Final Fantasy Revival Trance Upgrade & Review

Magic: The Gathering —FINAL FANTASY is such an awesome opportunity for both fans of the classic RPGs and Magic’s designers (some of whom are the same people). The sprawling Final Fantasy franchise is one of the deepest wells of inspiration you could ask for in a Universes Beyond set, with so many beloved games and characters to draw from. 

But even in that vast milieu, Final Fantasy VI (originally released in the west as FF3) is still a standout. Luckily the peerless villains, compelling heroes and influential magitek aesthetic of this game have been captured in the new Revival Trance Commander precon. Harness the power of rebirth to restore a wounded world with this fast-paced reanimator deck!

MEET THE COMMANDER

Terra Branford cuts a surprisingly elegant figure for a Mardu-color commander, but those looks belie her past as an unwilling soldier of the Gestahlian Empire. Terra’s capacity for magical destruction is almost unmatched thanks to her half-esper heritage. But it is her empathy and hope which allow her to broker peace between the espers and humanity, and thwart the mad mage Kefka Palazzo.

Terra’s card here focuses on her role as a restorer and avenger in the later parts of Final Fantasy VI following Kefka’s magical Cataclysm, leading to a playstyle not too different from classic Mardu commander Alesha, Who Smiles At Death.

Her Trance ability is a small nod to her dramatic battle transformation, where Terra lets the destructive power of her esper half run wild. I should point out that there’s another card for Terra in the main Final Fantasy set which places much more emphasis on this aspect of her character, actually transforming into a Saga Creature like the other summon/esper cards and having special synergy with them.

Unfortunately color identity rules prevent us adding that card to the Revival Trance deck, but Terra, Magical Adept makes an excellent commander for five-color esper decks if you’re excited to explore that kind of theme.

Let’s return our attention to the Terra we’re building around today. Her low casting cost means we can rely on Terra as an opening play. Even though she can’t attack, her Trance will immediately trigger to start the crucial task of filling up our graveyard. 

Enabling her own reanimation ability like this is a fantastic luxury, especially since the trigger is reliable and free. You’ll still want to have lots of other self-mill or discard outlets to support Terra, but at least you don’t have to be as worried about finding one in every single opening hand.

Terra’s second ability is the more exciting one, allowing her to reanimate creatures directly into play if she can attack unblocked. An early-game 3/3 flyer will almost always find at least one opponent defenseless in a multiplayer game, but we might need to provide her a bit of extra evasion or combat help if we want this to reliably trigger every turn.

We’ll also need to budget in the small but still meaningful mana cost when building our gameplan. Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely worth two mana to get back a creature in most situations, but “cheap” is not “free”, and we might want to keep our average mana value down so we can afford to use Terra while playing other cards.

The other key consideration Terra places on deckbuilding is her target restriction; she can only reanimate creatures with power three or less. This will naturally push us to find creatures whose value comes from their abilities instead of raw stats – especially abilities which trigger on entering or leaving the battlefield, since we can potentially reanimate and re-use these abilities every turn.

That said, I really appreciate that Terra seems tuned to have a high floor rather than a high ceiling on her power and synergy. Since she gets by just fine on her own, and she’s prevented from doing some of the most overpowered things a reanimator deck might normally try even ifhttps://www.cardkingdom.com/landing/mtg-final-fantasy-cards you help her, there’s less pressure to make this entire decklist myopically focused on that one theme.

If you’re more interested in building around legendary creatures, equipment, combat tricks or just the lore of Final Fantasy VI, Terra, Herald of Hope will always be an excellent set-up card to help assemble your chosen pieces.

NEW CARD REVIEW

Even if I’m excited about playing the precon as-built, it’s always important that these reviews consider the perspective of players who don’t need a whole new deck – but who could definitely be in the market for some powerful new spells if the synergy is right! There’s a LOT of new printings in Revival Trance, so I’ll focus on the highlights from a Magic mechanics perspective – if you want to see all the different Final Fantasy icons in this deck, you’ll have to buy it yourself (or look up the full card list).

The ability to make extra copies of legendary creatures (either temporarily or permanently) is something that’s become more commonplace in the last few years – in blue. In Red it’s still quite an exotic commodity, and Gogo even lets you enshrine it in the command zone. Being a haste-granter on top of that makes Gogo an absolute premium support card.

Anti-graveyard cards are more or less essential to Commander these days to slow down reanimation and combo decks… like Revival Trance. Why is this one here? Well, because it essentially doubles as a reanimation spell – at instant speed. There’s some compromise, as you’ll have to rebuild your graveyard afterwards, but this is still an amazing card with lots of potential.

Celes could be a potential alternate commander for this deck with her Mardu color identity, but her abilities just feel more complementary. A powerful ETB trigger can reload both your hand and graveyard with new gas, and her triggered ability will rapidly offset the low combat stats of creatures Terra reanimates.

It’s rare that a creature built solely around combat stats makes the highlights of a commander deck. But anyone who was around during Tenacious Underdog’s reign in Standard will understand why Sabin is far from an underdog to me. It triggers a lot of support cards and ensures you’ll always have something to do with your mana.

