Hey all. Final Fantasy is nearly here, with the set releasing tomorrow, June 10th, on MTG Arena, and on Friday, June 13th, in paper. As usual, I’ve been brewing a bit in both Standard and Alchemy, and I’ve got some fun ideas that I can’t wait to try out.

While watching the early access streamer event I noticed that several decks were tried by almost every streamer, such as Boros Equipment, Bant Birds, Yuna, Hope of Spira saga reanimation, among other archetypes. So if you are looking for those decks, I recommend looking up your favorite content creator and seeing what they put together!

Presented here are 5 Standard and 3 Alchemy decks that I will be trying on day one of the new format. Final Fantasy is our last set before rotation in both formats, so while I have some doubts about its ability to make big impacts on the competitive sides of Standard/Alchemy, there are a ton of sweet cards that I can’t wait to try out.

So let’s dive in and start talking sweet Final Fantasy Decks.

Standard

Jund Lands

I feel like I build a deck with Iridescent Vinelasher every set, but this time there are some sweet new additions that I can’t wait to try out.

First, we have a back-up ping effect with Sabotender, a new creature from Final Fantasy. This makes it much easier to actually have a ping effect in play and deal a lot of damage to the opponent in one turn.

Other new cards include Town Greeter to fill up our graveyard, and Summon: Titan to fill up the graveyard and then return all our lands to play, hopefully with a pinger or two in play.

We also have Zell Dincht as a way to trigger landfall twice a turn, and make sure that we always have a land to play since he bounces a land back to our hand at each end step.

This deck probably needs some tuning, and probably can’t compete against the fast aggro decks in the format, but I just love the slow and painful bleed out that it can inflict on opponents.

Gruul Vehicles

This deck is mostly built around various Vehicles and cards that care about Vehicles from Aetherdrift, but we did get Balthier and Franas a sweet way to buff our vehicles and eventually get in for extra combat steps, so I thought I’d just throw something together and see how it looks.

I think this deck looks alright. It has a good curve, good early and late game threats, good removal. Can it compete in a competitive environment? Maybe not, but I bet it is going to be a lot of fun.

Orzhov Knights

Orzhov Knights is an aggressive deck looking to build up a board and whittle the opponent down.

This deck is playing a lot of sweet new cards, starting with Cecil, Dark Knight, which is a fantastic one-drop, getting in early, trading off later on, and if you do flip it you are going to be quickly swinging the game in your favor.

On top of Cecil, we have Dion, Bahamut's Dominant as a way to give all of our Knights flying, the perfect way to get in surprise lethal, and Dion is also two bodies in one which is pretty great for going wide and for setting up Knight-Errant of Eos.

Our last new card is Battle Menu a very flexible instant, but we are mostly interested in making a 2/2 knight token at instant speed, or destroying a creature with power four or greater. The other two modes will come in handy at some point though!

The rest of our creatures are existing Knights in the format, and they fill in our curve nicely and give us good effects like removal and card draw.

Mono-Black Aggro

I couldn’t not try to build a deck with Dark Confidant, despite the fact that I think it won’t have much of an impact until after rotation (and a ban or two), I had to give in to the nostalgia and see if it could work in 2025.

This deck is combining a lot of the elements of the Orzhov Demons deck that has been popular recenetly, but taking a more aggressive slant, making use of Cecil, Dark Knight and Evolved Sleeper to get on the board early.

Rot-Curse Rakshasa is a demon for Unholy Annex, which combined with Dark Confidant keeps the cards coming. We will be losing a lot of life, so Cecil can flip pretty early, but that also means that we need to end the game quickly before we die to our own effects.

This deck probably needs a lot of testing and tuning, but I like this as a starting point for a different take on aggro in the format.

Simic Mill

We have a lot of good Mill cards in Standard, and this deck is putting them all together and trying to stay alive in the process.

New from Final Fantasy we have The Water Crystal which adds four cards each time we mill, as well as discounting our blue spells. This is one of our mid game engines which helps us quickly finish off our opponent.

