! The same thing that we do on a Magic: the Gathering set; whether it’s on Zendikar, or Innistrad, or Ravnica, if we’re introducing you to something new for the first time or if we’re returning to it we take a very ‘approach’ philosophy for how we introduce new characters or world building to the art and flavour text.
Universes Beyond also uses a lot of flavour words, so when possible, we would bring flavour words in from the game that were moves, abilities, and spells that made sense for the card mechanic. Thankfully for us, a lot of those moves, abilities, and spells are very understandable concepts.
Like [the fire spell] Firaga, or a certain ability that has the word sword or blade in it. We use those approaches to not only create resonance inside of a card to make it more interesting for the Final Fantasy fan but also to help guide you, the Magic player who’s discovering Final Fantasy for the first time. Who these characters are and why they’re so cool counts. Maybe you’ll go check out the game after Magic. Maybe you want to play the game with Cloud or Squall, or something like that. We do tell you on the bottom of the card what game each card comes from. Go give that game a download and try it out!
Zakeel Gordon: I’ll answer this from the product level. For a lot of development, we had this idea of the ‘rule of cool.’ We’ve been making this set for almost five years, but in a lot of ways, we’ve been making this set our entire lives. When we think about what we are delivering to our audience and the expectations of our audience, I always thought back to ‘what would the ten-year-old version of myself who played Final Fantasy X or Final Fantasy VIII really want out of this product?’ and that kind of scales with the set size.
The Final Fantasy set is a little bit larger than normal. We instituted a couple of extra mechanics because we just wanted to pay off full character identity and felt like they were brought to life within the set. Because the audience is a video game audience, we were able to crank up the complexity a little bit. Fans already understand things like health, mana, and damage. Stuff like the difference between a ‘glass cannon’ and a tank.
So we tried to make the Magic set that would appeal to the existing Final Fantasy audience and the crossband of whatever my experience was 20 years ago, of what I really hold special, to be delivered within Magic.
While you guys were presenting the panel at PAX East, it was made clear you guys are clearly through and through Final Fantasy fans. Meeting the Final Fantasy design team, how was that? And what did you guys pick up most from and speaking with the Final Fantasy game designers?
Dillon Deveney: That is a fantastic question. We had the pleasure of meeting with Square Enix on a weekly basis and our partners who helped with this collaboration. We also had the distinct honour of meeting with some of the title owners, original game designers, original developers, and original [Final Fantasy] artists on this set. The thing that I think I walked away with the most was such a sense of understanding, empathy, and reverence for how they do their games.
Each Final Fantasy title, Final Fantasy 1-16 in the mainline series, is a bespoke IP to each team that made it. We can very easily colloquially say like “Oh, yeah, Final Fantasy!” And we just kind of mean everything. But to the people who made it, every single game is its own unique entry with its own unique world and story, and it is held up against every other [Final Fantasy] in this pantheon of what creates Final Fantasy as a franchise.
That slight method of thinking, not just grouping all of Final Fantasy together, but looking at each individual game for its amazing contribution to video game history and so much of popular entertainment culture, just made me stop and appreciate everything. That I was fortunate enough to be raised alongside, and to think about the people who created the series.
Very often when we would talk about what a card should do or what the art should be like, we would think about the last time we talked to the title owner and what they were really excited about, and then we factored in the feedback of Square Enix and everyone who made the titles into a lot of our decision making. This was so we could start to align ourselves to how they made their games, and over time, we started to naturally walk that pace of how they were thinking and how they got to their decisions.
Things started clicking early on in the process, so just walking away with this broader mentality and respect is something I’m never going to forget. I learned to love and reconnect with games I already loved and already thought I understood in a way that I was previously unable to before working on this project.
That’s pretty cool! Gavin had said previously that the first game he ever purchased was Final Fantasy 1. I’m sure everybody has that ‘discovery moment’ of Final Fantasy. Now, if we could briefly go through each of those discovery moments [for the team], and how you guys have put that into Magic: the Gathering that you hope fans can discover.
