Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1247: FINAL FANTASY with Gavin Verhey

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

In this podcast, I sit down with the lead designer of Magic: The Gathering®—FINAL FANTASY™ to talk about the set's design.

I'm not pulling out my driveway. We all know what that means. Maybe we don't. This is an at work edition. I think the only second ever at work edition I've ever done. But I'm here with Gavin Verhe and we're gonna talk about Final Fantasy. Woo, I'm so excited.

Those are words I've been waiting to hear for years, Mark. Years and years. Okay, so you were in charge of set design. So let's start from the beginning. What are the challenges of bringing Final Fantasy to life? Wow, there's so much. First of all, it's just such a great honor because these games are so huge and have impacted so many people's lives.

I grew up playing these games when I was a kid. I played Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy 1 was one of the first games I ever bought when I was a kid, so it's really meaningful to me. And there's 16 different games, each with their different characters and stories and entirely different worlds, and we had to put all of them in a single magic set. So there's a big question of, you know, a lot of other University Beyond, we're looking at maybe one thing, or maybe a couple of things putting them together.

But this is 16 different things all in one place, and trying to figure out what we're going to use, how we're going to find the best pieces of it, and how to narrow it down while making sure everyone felt like they got their character in or their most strong moment in from things that they were excited about. All the fans, all of you out there feel like you got what you needed was going to be really challenging. So it was a lot to try and figure out how to do that. Okay.

So obviously one of the things I know was important was you wanted to represent all the games and we wanted to pick mechanics. So let's talk mechanics a little bit. Like we want to bring this video game to life, but in Magic Cards. So what, how did you approach that? Okay. So we look for things for our mechanics that kind of ran across most Final Fantasy games because while we couldn't guarantee that any given character you would know, because you

never played that game, there are some things that are pretty common across most games. So let's try and give you some of that as like the mechanics of the set, the tentpole mechanics of the set. So I'll start with the biggest one, the one that I think is just brilliant. Like we, I remember seeing this at first

and I was like, that is perfect. And then when we revealed it to everybody, they're also like, wow, that's perfect. That is Saga Creatures. It is such an amazing fit for the set. So in Final Fantasy, there are these summons, these huge creatures that you summon to battle and they show up, they make a big entrance, they do a thing and then after a couple of combats, Final Fantasy often has the turn-based combat

system, they go away in a big splashy effect. Perfect for Saw. It's literally what Saw does. It's so perfect. And so I know on the vision design team, when Yanni was leading it, him and Zach Franks came up with this idea. Originally, they tried vanishing creatures, right? They were using the vanishing mechanic where they faded way over time Yeah, but vanishing kind of reads like a downside It takes a bunch of extra text and then I think was Zach that pitched saw what if we did my saga creatures? Mm-hmm, and that was this beautiful marriage It also lets them be enchantments to which makes them feel a little bit different, right? Because like they are these things are something for like another plane down to come and help you out

So we can feel a little bit different in the set Because like they are these things, you're summoning from like another plane down to come and help you out. So it makes them feel a little bit different in the set and let's just key into that in some cool ways. Anything in the set that calls out enchantments, well that could mean saga creatures. So yeah, it was very, very cool. A very cool twist on that. So it's exactly like in the games. You play one, it doesn't affect.

Next turn it doesn't affect. And then usually a turn, the next turn, or maybe the turn later, it goes away. And it's a pretty a pretty cool moment. Yeah, I mean one of the fun things I think is, and when we're doing sort of top-down design, is can we find the magic mechanic that perfectly encompasses what we're trying to capture?

And yeah, Saga Creatures is really cool, I agree. I mean, I don't know, we do them again, maybe, maybe not, but they're fun. I also love, one thing I like about it too is it puts tension on sagas, on your saga creatures that you don't have on a normal saga. You play on a normal saga, unless your opponent has like a disenchant or something,

it's just gonna do its thing. So when a saga creature, it's like, okay, well, do I wanna spend my Doom Blade on that? Because it's gonna go away in two turns anyway, but you also get two effects. Do I wanna attack and block with it? If I attack, are you gonna block? There's really interesting decisions made

with saga creatures that I love. Yeah, it's really interesting, because I know that before we've played around the Sagas that turn into creatures, but the idea of Sagas that are creatures, I agree, it's very cool. Yeah, very cool. Okay, so now we'll talk about another thing

that kind of runs through a lot of Final Fantasy games, and that is the jobs. So there's all these different jobs, in magic we call them classes. You have your wizards and your rogues and whatever, artificers and what have you. And how are we going to represent that? I know a popular speculation from people was bringing back the class mechanics like we

did in Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. But we wanted to do something a little bit different. And so what we came up with was a mechanic called job select, which is sort of like a variant on living weapons. So when the equipment comes into play, you make a 1-1 token and you snap this onto it. And a couple things about these. So this originated early on in design. It was an idea that was different from early design.

