Final Fantasy Magic set adds a card that does 10,000 damage

Tuesday’s reveal of the first batch of products for Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy turned quite a few heads, with many fans of the long-running series suddenly curious about how and where to buy some of Wizards of the Coast’s finest shiny cardboard. Part of the reason is just the sheer amount of excellent art in the set, which the publisher says contains “the largest collection of Final Fantasy artwork ever in a single game.” But another big reason are the goofs, which are deeply embedded into the mechanics of the popular trading card game. Case in point: Jumbo Cactuar.

For the uninitiated, Cactuar are humanoid cacti which leap and frolic across the deserts in Final Fantasy before attacking unwary adventurers. Final Fantasy 8 includes an optional boss battle against a massive version of the li’l guys called Jumbo Cactuar, a kaiju fight against a towering, sassy succulent who counters attacks with a devastating ranged attack called 10,000 Needles. The fight is memorable for the scale of the foe, but also the fact that it likes to flee near the end of the battle, wasting player’s time and resources if they don’t bring their heaviest attacks at just the right moment. Even though he looks goofy on screen, make no mistake that in the video-game Jumbo Cactuar can easily kill off the entire party. And his Magic: The Gathering card is no slouch either.

Jumbo Cactuar is a creature, keyword plant, that costs a hefty five colorless and two green mana to cast to the table, so unless you’ve got a hot hand it’s unlikely that he’ll reach the table until after the first few rounds. At 1/7 he’s got a decent amount of defense, making him hard to kill just like his namesake. But the rare card also has a single ability called 10,000 Needles, which is excessive in a way that only Final Fantasy abilities can be excessive: “Whenever this creature attacks, it gets +9999/+0 until end of turn.”

Do you need to deal 10,000 damage to another creature in a game of Magic… ever? No. No, you absolutely do not. But the card is more than just an expensive way to delete an enemy from the table. If you add trample, perhaps by playing another card on top of it, Jumbo Cactuar gets even more powerful. That classic Magic ability allows you to leap right over the enemy lines and deal 10,000 damage directly to the opposing player. So, thematically, this Jumbo Cactuar card ticks off all the boxes of the original: He’s difficult to kill at seven defense, though not impossibly so. And, most importantly, he looks absolutely hilarious compared to the rest of the self-serious characters in the set — just like the original Jumbo Cactuar stood out as a delightful little Easter egg in Final Fantasy 8.

Be on the lookout for more deep-cut goofs in Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy. The set will be released widely on June 13, and even more preview cards are expected in the spring.