Daniel Holt: I’ll start here. Final Fantasy X is my personal favourite of the series. I was really excited when I got to pick it as one of the four decks that we got to deep dive into. Each of those four decks gets to go a little broader and deeper than the main set does because the main set is trying to encompass all 16 titles. With Final Fantasy X, I grew up on that. It was the first PlayStation game that had voice acting, beautiful cut scenes, and all of those story moments. So with that Deck specifically, I kept logs of every time I did a reprint of a new card, and I noted “Oh, it could be this! This could be the concept!”
Obviously, when talking with Dylan through all of that, I went to the concept meeting with my notes and Dylan’s would say, “You’ve already done it [the card design].” He would then double-check the design and notes when we would meet on a few specific cards. Some of those story moments and designing new cards for them, there’s a big turning point for you and I in that game specifically, and capturing that in a card. It’s those emotional connections to those scenes and characters that I was really excited to contribute to this set.
Zakeel Gordon: I’ll go next. Funnily enough, my favourite game is also Final Fantasy X. Final Fantasy X is not only my favourite Final Fantasy, it’s also my favourite video game. It’s the game that I purchased the most, and I’ve purchased it on every system or console that it has come out on since 2001. [Laughs] It’s also the game I’ve gifted the most.
It came to me at a point in my life that had a really big impact when I was younger and introduced me to broader gaming and fantasy as a genre. I can definitely say I would have never discovered Magic if it wasn’t for the introduction to Final Fantasy X. I don’t think I would have ever found Magic, let alone work on Magic, if it wasn’t for that game.
So, being able to work alongside the team here to bring all of those cards to life through Magic was just a dream come true.
Dillon Deveney: I was very young when I first landed on Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy IV was my first one and my personal favourite. It is one of the reasons I sought to become a narrative game designer. That game story taught me at a very young age what it means to tell good narrative in video games in ways that other mediums cannot do. The example that I always go to is Cecil’s story of becoming a Paladin from a Dark Knight in Final Fantasy IV. You start that game as a Dark Knight and you literally have the powers of darkness.
You wield a super cool, edgy black sword and work for the King of Baron, who ends up becoming corrupt and sends you on these very sketchy missions. Cecil slowly starts to realize something’s wrong, but he’s so powerful. You’re so OP at the beginning of that game. But eventually, when he decides he has to do the right thing, he goes on this quest of redemption. He gets a new sword, he becomes a Paladin, and there’s this moment of reflection where, in the game, he tells his party members, “Hey, I have to do this alone.” Classically, Final Fantasy is a party game, and your party just leaves your menu.
I was all, “Wait, wait, what?!” The moment when you go to this boss battle and see this crystal mirror. This is where your sprite from the beginning of the game walks out and challenges your new Paladin sprite to a 1 vs. 1 boss battle, and to become a Paladin, you have to quite literally kill your inner darkness. I mean, come on! I was like 4 or 5 [years old], and my mind was exploding. These experiences started to plant a seed in my head of the strength of video games, and how amazing they are when they give you the agency of control.
So, talking about what we put into Magic like Cecil’s Story, and then many of the other Final Fantasy IV characters. Kain is another great example. Kain Highwind, from that game, is a good example of where we spent a lot of time talking about how to incorporate each character’s macro story into a single card. I honestly feel for so many of these characters, we got their story arc right on their card. If we only got one shot for each card, I think we nailed it.
Gavin Verhey: Final Fantasy 1 was the first game I purchased, and I have many good memories playing that title as a kid. But I’ll say that the specific title that stays with me most is Final Fantasy IX. I played through IX on a road trip. We figured out how to rig up a PlayStation to work in our car on a 16-hour road trip, and it would work, but it was literally plugged into the cigarette lighter slot. As soon as the rig jiggled, the whole thing would turn off. This was a whole situation, but I have very fond memories of playing this game.
