"There is a card called A Realm Reborn": Gavin Verhey and Zakeel Gordon discuss MTG Final Fantasy, FF14 1.0, Meld, and more (Exclusive)

Ahead of PAX East 2025, I had a chance to talk about the MTG Final Fantasy expansion with Wizards of the Coast’s own Gavin Verhey (Principal Game Designer) and Zakeel Gordon (Executive Producer). It was a fantastic chat, especially to talk about a pair of game series I’ve been passionate about since I was a very young man. As a lifelong Final Fantasy fan and Magic: The Gathering fan, each reveal and spoiler has been more exciting than the last.

Seeing favorite Final Fantasy characters like Celes Chere and Tifa Lockhart show up in MTG is just something unreal to me. I spoke with Gavin and Zakeel not just about favorite Final Fantasy games, but the design of the set, including a focus on particular, important creatures like Absolute Virtue. If you’re like me and are pumped for this expansion, here’s a deep dive into some of the facets of the set.

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Gavin Verhey and Zakeel Gordon open up about the upcoming MTG x Final Fantasy expansion

Q) Hello! Thank you for taking the time to chat with me today about Final Fantasy. Could you please introduce yourselves to our audience?

Gavin Verhey: Hey, my name is Gavin Verhey. I'm a Principal Game Designer on Magic The Gathering, and I was the Lead Set Designer of the main set for Magic The Gathering Final Fantasy.

Zakeel Gordon: I'm Zakeel Gordon, an Executive Producer for Tabletop Magic, and I was the Product Architect of Magic The Gathering Final Fantasy.

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Q) The MTG Final Fantasy set is such a massive set, and narrowing it down to potential cards for each expansion must have been a nightmare. How did you determine how many cards each game got, because while each game is important in its own way, each game is not the same in terms of depth/length.

There are just too many cards in this MTG set (Image via Wizards of the Coast)

Gavin Verhey: Yeah, it was a lot of work. It took a lot of time, of course. So the answer is difficult to figure out. But what we did was we wanted to make sure that every game had a lot of representation and an equal shot to shine.

So we set some guidelines for us that even just simple game design guidelines, like every set gets a rare, every game gets a rare, every game gets at least 10 cards. And that gives a really nice base to start with.

And yeah, things skewed a little bit more based on what the set needed or the amount of content we thought players would want to see. There's just so many concepts from sets, a game like [Final Fantasy] 7, that we knew people would really want to see, that we made sure to get it in there.

But we really wanted to make sure that we could celebrate the whole franchise and that every game had a moment to shine and some cool stuff. And that's why in the panel you saw yesterday, we go from [Final Fantasy] 1 through [Final Fantasy] 16.

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Q) Final Fantasy 14 is one of the more interesting games in the franchise, because its first appearance, as many know, wasn't very successful. As one of the players who was there for the Megaflare that ended it all, were there any restrictions on potentially referencing that version of the game? I think it would've made a rad boardwipe, for example.

"Witness (Feel) Suffer (Think) Borrow (Teach) Reason (Hear) Follow (Feel) Stumble" (Image via Square Enix)

Gavin Verhey: Yeah, actually, we did talk about it for a while, like, should we have something in there from this moment? We ultimately didn't put something directly that references that moment in the set, but there are a couple of things that do nod to it. There is, I feel comfortable saying this, there is a card called A Realm Reborn, which kind of shows the aftermath right afterwards, which I think is a nice little nod to that happening.

And then, although Bahamut is in the set, which you guys saw is from Final Fantasy X, we did make sure to keep the mega flare ability on him as his ultimate ability. So like, even if you don't know X as well, if you know XIV, you're like, oh, Bahamut doing the mega flare, like I know what happens when this goes down. So there are a couple of references to it there, and there might be something else in the set.

I'm not going to say what it is right now, but keep your eyes peeled, I guess, if you're interested in that moment in particular.

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Q) Speaking of MMOs, I want to go back to Final Fantasy 11's Absolute Virtue. As a control player, what a great card! As an FF11 Vet, what a horrifying sight! Did any of its previous designs feature something like Hexproof or Indestructible, considering just how difficult this boss was in its time?

Gavin Verhey: Yeah, one of the challenges for this design, this design actually took a long time to get right. One of the challenges for this design, we went through a ton of versions, was that, okay, the idea is it's unkillable, impossible to stop, and really frustrating. Well, that's not the best recipe for a fun magic card, you know?

