Cid, Timeless Artificer – Final Fantasy
Date Reviewed: July 8, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.13
Casual: 4.50
Limited: 3.35
Multiplayer: 3.53
Commander [EDH]: 3.63
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Ever since Final Fantasy II, there’s been a character named Cid present in some capacity in the game, a throughline that’s run through all 15 mainline games since then and a healthy number of spin-offs. So the treatment here of giving Cid, Timeless Artificer 15 variant cards is a smart one, letting one of the most iconic recurring characters recur in the way he best does so.
Cid, Timeless Artificer also lets you run as many copies as you want to in a deck…which seems intentioned around giving that passive buff a real workout. If you load up your graveyard with copies of Cid (and other artificers, I suppose), you make your board bid. Heroes are mostly on the tokens from the job select mechanic, but there are still a fair few besides, and this also buffs artifact creatures if you needed that extra pop. Unlike a lot of the “any number of copies” cards, Cid himself is legendary and doesn’t have an in-built way to circumvent it, but you can cycle him if you have an extra.
Cid’s more fun than efficacious, but he is very fun, and you can make for some truly formidable boards if you play around his particular strengths and mechanics. He’s also acceptable in a pinch in combat, but just being a vanilla body won’t win awards. Still, as far as being a fun flavor reference and a fun card to play with, Cid hits the mark rather nicely.
Constructed: 3.25
Casual: 5
Limited: 3.5 (he is an uncommon, but I don’t know how feasible it’ll be to draft around him)
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander [EDH]: 3.75
Out of the 15 Cids depicted, there are two that are actual playable party members: IV‘s Cid is part of the game’s revolving door of playable characters, and VII‘s Cid is a full-fledged party member for the entire game who serves as the game’s “dragoon”. Two more, from III and XVI, show up as non-controllable party members at various points.
Thijs
How many characters can you name that have appeared in every single FF game since FFII? Yeah, neither could I. Until I came across this ‘Cid’ person. You read that right: he appears in every single game, bar one. That spectacular feat might be the reason they gave Cid not two cards (a regular and an alt art one like most legendary creatures in this set), but fifteen! Also there’s an alt art version of the one from FFXIV, that makes sixteen cards in total. Collectors will have loads of joy getting all these together.
The card itself is actually quite fun. Tribal cards are always popular across sets and formats, and ‘Artificer’ players will definitely find a place for Cid in a deck.
Did I mention it’s a new chapter in the ‘you can have any number of these’ universe? It’s the unofficial successor to Tempest Hawk, which became very popular for a while, especially in casual decks. There is, however, a big drawback to this ability. Cid is a legend. That means you will need at least a Mirror Gallery to safely get more Cids on the board.
Other than that, this is a fun card, both as commander or as part of your Azorius legion. Add to that the fact that there is a card for every version of Cid in the FF universe, I think this is a well-executed homage.
Constructed: 3
Casual: 4
Limited: 3,2
Multiplayer: 3,7
Commander [EDH]: 3,5
The first Cid I ever met was the one in Final Fantasy IV, the one portrayed on this card – and this specific scene was one that stuck with me right away and still stands out after all these years. But there’s been a character named Cid in almost every mainline game, and every one of those is in the Final Fantasy set, probably to spark the comparable memories regardless of how you remember him. And just as there’s been variety in the characters to bear the name, there’s actually more than one role for Cid to play in Magic decks. In his own draft environment, he has plenty of targets to boost, including giving an additional boost to the job-related equipment cards. As you get into bigger card pools, people are probably going to be looking more at the artifact creature side of his ability. There’s no shortage of anthem effects for artifacts already, but his particular nuances will add some appeal (and yes, the Final Fantasy theme probably will too for some people). If nothing else, the fact that he checks your graveyard too and the ability to have more than four copies of him in a deck will make it harder for opponents to disrupt the beatdown.
My instinct would usually be to have four of my favorite Cid variant per deck, or else have a deck with exactly fifteen different Cids, but there’s probably some way to get even crazier!
Constructed: 3
Casual: 4
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 3.5
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