One of the great things that no one ever tells you about being the lead designer of a set is that you get to do what you want. So, I got to put my thumb on the scale a little bit and got to put a little more IX content in the set. You’ll see a few more black mages and a couple of deeper cuts from IX because I love that game. If there are any IX fans out there reading this interview, know that I’m the reason why your favourite weird Final Fantasy IX cut is hanging out somewhere in the set.
There’s a theme that all four of you discussed about Final Fantasy, you all referred to the idea of gifts. Would you say that the Final Fantasy Universes Beyond is Final Fantasy‘s gift to Magic: the Gathering?
Gavin Verhey: I feel like it’s a gift to each other. We worked so closely with Square on this, I think what’s worth emphasizing is that Square has some huge Magic fans, and this project in part came about because they love Magic. I was on the first-ever call (we had these weekly calls on Tuesday nights forever, basically goodbye Tuesday nights for Zakeel [laughs] so sorry!) and on the first one, the guy from Square’s said something like “Yeah, I went to four pre-releases last weekend, and just got my new Ragavans for my modern deck!”
These are very serious magic players, and they treat magic with a high degree of respect. We want to treat Final Fantasy fans with the same high degree of respect.
In this collaboration together, it really is like we’re both giving gifts to each other right? It’s the coolest Magic interpretation of Final Fantasy and the coolest Final Fantasy interpretation of Magic in many ways, and that was reflected in the design process. They [Square] were even collaborative. When we showed them some of the early cards, we flew over there and we played with them. We built up some decks and played with them, and they gave feedback. Then I went back home and made tweaks based on their feedback.
So, it was just an incredibly collaborative process, and truly an honour. I feel like the gift being given here is to the players. This is an incredible thing these two gaming Titans have created together in a collaboration, and it’s unlike anything else in Magic or Final Fantasy history. We ask fans to please take it, enjoy it, and go forth with this very special moment.
Dillon Deveney: Zakeel said something earlier that is very resonant to what Gavin is saying, that this entire thing and every time we made a decision, it was based on everyone’s opinion, but what does the fan want to see? That notion triumphed over every other decision no matter what. So we were constantly thinking about who this set is for, and at the end of the day, when we talked about “what would the 10-year-old in me be so excited about to see?” that inner child and that person who loves their favourite game exists in every single fan, whether you’re a Magic fan or a Final Fantasy fan.
If you’re fans of both and come to play this set, it’s for you. Maybe it’s for some part of you that you needed to reconnect with or love, or haven’t talked to in a while. It just brings you back to a part of your life where you had the time to play games on your old CRT TV, or play on your GameBoy with no backlight. Or even the first time you got a PS2 and you were blown away by the stunning graphics of your favourite game. This is something that, while working on, I constantly realized that I really needed this set as a fan, and I’m really happy that I was able to work on it. So, if we can give that notion to anyone else who plays with the set, I’ll be through the moon and over the stars.
Daniel Holt: We were talking as a group earlier, and the word responsibility came up, and that’s how I felt when I got assigned the project. For example, we just wanted to make sure we gave the genuine Final Fantasy experience to the players to match their expectations. I talked about FFX being my favourite, and I know that game inside and out. I can pretty much make cards for it all day, but then I talked in the panel; and how I knew I was making a Final Fantasy XIV Deck and I’d never played Final Fantasy 14 before. So I played 200 hours of that game within a month. Me and my friend just started the game and went all the way up to Shadowbringers.
Afterwards, we found out everything past Shadowbringers and Endwalker is kind of where we’re focusing on, so I thought “back at it!” I had to learn a little bit more XIV, but it’s that kind of dedication from this whole team. We all brought our passion to it, and if one of us didn’t have the knowledge of a specific game, someone on our team did.
We have Yoni [Skolnik], who was the Vision Design Lead, who started me and Gavin on the game design projects. He’s a huge Final Fantasy II and VI fan. We have another FFVI fan over here, and designing was like that. Someone in the building knows these games, and if we personally didn’t know the title, we leaned on the people who did to make sure we provided that genuine experience.