We tried a version that was Indestructible, Hexproof, Lifelink, and granting your team stuff, and it was like, "Oh my god, it's so frustrating." We tried a version that, whenever it died, it went back into your hand or back on top of your library, which is also not the most fun. We tried a ton of stuff, and ultimately, it just came to me late at night once. What if it was less about this thing being impossible to kill, and more about it protecting you, right?

It was like, yeah, you got to get through this thing before you can deal with me, and it's an 8-8 flying that can't be countered, so good luck. So, yes, you can Doomblade it or something like that, but I think part of the fun of how the card plays out is, you want to kind of protect the queen with this card, you play Absolute Virtue, and you want to combo with a card that gives it hexproof, or a card that makes it indestructible, or whatever, so if you build your own little pillow for it, you are untouchable, and I think that still gives out the flavor decently well, while communicating that this thing is going to kill you. It's an 8/8 flyer, so you've got to deal with it fast.

Jason Parker: It’s a bigger, meaner True-Name Nemesis, was my takeaway.

Gavin Verhey: It’s an absolute nemesis, yeah.

Zakeel Gordon: And Jason, I'll add, it's funny you ask that, internally, as we were prepping for the presentation, we're kind of all just betting amongst each other, like, what do we think the most popular card is going to be? Absolute Virtue was towards the top of the list, but since yesterday, it has jumped up to number one or two, where everyone's like, oh, not only are the creative tones correct, the art is beautiful, but it just does the thing. So I'm just happy, personally, that it's hitting all the right notes for you, because we worked really hard on it, and people like it.

Jason Parker: Oh, it’s brilliant.

Gavin Verhey: It's kind of funny in magic design, right, because we've all been with these cards for so long, and we've seen them for so long, and it's a really awesome line of text, but also, I've read that line of text for two years, two and a half years before I designed my card, so to me, I'm like, man, I know protection of all your bones, like, yeah, we've done that, it's in the past. But obviously, you're all seeing it for the first time, it's like, oh, right, that is sick, you know, so.

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Q) This might be a sort of loaded question, but speaking of Superbosses like Absolute Virtue, we haven't seen any Superbosses revealed yet that I can think of — FF14's version of Shinryu doesn't count — except on the launch of the expansion, I guess. Can we expect any of those to appear, like Ozma, Warmech, Penance, Yiazmat?

Gavin Verhey: I will tell you, there's at least one card in the set that I would describe as a Superboss with a mechanic to match, and I'm not going to tell you what it is, you can speculate at what game it's from, but there is one thing I knew I had to get in the set, and when you see it, you will know what card I am talking about, it is a Mythic Rare.

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Q) One of the challenges that would no doubt come with a set like this is bosses that have more than forms/appearances: Ultros and Seymour to name just a few. Since we don't know everything in the set yet, would something like that preclude characters like that, or did you pitch ideas for those types of appearances?

Gavin Verhey: Well, you know, one of the great pieces of technology we have in the set is double-faced cards. It's a really cool way to show multiple versions of the same character at different stages in their evolution, and part of the reason why we use the mechanic here is because Final Fantasy is so good at that, about just like, letting you evolve the characters as you go. And so a number of villains, probably more villains than heroes by a good margin in the set, transform into something else.

So you've seen Garland and Chaos, where it starts as a simple Garland, and then at the end of the story, is Chaos, right? You've seen Sephiroth and it transforming into Safer Sephiroth, so there's a lot of that happening in the set, and that's how we kind of showed these two-stage evolutions. Some other places that we kind of did it are the Commander decks, which are like these bespoke experiences for the games, right?

So 6, 7, 10, 14, every non-land card in those decks is themed to that game, and so it's really a bespoke experience of that game. So let's say the Main Set has a Sephiroth, well, if there is a Sephiroth in the Commander deck, it'll be showing at a different point in that character's progression. So, for some of the biggest characters in those four games, we had different avenues to showcase them. So we have a few areas they can all go, but really, as a designer of the Main Set, the double-faced cards are the biggest way we could show that transformation.

Cloud is among the many great commanders coming to the game in the MTG Final Fantasy set (Image via Wizards of the Coast)

Jason Parker: So the Commander decks, are they, because I know normally Universe Beyond Commander decks, it's like X amount of cards are brand new, and the rest sort of fit the theme. How much of the Commander deck is brand new?

