This Week in Magic: Friday, June 27th

Posted on June 27, 2025

Banned And Restricted Announcement On Monday

This Monday, June 30th, will feature the latest banned and restricted update for Magic: The Gathering and it's expected to be quite a doozy. Following the results of Pro Tour Final Fantasy, many players are eagerly expecting and hoping to see changes to Standard. This update represents the annual B&R update that will be where Wizards takes any action on the game's premiere format, if any at all. Many players are anticipating powerful cards like Monstrous Rage, Cori-Steel Cutter, and Manifold Mouse to be hit, as well as possibly even the likes of Omniscience, Up the Beanstalk, Hopeless Nightmare, and This Town Ain't Big Enough. The speculation is high and it's going to be exciting to see what happens ahead of the 2025 rotation.

Additionally, the Pauper Format Panel (which, disclaimer, I'm a part of) has previously announced that there will be an announcement regarding the trial unbans from the previous update. Will High Tide and Prophetic Prism stick around or will they make their return back onto the ban list? You'll just have to wait and see what Monday's announcement brings.

Finally, it's worth reminding players that during the last announcement, it was also revealed in the WeeklyMTG followup stream that this update will not impact Modern. This is largely due to the format still being in the middle of its RCQ season as well as multiple recent changes as of late. In short: don't expect Modern to be affected this time around.

The announcement is expected to go live sometime around 11AM EST/8AM PST as is normal for WotC announcements. Keep your eyes peeled and be sure to check that out when it lands on Monday!

Sonic Secret Lairs Speed On In

Key art for the Secret Lair: The Sonic Superdrop, featuring Sonic the Hedgehog

Earlier today, Wizards of the Coast revealed via multiple news outlets the latest Universes Beyond collaboration: Sonic: the Hedgehog! The fastest thing alive comes to Magic: The Gathering with a series of three Secret Lair drops.

The first lair, Secret Lair x Sonic: Friends & Foes, will feature a set of mechanically unique cards designed around various Sonic characters. Secret Lair x Sonic: Turbo Gear will include a host of artifacts skinned based on iconic gear utilized throughout the Sonic video games. The last one, Secret Lair x Sonic: Chasing Adventure, features a variety of spells inspired by the different characters of the series.

You can find the full breakdowns of these lairs in the various articles below:

Variety: Secret Lair x Sonic: Friends & Foes

IGN: Secret Lair x Sonic: Turbo Gear

Game Informer: Secret Lair x Sonic: Chasing Adventure

All these Secret Lairs are expected to go on sale July 14 so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for when those go live!

Arena Qualifier Confusion

Alrighty, Arena Qualifier Weekend update. Historic will be the format, as originally listed in end-of-season emails and their weekly announcements. The best-of-3 play-in on Friday will also be Historic, and they are adding a make up bo1 play-in as well. #mtg

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— Robert Taylor ? (@fireshoes.bsky.social) June 23, 2025 at 3:20 PM

This weekend is the latest MTG Arena Qualifier Weekend event that can further qualify you for the Arena Championship later in the year. However, there was some unfortunate confusion this time around. Previous announcements posted throughout the year seemed to indicate that this upcoming event would be playing with the Historic format. However, the qualifying play-in event this past weekend featured the Pioneer format instead.

As noted in the Bluesky post above, shared by Fireshoes, the Arena team acknowledged the confusion and have changed course back to what was previously announced. Players will indeed be playing the Historic format for the Qualifier Weekend with an additional best-of-one qualifier for that happening this weekend in addition to the usual best-of-three one. Good luck to all players participating in the event!

Kibler and Olivia's Big On-Stage Moment

So our show went great. Especially the end.

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— Brian Kibler (@bmkibler.bsky.social) June 21, 2025 at 8:30 PM

MagicCon Las Vegas is over and aside from the preview panel (covered last week and earlier this week) and the Pro Tour, there surprisingly wasn't much by way of news. However, there was one particularly cool moment. Following the success of Game Knights Live at previous events, Commander at Home also got to do a big live show at Vegas. This one proved special as at the end of the show, Brian Kibler proposed to Olivia Gobert-Hicks and the two were officially engaged. Huge congratulations to them and their ongoing relationship!

Decklist of the Week

Mono-Red Aggro | FIN Standard | Ken Yukuhiro, 1st Place Pro Tour Final Fantasy

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In a splendid showing this past weekend, longtime competitive mainstay Ken Yukuhiro of Japan took town Pro Tour Final Fantasy in spectacular fashion. Not only is he also a massive Final Fantasy fan who wore a different Final Fantasy shirt every day, but he won the whole event thanks to Self-Destruct - a Final Fantasy V card - while wearing a Final Fantasy V shirt. It's a fittingly poetic victory that had Ken in tears as he composed himself to hoist the trophy.

Despite this victory, many others lambasted the state of Standard following this event. The top 8 was half Mono-Red Aggro and half Izzet Prowess. While Mono-Red came out on top - with Ken stating he's the best Mono-Red player - the polarizing and questionable health of the Standard format has left a bad taste in many players' mouths. Even with rotation on the horizon, many don't think it will be enough on its own to solve the issues given the cards that will remain in the format afterwards. This is the reason why many are expecting the bans mentioned at the top of this article and why many hope that Wizards will take action to get the format to a better place.

Congratulations once again to Ken Yukuhiro on the tremendous victory!

Paige Smith

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/themaverickgirl.bsky.social

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