The Magic: The Gathering card Moonmist is spiking and spiking hard, thanks to a neat interaction in the upcoming Final Fantasy set. This pretty obscure Innistrad common cost just 30 cents a couple of days ago, but now it has metamorphosed into a $5 card – a price spike of 1566%. Foil copies have seen a big increase as well: from $6.20 to $17.50.
Only printed once (outside of the List) in the 2011 gothic horror MTG set Innistrad, Moonmist has a pretty unique effect – it transforms all humans. The next line of the card reveals how it is intended to be used: it prevents all combat damage that would be dealt in the turn it’s cast, except by wolves and werewolves.
Obviously, Magic’s designers expect you to use this card as a combat trick or pump spell in a werewolves deck, turning your creatures from their less dangerous human side to their scarier wolf forms in the middle of combat, while also getting the benefit of a one-sided fog. But Moonmist doesn’t just transform werewolves. It works on any double-sided transforming card with ‘human’ in its typeline.
And MTG Final Fantasy has quite a few of these. It turns out this game series is riddled with characters (usually enemies) who start out as ordinary, if flamboyant, humans, and end up turning into some sort of enormous monster you can tackle in a boss fight.
In game terms, this means the set has a bunch of double-sided humans that can be transformed with Moonmist into something really powerful. Even though the set has only been half-revealed, there are already too many to cover in depth. Here are all the weedy humans that reform into something mightier.
- Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER
- Zenos yae Galvus
- Cecil, Dark Knight
- The Emperor of Palamecia
- Kuja, Genome Sorcerer
- Ultimecia, Time Sorcereress
- Garland, Knight of Cornelia
- Kefka, Court Mage
The spell also works on the Final Fantasy XVI protagonists Terra, Magical Adept and Clive, Ifrit’s Dominant. They’ll transform into their saga creature ‘summon’ form, but won’t gain their first lore counter until after your next draw step.
So that’s the reason Moonmist is spiking so quickly. Players are envisioning plonking one or more of these boss characters down and then flipping them at instant speed for two mana. But how viable is this really? There’s a big difference between a combo being cool enough to trigger a spike and it actually being effective to use in a game.
What’s set alarm bells ringing for me is that there doesn’t seem to be one specific interaction that players are planning to use Moonmist for. The card appears to be spiking just because the general idea of cheating past the mana cost or hoops you normally have to jump through to flip these transforming cards is extremely appealing.
But there are some big problems with using Moonmist in this way. Firstly, the fog does nothing for you. In a werewolf deck, Moonmist would often be used to enable a big swing, but with Final Fantasy characters, attacking the turn you cast this becomes worthless. You probably shouldn’t use it on your turn at all, in fact, and instead wait and play it defensively just before you untap.
Secondly, most of the FF bosses don’t belong in the same deck. While the transformed forms are often generically powerful, they all have their own disparate themes and synergies. To make Moonmist a strong card, you need to be transforming multiple creatures. But you can only have one Moonmist in your Commander deck, so to make this combination work, you’re going to need your creatures to work well together when you don’t have Moonmist in hand, and most of the Final Fantasy flip cards just don’t gel all that well.
Finally, and most importantly, Moonmist is the wrong color. Of the transforming humans revealed so far, literally only one, Tera, has green in her color identity. So unless you’re running Moonmist in a Tera deck with it only benefitting her and Clive, you’ll need some other five color MTG commander, which isn’t a transformer, to lead your deck. It’s all starting to look very dubious.
It’s possible that some green boss cards will be revealed in the coming days, which would make Moonmist much more viable. Even better would be a five color commander that ties all the double-faced creatures together, perhaps one that gives you some benefit for transforming. This would solve my biggest problems with this combo.
But until this mythical Magic card is spoiled, I’m personally of the opinion that folks have let hype get the better of them, and that this hefty new price tag won’t stay high for long. What do you think, am I bang on the money, or have I missed something (seems unlikely)? Come let me know on the Wargamer Discord.
And if you’re looking for more great informational reads, check out the MTG release schedule or our guide to the best MTG Arena decks.
Source: Wargamer
