Final Fantasy First Brews: Fun & Jank Episode 35

Hello and welcome to Fun & Jank Episode 35 with me, Plum! The Final Fantasy set just dropped, and it’s brought a ton of wild new tools to play with. There’s no shortage of brews to explore and trust me, we’re already lost in the sauce over on my stream.

Today we’re going to be focusing strictly on some fresh deck lists. Usually I like to revisit older brews and see if we can make some changes or upgrades with the new cards, but for now, I wanted to give you a quick taste of some of the new lists that have been showing early promise. That said, don’t worry: we’ll be circling back to update some of our old favorites once we’ve had a bit more time to test the new tech.

I’ve got three spicy lists to show off today, so let’s get to it!

Deck #1: Planisphere Broodscale Combo

Our first deck is quite a doozy, and comes from the user Squee_GoblinNabob. This is an all-in combo deck that aims to add redundancy to the already powerful Basking Broodscale combo in Historic.

Let’s break down the combos it can pull off:

Combo #1: Basking Broodscale+ Ghost Lantern

This is the simplest one to execute with the following sequence:
1.) Equip Broodscale with Ghost Lantern.
2.) Put a +1/+1 counter on Broodscale (use it’s adapt ability) or get one of your creatures to die (like sacrificing an eldrazi spawn token).
3.) Broodscale will create a 0/1 spawn token which can then sacrifice itself to trigger Ghost Lantern again, putting a counter on Broodscale and making another spawn token.
4.) Rinse and repeat

This results in
-An infinitely large Basking Broodscale.
-Infinite colorless mana from the spawn tokens.
-Infinite damage and tokens with Glaring Fleshraker.

Combo #2: Evolution Witness + Astrologian's Planisphere+ 2x Mox Amber

The combo is a little harder to set up, but features a sweet new card from the set, Astrologian's Planisphere Finding two Mox Ambers isn’t too hard because we play both Malevolent Rumble and Emry, Lurker of the Loch. but it is a lot to click through on the Arena client.

The combo is executed with the following sequence:
1.) Equip Evolution Witness with Astrologian's Planisphere
2.) Cast Mox Amber, triggering Planisphere to put a counter on Witness, which gets you back a permanent from the graveyard.
3.) Cast your second Mox Amber, sacrificing the original to the Legendary Rule. This results in the same effect as step 2, but this time we get back the original Mox Amber from the yard.
4.) Rinse and repeat.

This results in:
-An infinitely large Evolution Witness.
-Infinite colored mana (if you control a legendary creature).
-Infinite damage and tokens with Glaring Fleshraker.

The cool part about this combo is that you can also use single 0-mana artifact that sacrifices itself in place of the two Mox Ambers. Tormod's Crypt or Mishra's Bauble (in Timeless) both work for the loop instead. You can also Combo off with Fleshraker + Witness + Ghost Lantern which you can see in the gameplay video below.

Payoffs
Like I mentioned above, the main way to win is with Glaring Fleshraker pinging our opponent over and over. Each combo also results in an infinitely large attacker as well.

The primary win condition is Glaring Fleshraker pinging the opponent into dust. But both combos also create an infinitely large attacker in case you need to go beatdown mode.

If you pull off a combo but don’t have a way to break through or finish the game, you can always use your infinite mana to cast Kozilek's Command for X = your deck size and grab whatever you need to seal the deal.

Support

While the combos are flashy, they wouldn’t be nearly as consistent without a few strong support pieces:

• Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student – Tamiyo plays a huge role. She helps dig through your deck early via clue tokens and enables Mox Amber right at the start of the game. We don’t often get to flip her, but it’s possible.
  
• Emry, Lurker of the Loch – Emry is an all-star here. Not only does she fill your graveyard with targets for recursion, but she also lets you replay key artifacts like Ghost Lantern, Astrologian's Planisphere, or Mox Amber if they get removed. She’s a legend too, which matters for enabling colored mana with Amber.
  
• Malevolent Rumble – One of the best new enablers for graveyard combo decks, period. It mills four cards and lets you pick up a permanent—helping to fix your mana while fueling both Broodscale loops and Emry value. It even finds Fleshraker or Witness in a pinch if you’re looking for a creature instead.
  
• Kozilek’s Command – This one does a lot of heavy lifting. It’s a draw spell, a win condition finder (X=deck), a source of card advantage, and sometimes just a way to get multiple combo pieces into your hand after a grindy game. Once you’ve got infinite mana, it’s basically a one-card win button.

