Rumors hit the internet on April 21 alleging that Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy 7 was in the pipeline for Street Fighter 6 as a playable DLC character sometime in the game’s fourth year. In the past week, fans of both games have been debating whether or not she’s a good fit. As one of gaming’s most iconic hand-to-hand combatants, her mix of speed, power, and combo-heavy attacks feel naturally suited to Capcom’s modern brawler. But as a JRPG character, Tifa may seem like an odd choice.
My favorite piece of evidence in favor of Tifa is a clip posted to X from Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth that puts her combat prowess on full display: Tifa dodges a bat swing at the last second and launches a flurry of counterattacks that juggle her enemy in the air. After a string of aerial combos, she delivers a devastating backflip kick that launches her victim into the sky — probably all the way into outer space. The Remake games capture the power fantasy of Tifa better than the original FF7 ever could, as she channels Focus to deliver devastating combos that make her the most effective damage dealer in the game.
That exact power fantasy feels perfectly suited to fighting games. And, believe it or not, it already exists in Magic: The Gathering in the form of Tifa, Martial Artist.
The alternate Commander in Final Fantasy’s Limit Break preconstructed deck, Tifa is a naya (green-red-white) legendary creature with one of the more complicated named abilities in the game: melee. Every time a creature with melee attacks, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn for each opponent you attacked with a creature THAT turn. In 1v1 formats, that’s a slight buff. But in four-player Commander games, it’s a significant boost to Tifa if you attack all three opponents at once.
Melee debuted in 2016’s Conspiracy: Take the Crown set, and in the decade since, only 14 creatures have been added to Magic that include the ability on the card (some, like Depthshaker Titan, give melee to each artifact creature you control). Tifa’s secondary ability, however, makes her perhaps the single best among them. Whenever a creature with seven or more power deals any amount of damage to a player, you untap all creatures you control and get an additional combat phase after the current one if it’s the first.
The “first combat phase” language makes it sound like you can only get a single extra hit,” but “combat damage to a player” means that if you successfully damage all three opponents with creatures that are strong enough, this triggers separate instances. That means you can then generate three more combats. If all three of those creatures have double-strike, you generate six.
The Limit Break precon already has a lot of great cards to support Tifa’s core strategy, including plenty of equipment to buff and protect Tifa herself, along with powerful creatures to help you attack every enemy in play.
Assuming you have Tifa as your Commander, her best friend is going to be Raphael, the Nightwatcher, a rare version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle that grants double strike to all of your attacking creatures. Other TMNT cards, like Raph & Leo, Sibling Rivals and Raphael, Tag Team Tough, can also generate an additional combat phase as long as you trigger their abilities the first time around. The Final Fantasy set also has a few options here, namely Genji Glove and Gilgamesh, Weapon Collector. Any creature with Genji Glove equipped gets double strike and generates an additional combat phase. Gilgamesh untaps all samurai you control and generates an additional combat phase with every attack (which is a bit niche here since Tifa isn’t a samurai), but he also lets you search your library for any piece of equipment, including that Genji Glove. And let’s be real: There are worse ways you can build this deck than to have Tifa supported by a bunch of samurai. In fact, Tifa herself once wielded Sephiroth’s Masamune for a few seconds. Does that make her a samurai, too?
Perhaps the most enchanting combo for Tifa, Martial Artist involves using a card like Mirror Box to eliminate the legend rule, then equipping her with something like Blade of Selves so she has myriad. That way, every time Tifa attacks, she generates an additional three Tifas that each attack a different opponent. There are some drawbacks here, though. The Tifa clones won’t trigger melee so they won’t get that +3/+3 buff, but it’s hard to shake the image of four Tifas sprinting in different directions to pummel all of your opponents over and over again.