Glacierwood Siege from Tarkir: Dragonstorm is our other engine, as we can put it on the Temur side and then go through a few cantrips to quickly mill our opponent for a lot of cards.

Riverchurn Monument and Jace, the Perfected Mind round out our mill engines, with Jidoor, Aristocratic Capital hanging out in the mana base for some late game milling.

The rest of the deck is about staying alive, such as Into the Flood Maw, Into the Roil, and Heritage Reclamation, although these will all trigger Glacierwood Siege along the way. Auroral Processionhelps us recur any of our engine pieces that have been removed, or just serve as extra bounce spells to keep us alive.

Will this deck work? In a vacuum absolutely. In current Standard it might be more tough, but I think you can build this type of deck around the meta to try to stay alive long enough to do the thing, so I can’t wait to give it a try.

Alchemy

Temur Scouts/Pirates/Rogues

Quite a strange name for a deck, but that is because we are building around Vaan, Street Thief who asks us to have creatures that are Scouts, Pirates, or Rogues.

At first I was going to build Vaan into a pirates deck, but as I was scrolling I saw that we had a lot of cool scouts, like Leaf-Leap Guide, Cenote Scout, Plumecreed Escort, and Sentinel of the Nameless City, so I thought I would give a Temur build a try.

For pirates we have Spyglass Siren, which is going to be key to triggering Vaan thanks to flying, Kitesail Larcenist for removal, and Kari Zev, Crew of Two for some extra fun and extra stealing.

Our lone Rogue is Impetuous Lootmonger, but what a rogue they are. Lootmonger also adds to our plan of casting spells that we don’t own, which if we do with Vaan in play will grow our team.

This deck can just play a midrange creature game plan, but it will have some explosive turns thanks to Vaan, where we are stealing spells, growing our team, and frustrating the opponent.

Mardu Helping Hand

Mardu Helping Hand came about thanks to the printing of Joshua, Phoenix's Dominant giving us even more ways to fill our graveyard on top of Splitskin Doll, Fear of Missing Out, and Tersa Lightshatter

We ended up in Mardu for one reason: Razor Demon. Razor Demon is a card that you almost never want to cast, because it gives your opponent great value, but bringing it back with Helping Hand gives you a big 7/7 flyer with ward in play, which seems pretty good to me.

Bloodghast is also a great card to discard, and I think that this deck can play a midrange grindy style even when we aren’t bringing back big demons.

There is a chance that we should just be Jeskai for Abhorrent Oculus but I’m going to give Mardu a try first!

Bant Birds

I know I said no Bant Birds in the intro, but that was for Standard! In Alchemy we get to evolve the existing Azorius Birds deck into something a bit bigger with a lot more value.

We get a lot of sweet cards from Final Fantasy for this deck. Sazh's Chocobo gives us another early game threat, while Traveling Chocobo is a great engine for the mid game, letting us play off the top of our deck.

Choco, Seeker of Paradise and Bartz and Bokoserve as our top end, giving us some card advantage and removal respectively, and we honestly might want more copies but I started light to see how they played, but after watching the early access event I think they are going to play very well.

This might end up feeling worse than the existing Azorius Birds deck, but I think that adding green gives us access to some exciting cards that help us play into the mid and late game, which the deck could struggle with before.

I look forward to tuning this deck up and making it a menace in the format.

Wrapping Up

I hope some of these decks look exciting to you, I know that I can’t wait to try them, but then again I did brew them so that tracks.

Final Fantasy has so many sweet cards, and I’m not even a big fan of the franchise, and I hope that in both Standard and Alchemy we can see new decks and new cards make a big splash. Of course the specter of Cori-Steel Cutter and friends hangs over both formats, but with some bans/nerfs/rotation etc. I think that both formats could be a lot of fun again.

Regardless, I hope that whether you are jamming drafts or taking a new deck to the constructed ladder that you enjoy the release of Final Fantasy tomorrow! Best of luck in all your games!