Gameplay

This deck is a blast to play, but it definitely rewards focus. You’ll need to pay attention to your sequencing and graveyard management to pull off the combos cleanly—but the payoff is worth it. With so many overlapping pieces and multiple ways to go infinite, the deck is surprisingly resilient.

Deck #2: Chocobo Landfall

This is something a little more straightforward. This one’s a classic Gruul landfall aggro deck—lean and mean. The big draw from the Final Fantasy set? Two new landfall threats that slot right into the archetype: Tifa Lockhart and Sazh’s Chocobo.

Tifa Lockhart is the more powerful of the two new cards we’re playing, and adds some much welcome power to our two-drop slot. Every time a land hits the battlefield, she doubles her power until end of turn. That adds up quite fast, especially with Atarka’s Command, Groundswell, or double-land drops off of Fabled Passage or Prismatic Vista.

Sazh’s Chocobo has been strong so far. It starts small, but left unchecked it grows into a massive threat just by playing the game. This archetype has needed redundancy to Akoum Hellhound. and although this is no Steppe Lynx, it does a pretty good job as a replacement.

The rest of the deck is full of classics:

• Reckless Pyrosurfer and Brushfire Elemental help push through damage.
• Seasoned Pyromancer and Springheart Nantuko give you staying power and additional bodies for Atarka's Commandand Pyrosurfer’s battle cry ability.
• Winding Way lets you reload on lands or creatures if you run out of fuel (Wizards plz give us Wrenn and Six)

Gameplay

This deck hits hard, hits fast, and it’s also super satisfying to curve out. It’s not the most complex brew in the world, but it felt relatively strong during our games. However I believe it’s in an awkward position in general. We tried a Timeless version out so we had access to fetchlands, but the deck was too slow. The deck feels more viable in historic, but Prismatic Vista/Fabled Passage hold it back quite a bit.

Anyways, smashing people with Chocobos is fun.

Deck #3: Witness Command Lock

If you’ve been playing Modern for a while, you might remember the classic “Eternal Command” decks—grindy midrange-control piles that used Eternal Witness (played for free with Aether Vial) and Cryptic Command to “lock” opponents out of the game, countering their spells or tapping their creatures down every turn.

I’m bringing it back… kinda.

Now that we got Cryptic Command from the Final Fantasy bonus sheet we can have some fun. This list is a spiritual successor to those old-school control decks, but with a new twist: we’re replacing Aether Vial with As Foretold, and running Timeless Witness in place of the OG Witness.

Once As Foretold hits 4 counters, you can cast Cryptic Command for free on your opponent’s turn, countering or tapping things, and return Timeless Witness back to your hand. Then you can cast Witness of off As Foretoldon your turn to bring back Cryptic Command so you can do it all over again.

It’s not a “hard lock” so to speak, but it’s usually enough to slow them down to a halt so you can close out the game on your own time. The early game is about survival. You’ll be playing a mix of cheap interaction, card draw, and counter spells while trying to land As Foretold. We’re playing both the Chorus and Energy packages backed up by Archmage's Charm and Snapcaster Mages to achieve this.

You can flesh it out however you want—counter spells, card draw, even planeswalkers or backup creatures, the core can slot into plenty of color combinations, but the deck rewards careful planning and resource management. And while the combo is powerful, it’s not instant-win, which leads to some great back-and-forth gameplay. You have to survive the early turns, find your pieces, and sequence around disruption. The deck feels incredibly rewarding once you know what to prioritize each matchup.

Gameplay

This specific game was so fun. We played against a player actually doing something very similar to us with the Cryptic Command + Mystic Sanctuary loop in a Grixis Frog Shell. I won’t spoil who won, but it was very back and forth and an interesting match for sure!

Closing Thoughts

I’m genuinely excited to see the Final Fantasy set shake things up. It’s not just about flashy legends or fan-favorite characters, it’s actually opening doors to entirely new archetypes in Historic, while also giving us the tools to port over some old-school strategies from Eternal formats.

Thanks for reading.

As always feel free to comment and leave any questions you have below! Make sure to come back next week for even more Fun & Jank!

If you want to see these decks in action, come hang out with me on stream where we test, refine, and have a ton of fun together!

Happy Brewing!