But originally, the token was legendary and had no name. And the idea of that was that the name would actually be like blank on the token so you could write in whatever name you wanted, like your name and character in a video game. But that had a lot of issues. First of all, there were printing issues with it. Second of all, we found that people didn't really do it, or they did it one time and they're like, I don't want to name all,

I don't want to do this one every time forever. Not to mention talk about digital. Are you going to type in a name every time you make a token when you're playing on Arena? Probably not. So we cut that, but we showed the mechanic to Square, and they're like, well, actually there's one time. So we went over to Japan to do some play testing with Square.

And we went over and we showed them the whole set and played with it about halfway through development maybe. And they're like, the set's looking great, it's amazing. They gave us so much positive feedback. They loved what they saw. They were amazing partners to work with. But one thing they said was, you know, the shop of cards are like kind of there, but we could use a little bit more, like a little bit more flavor. And so me and Zakeel Gordon, architect on the set, and Dylan Devaney, creative lead on the set, that night we came back from the play test and we sat in the hotel lobby and just chatted for a while.

Okay, how can we like get the little bit of flavor we need in here? And what we came up with was a really nice little solution where the equipment, one of the things that they all do is they confer a creature type that is that job to the creature. So like the black mage's rod makes your creature a wizard, for example. It makes sense. They're holding a black mage's rod, they're a wizard, for example. It makes sense to hold the black mage's rod, they're a wizard now. You can kind of toss that around, which is kind of fun. And then when we showed that again, just to square,

they were like, oh, that's it. That's perfect, right? And I was really happy with that. In fact, I put it in the set and the next play test I played in, players were like, oh, I really like this little touch of Gavin, even not knowing the history of how it got there. So it was a nice little thing that we were able to add on

that I think makes you feel a little more in the world for what is essentially like just a twist on the living weapon or for Mirrodin. And I like the idea that the stuff you're talking about are most Final Fantasy games do this. Right. And that's very cool that, how do you like,

obviously when you get to characters, the characters are very specific and such, but it's neat that you can capture not just individual worlds, but the feel of the game, which I think is really important. Right, and you know, so the, all the job select cards in the set

are based on Final Fantasy I or XIV, because that's where you, like in XIV especially, is where you get kind of the, you're holding the equipment you are that job. But, but of course the jobs are throughout all the Final Fantasy, like you know, every game is someone who's a kind of wizard character

and someone who's kind of like a more fighting character, right, so it kind of, kind of goes all the way across. There's a fun way to represent it. OK, so let's go on to something else that was also there from pretty much the very beginning, and that's Transforming Double-Face cards. So Final Fantasy was the game that kind of pioneered the idea of, you know, there's still another form to get to in my boss, right? You start, you think you beat your boss, and no, it goes and transforms into something

different. And even the heroes, villains and heroes alike, have these story arcs they go through where they change so much that really transforming double face card made a lot of sense for how you wanna showcase that. Yeah, one of the things that I love about TDFCs is that you get to tell a story in two parts, which is really cool.

And you get two pieces of art. And so it's really good for transformational stuff, which is why we made them in the first place, but it's cool that they work here so well. They also really opened up something cool. So there are heroes and villains that were transforming, it made a lot of sense. And in the first place, but it's cool that they work here so well. They also really opened up something cool. So we, you know, there are heroes and villains that were transforming. It made a lot of sense. And in the middle of set design, I kept getting feedback, I got some feedback about like,

okay, you've got all the heroes there, you've got all the villains there, you've got the cute little adorable creatures, sure. But when I play Final Fantasy, there's so much more. These games are huge. There's side quests you go on and all this stuff. Could we do a little bit more with that? And I had the idea of, okay, what if we did a cycle of five uncommon enchantments that were side quests that then transformed into the reward of the side quest on the other side?