Judging by the party’s answers, I gathered it’s a collaborative effort, like the plot line of many of the Final Fantasy games. I noticed during all the card designs, there are no spoiler alerts is that by design? Or was it like “a couple years passed so…”
Dillon Deveney: In order to tell an authentic story, you have to be willing to tell that story. If our entire product were just teasers or the moments before, it would be an unsatisfying experience for the fans. But even if you’re unfamiliar with the story, our players are smart, they’re intelligent, and they’re hungry for story and context; they’ll find it.
You feel that in our set. You wouldn’t feel that it was just like, “Oh, we just put characters on paper and called it a day.” So we ask that if you are playing the set, that you are also engaging with the story of Final Fantasy. There’s certain games that are relatively recent from the past couple of years that we try to avoid major spoilers for because you can go play it and It just kind of came out. But it’s not a spoiler to know that the four warriors of light beat chaos at the end of Final Fantasy 1. The game’s been out for… you know, a little bit of a time now, so I fully expect that to be okay, right?
But even then, if there are some spoilers and you’re not familiar with Final Fantasy, maybe that’s a reason to get excited about what you just saw or witnessed; what your friends are interested in, and to go download the game and try it. Hopefully, that is part of the effort. You don’t stop at this set. Final Fantasy fans try more Magic sets, and Magic fans try other Final Fantasy games that they haven’t experienced yet. That was my philosophy going into it.
Zakeel Gordon: One minor thing I’ll add is for the Magic fans who aren’t familiar with Final Fantasy, we put a lot of effort to breadcrumb people towards the general theming of all the games, but also towards an identification for all the games. So in the bottom left corner of every single card in the set, it identifies which game that card is from because if you don’t know anything about Final Fantasy, if you are not familiar with the IP, it’s going to be very difficult for you to open a pack, see 10 different characters that are from 10 completely different games and know what’s going on.
If a fan says “Hey, I really like Squall!” for example, where do they go to learn about them? That information is right there for you on the card to then kick off your experience if you want to. You can check out Final Fantasy VIII.
It always feels like everything’s too strong in new sets, and I’m sure fans will have that complaint as well here. But, after seeing some of the preview cards, things look a little strong [laughs].
Do you guys ever worry about that, that Final Fantasy is going to outpace or erase the rest of Magic? Do you guys have any worries about certain card designs that push the envelope a little too far?
Gavin Verhey: This set had gotten so much additional play testing and scrutiny, because it’s the first-ever Universes Beyond set to be legal in all formats. It’s going to be legal in everything! Given that it’s going to be legal in places like standard, we really wanted to put it through all of its paces.
Fortunately we were still able to come up with a lot of really resonant designs, and a lot of the knobs in Magic like power, mana cost, toughness, and that kind of stuff were able to turn properly. We were a lot more flexible in what we wanted to do. I mean, I’ll say it straight up – The set is powerful. There’s a lot of awesome stuff in here, and frankly, it’s a huge Magic set.
We feel good about what we’re putting out in the world. It’s going to have some strong cards and there’s going to be plenty of cards that see play. Hopefully, nothing too broken, but ultimately, there are 50 designers and 50 million Magic players. It is a 1 designer to 1 million players ratio.
It’s always fun to see what people come up with, and to me, that’s part of the fun. We put a lot of work, energy, and time into the set. I would be very surprised if you don’t see many of these cards showing up in big tournaments and on Commander tables. Hopefully, if we’ve done our job right, you won’t see them hitting the banned list either.
Dillon Deveney: Another thing to consider about Universes Beyond in general, is a lot of the times when we make a Universes Beyond set or work with new IP, our ultimate goal is to make a serviceable, resonant, faithful, and super exciting experience for all of our Magic: the Gathering players and all the fans of that IP. After that, the goal is not to replace anything. The set doesn’t replace the original version of the IP, and it doesn’t erase the rest of Magic. Just like when we returned to Innistrad, it doesn’t erase the original Innistrad release.
Even when we go back to Midnight Hunt, it didn’t get rid of Dark Ascension, and so Final Fantasy will come out and hopefully ask you to look back at your favourite sets previously, your favourite decks previously, and figure out stuff like “Oh, man, how does Sephiroth play with cards all the way back from this set?” and like “How can I break this character with cards from my favourite set?”
