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Rabrandt, the Red

As many are aware, I am a fan of Final Fantasy XIV, and I have been playing it since roughly the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. In January of 2023, I continued the long running side hustle of “Design MTG cards around my favorite Final Fantasy XIV classes”, trying my hand at the Red Mage since I already had art from LittleBadWolf.

This is one of those rare designs that remained mostly intact, with it’s revision mostly involving cleaning up language and adding a few small tweaks. Mechanically, a Red Mage’s signature mechanic is Dualcast, where they can quickly follow up one spell with another in rapid succession. Putting some thought into how to represent this in Magic, I remembered the Energy mechanic from Kaladesh and chose to take inspiration from it.

After I explained the class and how it works to another friend of mine who is an expert of MTG rules, they advised me that I could both simplify the text and push the power level of the card further by giving Rabrandt a power boost when a spell is cast. We also added the Soldier creature type because we noticed a lot of fencers in Magic are Soldiers, and first strike was a common theme among them.

Sadly, in the time since I’ve learned I’m not too fond of the deck I built around it because between Jeska’s Will, Underworld Breach, and Approach of the Second Sun, it was too consistent for the power level that my tables aim for. However, I am fond of the design itself and I’m proud of it.