And it's so fun because it's like, yeah, it's just like, you know, you can go fishing in Final Fantasy for hours and do that little side quest. Well, now in Magic, you can play your little fishing side quest and every turn, did I find a fish? Did I find a fish? Did I find a fish? So it gives you another thing you can kind of latch on to to build with it, which I think is neat. That is super cool. Okay, so another thing that we knew we had to represent somehow was the kind of tiered nature of Final Fantasy spells. So this mechanic ended up being called tiered. So in Final Fantasy, there's some very classic spells

that have upgraded versions. So there's like Cure, Cura, and Curaaga as a great example of this. So there's the baseline level Cure, which is the most, the smallest amount of healing. And then as you level up, you might unlock Cura and Curauga, which are even stronger versions of the same effect. They're all healing spells,

but one is stronger than the other. And so we wanted to kind of come up with a way to do that. And came up with tier, but just sort of like a take on like kicker meets modal meets spree, where like you pick one of three different versions of the card you can cast, and you cast it as that.

So in the case of Fire Magic, you can pay one mana for two damage, or four mana for four damage, or more mana for a ton of damage. And you get to choose what level you want to cast it at. And I think that's like, in often in Final Fantasy games, you also have that choice. Do you want to spend a little bit of mana to cast my Cure, or a lot of mana to cast my Cure Aga? And it's a fun little way that you can show that on a single card. There's a lot of ton of these in the set. They're mostly just there for texture, but we really wanted to show

them off and have them around. Yeah, it's funny. Just modal effects, I always find early Magic just did a little bit of it and over time we've just found so much different diversity to do modal things. So it's interesting. I always like to see the different take on them. So like we had a lot of fun with Spree. We're like, oh, you can do as many things as you want. This is like, has a lot of the value of Spree in which there's different costs, but you only get to do one.

So that's really interesting. And the flexibility is so meaningful. So as we're recording this, we actually haven't shown and cheered off to the world yet. So I'm curious to see what you all think about it, but it's a really fun, a flavorful way to do this. And then we also had a couple of returning mechanics in the set as well. We had adventures coming back, and this is in a way you've never seen them before, on lands.

So this is something new, so I'll kind of tell the story of this. So I took this head over from Yanni, and I was like, okay, I'm trying to make an awesome set. What does every awesome set want to have? Probably some lands, right? Everyone loves lands. They love cool lands put in their decks, and there's so many cool places in Final Fantasy. We even have this town theme, right? There's this town subtype in the set, it's kind of like gates show up across the set, there's like a little limited sub theme of that. Okay, can we make some rare lands that fit in this? So I slotted in five monocolored lands, and I started talking to people what the options would be for them, and someone pitched, it might have been Yanni, what about adventure lands? And I was like,

whoa, I've never done that before. That's really novel. And what's so cool is we could call the adventure the name of the quest you actually go on in the game. So when you, you know, on Midgar, for example, the adventure is something that you actually do in the game, which is fantastic, right? You go on this kind of bombing mission with, right in the very beginning of the game. So it fits so nicely. And the lands are super strong too, because you get a land that also has a spell on top of it. It doesn't take much for that spell to be really good. And then we're able to, you know, relate them to the places.

Lindblom, for example, makes a Black Mage token, which the Black Mages hang out in Lindblom. There's plenty of them there. So there's, it was a really cool, really cool little through line for us. So more of my little story. I remember when we first did adventures in Throne of Eldraine, the rules were written such that it just needed to be a permanent, but we only did creatures in it. And remember we were talking with like just the rules person about, okay, but you could do other things.

And he's like, yeah, yeah, I just got the ending permit. We're like, okay, we got some future sets here. So I'm happy we finally got to land. Yeah, I think we had to slightly rewrite the rules, but we made it work. And I guess the fun thing I didn't know when I put them in was Chris Mooney actually had them in vision design for Wilds of Eldraine.

They had put in Adventure Lands and Wilds of Eldraine, but they didn't work for standard reasons or whatever. And so unbeknownst to me, I just took the idea and put it in this set. And I remember them coming to me and be like, it didn't work out for this set. Are you going to be okay here? And I was like, oh, I think it's going to be cool enough. And it was, it was, we made it work. Yeah. Magic is full of ideas that we didn't use in one place, but used in a later place. For sure, for sure.

