Lets get the cliches out of the way immediately: It's been a roller-coaster year for Magic as a whole, and limited was no different. But what were the dizzying highs and where were the stomach-lurching lows for draft players? Let's have a look.

Spider-Man

There isn't much left to say about this abomination by now. Whatever your feelings about Universes Beyond, we can all agree that this was the worst Limited set of the year. Heck, this was one of the worst Limited sets of all time. Let's just move on.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

This was certainly a more successful implementation of external IP, but it still wasn't a great Limited format. I haven't played much of it, but it doesn't seem to be particularly beloved by the community. I do think there is a huge gap between this and the previous set, but Avatar was unlucky to be a fine set in a year full of much better limited formats. There's nothing wrong with Avatar, it just isn't anything special.

Tarkir: Dragonstorm

Original Tarkir is fondly remembered as one of the best limited formats of all time. Dragonstorm... won't be. It was perfectly serviceable, and there was fun to be had, but it's hard for a format to be beloved when the best thing to do if often just turning everything sideways every turn. There was enough going on in the set to keep it from devolving into purely Boros mirrors, but only just. Golgari wasn't too far behind, due to its ability to stall out games with huge blockers and a decent bit of life gain, but many other decks struggled to keep up. Multicolour dragon decks were out there, though they ended up being fairly mediocre in the long run. TDM was another fine set, but when one of your key themes is three-colour clans, it's hard to call it a success when the best decks were all two colours.

Edge of Eternities

Magic in space turned out to be pretty solid. There were a lot of really good mechanics in the set, from the exciting and flavourful Station to the workhorse but very effective Lander tokens. Yes, many of them were new takes on old classics, but Magic is 30 years old and design space is not infinite. The new takes were interesting enough, but what really mattered for Limited is that they played out very well. Landers were my personal favourite, but Warp was a fun puzzle that added variety to the format and Void was a great take on Morbid that played very nicely with Warp. It also had the best bonus sheet of the year - one of the best ever, as far as Limited goes - which helped to keep things interested long after the format was solved. Although, I will say we could have done without Strip Mine.

Aetherdrift

If you're reading this as a Constructed or Commander-only player, DFT being this high might surprise you. Flavour-wise, this set was widely panned. In Standard, it barely made a dent and in older formats it made even less of an impact.

But as a Limited environment it was really good. Green decks ended up being the best in the format, but not by a lot. The format was pretty well-balanced overall, and even those Green decks could be vastly different from one another. Simic wanted to ramp out to a Migrating Ketradon ASAP, and that was often enough to put aggressive decks to bed in one fell swoop. But Golgari decks, just 0.1% behind in win rate, often wanted to fill its graveyard and reanimate something with a Broodheart Engine. Yes, Speed fell a little flat, but it did have some strong, relevant cards in the likes of Gastal Thrillseeker and Aether Syphon, the latter of which was one of the better alternate win conditions we've seen in a while. DFT had several cool aspirational build-around cards, in fact. Syphon was probably the best, but Push The Limit was spectacular when it went off, and Monument to Endurance was one of the most fun rares of the year. It's a shame Aetherdrift is so maligned overall, because it was one of the best Limited formats of the year. Not quite an all-timer, but honestly not that far off.

Final Fantasy

I didn't want this to be true, but I couldn't deny it either. Final Fantasy was comfortably the best Limited format of 2025 and it proved that Universes Beyond sets can be done well, when this amount of love and care goes into them.

But what made it so good? Well, for starters, look at the spread on 17lands win rate data. Only one color pair has a below-average win rate, that being Gruul at 53.4%. But even the best deck (Izzet, at 57.5%) isn't super far out in front. There are several pairs within a single percent of it, which is a good indicator of a carefully tuned format.

It's not all about balance, though. The decks were also fun to play. Job Select might look like Living Weapon, but the creature type mattered just enough to keep things interesting and made Boros equipment decks much more enjoyable than usual. Multicolour soup decks were not great usually, but throw a bunch of towns into a Simic or Golgari deck and you splash almost anything. Izzet was an absolute blast and you could even play proper control decks with next-to-no creatures if you were so inclined. There were some very powerful rares, but removal largely matched up well against them and there were multiple playable counterspells.

Really, there isn't much to criticise about FIN. Even the bonus sheet was mostly solid, and any format that gives me a chance to play with Cryptic Command again is going to have an easier time getting on my good side. I wish the best set of the year hadn't been from UB, but even that didn't feel too egregious thanks to Final Fantasy's overall aesthetic.