Gavin Verhey: So I believe it’s 35 cards in every Commander deck.

Jason Parker: That’s not bad.

Gavin Verhey: That is brand new. I would want to double-check that number. Zakeel, do you happen to remember anything?

Zakeel Gordon: I think it’s 35? I believe that is correct. Yeah, I believe that’s correct.

Gavin Verhey: It should be on our website at this point somewhere. But I think it's 35 in the deck. We can get you that information. So when you take the lands into account, you're looking at a Commander deck, let's say 38-ish lands, plus 35 new cards. Well, okay, you're already up pretty high. And then you have this matter of reprints, right?

The cards that, of course, you're going to want for your Commander deck. Your Arcane Signet, your Sorcerer, all that kind of stuff. So that adds in there. But it's all new artwork, right? Every single card in the set has artwork that's Final Fantasy themed.

And while the lands kind of mix and match between the four decks, all the non-land stuff is from that game. So once again, you hold it in your hand, and so you're seeing the story of Seven play out in front of you, which is very, very, very cool.

Tidus and Yuna will both also take part in some Commander shenanigans for MTG Final Fantasy (Image via Wizards of the Coast)

Jason Parker: Okay.

Zakeel Gordon: And I'll also add, Jason, there are 35 new cards, but on a lot of those reprints, to Gavin's point, let's just say there's a non-legendary dragon or the non-legendary kind of human. That is how we're able to fit named characters, kind of NPCs, random creatures, and monsters from those worlds as well.

So, of course, mechanically new cards are amazing, but a lot of our fans also just love the fact that Solemn Simulacrum, for example, can show up with new art, and they can display their fandom for Final Fantasy in their other Commander decks and just have a good time.

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Q) You mentioned that the primary "Jobs" in MTG are focused on Final Fantasy 1 and 14. These are solid choices, but what about Final Fantasy 5? Was it simply that there were too many jobs to choose from, that you had to narrow it down a bit?

Gavin Verhey: Yeah. We talked, and I think Dylan might have briefly mentioned this yesterday, but we talked about doing it from a spread of FF games, but it's tricky because although jobs and classes are so resonant for Final Fantasy, they're actually not in every game, and only in a handful of games you can choose what classes people are. And so we were like, well, we could do some from I and some from 5 and some from, I think, 11, right?

While I love the Final Fantasy 14 jobs, I was admittedly hoping for some Final Fantasy 5. But that's okay! (Image via Square Enix)

And some from XIV, but eventually we're like, let's just dial it in and let's just choose two. Let's do I, that's where a lot of the stuff started, right? Black Mage, that's where it started. White Mage, that's where it started. Let's go XIV, which has a lot of really iconic ones, a super popular MMORPG. And we'll kind of pick from those two.

And one little thing, I don't know if you noticed this yesterday, Jason, when we were previewing the cards, but if you notice on the summoner's grimoire, on the bottom where it has the equip cost, it has like a little ability word before it. Well, that ability word is actually the weapon in Final Fantasy XIV. And that's a cool little nod that the XIV team suggested to indicate which weapon is in the artwork.

So, a really easy way to distinguish it in the set, this kind of a slide that not everyone might pick up on, is that the Final Fantasy XIV ones have that ability word, and the Final Fantasy XI ones do not. So that's how you can even tell in the set which game it's from. Of course, in the bottom left-hand corner of every card, there's also that little number letting you know which game it's from, too.

But it's just a little nod there. But yeah, we did discuss it at one point, but ultimately decided let's just focus on XI and XIV for this.

Jason Parker: I did notice that when I was looking at the Summoner's Tome!

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Q) While I love that Fang/Vanille are the only Meld pairing in the game, there were quite a few potential targets for a Meld combo. Were there any other character pairings that almost received this treatment? As a tragic pair, you could have picked Palom and Porom and their unfortunate fate to save their team.

Gavin Verhey: Yeah, meld is really cool and unique. And there's a handful of times in Final Fantasy where you could definitely justify two things coming together to make one bigger thing, right? It's not totally unique to XIII’s situation.

But for these two characters, it really felt like the perfect thing to do. When we were talking about it, everyone's like, you have to do this, you have to do this, right? Which is why we left it in there.

