Cecil, Dark Knight – Final Fantasy
Date Reviewed: June 2, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed: 4.37
Casual: 5.00
Limited: 4.63
Multiplayer: 3.75
Commander [EDH]: 4.00
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
As I noted last week, Final Fantasy IV was my first game in the series, and so I may be biased; but I nonetheless think it holds up very well even after all these decades. Part of this is due to the personal arc of its main character, Cecil – even in 16-bit form, generations of players have been touched by the way he tries to maintain his humanity as a dark knight and ultimately realizes that he needs to find a new path. And the front face of his Magic card is extremely effective in both gameplay and non-gameplay terms, from the combination of his poignant line from the game and incredibly sinister art, to the way he presents a puzzle to solve. At first you think of Death’s Shadow, but he’s really for a different type of deck: he will almost inevitably switch to his paladin form if he stays in play, and then he’ll be working against the Shadow’s gameplan. He’s really intended to be the centerpiece of his own deck, being a major threat in both dark and light form. He’s all about combat and so won’t be quite as spectacular against opponents that don’t care about that, but this is a comparatively minor wrinkle when he dominates opposing creature suites so aggressively.
Constructed: 4.5
Casual: 5
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 4 (harder to win by attacking in these sorts of settings, but cards like this make it much more feasible)
Commander [EDH]: 4
The main hero of Final Fantasy IV, Cecil Harvey goes from being a dark knight willing to sacrifice to win a fight to being a paladin attempting to protect others and eschew the darkness he once embraced. That’s reflected interestingly here, as a knight who brings death before redemption (and maybe a reference to his “ultimate” Dark Knight sword being the Deathbringer).
In Magic, Cecil starts pretty intriguing: a very aggressively-costed one-mana creature who trades your life as if it was his own. He’s quite potent as a dark knight, though; deathtouch takes out a lot of things and helps him punch above his weight, and while you lose life as he does damage, it’s still a fair trade in the short term that turns him into a protector with quite the nice body. And all of this is for one mana; Cecil does need to do damage (and survive) to flip, but I will mention that it needn’t be combat damage, and a 4/4 with lifelink that makes your other attackers indestructible (a reference to Cecil’s “cover” ability as a paladin) is quite nice.
I do think Cecil has a lot going for him: costing one mana makes him surprisingly efficient and a decent creature even if he dies instantly, and even if he doesn’t flip, he’ll still pull his weight. Don’t count out either side of him; the flip trigger happens with (usually) plenty of life to spare, and he can put in good work on both sides.
Constructed: 4.25 (being one mana is quite a nice starting point, and he may even have some legs in Modern with its tendency to weaponize life totals here)
Casual: 5
Limited: 4.75 (the deathtouch makes him vicious to nearly every creature, he flips readily, and he can win a game of attrition)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4 (keep in mind that he’s black and white for purposes of color identity; you do need to lose 20 life to get him to flip, but that still seems manageable)
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