Close Menu
  • Login
  • Support Us
  • Newsletter
  • News
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
    • Video Games
      • Previews
      • PC
      • PS5
      • Xbox Series X/S
      • Nintendo Switch
      • Xbox One
      • PS4
      • Tabletop
    • Film
    • TV
    • Anime
    • Comics
      • BOOM! Studios
      • Dark Horse Comics
      • DC Comics
      • IDW Publishing
      • Image Comics
      • Indie Comics
      • Marvel Comics
      • Oni-Lion Forge
      • Valiant Comics
      • Vault Comics
  • Podcast
  • More
    • Event Coverage
    • BWT Recommends
    • RSS Feeds
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Support Us
But Why Tho?
RSS Facebook X (Twitter) YouTube
Trending:
  • Features
    Momo and Okarun share a close moment in Dandadan

    Momo And Okarun: The Gold Standard For Shonen Romance

    07/03/2025
    Ironheart Episodes 4 6 But Why Tho 1

    ‘Ironheart’ Explained: Explore MCU’s Bold New Chapter

    07/01/2025
    Buck in 9-1-1

    ‘9-1-1’ Has To Let Buck Say Bisexual

    06/29/2025
    Nintendo Welcome Tour promotional image of the maraca mini-game

    The One “Game” That Justifies The Nintendo Switch 2 Purchase

    06/25/2025
    Destiel Confession in Supernatural - Castiel (Misha Collins) and Dean (Jensen Ackles)

    The Destiel Confession: The Lasting Importance Of Supernatural’s Greatest Ship

    06/22/2025
  • Squid Game
  • K-Dramas
  • Netflix
  • Switch 2 Games
  • Summer Game Fest
But Why Tho?
Home » Interviews » Magic Designer Explains The Challenge Of Picking A Face For The FFXIV Commander Deck

Magic Designer Explains The Challenge Of Picking A Face For The FFXIV Commander Deck

Kate SánchezBy Kate Sánchez06/11/202510 Mins ReadUpdated:06/11/2025
Y'shtola in the FFXIV Commander Deck - Magic: The Gathering x Final Fantasy
Share
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reddit WhatsApp Email

Magic: The Gathering is no stranger to crossovers with other properties. The trading card game’s Universes Beyond sets have captured fans of Magic and brought new players in through their fandom in equal measure. While hearing your friend talk about their SpongeBob SquarePants Commander Deck still just doesn’t feel real, these sets have become larger than life. And for Final Fantasy XIV players, the FFXIV Commander Deck is about to be their favorite collaboration.

Final Fantasy Universe Beyond is the most bought set that Magic: The Gathering has released is also the most expensive. With the Final Fantasy Universes Beyond set, Magic developers made a card that adapted all 16 mainline Final Fantasy games, working hand in hand with Square Enix. Sixteen games, hundreds upon hundreds of hours of play time, and adapting 16 games are challenges of their own, but what happens when one of those games is the world’s most played MMORPG, spanning?

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here

At Summer Game Fest 2025 in Los Angeles, we spoke with Daniel Holt, the Senior Game Designer at Wizards of the Coast, who led the design and creation of the Final Fantasy Commander Decks. Final Fantasy XIV spans 10 years, one entire rebuild, six expansions, and has no signs of slowing. Distilling the game’s depth, job system, party of Scions, Duty Finder, and all the other fan favorite elements proved to be one of the most challenging tasks faced by the development team working on Final Fantasy Universe’s Beyond Commander Decks.

The Y’stola Commander Deck wasn’t always going to have the spellcaster as the Commander.

Y'shtola in the FFXIV Commander Deck - Magic: The Gathering x Final Fantasy

The first challenge was picking the Commander. When asked why Y’shtola was chosen to feature, Daniel Holt explained that she wasn’t going to be the deck’s Commander. While the team knew they had to represent Final Fantasy XIV in the Universes Beyond set (which inspired the most number of cards), exploring how to do that involved multiple choices.

“I started with a Warrior of Light scheme [for the FF14 Commander Deck], That is the player character that you play as, so I tried that. [The Warrior of Light] is so customizable, there are over 20 jobs to select, and everybody’s character is so unique to them. I wasn’t able to make the Warrior of Light the face of the Commander in a satisfying way. I was making like a 9-sided card, so I had to say, ‘No, this isn’t going to work. And then I picked Y’shtola. She’s one of the fan favorite [scions] from the game, along with G’raha Tia, who is the backup Commander [in the deck].” Holt said.

Still, just because the Warrior of Light isn’t the Commander, doesn’t mean that the individual job choices that players love about the game aren’t represented. “You’ll still see those hero characters throughout the deck as jobs, equipment, and random cards,” Holt added. One good example is the Hero Tokens that can be summoned, each one reflecting a different FF14 job and race.

For Daniel Holt, building the deck was choosing the face, but then also defining what the deck does. To explain adapting FF14’s mechanics, Holt explained that he needed to do research, which was racking up hundreds of hours in the MMO to focus on authenticity.

