Yes, One Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy Card Really…

Magic: The Gathering's Final Fantasy set has had an undeniable impact on the game so far in multiple ways. The FF set for MTG sold $200 million in one day, setting an impossibly high record to beat for future releases, and it was five years in the making - it even started before Final Fantasy 16 came out, with Wizards of the Coast working closely with Square Enix to then integrate that game too. Between the massive hype for the set and the fact that it includes several pretty good cards from a gameplay perspective, MTG's latest UB release added one card that can win by ignoring most of its text.

One of the longstanding memes in Magic: The Gathering is that "reading the card explains the card," which more often than not happens to be the case anyway. However, it doesn't always apply, as some cards have hidden combos and functionalities that make them stronger or weaker than they appear, and others have parts of their effects that don't really matter when it comes to winning a game. These rules of sorts can be especially important in Commander, which is one of the highest-power formats in the game, given its very high ceiling, and Final Fantasy's The Wandering Minstrel is the perfect proof.

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By Andrea Trama

Magic: The Gathering's The Wandering Minstrel is an OP Commander

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The Wandering Minstrel is a Simic MTG x FF card inspired by the FF14 character, costing 1 Green and 1 Blue mana to play for a 1/3 creature, and it has three abilities. They are:

Lands played by the owner enter untapped
At the beginning of the user's combat phase, they can create a 2/2 elemental creature token if they control five or more towns
By spending 3 generic and WUBRG (one mana of every color), other creatures under the user's control get +1/+1 for each town under the player's control

The ability to play around towns is interesting because it ties perfectly with MTG's land cards with the town subtype introduced with the Final Fantasy set, which includes 23 of them. The synergy there is great, but this is hardly playable in most formats, as a 5-color deck with 60 cards may tend to perform worse than 3-color or 2-color decks, which are typically the most common. Funnily enough, though, The Wandering Minstrel is one of the best commanders in MTG when it comes to competitive play, and it can be equally good in budget or casual settings, the main reason being its first ability.

Why You Can Safely Ignore The Wandering Minstrel's Second and Third Ability in MTG

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The fact that The Wandering Minstrel allows all lands to enter play untapped means that one can create incredibly strong and valuable combos or loops with some cards that would normally never see play in Commander since they slow things down a lot by entering tapped. Instead, one can build a deck with mostly lands, often 50% of the entire 100-card deck for MTG's Commander format, and have it work with combos like Lumra, Bellow of the Woods, and any self-sacrificing land, like Barbarian Ring. Alternatively, Mystic Sanctuary + self-sacrificing lands + Splendid Reclamation or Aftermath Analyst works.

Ad Nauseam is also fantastic in this type of deck because it will rarely have players pay life for it, as they can find a lot of lands from the top of their library and then win with their preferred win-cons. MTG's Icetill Explorer from Edge of Eternities could be great in this deck due to extra lands per turn and land recursion, for example. Another win-con could be the usual Thassa's Oracle for cEDH, even without Demonic Consultation, as the deck focuses on milling itself out and/or drawing a lot, which cards like Scapeshift or Cephalid Coliseum can help achieve quite easily.

One can still play towns in a The Wandering Minstrel deck, but the mechanic can be entirely ignored, and in competitive Commander, it could even be a nerf to the card's potential. Still, Eden, Seat of the Sanctum, is not a bad card to play in this type of Magic: The Gathering Commander deck, and the other bicolor towns can be a cheap alternative to expensive dual lands.

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