And my fun little fact for all of you is I hinted at this in Mystery Booster 2. There's actually a play test card that is an Adventure Land. So there's a little bit of sneaky preview for you there. Okay. So the other returning mechanics, we've got Landfall, which is back. I don't need to explain Landfall too much, it's a great mechanic. It's just awesome to have around, and it's kind of the red-green theme,

and it's chocobos like Landfall. So you're running around on your chocobos, you have mounts all around the countryside, well how about Landfall for that? And then one that I thought was really cool, and you know, it was Flashback. So go all the way back to Odyssey. It's the year 2002, right, and Mark, and you're making Odyssey, and you know, it was flashback. So go all back to Odyssey. It's a year 2002, right?

And Mark and you're making Odyssey. Yes. And you guys named the mechanic Flashback. Now why did you, I actually don't know the answer. Why did you name it Flashback? Well, the idea essentially was we were trying to just get up. It's hard to name spells. Right.

Because spells usually have like a very vague sort of flavor. So we just wanted to give it something that was evocative, but vague and of flavor. So we just wanted to give it something that was evocative, but vague. And flashback, well, I think part of the reason was buyback had been a spell in which you gotta cast the spell twice. And so I think we were trying to riff on buyback and we're sitting in the graveyard

and the graveyard's kind of the past. So that's where it came from. I think flashback is us riffing on buyback. Makes total sense, right? So it's kind of like almost like cycling-esque where it's not like a super flavorful thing. It's just like, it riffing on buyback. It makes total sense, right? So it's kind of like almost like cycling escorts, not like a super flavorful thing. It's just like, it fits with the mechanic that we're trying to do, right?

I think it's cool that 23 years after Odyssey, we're finally doing them as flashbacks, which is so fun. So not everyone in the set, but the majority of flashback cards in the set are actual flashbacks that happen in the video game, which is cool to be like, oh, this card literally is something you flashback to. And often, funnily enough, I've seen you flash back to multiple times, like on the card

Nibelheim of Flame, for example, this is a scene that is repeated through the Cloud's memory over and over and over again throughout Final Fantasy VII, where he kind of sees Sephiroth and all the flames around him. And so it's like a really iconic scene that you flash back to. So giving flashbacks the flashback keyword was so cool. That is definitely very cool. I always like seeing flashback come back. Yeah, it's fun to us. And then of course, just have a couple of cool unique tokens.

We've got hero tokens that show up on job selectors. There's just one ones, but hero tokens is kind of a new thing here. We have chocobos, which have landfall plus and plus-o. And then my personal favorite, and one that I know was a big fan of people in playtesting, are the black mage tokens that deal a damage to your opponent. There's zero ones that ping your opponent, you cast a non-creature spell. And so actually the Black Red limited archetype is kind of a brand new archetype, it's a prowess archetype with Black Red non-creature spells where you kind of hide behind your army of

Black Mage tokens, you just slowly boop ping, boop ping, boop ping your opponent, which is kind of a neat take on a Black Red limited deck you've never seen before. So those are the mechanics and a lot of really fun ones. So here's my one story on black mages. I remember so I didn't work directly on the set, but I remember when the set came to the council of colors. So black mages, whenever we play a non creature spell, they do one damage to the opponent. Not every color gets to do that. And so one of the big things is okay, what like, okay, red can do direct damage. That's fine. Black can make opponent lose light. So black and red fine. But I know you guys from toying with them in other colors and we're like, well, what like okay red can do direct damage that's fine black can make opponent lose life so black and

Red fine, but I know you guys from toying with them in other colors They were like well not all the colors can do that so yeah, no green black mazes as it turns out Yeah, but then black was close enough I think kind of the line ended up drawing is black should not get the best version of this right red should be the better Yeah, so the black mazes rod even though just the common was actually pretty controversial card It's a two mana card that makes the black ma Mage, so we're trying to be very careful about that. Okay, so I'm curious, let's talk a little bit through, like, what were some of your favorite things to capture? Like, what were some of, like, it was a joy to bring this to the game.

Well, one of the biggest things for us, one of the biggest tasks we had was figuring out which legends were going to be in the set and what they were going to do, right? Because there's so many characters. Like, every? Because there's so many characters. Like every Final Fantasy game has huge party characters. If we put every legend for every Final Fantasy game in the set, it would be a thousand cards. It would be like an absurdly large thing. So we had to really carefully choose.

