FF14 fans expand MTG's upcoming Rite of Replication card in hilariously befitting way

FF14 fans have fixed the upcoming MTG Final Fantasy card, Rite of Replication, featuring Gaius van Baelsar. A fitting character, since he duplicates himself to attack you during the Main Story Quest battle he appears in. However, instead of using one of the more popular lines from his once-extensive monologue, the card’s flavor text is only “Eorzea is mine by right!”. It’s still good, but “How very glib.” might have been better.

It wouldn't be known if the Redditor Sir5000 created this meme. They did, however, share the fixed Rite of Replication to the FF14 subReddit, and it’s the perfect bit of flavor for the upcoming MTG expansion, which we spoke to Gavin Verhey and Zakeel Gordon about recently. This meme card perfectly replicates what Square Enix took from us.

MTG Final Fantasy reprint of Rite of Replication receives a perfect fan edit by FF14 fan

Redditor u/Sir5000 offered an incredible version of MTG x Final Fantasy’s Rite of Replication card, titled the post, “Honestly, I feel like this was too much flavor text for the MTG collab card…”. On it, you can see the entire monologue Gaius van Baelsar hits players with before his battle with them in The Praetorium.

Honestly, I feel like this was too much flavor text for the MTG collab card... byu/Sir5000 inffxiv

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In this FF14 boss fight, Gaius van Baelsar gives the players an incredibly lengthy, frankly tedious monologue about why he deserves to rule Eorzea, which was crammed onto the above MTG card.

He rambles about corruption, strength, and has the nerve to call the players, the Warriors of Light, “glib.” While it takes forever to get through, many players miss the silliness of it. It’s a very serious, thought-provoking monologue, though.

However, the fact that the players just stand there, waiting for him to get through his speech, which goes on for minutes, makes it feel sort of comical. There’s no option to just attack partway through it, like Android 17 does in Dragon Ball Super during the Universal Survival Arc.

In this meme version, in addition to MTG Final Fantasy’s Rite of Replication mechanical text, you can read the entire monologue, from start to finish.

Unfortunately, there’s no way this could fit on one card, even if you removed the Rite of Replication in-game text. However, Wizards of the Coast had the opportunity to slide this flavor text into several cards, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

I think this version of Rite of Replication is good for MTG Final Fantasy, but the FF14 fan edit is frankly, the superior card (Image via Wizards of the Coast)

This FF14 fan-edited card is reminiscent of the Full Text basic lands that were dropped some ago, only it’s pure flavor text. I’d love to see tokens or something that represent this amazing speech from Gaius van Baelsar, or alternate versions of this card that had portions of the speech on it.

If we can have 15 different Cids, then that’s possible here, too. If nothing else, I think it will inspire a variety of card alters — cards that have been repainted/redesigned by fans — sometime in the future.

Rite of Replication is one of my all-time favorite cards, and seeing Gaius represent it in MTG Final Fantasy only makes it that much better, even if he doesn’t remind me that I was once very glib. For now, we just have to accept that the flavor text is “Eorzea is mine by right!” instead of the entire, grand speech.

Check out our other Final Fantasy 14 guides and features

About the author

Jason is an Esports and Gaming journalist at Sportskeeda holding an amazing 11 years of experience under his belt. Having put out 4000-plus articles and amassing over 12 million reads for Sportskeeda, he is among the company’s most experienced writers. Jason holds a Bachelor's degree in English from UNC Pembroke and was inspired to become a gaming journalist very early on in life after reading Nintendo Power.

Jason is a jack of all trades when it comes to gaming journalism. He’s a key writer in Sportskeeda's MMO department, but he also likes to help out in other categories, like streamers, RPG, card games, and whatever else is needed. A solo gamer at heart, Jason's favorite titles include Earthbound and Dragon Warrior.

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Edited by Jason Parker