Hades Card art from the FFXIV Commander Deck

“I’d never played [Final Fantasy XIV] when I started working on these [Commander] Decks, but when they told me that I was leading the product. I was like, well, I have to play [FF14]. I want to be genuine to the product, so I put 200 hours into it in my first month of design and fell in love with the game. I got up to Shadowbringers, played a lot of Dancer, Black Mage, White Mage, etc.,” Holt explained.

If the Hero Tokens are the best examples of pulling your Warrior of Light into the FFXIV Commander Deck, other mechanics from FF14 were also worked into the deck. Given Holt’s time as a Dancer main and playing different Mages, it’s no surprise that FFXIV Commander Deck focuses on spells, specifically non-creature spells. Holt continued explaining, “It became more of a control deck, casting in those known creature spells like the job, select equipment, and things like that, and then for the job select equipment.’

Holt added context around the job select equipment, “I played the dancer like I just mentioned, so I made sure to put things like the dancer’s chakrams in there. [A Dancer is] kind of a support character, buffing each other, so its card itself comes down with a hero, but it also puts those abilities on your commander, just like in the game.”

Final Fantasy XIV’s community is a driving factor in the development of the Commander Deck.

scion-focused cards in the FFXIV Commander Deck - Magic: The Gathering x Final Fantasy

While Daniel Holt put his own character weapons into the FFXIV Commander Deck, his larger concern was to make sure that the FF14 community was represented. And that all started by looking at his favorite part of the game: its community.

“My favorite thing about [Final Fantasy XIV] is the approach to being an MMO. I was not a big MMO player when I started this game. But you can kind of play it as a single-player game! You can just go through the story solo, but [the FF14] community that’s there is so welcoming; this is the nicest community that I’ve ever seen in a game. They’re so welcoming. If I had any questions, I could type them in chat, and immediately, 10 people are like, ‘Oh, go here, go here, do you want me to take you there?’ People are so friendly in this game, and I love it,” Holt said.

That love for community guided Holt’s design for the FFXIV Commander Deck and, ultimately, the creation of Final Fantasy XIV cards. However, to show that care, Holt used his newer experience with the MMO to include elements from the game’s earlier expansions, like Heavensward or A Realm Reborn. Holt explained that this balanced out the inclusion of elements from Shadowbringers and Endwalker that the set’s Creative Director was able to map out. For Holt, while these parts of the game were old for veteran players, starting his FF14 journey in 2022 meant that the oldest expansions were still new to him.

He explained, “I had to include all the scions and all the people on the journey. So, for me, something important to get in was the side characters. I filled a Grand Manderville. I gave him his own card because this is a fan favorite character, but you could play that entire storyline and never see him. Things like this are just genuine and are player fanbase things to give them.”

The Scions were necessary characters to include in the Y’shtola Commander Deck.

Cards in the FFXIV Commander Deck - Magic: The Gathering x Final Fantasy

Daniel Holt then explained what he knew he wanted to include in the Y’stola Commander Deck and the FF14-inspired cards for himself. “I wanted the Dancers’ Chakrams because I play Dancer. And then I designed the ‘Champions From Beyond’ card. This card is actually the Duty Finder. You cast it to actually make x-number of heroes, so it’s like summoning people to the party, and then it checks. If you have a light party, if you have four or more characters, you get a specific ability, and if you have eight or more characters for a full party, you get another value. So I wanted to capture that kind of mental moment from FF14.”

With all of the Scions in the Y’stola Commander Deck, I had to ask how my favorite one was captured. And that’s the white haired Dragoon. Holt explained, “So Estinien is a Dragoon, so he still has that jump ability [for his card]. He’s going to gain flying. But he also cares about dragons. So his second ability will let you draw cards if you hit with either him or another dragon, which really ties to the Heavensward area.”

He continued, “If you look at ‘Crux of Fate,’ it’s kind of a weird board wipe to include because it’s like it’s not a Dragon Deck. Still [“Crux of Fate”] just captures that moment of the dragon’s fighting, so you choose dragons or non-dragons and destroy those creatures.” The moment that Holt is referring to is the core narrative conflict in Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward, in the fight between the Church and the Dragons, and their war.

As we continued talking and playing a round with the Final Fantasy Universes Beyond starter decks, the passion that Daniel Holt had for Final Fantasy matched mine. We spoke about different jobs, how the set only includes up to Endwalker, but how the five-year development cycle was done hand-in-hand with Square Enix, the publisher for the Final Fantasy franchise.

Every card in the Final Fantasy Magic: The Gathering set is someone’s favorite.

Estinein-focused cards in the FFXIV Commander Deck - Magic: The Gathering x Final Fantasy

Each card he showed me was a thoughtful adaptation of a world that has meant so much to fans. But for some reason, even as we played with the Final Fantasy VII Remake-themed decks, all I could think was FF14. But that’s because that is the game that means something to me, and for others, the depth of the set, and especially the Commander Decks, will pull a different title to the front.