And so kind of what we did is we made, you know, simply a spreadsheet of like, okay, let's look at the hero and villain from each game and the key like other party members from each game and figure out which of those we could put in the set. And then, you know, from there, we begin to expand out to try and figure out how many of a footprint every game wanted to have, right? So for example, you know, seven is a game we wanted to have all kinds of like trying

to go a little bit deeper on, but every game got plenty of representation. And I think one of the smart ways we did this that I was really pleased with was the fact that we had these four commander decks So Daniel Holt led the commander deck design But Dan and I worked really closely together because if what they could kind of take some of the pressure off of the main set A little bit right like if with Final Fantasy 10 and 7 and 6 and 14 the four commander decks I don't have to make all those like it's not I wanted a cloud and I wanted Yeah, I T this and all that stuff right because to make sure that

That I could have ones in the main set and then Dana tells me to put them in the commander decks. But some of the side characters could just go in the commander deck because there's enough space there to be able to put those in and let the main set have other stuff, right? So it was by giving those four games commander decks,

it freed up some room in the main set to kind of go a little bit wider and make sure we could hit every game. We also set like a few rules. Every game should have at least 10 cards. Every game should at least have one rare or mythic rare card. So every game feels like they have a cool chance to shine, play representation inside the set.

And you know, really like throughout the whole process, there was always like trying to figure out who was going to be in there. And I remember, you know, we do these things at Wizards called art waves, right? Where basically, you get two shots, sometimes three, but often two shots of the first art wave, you commission half the cards in your set, and the second art wave, you commission

the other half the cards in your set. That's kind of how it works. I remember in the second art wave, I was there down to the wire, carefully choosing, oh, do I want to use this person or this person, and how do I want it to be? Once the artist commissioned, there's no going back. Right, it's that character. It's that character and but overall really happy with what we got

I think we have a good mix of beloved characters that people know and then a couple deep cuts for people and then we were able to you know, there's also a big question of like what rarity should things be and You know kind of making sure that you saw them at across uncommon at rare doing A variety of different things. Even the Uncommons who wanted to be cool, right? Like the Uncommons, even if they're just Uncommons, they should still be cool characters. You might be excited to put it in your deck

and they're gonna be unlimited all the time. So, you know, you look at a character like, and the other thing about Final Fantasy characters is they're so dynamic. They have so much going on. For the Uncommons, we had to kind of pick one aspect and hone in on them a little bit, especially, right? So what is their thing? Or what is going on with For the Uncommons, we had to kind of pick one aspect and hone in on them a little bit especially, right? So what is their thing or what is going on with that character? I think I'll use like Adelbert Steiner as a great example of this. There's a lot of things

that Adelbert Steiner is known for. He's like this knight and he helps lead the party and whatever, but along with Zidane. But he also carries this big sword, right? The maw's immune. And so we wanted to kind of relate to that here with his card that carries about how many equipment you control, right? So he has a lot of things going on with him in the story besides equipment, but a card can only do one thing,

can't have like 12 different abilities. So he cares about equipment in that example. So one thing that you touched upon that was very interesting is, so one of the challenges of making a universe to be on set is some universe of Beyond Set, hey, there's a limited number of things to do and like you're actually stretching to try to find things you need. But this was the opposite, that you had way more than you needed.

So you touched about something I want to talk about is so Yanni made a spreadsheet. And the idea is, and Yanni loves spreadsheets. He does. I think they took all the characters, they made a giant list of all the characters and all the different objects and plates. Like just made a list of all these things and then went around some internally, some looking externally of, okay, I think everything got rated on a one to five,

which is you personally, how excited are you to have this thing, to see this thing? Like how much do you want to see this be a card? And they talked to lots of different players who had different favorites and different games they liked. And then to sort of slowly get an average of, just to give you guys a sense of what are the characters and what are the objects and spells and monsters?

