Another Magic: The Gathering card has been revealed by the official Final Fantasy Twitter account: a new legendary creature from the upcoming crossover set that brings the video games’ characters to the TCG. This time it’s a character from Final Fantasy 8: Zell Dincht.
Zell is a mono-red card, which matches his energetic and impulsive personality to a tee. What’s harder to figure out though is how his card’s abilities fit with his powers and persona in-game.
They are certainly intriguing though. This MTG Final Fantasy creature gets a higher power stat for each land you control and lets you play an additional land card on each of your turns. That’s a very powerful ramp effect, usually seen on green cards like Dryad of the Ilysian Grove. I don’t think it’s ever been printed in red before: red’s form of ramp tends to be more temporary – stuff like rituals or treasures.
If you stopped reading there, in fact, you might think this card is a glaring color pie break. But Zell’s ability has a drawback. At the end of your turn you have to return a land to your hand. So you’re not really ramping after all – your extra mana is all too fleeting, which is what makes this a red ability.
While he’s part of the main set, not the Commander precons, I don’t see Zell Dincht being a Standard-playable card. Instead, his most obvious spot is in a landfall deck; he’d be good with either of the desert MTG commanders, for instance, or in a deck like Omnath. Perhaps he’d also be a good ramp option for Obeka, Brute Chronologist, who could end the turn to skip the land-return drawback.
Personally, though, I’ve long wanted to build a mountains-matter mono-red deck with cards like Koth, Fire of Resistance, but there aren’t really enough relevant cards to make it work. Zell is one more piece of the puzzle, and that’s why I’m itching to pick this card up.
Just like the Celes reveal last week, Zell Dincht is apparently being shown off now because it’s the character’s birthday – March 17. Which obviously has everyone scrambling to look up FF characters’ birthdays, in anticipation of future spoilers.
Some notable characters and their (imminent) birthdays include:
- Eiko Carol – March 21
- Gladio – April 2
- Ardyn – April 30
- Tifa – May 3
However, it seems unlikely that every character with a known birthday will get their own special spoiler day. For instance, Rinoa from Final Fantasy VIII has a birthday on March 3, and she didn’t get a preview.
To stay up to date with all upcoming MTG sets, you should check out our MTG release schedule guide – to find all the information you need in one spot.
Source: Wargamer