No matter what anyone says, Final Fantasy 13 was a good game (Image via Square Enix)

And it's also the kind of thing that I think loses its specialness if you do it a bunch of times, right? But just as one time in the set, we thought it would make a lot of sense for these characters in particular. We could have trotted it out in more places, but the other thing is, meld takes a lot of infrastructure to work.

Getting it to work in Constructed or Limited is really difficult. If you look at The Brothers' War as a set, that set only had three meld cards? Is that the other three or four? I think it was three meld cards. If you look at Eldritch Moon, that set also had very few meld cards. They're really, really, really hard to get right.

And they do some weird stuff to drafting and production and so on. We decided, let's just go with the one pair to kind of show, hey, this is how we're going to represent this story. This is how we're going to do it.

And also, frankly, we wanted as much in the set as possible. We want to get a good spread of stuff from all the games. But this, we thought, was the most iconic moment of this kind of thing happening. And not everyone is going to get a chance to be on the set. So let's focus on these two that we know we definitely want in the set and have them use this mechanic.

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Q) I know you don't develop with Modern/Eternal formats in mind, but are there any cards you've seen that might wind up making a real splash in those formats?

Gavin Verhey: Well, yeah. This is the first Universe of Beyond set legal in all formats. So, of course, we were thinking about all kinds of different formats as we were making the set.

And while Standard was a huge priority, right? Make sure that we could balance cards were Standard. We wanted to make sure that there were potentially some Eternal applications on the cards.

So I think Cloud actually has a pretty decent shot of showing up in Eternal places, right? Stoneforge Mystic has shown up forever. Now, the cost-cheating ability of Stoneforge Mystic is certainly a powerhouse part of that card.

But especially in something like Pioneer, I think that Cloud has a real shot. Showing up there. And we see now and then, the Pure Steel Paladin equipment decks, the Hammer decks showing up in Modern.

And they play a couple of copies of Steelshaper's Gift. I can imagine that Cloud shows up there sometimes as well. So that's something that we've shown off already to you that has some potential Eternal application.

But yeah, there's other cards in the set that might have some shots. I guess the other thing I'll say too is we've always been chatting about if Vivi has a potential chance at Legacy or something like that. Probably not.

It's a three-mana card. You know, it's tough to make that work. But the card does produce a ridiculous amount of mana. I want to call out, this isn't even apparently obvious when you read the card, it adds mana equal to its power. So you can use Giant Growth as Dark Rituals, right? So maybe there's a wacky deck where you play Vivi and cast a couple of Invigorates on it to get it to eight power. And then you just add eight mana on the turn you cast it, right?

Jason Parker: Then you just wrap the game up.

Gavin Verhey: Right, exactly. Wacky stuff like that you can do. If it's going to be strong enough, Legacy at this point is a wildly powerful format.

So my guess is it's pretty hard for any card to break through into Legacy. But maybe, and then there's also some cool things. We talked about the Towns yesterday. There's some cool Towns on the set too.

So maybe one card there might break through, but we'll have to wait and see. I will say, though, for me as a designer, a good barometer for just overall long-term magic appeal is how many cards in the set are cube worthy. Like Cube to me is like a good like, ooh, can this hang with the rest of magic, right?

Legacy is like a very focused, tough, and hardened format. It's like all the still down to the strongest stuff. But cube is like, these are some of the strongest cards in magic, and they all interact in really cool ways together. I think there's a ton of really strong potential cube cards from this set that are — Yeah, oh, for sure.

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Q) Since you've already cracked packs and done some testing, what are some of the most interesting interactions you've seen?

Gavin Verhey: [Long, cryptic pause] Yes. No, I mean, you know, we spend so much time testing and iterating, you know, like this set, Gil talked about this yesterday, but this set, the conversation started five years ago, and we've been designing it for about four years. And so we've tested it so many times and up and down.

And we have a pretty good idea of the range of things that can happen. But ultimately, you know, we're a design team of say 40 people and there's, I don't know what the current number is, but millions and millions and millions of magic players out there. We're outnumbered, probably one to a million.

And so there's a heck of, and even probably even more with this release, frankly, because so many people are going to have their eyes on it. So I'm sure there are going to be things we did not find that people are going to have fun cooking up. And one thing I often say in design is we're pretty good about knowing what cards are going to be strong, but we're not always good about knowing exactly what decks are going to be strong.