Like what do people most want to see? Yeah, totally. And so that also was really useful for us when Gani handed the set over. I was like, okay, some of the fives out of fives, we're gonna make sure they stay in the set. And if the characters really love to make sure that there's a cool like mythic them, or a rare version of them,

or the commander actually got a rare version of them, or something like that. Where some of the, like, the threes or fours, maybe those are uncommons. They still exist in the set or around, then some of the ones might get cut, for example. Now, one of the things we did that I was really pleased with, kind of my idea was, okay, well,

there's some things that are once again, across all Final Fantasy games, or most Final Fantasy games, I mentioned that with the summons and the jobs earlier. Well, another thing that's true for are the monsters. So a lot of the monsters people would be like, yes, of course I would expect to see a bomb in the set or I'd expect to see a cactuar in the set or whatever. I tried to make most of those common or uncommon. So once again, even if you don't know all the games and you're opening a pack, you'll

see a monster that you recognize or something like that. So that's another way we're kind of able to control, okay, you open a pack and you're guaranteed to find something that you will recognize. And one of the things that's really interesting, let's talk a little bit about the power of the art. Yeah. So if you're doing a monster that's been in a lot of different sets, you still have to draw a picture.

And so that allowed you to sort of do highlight different games because you could choose which version to show. Yes, absolutely. And we worked really carefully with Square on this too. So I'll give you a great example, right? There's the card Behemoth. Now Behemoth is a monster that appears in many Final Fantasy games.

And we could have picked any one to do, but we chose, I believe the one we chose is from Final Fantasy II, if I remember correctly. I believe that's correct. And it is, and it's like, okay, Final Fantasy II might be a little bit lesser known to the Western audience especially. Final Fantasy II was not originally released

in the U.S US back in the day. Although of course you can go and get it now. But like if you know Final Fantasy at all, it's like a lenticular design, right? Yes. If you don't know Final Fantasy at all, I know it's no problem. But if you are a fan of 2, that is the specific design of Final Fantasy 2 and you'd be like, oh here's something for me. So there's a lot of lenticular design used in this.

So another good use of art is not every character fit in, but hey we have to make spells. There's a lot of lenticular design used in this. So another good use of art is not every character fit in, but hey, we have to make spells. There's a lot of other things we're doing. So talk a little bit about getting the characters that didn't fit on creature cards, but getting them in the set. Right, there's only so many legends we can do. I mean, the set has like around a hundred legends in it,

not even counting commander decks and other stuff, right? There's so many legends in the set. But ultimately, even with that many legends, we couldn't get everybody. And we're gonna have to have non-creatures. You're going to have to have your removal spells, your pump spells, your tricks, whatever, so on and so forth. And so one of the things we did was, okay, let's try and put some characters that aren't

going to get main set cards on these pump spells or removal spells or whatever, so you can only see them somewhere. They feel like they're around in the set. So on a sleep magic, for example, there's this character called Ico who doesn't get her own card, but is here here prominently featured there, right? There's a card called You're Not Alone, which features a lot of the nine casts really prominently. So there were ways we were able to kind of work other people in, even though we couldn't get every single character as a legend.

And you know, maybe someday, you know, we'll be able to do more. But for now, you'll have to live with without everyone as a legend. But we wanted to make sure there were at least some cards that could represent them for you. Yeah, and then one of the things that's really neat is just, I mean, looking through the set is really amazing to me of how much you guys got in there. Like it is crazy. It is bananas.

But also the set is huge. The main set is gigantic. It's got four commander decks. It's got starter kits. There's all kinds of stuff. And like it is just a giant, and their secret layers, it's just a gigantic set. And in fact, the main set is larger

than a normal magic set. We added extra uncommons into the set just to help get some of the characters in there. And we have more rares than a normal set does to help just once again, get some characters in there. So we were like, we tried to jam pack everything in there. And you know, I want to give credit where credit is due here to Zakil Gordon as architect,

because in my whole history of working at Wizards, there's been no set that basically got everything I wanted. And this is a set where I was like, is there anything with this? He's like, yep, let's do it. What do you want this? Yep, let's do it, right? And there was not a lot of no.

It was like, all right, you want one commons, fire it off. You want to do this wild thing, fire it off. You want to do 16 copies of Sid? Or 50 copies of Sid? So in case you don't know, this is a funny story. So there's a character called Sid that shows up in every Final Fantasy game, except for the a character called Sid that shows up in every Final Fantasy game, except for the first one,

but he shows up in every Final Fantasy game. Now he's always a different character, right? He's not the same person, but he's always called Sid, and he's always some kind of artificer of some kind. And so how are we gonna do that in the card set? We're gonna spend 15 card slots on a Sid? No, we pitched the thing to Zakeel, and he was like, sounds crazy enough, let's do it,

