Pauper: 5 Decks with Final Fantasy to try out!

Final Fantasy is coming. The most anticipated set of 2025 for Magic: The Gathering is scheduled to be released on June 13th and all the cards have already been officially revealed, allowing us to analyze and build the first ideas with its cards in the coming weeks.

In Pauper, FF brought some new tools to already established decks, such as Town Greeter for Dredge and Red Mage’s Rapier for Kiln Fiend and also offers some cards to build new decks around or change existing archetypes, such as Black Mage’s Rod, which helps at mixing more artifacts into Rakdos Burn, and Balamb T-Rexaur, whose ETB effect and decent body combined with the Landcycling ability make it a good Payoff for ramp and a decent target for Reanimate.

Below, we present some Pauper decklists with the main new Final Fantasy cards for the format.

Choco/Mog Weenie

Despite losing ground in the Metagame after the recent bans, White Weenie remains a solid choice in Pauper, especially for Leagues. The new Summon: Choco/Mog offers a power boost to your creatures for four turns at an efficient cost, making it almost equivalent to a “Lord” for go wide decks.

This boost means that your creatures are threats in the medium term and not just if we cast Guardians’ Pledge, and we can also reuse the card with Kor Skyfisher to reuse its chapters before it is sacrificed, or even to stack its triggers in a single turn.

Red Mage Fiend

One of the biggest problems with Kiln Fiend decks is consistency, especially when it comes to threats. Fortunately, Final Fantasy brought a complementary version of Festival Crasher in Red Mage’s Rapier, which has the same cost, creates a 1/1 token equipped with it when it enters, and still has the advantage of triggering with any non-creature spell, including another Red Mage’s Rapier.

Another advantage of the card is that it is an equipment, and despite the high cost to attach it to another card, we can imagine some circumstances where Rite of Flame followed by attaching Red Mage’s Rapier and playing Mutagenic Growth or similar can add to the lethal damage caused by another creature.

Black Mage Burn

Black Mage’s Rod is probably the best common to build decks around in Final Fantasy: it is an artifact, creates a variant of Kessig Flamebreather on the board, and is in a color where it does not compete for slots with other cards.

It will most likely show up in Black Burn, and I can imagine some Pactdoll Terror lists trying interactions with it as well. Rakdos Madness can take advantage of this card to have more reach and increase the number of artifacts in the maindeck to play the best Burn spell in the format today, Galvanic Blast.

Town Greeter Dredge

This list isn't very creative since it is just a slot replacement. Town Greeter works on Dredge or any archetype that wants cards in the graveyard, such as 5–8 copies of Satyr Wayfinder, a more attractive and efficient option than other creatures that these decks have run in recent lists.

Shinra Reinforcements is another card that could make it onto this list if we want to keep the Mill quality without giving up life gain, but the low value of Blanchwood Prowler probably matters more than a beefier body and extra life against Aggro for a turn.

Balamb Reanimator

Ever since Legacy players discovered that Troll of Khazad-dûm can win games if put into play early while also reducing the number of lands, I've been wanting to do a similar strategy in Pauper, but the lack of cheap reanimation effects and other payoffs makes it a bit of weird strategy.

With the new Balamb T-Rexaur, the idea of ​​forgoing traditional Reanimator targets in favor of a “fair” game plan while still following the combo path with Exhume seems more viable. We’ve merged twelve cards with Landcycling, including the new Balamb T-Rexaur with Exhume and Dread Return, and complemented it with the Eldrazi package that synergize with Writhing Chrysalis while also providing fodder for Dread Return’s Flashback.

More traditional versions with removal and geared toward interactions similar to Black Gardens are also an option, and Final Fantasy also introduced another relevant target for reanimation, Malboro, which wasn’t included in the list as it easily dies to Galvanic Blast.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!