Like other new sets, it’s going to ask you to kind of reevaluate some of the previous sets you were already in love with and to play the new cards with. It’s just adding to the pool of amazing cards we already have.
On the Through The Ages Bonus Sheet is where I feel that Final Fantasy really becomes Magic: the Gathering. Final Fantasy’s iconic artwork, even in the concept phase, is put on top of instantly memorable Magic: the Gathering characters. Like the Ragavan x Zidane Tribal card, what was that process going through? Choosing the Magic card and choosing the character to tie them to? Was there anything left on the cutting room floor?
Gavin Verhey: Well, Ragavan has a monkey’s tail, and Zidane has a monkey’s tail, so it really just worked. [laughs] This really is a collaborative effort. I mean, I know that’s kind of the theme today, but the collaborative effort between all four of us where we would all figure out a bunch of cool cards, and maybe need concepts that would match. Like, I know we kind of tagged Ragavan and Zidane early on, and we were thinking “Wow, that’s a really natural fit.”
There is a couple of other cards we were thinking, “Oh, we got to do this! We gotta do this one!” and we had a lot of fun trying to peg Magic concepts to characters. There’s also a lot of art that had to be sorted through. Dylan, would you want to talk about how much art we sorted through for this process? Because, as it turns out… There’s a lot of it.
Dillon Deveney: Yeah! So for just the 16 games, if you imagine any of your favourite pieces of art from those games and all the stages of concept we went through; then imagine every art book Final Fantasy has ever made, and all of the Ultimania books, and then art you’ve never even seen before that was an internal concept art.
Now, just go ahead and multiply all of that by 16, and that’s how much we had access to. So, we had to spend a lot [laughs] A LOT of time sorting through just artwork. I can fill the whole panel hall that we’re in right now with everything that we were working on [laughs].
When you talk about cutting room floor… there’s so much. Half of the time we would grab each other from the hallway like it was a mission: “Hey, we’re doing art. Now,” and then we would spend the next two hours going through everything. We come out of those concept meetings with the feeling of “Alright, Gavin, Daniel, Zakeel, we like these pieces, we think this was represented well, where is your brain going immediately for card designs?”
So half of it was just we have this art and we know we want to use it, and the other half is we think these are bespoke, what can we use this for? That was a lot of the back-and-forth process, and that’s kind of what Gavin was talking about. I know Zakeel was a big arbiter of this project initially, so I’m going to toss it to you.
Zakeel Gordon: Yeah, you mostly got it covered! But I think we showed the Firion x Sram [Through The Ages Bonus Sheet] that complements the Final Fantasy II Firion, so, yeah, it was half and half: Hey, we have all this amazing art —specifically, when we talk about Yoshitaka Amano from the game covers of early Final Fantasy like 1-6— the other half was mechanically resonant. So, there’s a bunch of stuff on the bonus sheet that kind of enables combos within the main set, ultimately complementing the main set design.
To Dylan’s point, we had a whiteboard of 300 images [laughs] where we’re kind of like figuring it out. We knew we needed to pick up this original illustration of the Dragon of Mount Gulg from FF1, the plan was then tying to “What dragon is it in Magic?”
So that’s the rundown there.
All right, thank you guys so much for your time, and thanks so much for the hard work on the set as a fan and journalist. It was a trip to get to speak to you guys, and I can’t wait for the set to drop!
Magic: The Gathering Universes Beyond Final Fantasy launches fully on June 13.
- THE ENTIRE FINAL FANTASY SAGA IS HERE—Step into the unforgettable stories of all 16 FINAL FANTASY core games brought to your tabletop with the strategic gameplay of the Magic: The Gathering trading card game
- CUE THE VICTORY FANFARE—Cast powerful spells, meet iconic characters, and visit familiar locales on the back of a Chocobo with cards featuring FINAL FANTASY-themed art and mechanics
