The Problem with the Bonus Sheet in Final Fantasy Limited

Jacob LacknerProducts

Final Fantasy released on June 13th. In addition to featuring cards from the main set, 1 in 3 Final Fantasy Play Boosters also contain a card from Final Fantasy Through the Ages. This is a sub-set of 64 reprints that have Final Fantasy skins. 

Stay With Me | Rhystic Study

Because these cards appear in Play Boosters, that makes them legal in Draft and Sealed. In the past, I’ve argued that bonus sheets are a net positive for Limited. I still believe that, but there are some problems with this particular bonus sheet.

PROBLEM 1: COMPLEX CARDS WITH NO REMINDER TEXT

Yuffie Kisaragi

Final Fantasy is a set that is likely to bring in lots of new or former players who are fans of the IP. So you would think they would make reprints easy to understand for new players. However, they did the furthest things from that.

Cards having huge blocks of text that will be hard to understand for new players is one thing. At least in most cases, reading the card enough times will explain the card. However, that’s not the case for the plethora of keyword abilities that appear on cards in Through the Ages. 

Imagine sitting down at the pre-release, or at your first ever draft, and opening up something like Yuffie Kisaragi (Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow). What the heck is Commander ninjutsu? All you’ll know about it is that it costs a blue and a black to use. From there, you’ll have to ask someone how it works, and when you’re trying to make a pick in a draft there isn’t exactly time for that.

To be honest, while this problem affects new players the most, the case of Yuffie isn’t something that can only affect new players. When I did my Limited Set Review on YouTube a couple of weeks ago, I had to look up Commander ninjutsu myself! 

Obviously I knew it worked how ninjutsu does, but I thought perhaps it only worked from the Command Zone. I’ve been playing Magic since 1998 and between YouTube and my articles here I write about 10,000 words about Magic every single week. I play Magic almost every day of the year. So I’m a very enfranchised player, and if I hadn’t looked up Commander ninjutsu ahead of time, I would have been uncertain about it when I first saw this card in a draft.

That’s the thing about reminder text, it’s intended to “remind” experienced players just as much as introduce how a mechanic works to new players. Without it, a lot of cards just become inscrutable, and Yuffie is but one example of this problem in Through the Ages. 

Ardyn Izunia

Ardyn Izunia (Varagoth, Bloodsky Sire) is another example of this, and I think it’s perhaps the biggest offender in the set. This is not because a player reads it and is uncertain how it works. Instead, they read it and think they know exactly how it works. Not only that, it sounds like a completely absurd Magic card!

Blazing Bomb | Quistis Trepe

If you put this card in the broader context of the Final Fantasy set, “Boast” simply looks like a flavor word. After all, Quistis Trepe’s enters trigger is called “Blue Magic,” or Blazing Bomb’s activated ability is called “Blow Up.”  As a Common and Uncommon, these are likely cards you’ve seen in the draft.

So, when Ardyn gets passed to you, it would make perfect sense to think that “Boast” is just the name of this insane activated ability that lets you stack your deck for one generic and a black per card. Without reminder text, that new or returning player has no way of knowing that you can only use Boast once per turn and that a creature has to attack for you to use that ability.

Yuffie and Ardyn are but two examples of this problem in the Through the Ages bonus sheet. In all, there are 15 cards in Through the Ages that feature a non-evergreen, non-deciduous mechanic, keyword ability or ability word without any explanation whatsoever: 

This is simply way, way too many. I get that they wanted to avoid reminder text to keep these specially-skinned cards looking as pretty as possible, but if that was their goal, perhaps they should have included cards that wouldn’t normally need reminder text to begin with. 

The more complicated cards could have received reprints on cards that appear exclusively in Collector Boosters or Commander decks, since those products aren’t intended for Limited.

PROBLEM 2: COLORS ARE HARD TO GROK

Memories of Nibelheim | Shantotto’s Coercion | Princess Sarah

Internally, Wizards of the Coast has long-used the term “Grok” to refer to how intuitive things are in Magic. For example, most of the time, a quick glance at a Magic card will tell you what color is. So the color of Magic cards is easily grokable. But that’s a lot harder to achieve with the cards in Through the Ages.

These cards don’t have frames of any kind or any other color indicator anywhere on the card. You have to look at these card’s mana costs to figure that out. And those mana costs aren’t always easy to read since they are just on top of the art and not in a box of any kind.

This comes up in the later stages of a draft, where your two primary colors are well-established. At that point, your eye tends to drift towards cards in those two colors. But the Through the Ages cards complicate that process. While some of them do have art that hints you in the right direction, not all of them do.

Memories of Nibelheim looks like a Blue card. Shantotto’s Coercion looks like a Red card. Princess Sarah looks like a White card. It’s anything but intuitive what these cards’ color identities are, and it’s a problem throughout the set. 

Once again, this is the result of making aesthetic choices for each of these cards. Basically, they went with form over function. But I think each of them could have a colored box around their name or card type, and it wouldn’t make the cards any less attractive.

THE GOOD NEWS: THIS BONUS SHEET IS FUN TO PLAY WITH

Firion, Swordmaster | Astral Titan | Dawn Warriors’ Legacy

Alright, now that I’ve complained about this bonus sheet, let me say something good about it. Provided you understand all the text on the cards and carefully look at them to ascertain what color they are, this bonus sheet plays quite well in Limited.

Many of the cards that they chose slot well into various Limited archetypes. For example, Firion, Swordmaster is right at home in Red/White Equipment decks, Astral Titan is great in Red/Green Landfall and Blue/Green towns, and Dawn Warrior’s Legacy is great in the two spell decks – Blue/Red and Black/Red.

Furthermore, with a few exceptions (Terra Branford, I’m looking at you), the cards aren’t super overpowered or entirely useless in Limited. Those are the two categories that should really be avoided for a bonus sheet to have an overall positive impact on a format.

So, in the end, I do think Final Fantasy: Through the Ages has a positive impact on this draft format, even if some of the choices they made in favor of the appearance of these cards makes them difficult to understand.

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What do you think about the Through the Ages bonus sheet? Let me know over on X or Bluesky.