“I really hope they see that passion that went into [the Final Fantasy set],” Daniel Holt said. “Like I said, I put 200 hours in because I didn’t want to go into [making the Commander Decks] blind. I don’t think I could have found this story myself; the creative team helped me a lot.”

Continuing, Holt said, “Still, I really want to be genuine with the product because we have a responsibility to the fans of this game. I think players coming into this [are] going to see their favorite character, their favorite moments, and coming from a video game background, they know what mana is, you know what equipment is, the mechanics match!”

It should also be noted that Daniel Holt may have been new to Final Fantasy XIV when his work on the Commander Decks started, but he wasn’t new to Final Fantasy. When asked what working on the set taught him about himself, he didn’t focus on learning. He focused on memory, and for him, it was his love of Final Fantasy X.

“I think it’s less about learning and more about rediscovering. I’ve played Final Fantasy all my life. When [Final Fnatasy XVI] came out during development, we jammed out a weekend when it came out. It really was like rediscovering some of my childhood memories in nostalgia for the series. Final Fantasy X is my personal favorite, and as soon as I started leading this, I pulled out my old photo of me, cosplaying Tidus at 17, and just all the memories that flooded back to me in high school.”

“Final Fantasy is just such a part of our lives, just like Magic is,” Holt said in speaking about the developers on the team, “I’ve been playing Magic since 2004 and so just being able to tie them together in this product was just such a blend of like fan plus work, and it never felt like work. It was just truly magical.”

Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy is available now at participating retailers. 

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Email
Previous ArticleOnimusha Way of the Sword Hands-Off Demo Highlights Spectacular Action
Next Article REVIEW: ‘Materialists’ Proves Celine Song Understands Love Better Than Most Of Us
Kate Sánchez
  • Website
  • X (Twitter)
  • Instagram

Kate Sánchez is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of But Why Tho? A Geek Community. There, she coordinates film, television, anime, and manga coverage. Kate is also a freelance journalist writing features on video games, anime, and film. Her focus as a critic is championing animation and international films and television series for inclusion in awards cycles. Find her on Bluesky @ohmymithrandir.bsky.social

Related Posts

NOMELON NOLEMON

Nomelon Nolemon Share Their Favorite Mech, What They’re Watching And More At AX205

07/03/2025
Madden NFL 26 Miami Dolphins presentation

Madden NFL 26’s Dev Explains Franchise Mode’s Largest Update In a Decade

07/02/2025
Dylan O'Brien and River Gallo star in 'Ponyboi'

River Gallo and Dylan O’Brien Discuss Good Vibes and Shooting ‘Ponyboi’

06/27/2025
Possessors promotional key art from Heart MAchine and Digital Devolver

Why Anime Like Jujutsu Kaisen & Bad Relationships Inspired ‘Possessor(s)’

06/27/2025
61st Wardeame In Warframe's Isleweaver update

The 61st Warframe Oraxia is Gorgeous – We Asked The Devs How She Came To Be

06/26/2025
Diablo Immortal Druid promotional image

‘Diablo Immortal’s’ Druid May Be the Best Diablo Druid To Date

06/26/2025

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here
TRENDING POSTS
Taecyeon and Seohyun in The First Night With The Duke Episodes 7-8
7.5
TV

REVIEW: ‘The First Night With The Duke’ Episodes 7-8

By Sarah Musnicky07/03/2025

The First Night With The Duke Episodes 7-8 spends welcome time in pre-domestic bliss before new developments stir up trouble.

The Terminal List: Dark Wolf trailer First Look Image From Prime Video News

Prime Video Unleashes Teaser for Prequel Series The Terminal List: Dark Wolf

By Kate Sánchez07/04/2025

The first Terminal List: Dark Wolf trailer was released today by Prime Video. The series…

Together (2025) still from Sundance
8.0
Film

REVIEW: Have A Grossly Good Time ‘Together’

By Kate Sánchez01/27/2025Updated:07/04/2025

Dave Franco and Alison Brie’s Together (2025) is disgustingly funny, genuinely ugly, and just a good time at the movies.

Black Women Anime — But Why Tho (9) BWT Recommends

10 Black Women in Anime That Made Me Feel Seen

By LaNeysha Campbell11/11/2023Updated:12/03/2024

Black women are some of anime’s most iconic characters, and that has a big impact on Black anime fans. Here are some of our favorites.

But Why Tho?
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest RSS YouTube Twitch
  • CONTACT US
  • ABOUT US
  • PRIVACY POLICY
  • SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
  • Review Score Guide
Sometimes we include links to online retail stores. If you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small contribution.
Written Content is Copyright © 2025 But Why Tho? A Geek Community

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

But Why Tho Logo

Support Us!

We're able to keep making content thanks to readers like YOU!
Support independent media today with
Click Here