The Best Magic: the Gathering Cards of 2025

The Meathook Massacre – The Meathook Massacre really butchers the competition, and it’s easily black’s best board wipe. Because The Meathook Massacre kills creatures by reducing their stats, rather than just “destroying” them, it’s capable of getting rid of even indestructible threats. Furthermore, once it has been cast, it stays in play, and permanently damages your opponents whenever your creatures die, and heals you whenever their creatures go to the graveyard. This is one massacre that you won’t want to miss.

Emrakul, the Promised End – This card really conveys the alien and unknowable power of the Eldrazi titans. When you cast Emrakul, the Promised End, you get to control another player during their next turn. This allows you to get up to all sorts of mischief, from having them use their removal spells to destroy their own creatures, to forcing them into unfavourable combat situations. Even if they survive a turn under your control, they’re still stuck staring down a colossal 13/13 eldritch monstrosity.

The Aetherspark – What do you get when you combine an artifact with a planeswalker? Well, you get The Aetherspark, a completely unique card unlike any other. When the Aetherspark is equipped to a creature, it gains loyalty counters for each point of combat damage that creature inflicts. These counters can be traded in for card draw or to generate huge amounts of mana.

Ketramose, the New Dawn – If a creature is a god, it’s effectively guaranteed to be powerful. Aetherdrift gave us two new gods. Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied, and Ketramose, the New Dawn. Both of these creatures make for great commanders, but Ketramose has the edge. Ketramose rewards you for exiling cards by providing card draw, encouraging you to fill your deck with removal and blink effects. Once enough cards have been sent into exile, Ketramos comes online and can swing in to attack with a selection of powerful keywords.

Ugin, Eye of the Storms – Ugin planeswalkers have a history of being devastatingly powerful, and Eye of the Storm is no exception. Not only does Ugin exile any permanent that isn’t colourless when it enters play, but it also repeats this effect whenever you cast another colourless spell. Ugin can also provide ramp and card draw to keep you in the game. If you’re playing a colourless deck, whether you’re running an ensemble of artifacts or you’re unleashing the power of the Eldrazi, you’ll want Ugin by your side.

Elspeth, Storm Slayer – Speaking of planeswalkers with a reputation for power, Tarkir Dragonstorm also gave us a brand new printing of Elspeth. This card’s token doubling effect, combined with its ability to generate 1/1 soldier tokens ensures that it is a self-assembling army. Elsepth can quickly flood your board with creatures, and then use her second loyalty ability to grant them all +1/+1 counters and send them into the air to attack your opponents, ignoring their blockers on the ground.

Cori-Steel Cutter – This steel slicing blade is so powerful that it absolutely dominated the standard format for several months, from April to June, until it was hit with the banhammer. Unlike most equipment, you don’t need to find a creature to attach Cori-Steel Cutter to, since it creates a monk token and then auto-equips itself, once you cast your second spell in a turn. While it’s difficult to understand quite how this curved blade is capable of generating its own wielders, it’s impossible to deny just how powerful this effect is.

Vivi Ornitier – This souped up Spellcaster needs no introduction. Vivi was the terror of standard, thanks to a combo with Agatha's Soul Cauldron that enabled his incredibly powerful mana generating ability to be spread out across a selection of other creatures. Even without the cauldron, Vivi is a spellslinger player’s best friend that richly rewards anyone for casting noncreature cards.

Buster Sword – It just wouldn’t be a Final Fantasy set without this massive blade showing up. The signature weapon of Cloud Strife, the Buster Sword, not only provides a generous +3/+2 bonus to the creature wielding it, but also enables their controller to cast spells for free once the wielder of this weapon starts damaging the opponent.

Starting Town – This town provides anyone running a multicolour deck with some truly fantastic fixing. Getting it out early ensures that it will enter play untapped, and from there you can start generating mana of any colour to really get your plans going.

