Discussing Magic The Gathering x Final Fantasy With Daniel Holt, Design Lead For Commander Decks

The Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy set is now available in pre-release with the full release only days away. As someone hooked into both the MTG and FF spaces, it's been incredible seeing the reaction, on par with the release of a Final Fantasy game. At Summer Game Fest, I got to sit down with Daniel Holt, Senior Game Designer for Magic: The Gathering and the lead designer behind the pre-con Commander decks featuring Terra, Cloud, Tidus, and Y'shtola.

But First, A Duel

Prior to sitting down to discuss the collaboration, Holt and I engaged in a quick game of Magic: The Gathering using the Cloud and Sephiroth decks that come in the starter set. Cloud's deck features equipment cards lending to the JRPG roots, while Sephiroth's deck is built around tokens and powering up Sephiroth, Planet's Heir.

Being my first time really getting hands-on with these cards, I was continuously distracted while playing, spotting favorite characters, locations, and events from the history of FF. I couldn't help but comment in excitement seeing the Sunstones of the Giza Plains from Final Fantasy XII glowing on the Plains card.

After competently defeating him (absolute blind luck top-decking a card that let me create a 13/13 monstrosity with Haste and Trample, there was no skill on my part whatsoever) we moved over to an interview space to continue talking.

Picking And Choosing Moments

Knowing how much history there was to Final Fantasy, I first wanted to understand how, even in a large set such as this, they were able to pick and choose the different characters and moments to highlight.

Holt told me that Gavin Verhey, who led the main set, developed a tiered system. "Tier One was made up of the character and story moments that every character knows; Sephiroth and Cloud, etc. Tier Two is like, if you played the game, you'd probably know. Tier Three is those deeper facts, like this is probably your favorite game."

On the topic of favorite games, Holt revealed that his favorite numbered Final Fantasy title was Final Fantasy X, which is why he was even more excited that he got to create a Tidus and Final Fantasy X themed pre-con.

I quickly paused to ask him whether he pronounces it Tidus (Tee-dus) or Tidus (Tie-dus), and he very quickly and confidently said the correct answer, Tidus (Tee-dus).

Commander Decks Are For The Whole Game, Not Just The Hero

At the interview space, Holt directed me to editions of each of the Commander Pre-Con decks, explaining that each of these Pre-Con decks doesn't just feature a hero, but is completely themed after the game that they're from.

"When you buy the Final Fantasy X deck, every card in here is Final Fantasy X, except the lands. So we had 63-ish cards to all be from Final Fantasy X. So we got to go in those deep moments."

"One of my favorites from this one is the reprint Endless Detour. We've got to show Riku where she's scared of lightning. She's with the whole party inside the hotel, and she doesn't want to go back out."

Creating The Plan For A Pre-Con Commander Deck

I asked if there were any moments that a fan of FFX like himself put his foot down to say they needed to be included, and Holt revealed a bit of the behind-the-scenes for Commander deck creation. "The way we approached all these decks is that I had an Excel sheet where I looked at the reprint I'm considering, and a possible story moment."

He talked about the discussion he had with Dillon Deveney, the head of creative for the set, "I'll ping him and ask 'hey, can we do this?' and [Deveney] will say 'yeah, that's fine' and for every card we have one sentence what it could be. I had this sheet already filled out for Final Fantasy X before coming to Deveney. He looked at it and said 'This pretty much works' and we were already kind of done."

"Every character is somebody's favorite character"

While Final Fantasy X had a lot of easy moments to pull from the Commander deck, Final Fantasy VI was more difficult. "VI was the last of the pixel games, so some of our references weren't great for capturing the game. Some of the items in the game are just a sphere, it's not enough for a reference."

Holt talked about having to drop certain ideas when there just wasn't any possible option, and seek out a different reference for those cards.

Holt did speak very highly of the team at Square Enix that they worked with while putting this set together. He talked of the benefit of so many on the MTG team being fans of Square Enix and Final Fantasy, and likewise, a lot of those at Square Enix were fans of MTG.

If they reached out to Square Enix and there wasn't a great reference to be used, the team would be very helpful and provide alternate references.

When playing with the Cloud starter deck, I was impressed with the way that Equipment and Hero tokens had been implemented. On top of that, Sagas have been altered to provide a basis for Summons. Powerful while on the field, but only temporary.

Turning Gameplay Mechanics Into Card Mechanics

Explaining more about how they adapted game systems to Magic: The Gathering Holt again referenced the Final Fantasy X deck. "Tidus has a Cheer ability and he moves counters around. Just like you are on the sphere grid."

"We've got some fan favorite moments like the Cloud in a dress scene, the train suplex, and the laughing scene from Final Fantasy X"

Knowing that there's so much excitement around the Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy cards, I wondered how he and the team were reacting to it.

"It's still amazing. Even now that it's out like, I hear somebody say Sephiroth over in the corner and I'm like 'do people know about Sephiroth already?' because we've been working on this for four to five years. [...] Everyone on the team understands these games, loves them so it was a true passion project."