Best Cloud Midgar Mercenary Deck in MTGA – Standard Deck
The Buster Sword deck!
Cloud’s Midgar Mercenary version brings a lot of excitement in the commander or EDH format, but does it fare well in the standard format? Making a standard deck around Cloud, Midgar Mercenary is hard because casting and equipping are too slow in most formats.
This is why Cloud, Midgar Mercenary won’t be as viable in standard, but there are still ways you can use him in other midrange decks – and if you are like me, who wants to force out some Final Fantasy-themed decks, you can always make something work. Here’s the best Cloud, Midgar Mercenary deck you can build for standard in Magic: The Gathering Arena.
Cloud Midgar Mercenary Standard Decklist for Magic: The Gathering Arena
| Lands (23 cards) | Creatures (22 cards) |
| 1x Plains | 1x Zack Fair |
| 1x Mountains | 4x Adelbert Steiner |
| 1x Forest | 4x Cloud, Midgar Mercenary |
| 4x Inspiring Vantage | 2x Raubahn, Ball of Ala Mhigo |
| 4x Cavern of Souls | 3x Firion, Wild Rose Warrior |
| 4x Fabled Passage | 2x Terra, Magical Adept |
| 4x Plaza of Heroes | 2x Joshua, Phoenix’s Dominant |
| 4x Starting Town | 1x Cloud, Planet’s Champion |
| Artifacts and Equipment (7 cards) | 3x Overlord of the Mistmoors |
| 1x Adventuring Gear | Planeswalker (1 card) |
| 1x Lost Jitte | 1x The Aetherspark |
| 1x Chainsaw | Enchantments (5 cards) |
| 1x Cori-Steel Cutter | 1x Summon: Knights of Round |
| 1x Buster Sword | 4x Summon: Bahamut |
| 3x Summoner’s Grimoire | |
| 1x Celestial Armor |
There are a lot of cards you can swap in and out of the deck since it is a midrange deck that will revolve around equipment and summons. The Final Fantasy set brought a lot of interesting weapons, as almost every FFXIV class has its themed weapon included in the set, among other iconic ones like Masamune and Ultima Weapon.
The deck sticks with Buster Sword, fittingly perfect for both Cloud, Midgar Mercenary (trigger it twice) and Cloud, Planet’s Champion (indestructible and double-strike). You’ll only want one of the weapons in the deck because you don’t really want to draw into them. You would rather draw Cloud, Midgar Mercenary, to pick them up for free, including the Aetherspark.
The rest of the creatures help synergize Cloud’s early game, but the endgame is always lacking, so Terra, Magical Adept, comes in to improve the late game.
The deck uses massive game-changing high-cost cards like Overlord of the Mistmoors, Summon: Knights of Round, and Summon: Bahamut. You can even add a bit more powerful summons because of the Summoner’s Grimoire tech. The Summoner’s Grimoire adds a lot of versatility to the deck, and you can swap around cards easily since it can cast high-cost enchantments and creatures for free.
Cloud Midgar Mercenary Standard Deck Playstyle and Keypoints
Your playstyle in the early game is to play timidly. Even with a perfect curve and draw, your early game isn’t as strong, and it takes a while for things to activate.
Ideally, you want to play Cloud, Midgar Mercenary immediately, and get crucial weapons like Buster Sword and Aetherspark.
Equipping costs mana, so you’ll most likely be slower than your enemies. If you are fighting decks with a lot of clear, you’ll want to get the Celestial Armor first before those crucial weapons. If you spend mana equipping a creature like Cloud, you want them to be at least hexproof, or you’ll lose tempo if they get rid of it after spending to equip an equipment.
Raubahn is in the deck to equip attacking creatures for free and has ward (2). Firion synergizes the equipment, making copies of it so you’ll get more power. When you can copy strong weapons using Firion, you are already getting massive value out of the ability, giving you a big lead or allowing you to catch up quickly with the power level on the board.
When you have all that equipment on the field, Steiner gets more powerful if left on the board. You aim to hit the enemy with an equipped Buster Sword, preferably on Cloud, Midgar Mercenary, so the effect triggers twice. Buster Sword allows you to draw and cast for free when you hit an enemy for any damage with this equipped on the creature. This is also why we have those big summons, which usually complement Terra but indirectly synergize with the Buster Sword.
Hitting a player with a Buster Sword and drawing into a free Summon: Bahamut or Summon: Knights of the Round almost always wins the game on the spot. But those odds are quite low.
Once you round up the early and midgame, trying to hit players with the Buster Sword or get heavily equipped creatures to control the board, you’ll transition to using Terra and hope to use her Trance and bring some massive summons into play.
The Aetherspark is useful here as it allows you to get +10 mana out of nowhere. The only problem with Aetherspark is that it isn’t as impactful when you play it, which is usually in a crucial moment in the game (turn 4 or 5). Hopefully, you will get to use the ten mana to play the summons, or it will be a way to draw cards, which is also great.
Joshua, Phoenix’s Dominant, helps you cycle through your most needed cards during a specific situation.
Other Synergies and Combos
- Buster Sword + Cori-Steel Cutter – it allows you to get trample and usually hit the player even when blocked, so you can activate the Buster Sword.
- Cloud, Planet’s Champion + any equipment – Cloud, Planet’s Champion becomes indestructible with double-strike during your turn as long as he has equipment, giving you unbelievable power when given trample (Cori-Steel Cutter).
- Lost Jitte + Buster Sword – One of the earliest combos you can do is to use a counter on Lost Jitte to prevent an enemy creature from blocking, so you could hit the player’s face and activate Buster Sword.
- Firion, Wild Rose Warrior + any equipment – Doubling any equipment provides so much value, but it is more difficult to keep Firion alive than anything else, since Cloud, Midgar Mercenary, isn’t exactly a massive threat to the enemy early in the game.
- Summoner’s Grimoire + Summons – It is extremely difficult to play Summoner’s Grimoire and equip it freely to activate the ability, but when things align, you can summon Bahamut this way instead of the Terra, Buster Sword, or the Aetherspark tech.
Overall, the deck is average at best, especially against mono-red aggros, Azorius Omniscience, Boros, and Rakdos. It’ll struggle, but at least you’ll have much fun with unique Cloud combos.
In all honesty, Cloud, Midgar Mercenary should see more play in Commander or EDH formats unless there are future cards that can help curve equipment better.
If you want more standard decks, check out our Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier standard deck.
