Spoiler Highlight: Emet-Selch, Unsundered

February 18th was a memorable day. It was the first time Wizards and Square Enix shared the first look at what they have in store for the first set of the Universes Beyond series in 2025, Final Fantasy. And for someone who is a fan of both franchises, there are no words that can describe that hour-long broadcast other than magical and fantastic.

But as a journalist and content creator, I need to keep my hype low (I'll try, I promise!) and look at the cards in the expansion as a product and evaluate the potential that each one has to affect competitive Magic formats, as I did with Aetherdrift, and as I will do with Tarkir: Dragonstorm, whose previews will also begin soon.

Of the 12 cards revealed from the Final Fantasy main set so far, one certainly stands out as a potential tool to affect multiple competitive environments: Emet-Selch, Unsundered.

While its body and cost may not seem impressive, the Shadowbringers antagonist has on its transformed side the effect of what many consider the most powerful card of all time in Magic, Yawgmoth’s Will, and with an easy-to-activate trigger in various decks that interact directly with the graveyard.

Note: This section contains spoilers for Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers and Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker.

Emet-Selch is one of the last remaining Ascians, an ancient and all-powerful race that once ruled Etheirys.

The Ascians' utopian world was on the brink of ruin at the Final Days, so they created and summoned Zodiark to save it, but in exchange they had to sacrifice half of their total population. A group of Ascians opposed to going through another sacrifice and created Hydaelyn to keep Zodiark in check, and she did so by sundering the entire world into 14 fragments and creating 14 parallel reflections, where all the inhabitants in each are 1/14 of the original race of Ascians from which they were created.

His goal is to reunite all the reflections into a single Source to recreate the complete world as he knew it. This would lead to the destruction of these reflections and the death of all the individuals now living in them, as each "sundered" would be combined to create a complete Ascian.

Emet-Selch deems this as a necessary sacrifice to save his world, to the point of not recognizing the humanity or individuality of the sundered people if it means resurrecting the utopian society he once lived in, going as far as saying he doesn't deem himself as guilty of murder for killing them en masse.

Selch is one of the most famous characters in Final Fantasy and is considered one of the best villains in the franchise due to his sarcastic personality, the way he approaches the team of heroes and accompanies them while explaining the true history of the Ascians, and how some of his attitudes and speeches represent the depression behind mourning.

Emet-Selch, Unsundered has a decent body for its cost and an ETB and attack effect that feeds its main ability: when its controller has 14 or more cards in the graveyard, it transforms into Hades, Sorcerer of Eld, basically a Yawgmoth’s Will in a 6/6 body.

The fact that he has the ability of what many consider to be the most powerful Magic card of all time - to this day, Yawgmoth’s Will is still nicknamed “YawgWin” because of how easily it can win the game or create an absurd amount of value - is by far the biggest factor in considering Selch a competitively viable card, but we need to pay attention to his text line to transform him into Hades: he only transforms at the beginning of the upkeep, so his controller has to wait a turn cycle to trigger even when they already have 14 or more cards in the graveyard.

The problem with this condition is that Emet-Selch becomes a telegraphed card. One of the biggest threats of Underworld Breach or Yawgmoth’s Will is that your opponent needs to be constantly on the lookout for the possibility of you using this card to suddenly “going off” with some combo, or reusing as many cards from your graveyard as possible to get back into the game, or to win the game.

Selch, therefore, has two major barriers:

The moment he comes into play, he gets a target on his head because if he transforms, the game is virtually won.

Interestingly, this puts the Ascian in a position where it's not as good for combos, or for decks trying to do absurd things too quickly. It's not a card for Abhorrent Oculus in Standard, but a companion to Oildeep Gearhulk in the same format - Emet-Selch is much more effective as a Midrange card, where untapping with it will bring back a dozen removals and creatures with powerful effects.

It's worth noting that while it may be appealing, I don't think Emet-Selch has a place in a Bounce deck these days because Bounce decks are based on permanents and have a hard time getting cards into the graveyard quickly, but it does provide an excellent way to get back into the game after a Pest Control or other sweeper that deals with your enchantments.

Selch is also comparable to Kiora, the Rising Tide, a staple of Abhorrent Oculus lists in Standard, and given that Kiora has a hard time fitting into every Oculus list, it's hard to imagine a card that requires twice as many cards in the graveyard appearing in an archetype that sometimes needs to exile five to cast its main threat.

For the same reason, it's difficult to imagine Emet-Selch sharing slots with Oculus in Modern, where he still needs to prove himself more efficient than Murktide Regent to offset the exile costs.

On the other hand, Psychic Frog, Tome Scour and Fallaji Archaeologist are some of his best friends in Modern, and there's still the entirety of the Tarkir: Dragonstorm and Final Fantasy expansions - not to mention the possibility of two banlist announcement until June - to bring other tools to the Ascian.

In Legacy, Selch has the same obstacle he faces in other formats, of being a card whose main ability is telegraphed and in an environment where there are no shortage of answers to deal with him.

However, he's also a pitch for Force of Will and Force of Negation, his body dodges Lightning Bolt and his trigger feeds the graveyard for Reanimate, and with Dimir Reanimator being the best deck in the format right now, it's likely that Emet-Selch will be worth some testing as another means of filtering the hand and with high recursion potential in longer games.

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Finally, we can't rule out the possibilities of what Selch can do in Commander. As a commander, he seems more geared towards a combo list where we create the setup with cards in the graveyard for a big explosive turn when the Ascian transforms to win the game, not much different from what is done with Yawgmoth’s Will or Underworld Breach, but potentially slower due to the necessary conditions - let's face it, the most laborious part of the process is making Emet-Selch survive a cycle of four whole turns with a giant target on his head.

It is worth mentioning that both Yawgmoth’s Will and Underworld Breach are currently on the Game Changers list, cards that are not welcome in more casual Commander tables. If Selch does not prove to be efficient at higher power levels, it is possible that he will find space among the Storm decks with access to in the lower brackets to “compensate” for the loss of these cards.

Wrapping Up

That's all for today!

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

Thanks for reading!