which is there's one card with 15 different artworks for it, right? And it's a single legend, it says you can play as many of them as you want in a deck, so you can have a commander deck that's all SIDS or whatever if you want to. And that's one of the examples of just like, I thought I would pitch that and be like,

that's ridiculous, but it was like, let's do it. It's awesome and I think it really helped that everyone involved in this project is such a lifelong Final Fantasy fan that the rule of cool really went out in most cases. Yeah, so you bring up Zakeel. This is one of my favorite stories, my favorite Zakeel story,

is when Zakeel first got hired, his boss said to him, if you could do anything, what would you do? And he like, didn't even take a second. He goes, Final Fantasy is what I do. Well, turns out he got to do it. So I mean, really, I mean, the passion behind this set is wild, right?, he goes, Final Fantasy is what I do. Well, it turns out he got to do it. So I mean, really, the passion behind this set is wild, right? We all play Final Fantasy,

and it's actually a really fun experience. So when Final Fantasy XVI came out, it came out during the course of working on this project, and we knew we wanted XVI stuff in the set, like there's a board that doesn't capture the game. So what I did is I earmarked a few slots in the set, okay, we'll save some spots for it, and Square, of course, told us in advance some of the stuff that they were

doing so we could try and have a rough idea of what it was. But the game came out and suddenly it was like all hands on deck. It's like, all right, we're going to play through this game. We had a chat going over, sending notes to each other of what was happening. And then like, ooh, this is a good card. Ooh, this is a good card. Ooh, this is a good card. And then they kind of found ways to weave that all into the set. And I'm really happy with the 16 representation we got in the set. And this one that's pretty wild too, which is, so every game in the set has a basic land, right?

So there's 16 Final Fantasy games, each one gets a basic land. And so that breaks down to three arts per basic land, except for it doesn't break down perfectly because 16 is actually, it doesn't divide perfectly, right? It leaves one left over. Yeah. So when we're playing through 16, there was this moment that we didn't know what we're gonna do for 16's basic land.

And as it turns out, there's this character in 16 that like drains the force out of lands and takes the like man away from them. And we're like, guys, this is waste. This is perfect, it's waste. And so we put the 16th basic land in the set as a Wastes you can open. So there actually is a Wastes floating around in booster packs of Final Fantasy for the Final Fantasy XVI artwork, which is really, it's perfect serendipity.

We're like, we're talking about like, how are we going to divvy up this last land? Like, we don't know which one's going to get more than the other. And there's going to be a Wastes, which is like a perfect moment for us. So it was pretty funny. So another thing you guys did, which I thought was very cool, was down by the collector number, you actually list the actual set it's from. So even if you're not familiar with all the Final Fantasy sets, it will tell you what set it's from.

Yeah, so this game from a playtest, we were in a playtest and Zakeel was there and someone who knows Final Fantasy pretty well picked up a card and he looked, he's like, what the heck is an Onion Knight? What is an Onion Knight? And it's, if you don't know, is from Final Fantasy III. They're like the heroes in Final Fantasy III. But it really goes to show that, like,

what we found is a lot of people have played a Final Fantasy game or a couple of Final Fantasy games, but very few people have played every game, right? And so I love having the number down there because it really inspires you to ask someone, oh, I know my friend played through Final Fantasy IV, I'm gonna go ask him. Right, because the same way that we did it in the office

of like when I needed to work on a Final Fantasy IV card, I would go ask someone like Dylan Devaney, who I know of who played through Final Fantasy IV. I'm gonna go ask him. Right, because the same way that we did in the office of like when I needed to work on Final Fantasy IV card, I would go ask someone like Dylan Devaney, who I know of those Final Fantasy IV, or Yanni, who I know of those Final Fantasy IV. Be like, hey, I'm making a card for IV, does it feel like the character to you? And in real life, you can do a bit of that too. We're like, oh, I never played through Final Fantasy V

or whatever, but I know someone that did. Let me go ask them if this fits, right? So it almost inspires you to go look up more online or ask your friends about it, which I think is gonna be a great discussion starter at tables. Yeah, it's funny. So we have a thing here at Wizards we call the SME's. So what a SME is a subject matter expert. So normally when we make a game, we want to make sure people that really know the game are involved. And the funny thing about this particular thing