Quantum Riddler – The late game of Magic: the Gathering can be difficult to work through. Sometimes you’re just stucktop decking and hoping for the best. This sphinx from space can ensure that won’t happen to you, since it provides a fantastic burst of card draw when your hand is nearly empty. Not only that, but this is all backed up by flying, an impressive stat line, and the ability to warp into the game early and grab cards from the top of your deck.

Icetill Explorer – Green decks love playing lands. Whether it’s to summon beast tokens using Rampaging Baloth, or to generate the mana necessary to call out massive creatures like Avatar Kyoshi, Earthbender. Icetill Explorer allows you to play an additional land on each of your turns, doubling the pace at which you can get your resources ready. Not only that, but Icetill Explorer also allows you to play lands from your graveyard, letting you loop your fetch lands and activate them over and over again.

Tezzeret, Cruel Captain – Tezzeret is a planeswalker that can slot comfortably into any artifact deck. Tezzeret can untap your artifacts and creatures, enabling a variety of combos, and his ultimate ability turns all of your artifacts into combat ready 3/3 robots. Tezzeret’s middle ability is his most powerful, though, as it enables him to seek out any artifact in your deck that costs one or less mana. This lets you grab your Sol Ring straight away, alongside a variety of other useful artifacts like Colossus Hammer, Skullclamp, or Luxior, Giada's Gift if you want to send Tezzeret charging into combat.

The Soul Stone – On top of being a literal mana rock, the Soul Stone also possesses an incredibly powerful reanimation effect. By exiling a creature you control, you can harness the power of The Soul Stone and bring a creature from your graveyard back into play during your upkeep on every turn from then on. Put this in a deck with plenty of ways of milling itself, so that you can load up your graveyard with massive creatures, ready to be returned from death and brought into the action.

Norman Osborn – Both faces of this two-sided supervillain work together to enable a powerful graveyard centric strategy. Norman Osborn’s ability to connive allows you to load up your graveyard with cards with abilities like flashback or unearth. Then Green Goblin provides a discount on the effects of these cards letting you return them to play more easily. There are all sorts of strategies this goblin can accomplish with a fully loaded graveyard.

Gwenom, Remorseless – Gwenom takes the effect of Bolas’s Citadel and attaches it to a symbiotic spider-woman. The mana system is an integral part of Magic: the Gathering, and this card allows you to play around it by using life to pay for spells rather than needing to tap lands. This lets you race out your expensive cards far more early in the game than you would normally be able to; not only that, but Gwenom also has lifelink, allowing her to easily refund the life payments that you make.

Fire Lord Azula – Azula is a spell copying commander that provides fuel to get your gameplan going, thanks to her firebending skills. Any spell that you cast when Azula attacks becomes duplicated; there are a massive variety of different ways of taking advantage of this. You can make multiple copies of any creatures with flash that you bring out during combat, duplicate combat tricks to raise Azula’s stats sky high, or double your burn spells to tear down the defences of your opponents twice as quickly.

Badgermole Cub – This baby badger is one of the most impactful creatures from the Avatar set. It earthbends a land as it enters play, providing 3/3 worth of stats for only two mana, and it also doubles the mana generated by any creatures that can produce it, whether that’s Llanowar Elves, Noble Hierarch, or even the land that the Badgermole earthbends when it enters play. For such a fluffy little creature, Badgermole Cub is certainly very resourceful.

Avatar Aang – The face of the set, and the hero of the story, Avatar Aang is a multi-colour commander that encourages you to build a deck filled with all of the best bending cards from the set. Aang allows you to draw a card whenever you waterbend, firebend, earthbend, or airbend. If you pull off all of the above in a single turn then he transforms, flipping over into Aang, Master of Elements, who provides a significant discount on every spell that you cast, letting you play anything that costs five mana or less for no cost at all.

These are just one set of takes, though, and there are all manner of other powerful cards that have seen print this year. If you’ve got some strong cards that you’d like to shout out, why not join the Magic Madhouse Discord community and give them a plug?

Now that we’ve covered the best cards of the year, how about reading our in-depth dive into every set from 2025?

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