In 2001, one of the first forays into 3D RPGs was released upon the world. Final Fantasy X, created by Square, was the 10th installment of the famous fantasy franchise and it gave us memorable characters, new mechanics and a beautiful story. Its innovative Sphere Grid leveling system lets you customize your characters to suit any play style. This system is emulated on the new Magic: the Gathering legendary creature, Tidus, Yuna's Guardian.

Tidus is a 3/3 legendary human warrior for Bant. At the beginning of combat his primary ability is to move a counter from one of your creatures to a second creature. This can be any kind of counter the game offers. His secondary ability triggers after we've dealt combat damage with one or more creatures that are holding a counter. Once triggered we get to draw a card and proliferate. While the card advantage from the draw effect is nice, the proliferate effect will grow our creatures, provide more counters for Tidus to move or even increase our opponents' poison.

Today we're going to highlight 10 cards that synergize with Tidus' abilities that you can include in your future brews!

1. Strixhaven Stadium

Strixhaven Stadium is the most meme-worthy card on this list. In Final Fantasy X, Tidus is known for his particular skills in a sport called Blitzball. Whenever we tap the stadium for mana and whenever we deal combat damage with a creature we put a point counter on it. If the stadium has at least 10 counters on it and we deal combat damage with a creature, we can remove the counters to have the player that took the damage lose the game. Tidus' second ability rewards us for playing evasive creatures that can sneak in for damage. With the on damage trigger we can add a point counter and proliferate the counter. Add some mana with the stadium's mana ability and we're scoring 3 points per turn. We'll be able to knock someone out in no time!

2. Hardened Scales

Hardened Scales is likely the easiest card to include on this list. Adding +1/+1 counters to our creatures is so common in our colors that adding an extra is a no brainer. We even have a unique synergy between Hardened Scales and Tidus. If we move a +1/+1 counter from one creature to another with Tidus' first ability, Hardened Scales will see that counter being added to a new creature and give us one additional counter. This has the capacity to grow our creature's exponentially.

3. Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar

Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar lets us double down on one of Tidus' abilities. As long as we deal combat damage with one or more creatures that have power greater than their printed base power we draw a card. WIth the amount of +1/+1 counters we'll be shuffling around the table there should always be a way to trigger this ability. Kutzil also adds the ability to prevent our opponents from casting spells on our turn, which means we won't get blown out by countermagic or a Fog effect.

4. Luminous Broodmoth

Luminous Broodmoth is a great tool for our deck, not only to spread counters around but also to recur creatures with great enter the battlefield abilities, like Rishkar, Peema Renegade. A nice synergy with the Broodmoth and Tidus is the fact that we can move the flying counter off of the returned creature only to generate another counter once that creature dies again. Redundancy is the bread and butter of singleton formats and the Broodmoth gives us that in spades.

5. Glen Elendra Archmage

Glen Elendra Archmage and other creatures with the Persist and Undying mechanic are great for our deck. Just like Broodmoth's ability, Persist and Undying recycle our creatures with the added benefit of bringing a counter along for the ride. If we move those counters with Tidus' first ability we get to take advantage of these triggers to our heart's content. Who doesn't love a consistent noncreature counterspell?

6. Slip Out The Back

Slip Out the Back is a perfect protection spell for Tidus, not only does it prevent him from being tagged with removal, it also brings a counter along for the ride. When Tidus pops back into existence he'll have a counter he can spread around or he can sneak in some combat damage to get a quick draw and proliferate.

7. Anduril, Narsil Reforged

Outside of equipment that gives us the ability to go unblocked, Anduril, Narsil Reforged is incredible in our deck. Constantly generating counters for us to proliferate with Tidus' second ability is insane, then once we have the City's Blessing we'll be generating twice as many counters per combat step. This will buff our creatures and secure our victory in no time!

8. Stocking the Pantry

Stocking the Pantry is a little uncommon from Bloomburrow. While not hyper efficient it does synergize really well with Tidus' abilities. It cares about +1/+1 counters being put on our creatures and generates a counter for us to proliferate. Being a low impact enchantment it's less likely to warrant any removal but it has the capacity to draw us a ton of cards over the course of the game. It seems pretty good for a potentially overlooked uncommon!

9. Communal Brewing

Communal Brewing has some exceptional upside for a group hug style card. When it enters, each of our opponents draw a card, which is pretty helpful to the table. Then, for each of our opponents we get to put an ingredient counter on it. Moving forward, whenever we cast a creature spell, that creature will enter the battlefield with extra +1/+1 counters equal to the number of ingredient counters on Communal Brewing. The downside of giving our opponents a card is easily overshadowed by the advantage we get with the counters we're adding. Coupling this with the fact that Tidus' ability will let us proliferate the ingredient counters, we not only grow our creatures but also provide more counters to disperse across the battlefield.

10. Arwen, Mortal Queen

Arwen has the potential to do so much for our deck. She enters with an indestructible counter which is pretty powerful in itself, but she can also sacrifice that counter to buff a creature, give it a lifelink counter and a +1/+1 counter, all while giving the same to herself. Paired with Tidus she goes wild. We could proliferate and move the indestructible counter to eventually give us an immortal board state. After proliferating the indestructible counter we could pop it multiple times to buff our board. There is so much we can do when paired with Tidus' abilities that she's easily an auto-include in our deck.

Hopefully this primer inspired you to give Tidus, Yuna's Guardian a try in Commander. There are endless cards that synergize with both of Tidus' abilities that you could brew him anyway you like. Do you like artifacts? Try using artifact creatures with the modular ability, they will grow exponentially! Are you feeling sinister? Try building an infect list and proliferate your opponents to their doom! The only limit here is your imagination, so start brewing!