LSV's Limited Guide to Final Fantasy: Final Fantasy Draft Has Me Feeling Blue

I’ve been drafting a lot of Final Fantasy ever since the release last week, and it’s been a blast. New formats are always fun, and especially ones where blue is great, which it certainly is here. My strategy thus far has been to draft one of three decks (most of the time) and other decks in the event that they aren’t open.

My favorite three decks:

• Blue-Red 4-drop spells: This is the base archetype for UR, and is supported quite well
• Grixis Control: As the name suggests, this is basically just all the good Grixis removal and card draw combined, with some lands for good measure.
• Sultai Towns: This can either be UG or GB base, and often splashes, with some graveyard synergies in the heavier black versions.

Today, I’ll walk you through the top commons and uncommons for these decks, and show you what outlines of these decks look like. Let’s jump in!

Blue-Red 4-Drops | Best Final Fantasy Draft Decks

This deck is fairly straightforward - you want cards that care about playing 4+ mana spells, and spells that trigger them. This deck can range from aggressive to controlling, with most of the builds falling somewhere in the middle.

Top Commons for Blue-Red 4-Drops

This deck mostly wants removal and cards that trigger off 4-mana spells, with The Emperor of Palamecia and Shantotto being the best uncommon payoffs. If you have more Sahagins and Dragoon’s Wyverns, your deck will tend towards aggression, and with more removal and card draw, it will lean towards control. Here’s an outline:

• 5-8 removal spells
• 4-6 card draw spells (including flashback cards)
• 4-6 payoffs (Sahagin, Shantotto, etc.)
• 2-3 other creatures (Wyvern, Ice Flan, etc.)
• 17 lands

The deck is fairly simple to put together, and really doesn’t want much outside of removal, card draw, and payoffs. There are only a few slots for random off-theme creatures, so use those sparingly.

Reasons to Get Into This Deck

The main reasons to get into UR are a strong uncommon or a sequence of strong commons. One Shantotto is enough to set me down the path, or getting multiple copies of Thunder / Ice Magic, or Sahagin. Here are some of the cards that pull me into UR:

This is a strong deck, and a very good tool to have in your arsenal.

Grixis Control | Best Final Fantasy Draft Decks

Grixis Control is my favorite deck to draft right now. I just love casting removal into removal into card draw, and that’s basically all the deck does - perfection.

Top Commons for Grixis Control

This deck is split between card draw, removal, and lands, with a small smattering of win conditions (you do eventually have to win the game). The trickiest part about drafting Grixis is balancing all three, and there’s no easy way to determine which is the most important at any given time. I try to make sure I end up with 4-6 lands, 4-5 card draw spells, and as much removal as I can get my hands on (which does make it a higher pick usually).

Here’s an outline:

• 10+ removal / interaction
• 2-3 random creatures
• 2-3 finishers
• 4-5 card draw spells
• 4-6 Grixis Towns

Here are a couple example Grixis decks:

Reasons to Get Into This Deck

Grixis is funny because it isn’t a heavily-themed deck. As such, there’s not really a signpost uncommon or rare that would lead me down this path - I mostly draft Grixis when I’m getting passed a ton of removal, and maybe see a late Grixis land. I wouldn’t tunnel in on Grixis too early, but if you are drafting blue/red and haven’t seen any good payoffs, consider picking black removal and going the Grixis direction.

Sultai Towns | Best Final Fantasy Draft Decks

While this deck can be anywhere from 2-5 colors, depending on which rares you see, I mostly find myself drafting Sultai, GB, or UG. There are just enough strong cards that you don’t need red or white unless you see a sick rare, and I enjoy the increased consistency.

Top Commons for Sultai Towns

The Town ramp deck is also fairly focused, and wants to play a mix of cheap cards (ramp, interaction) and high-end threats (Coliseum Behemoths), without that much in between. Summon: Fat Chocobo is the exception, as it just puts tons of stats on the board, but most 3-5 mana threats aren’t really what this deck is looking for. This deck also snaps up bombs nicely, and part of the reason to draft this deck is that you can often take any great card you see later in the draft.

Sample decklist:

• 4-6 acceleration
• 4-6 removal
• 2-3 midrange creature
• 2-3 card advantage
• 4-5 high-end threats
• 4-6 Towns

Here are two versions, a GB graveyard-focused version and a more straightforward Sultai version that ramps into Bahamut.

However you tackle Final Fantasy draft, I hope you have a blast! I certainly have been having tons of success with blue, but the format is quite well balanced, so every color has multiple good decks you can get into. This guide will help you with the best of them, blue, but the world is your oyster. Happy drafting!