Surprising new MTG Final Fantasy spoilers have appeared, revealing Celes, Rune Knight, the alternate commander for one of the new EDH decks releasing with the set. Specifically, she’s part of the Mardu FFVI deck led by Tera, Herald of Hope.
Celes, Rune Knight was revealed on the official Japanese Final Fantasy Twitter account on March 10, which is apparently the character’s birthday. Like Tera, she has abilities that gel with the Revival Trance deck’s reanimation theme. But she may be even more interesting than this Commander precon deck’s main MTG commander. The card’s only been spoiled in Japanese so far, but we knocked together the mockup below so you can check out her effect.
First up, Celes, Rune Knight is essentially a wheel in the Command zone. When she ETBs you get to discard any number of cards from your hand, then draw that many, plus one. That’s a hugely powerful ability, which would be strong if the card ended right there. She’s going to be great at filling the graveyard, and with blink or clone effects, you can really get something going here.
However, Celes, Rune Knight also has incredible infinite combo potential, thanks to her other effect. This ability makes you buff your entire board of creatures with +1/+1 effects whenever a creature enters the battlefield from the graveyard.
The trouble is, there’s a whole MTG keyword, Persist, which makes creatures come back from the dead with a -1/-1 counter, if they didn’t already have one.
Since Celes will take the -1/-1 counter away automatically, that means this commander, plus any free sac outlet, goes infinite immediately.
On its own, that’ll give all your other creatures infinitely high stats, which is certainly not a bad place to be. But if you run a card like Goblin Bombardment or Altar of Dementia, thats instant game over for your opponents.
Most Persist creatures aren’t great, but that doesn’t matter when they’re merely the fuel for your engine. On the other hand there are a couple of good ones that should definitely go in the deck. Murderous Redcap for instance can ping your opponents to death, while Puppeteer Clique can empty their graveyards, temporarily giving you all their creatures, and activating Celes’ ability at the same time.
To stay up to date with MTG Final Fantasy, and all the other upcoming Magic: The Gathering sets, check out our MTG release schedule guide.
Source: Wargamer