And usually some synergies or some things that, especially in older eternal formats, maybe like, you know, there are so many magic cards, maybe we missed interaction with. So you never know. I think it's part of the fun of magic, right?

We do our best job. And then I think about it sometimes, like, as designers, we construct this gorgeous hedge maze. We make this really ornate, beautiful hedge maze with these incredible sets.

And then the players come with torches and try to burn their way through the hedge maze as fast as possible. And we'll see what they find in the hedge maze, right? So now we're like making these spring-loaded traps and like making some iron walls, but you still never know where people are going to find in the hedge maze.

So yeah, it'll be a fun adventure. I know I'm stoked because after working on the set for so long, I cannot wait to see what people do with it and what wild stuff they find.

Zakeel Gordon: There's one combo, I won't say what it is, but there's something that I think we discovered a little bit later on in Limited as a result of the bonus sheet that I think will be pretty wild for players to discover.

So I can't say what it is, but it is just a very strange circumstance of the reprints that we chose juxtaposed with some main set cards end up being kind of resulting in just really funny outcomes. So I can't say what it is now, but stuff like that is always just fun to see.

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Q) It's so hard to pin down a favorite Final Fantasy. As someone who has played all the mainline entries at the very least, so many times, for me it's FF4, FF6, and FF10. What are your top three (and why)?

Zakeel Gordon: Sure, I can go first. So my favorite Final Fantasy is Final Fantasy 10. It's not just my favorite Final Fantasy, it's also my favorite video game. It came to me at a point in life that I think was very meaningful and impactful. It's also the game I purchased the most. I feel like I've purchased it on every single generation or console generation, and it is also the game that I've gifted to most people who maybe have never played an RPG before.

And it's top three. I'll say number two is probably 7. 7 is obviously the cult classic that everyone knows and loves. And then number three would be a tie between FF6 and probably FF15. I'm a big fan of FF14, and I know it's a little bit more modern, but FFXV's really underrated.

Jason Parker: I loved FF15. A lot of people kind of s**t on it, but I thought it was a fun, like really emotional journey. I was not ready for the end of 15 at all.

Zakeel Gordon: Yeah, the ending is beautiful. I was, as we were preparing for launch, I was reviewing all of my notes of all the characters and all the things that I wanted to say. And we did share Noctis in the presentation, and the ending of that game is beautiful.

I think the way that we tied his abilities together, of him being able to use armature to like yield the royal arms, and by paying a portion of his life to equip things from the graveyard, is really cool. So it's a blast and there's no wrong answer.

I really genuinely do love all the Final Fantasies. I love the fishing minigame. I love Noctis. There are all kinds of cool abilities and bosses that you can fight. So yeah, that's my top three.

Gavin Verhey: Yeah, I mean, like Zakeel, it's so hard to choose. There are so many good ones. But for me, my number one is Final Fantasy 9, which I love. I love the return to high fantasy. I love the aesthetic of it. I love the storylines. I love how things evolve. I love the Black Mages. So a lot to love about 9.

And as the lead designer of this set, I got to put my thumb on the scale a little bit. And we wore 9 content than we would have had otherwise. I love 6. I spent tons of hours as a kid pouring into VI. It's a huge story. I remember renting it. I remember renting video games. I remember renting VI from the video game store. You only had it for a week, right?

So, like you try and do as much as you can in a week. And then the week came, it was not even close to Final Fantasy 6, back to where it went. And so like, you know, then two weeks later, I'm like, mom, can we like rent 6 again?

I'm like, “Hope my save file is still there.” And so a lot of good memories of 6. I eventually did it on my copy. And then Final Fantasy I, to me like it's just where things started. And it was the first game I ever purchased as a kid. And we would, I would sit there for hours playing.

And the funny thing about Final Fantasy I is like, I hadn't really figured out saving, right? That was a little bit different. And so it was only at our cabin.

And so what we do is when we go up the cabins, when I got to play Final Fantasy I, then we would come back home for the rest of the week and I couldn't play it. And so what I potentially started doing is I would leave the NES on at the cabin for a week. I didn't know about this.

It was like burning their energy. I'd leave it in the cabin for a week. So when I got back, I turned the TV on, and my game would still be there exactly where I left it, right? So I had a blast doing that.

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MTG Final Fantasy releases on June 13, 2025. It features a series of four incredible Commander decks, and fan-favorite characters like Emet-Selch, Jumbo Cactuar, and many more.