Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy Creators on Choosing the Right Characters for the Cards | IGN Live 2025

Having already retired pre-orders of galore packs and bundles already, the Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy cards officially volition beryllium released June 13 and Principal Designer Gavin Verhey and Executive Producer Zakeel Gordon were connected manus astatine IGN Live contiguous to sermon the much-anticipated collaboration.

Verhey and Gordon said that determination person been different IP crossovers with Magic before, Final Fantasy was peculiarly breathtaking because, arsenic Verhey enactment it, “It’s Final Fantasy! That truly helps! We’ve been moving connected this acceptable for astir 5 years.”

The duo noted everyone astatine Wizards of the Coast were large fans of Final Fantasy, noting astir had been playing the games longer than they’d played Magic and means truthful overmuch to them.

Verhery said their attack was to incorporated thing from each 15 games – which upped to 16 arsenic they were moving connected the cards – which began with making spreadsheets of each the characters, items and communicative modes. They past divided up the imaginable inclusions into 3 tiers - what Verhey described arsenic the "gotta have: superior elements and astir fashionable characters, followed by the 2nd tier, which is wherever “cool broadside characters” came into play, portion the 3rd tier were the heavy cuts, “like Guy speaking beaver. We wanted to get it each successful there. Every crippled is represented from astir iconic characters to heavy cuts you can’t judge they enactment connected a Magic card.”

There are 4 Commander decks, based connected Final Fantasy X, XIV, VI and VII and Verhery promised “Everything too the lands is themed to the game” and that playing the FF7 platform “ is similar seeing the full crippled play retired earlier you eyes.” Added Gordon, “We chose those decks to correspond antithetic eras. We tried to truly get the breadth of the full franchise successful our product.”

Gordon said inevitably they inactive couldn’t see each azygous quality oregon crippled facet they would person liked, fixed they didn’t person unlimited cards, noting, “The large situation is we were going for the full mainline series. We constricted it to halfway games which near retired a fewer large characters, but by design.”

Gordon explained that the Through the Ages cards, which see classical Final Fantasy artwork was an thought that came up halfway done the improvement process, simply due to the fact that they were looking astatine the creation – from the likes of Yoshitaka Amano and Tetsuya Nomura – truthful overmuch already and, arsenic Gordon enactment it “The creation was truthful astonishing they wanted to enactment it connected cards.”

A mates of fortunate fans astatine IGN Live were fixed decks of cards earlier merchandise and erstwhile showing them off, their decks included the likes of Final Fantasy VII’s Sephiroth and Final Fantasy IV’s Rosa. Verhey said helium felt that was an entreaty of the Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy cards - taking 2 characters “you’d ne'er spot successful [the same] crippled but present they are together.”