was that different games would have different SME's. It's like, oh, we're doing nine. Well, okay, who's the expert on nine? You have to go find the person who knows nine. So I thought it was very funny that there's like different smeeze for different games. Yeah. I mean, when I say this effort was a company wide project, it really was like not only was the design team involved and everyone who touched the, you know, all the pieces of the set involved, but we would constantly go like, Oh, I know there's this guy up in customer service that loves this Final Fantasy game. Let's go chat with him. Right. And so, so we could get as many different opinions in as possible. fantasy game, let's go chat with him, right? And so we could get as many different opinions in as possible. And man, it's been so cool to get to work with basically the whole company to bring this set to life. It really is like the passion of a thousand fans in one place. Yeah. And the thing that is, I mean, as someone who interacts with the, you and I interact

with the audience all the time, just, I remember just we announced, you know, at Magic Con, we, or shortly before Magic Con, we announced in a video, and then we showed it again at Magic Con. And just the outpouring of excitement, I had seen nothing like it. It was, it was just, wow, they were just so excited. It is just like, this is a game that is so seeded into so many of our lives. Like, you know, I was writing my article about this set, and it's like, when I was a kid, this is like one that, I looked for the new release, like this is when it would come out, I would spend hours on it, me and my brother would play through it together, and like I was writing my article about this set, and it's like, when I was a kid, this is like one that, like, I looked for the new release, like, this is, when it would come out, I would spend hours, I would meet my brother, we'd play through it together,

and like, I would tell my parents about what I was making, and like, what I was playing in this game, and it was like, it was so meaningful to me. I think so many of us had that experience, and it's just such a special property, and, you know, Final Fantasy, it's just, it's a tent pool of gaming, and to get to work on it is so cool, and one thing that we've really noticed, I think, working on Universe Beyond properties, is when you're working on a Universe Beyond game property, it's so fun and natural to transit that into magic terms.

Because you know what mana is. Mana already exists in Final Fantasy, right? That's there. You know what a character having hit points is. That already exists in Final Fantasy. So we can kind of take that in cool ways and apply that to magic. One of the things that I really like is

we brought back flavor words in this set. So kind of like little flavor words above some abilities. And a lot of that is just like, what is the move called in Final Fantasy? So you look at it, you're like, of course this character would have this ability, that that's what the flavor word is and that's what the mechanic is in the game.

So it's like this really great natural blending. So one thing before we're almost wrapping up here, but I just want to make one note. So I have not played Final Fantasy. I was someone who, that it wasn't, I played less video games as a kid. And so- It's never too late, Mark. It's never too late.

You can go play it now. But one of the things that's really fun for me is, and I want to say to people out there who aren't Final Fantasy players, like I've had a blast playing this. It's been super fun in two ways. One, it's just a real fun magic set. So like in a vacuum, you know, it's just evocative and fun the gameplay is great But the second thing is I'm learning all about Final Fantasy the things I didn't know it's really interesting to see much like any world Magic would make where you get to explore the world

You know look the Final Fantasy made 16 amazing worlds over the years and so even for you out there that aren't Final Fantasy fans I you can the the love of the world building just drips through all the stuff in the set. And I really think that even if you're not a Final Fantasy set, you, Final Fantasy fan, you will really enjoy this set. Yeah. And I think once again, that collector number thing is so great because it inspires you to find out, right? You're like, I know who this person is. Like, like, like there's a great, a great example. There's this card in the set, uh, King Edgar, who has a totally normal ability. His first ability is like, when he comes in to play, you draw a card

for each artifact you control. Sure. that makes sense. And his second ability is once per turn you get to make the flip of a coin heads. And you're like, why, I don't know what is going on here? Like, why is that, why is that this ability? But then you ask a fan, like, oh, there's a great story moment where he like, he like uses this two-sided coin to win this coin flip. It's this whole thing right and I think that kind of stuff those discussions are gonna make playing such a blast and when you're at your pre-release and you're talking with people I encourage you like if you don't know about a character find someone who does and ask

them because you'll hear a great story about it. Well anyway we are out of time but I want to thank you for joining us today Gavin. This is real exciting and it's so much fun to talk about Final Fantasy. Yeah it's been so many years in the making and I just hope you all enjoy playing it as much as we enjoy making it. But anyway guys I'm now at work I guess so we all know what that means. It's the end of my drive to work and it's time for me to stop talking magic and start making magic. So I'll see you all next time. Bye bye guys.