In 2019 I was introduced to Oathbreaker by a group of coworkers who played the format during their lunch break. I had already been familiar with Commander, of course, but Oathbreaker was new to me at the time. I didn’t really “get” it at the time. I built a single Oathbreaker deck, because I realized I could abuse Worldgorger Dragon in the format. I chose Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God as my Oathbreaker and Final Parting as my Signature Spell. Then COVID happened, and the lunch time magic duels disappeared as we all began working from home and social distancing.
Fast forward to June 2025. Magic the Gathering’s Universes Beyond Final Fantasy set came out. I bought a box of boosters and convinced my close knit friends group of Final Fantasy stans to join me in a few drafts. They had played Magic in spurts previously. We had drafted the Conspiracy: Take the Crown set, and a bit of Innistrad, but Magic didn’t really take off with the group at the time.
Final Fantasy hit us like a Phantom Train. Magic the Gathering has always been a special interest of mine, but pairing it with the series that everyone in my friends group except for me had played religiously was the kindling for what would become Limit Breaker. We drafted through the box I bought, and we were talking about what to do with all the cards.
Generally speaking, I’m not much of a constructed format player. I love drafting and I love building decks, and drafting scratches both of those itches for me. We all built a few Standard decks based on the archetypes that we found fun drafting, and were playing a game one day, when I suddenly had a light bulb fire up in my brain.
I was reminded of Oathbreaker, and realized that the sheer amount of Legendary Creatures in the Final Fantasy set (229, to be exact) meant it was ripe for a similar format. Since there are no Planeswalkers in Final Fantasy, the Planeswalker would be replaced with a Legendary Creature. The Signature Spell mechanic would remain the same, but renamed Limit Break… for hopefully obvious reasons.
Limit Breaker was born. We immediately began picking out our favorite characters and building decks around them. Over the next six months, we continued drafting Final Fantasy boosters, and largely shared the spoils. The owner of the box/packs largely gets first dibs, but beyond that we share our cards and are always helping each other make more and more streamlined and unique Limit Breaker decks.
Whether it’s 1v1 on a lunch break or date night, or a pod of the 4-5 of us, we have been having an absolute blast. We’ve since come up with a full rule set, of course based upon Oathbreaker’s official rules document, but the Party Leader being a Legendary Creature created some interesting decisions about how the format would play out.
For the most part we settled on “the rule of fun” – because that’s what we’re here for. Feng and Vanille were declared partners, due to their meld mechanic. We also decided that the Party Leader being on the battlefield when transformed still counted as the Party Leader for purposes of casting Limit Breaks.
There’s been some debate about a ban list, due to the Through the Ages cards, but once again… the rule of fun. If there is a Final Fantasy treatment, it’s legal. We also know that some of those Through the Ages and Secret Lair cards can be prohibitively expensive, so we also decided that all treatments are still legal in the format, as long as it has been printed at least once as a Final Fantasy themed card. This might change if/when Wizards of the Coast releases another set of Final Fantasy cards, and surely they will, right? It did numbers.
I made this website, largely to share our joy with the rest of the community. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
Thanks for reading,
Mattie Schraeder