Summon: Bahamut – Final Fantasy
Date Reviewed: May 19, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.75
Casual: 5
Limited: 5
Multiplayer: 4.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.75
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
This card is very impressive to me all around – not least because it manages to capture the menace and threat you feel when a Mega Flare is on its way. It’s caused countless reloads (and conversely won countless boss fights) over the years, and it’s suitably spectacular in Magic form. You can use effects like Open the Vaults to put the opponent on a countdown similar to what Bahamut himself does in some of the games, one that can be hard to stop indeed. Reanimation effects are probably the way most people will go with this card (don’t forget that it’s also a creature!), but even if you don’t do that, it offers you a colorless Vindicate variant which will be very tempting for a lot of decks. Green decks with mana ramp might like it as a second or alternative Meteor Golem, for one thing. And it even has a relevant creature type!
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 5
Limited: 5
Multiplayer: 4.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
rawr
One of the recurring presences of Final Fantasy, Bahamut has shown up in many games in varying guises, most often serving as a high-level summon characterized by his destructive power and his great, big, long wings. While his first summon appearance was in III, this is depicting his appearance as one of Yuna’s summons in X, and he’s a good starting point for the way summons are depicted, as ephemeral saga creatures that do things as they sit on the battlefield and look menacing.
Summon: Bahamut won’t win awards for subtlety, but it blows up something immediately on entry and again the next turn, draws you two cards on the third, and then nukes your opponents on the way out. Remember that the way Sagas work is that this is sacrificed after the final ability finishes resolving, so Bahamut himself adds 9 to the damage (so long as he doesn’t get removed as the ability prepares to fire), and paired with this being a 9/9 in the air, Bahamut will end games if he has a chance to stick around for even a short period. He’s even a dragon, and we did just have a set that loves dragons…
Nine mana is an issue, don’t get me wrong, but Bahamut’s entirely generic in its mana cost, and it’s a very splashable card in that regard. This is not to say he’s for every deck, as you need to get to 9 mana to make him work (or cheat him out), but as far as “answer me now” threats go, you could definitely do a lot worse than this one.
Constructed: 4 (I do think he’s good, but might be a bit slow for Standard right now)
Casual: 5
Limited: 5
Multiplayer: 4.5
Commander [EDH]: 5
I wonder if he’d be friends with the other Bahamut we’ve gotten?
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