Magic's TMNT set finally convinced me to build this terrifying Final Fantasy commander deck |
When a friend gifted me the Cloud Strife Magic: The Gathering card, I was pretty intimidated. It’s a reprint of the wickedly powerful Najeela, the Blade-Blossom — the kind of commander that opposing players target immediately. A 3/2 human warrior that costs two colorless and one red mana, Najeela generates a warrior creature token whenever a warrior attacks, but the key detail is its second ability. For five mana (one of each color) you can untap all attacking creatures and give them trample, lifelink, and haste and gives you an additional combat phase after that one. Because of the ability, that means a commander deck with Cloud Strife/Najeela at its head has access to all five colors and a very clear path to victory.
All told, the general strategy is pretty straightforward: ramp up a variety of mana, fill your board with warriors, keep attacking to generate more warriors, and eventually trigger the ability mid-combat. Running a five-color deck, however, means you have to carefully calculate the mana costs across all of your cards and balance your lands and other mana-generators accordingly. There are also a lot of directions you can potentially veer. Warrior appears as a creature subtype across all sorts of sets. While it’s possible to build this out using just Final Fantasy cards, I had the most fun mining the most recent sets and by embracing the weirdness of Universes Beyond — especially when I added Raphael and Leonardo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into the mix.
Raph &........