Any card you can reasonably compare to Broadside Bombardiers has a ton of potential. Shadow’s trigger may not be as reliable due to needing to actually deal player damage, but the payoff is extremely high! Shadow would be an excellent “accelerator” commander in most mono-black lists, similar to what Terra does for Revival Trance. I also love the interaction with Interceptor as an example of pairing cards without the restrictive Partner ability.

An exciting new addition to the portfolio of “stuff you can do with Vehicle cards”, The Falcon offers similar benefits to Sabin, Master Monk – always having something to do with your mana while it’s in the graveyard. Except this card lets you dump mana at instant speed, and has the far more explosive potential to reanimate any OTHER creature when it connects on your next turn. You do still need to crew The Falcon with another creature to do that (and Terra’s ability cannot reanimate vehicles) but it’s an exceptional Plan B for this kind of deck!

$50 UPGRADE GUIDE

As I said when discussing Terra, Herald of Hope, there’s a lot of opportunity to get creative and make this deck about whatever you want it to be. There is also, admittedly, a lot of reasons to not change it at all! 

Maybe you’re a big Final Fantasy VI fan and you want to keep this deck on brand, or you and your friends all bought different precons and want to keep them at an equal power level. In those cases, I totally recommend changing only a few cards from Revival Trance, or just leaving it to enjoy as-is. It’s a focused and functional decklist with a ton of interesting play patterns and you won’t be disappointed.

That said, what if you’re like me and you can’t help but tinker? Let’s see how far $50 of new  cards can take Terra and company. First we’ll need to identify our gameplan to build towards, and which cards from the stock list don’t align with it. That will help build a list of potential cuts as well as tell us what roles our new cards need to fill.

I see no need to pivot away from the reanimation/graveyard value strategy Terra sets us up for. So I mostly want to ensure we’re using our graveyard consistently and that we have the right mix of targets between relevant utility and effective win conditions.

That means cutting cards that don’t cleanly fit into either role, or which are redundant versions of effects we have already – graveyard decks can easily access huge chunks of their library each game, so variety is more valuable than depth. I might also look to cut non-creature spells (especially expensive ones) if I think we can replace them with a creature Terra can target while delivering a similar effect.

You can check out my upgraded decklist in full on Moxfield!

CUTS:

• Sepulchral Primordial
• Setzer, Wandering Gambler
• Summon: Esper Valigarmanda
• Coin of Fate
• Rise of the Dark Realms
• Sabin, Master Monk
• Combustible Gearhulk
• General Leo Christophe
• Siegfried, Famed Swordsman
• Strago and Relm
• Sun Titan
• Big Score
• Mortify
• Rejoin the Fight
• Phoenix Down

With only $50 to spend, I think the best way to make use of Revival Trance and its already great cards is to double-down on value and efficiency – just spilling enough potent creatures into play from the yard to take over the game in short order.

We do have at least one very fun combination to try and reanimate – Mishra, Claimed by Gix and Phyrexian Dragon Engine are both fine on their own, but together can meld into the mighty Mishra, Lost to Phyrexia! I’ve also left in a couple of the biggest haymakers from the original list – you can’t reanimate Kefka or Umaro with Terra directly, but she can bring back a card like Priest of Fell Rites to do it for you.

There’s also a handful of creatures I’ve added that we want to stay IN our graveyard – Glory and Filth join fellow incarnation Anger and help Terra attack unblocked, while Vengeful Pharaoh is a unique “rattlesnake” card to discourage opponents from attacking us!

As a final note – be a little careful about when you choose to cast Enduring Renewal. It effectively locks you into the set of creatures you have on board at the time. Worst case scenario we can still cheat around it by casting Terra from the Command Zone and using her to reanimate things.

ADDING GAME CHANGERS & FURTHER UPGRADES

I will admit, the presence of Pitiless Plunderer in the stock list did have me looking into potential combo wincons we could tutor into the graveyard and reanimate. If you’re willing to go even further in overhauling Revival Trance, that could be a very powerful direction to take it.

Wizards of the Coast have classified certain cards as “Game Changers” – cards which are legal to play in Commander, but which are recognized by the community for their unique capabilities and raw strength. If you’re interested in raising the power bracket of Revival Trance to the next level, the combination of Gamble and Vampiric Tutor will ensure you get the right cards at the right time. Usually Demonic Tutor is the superior choice, but I actually like having the option to cast Vampiric Tutor in response to Terra’s Trance trigger if there’s a card we’d prefer to tutor into the graveyard!

The other GC cards which really seem to fit here are Opposition Agent and Orcish Bowmasters. Both make great reanimation targets for Terra and help to shut down key lines of play from your higher-power opponents. Bowmasters also has great synergy with any “Wheel” effects you might run, including Snort.

DANCING HAPPY

I would never have guessed that the Magic team would put together a graveyard-centric deck for Terra and the Final Fantasy VI cast, but the final package of Revival Trance is really well put together. The card quality of the enablers in particular is top-notch – combine that with the strong interaction of Mardu colors and you get a precon where bad draws are rare and you can easily back up the pressure applied naturally as you reanimate aggressive creatures!