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2025 has proven to be one hell of a year for Magic. We've seen no shortage of sweet releases and, to be frank, a few duds along the way. There's been tons of huge events and some particularly high profile bans. However, regardless of how you feel about the quality of the sets and the state of the game's various formats, there's one core thing that matters: the cards themselves.
Today, I'm continuing my series breaking down the coolest cards from among each color in the game (plus Gold/Multicolored and Colorless/Lands). This looks at all the best among new cards that this year has had to offer, highlighting what made it such an awesome time for the game.
If you'd like to read my previous articles in this series up to this point, you can find them here:
There's tons to talk about - even with just "five" cards to cover - so let's not waste any time and get straight to it!
5. Firebending Lesson, Combustion Technique, and Iroh's Demonstration
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I originally had Raubahn, Bull of Ala Mhigo on this list thanks to his contributions to the introduction of Hammer Time to Pioneer. While I still think that is very much a worthwhile shoutout, I think it's far more relevant to bring up this batch of cards given recent events.
Since World Championship 31 happened, Izzet Lessons rapidly became the deck to beat in Standard. The biggest elements to this were cards like Gran-Gran, Accumulate Wisdom, and Boomerang Basics - all of which I've had edited into my top Blue cards article by the way. However, while those in conjunction with Artist's Talent and Monument to Endurance have made up the core of this powerful deck, it wouldn't have the same degree of potency without each of these awesome removal spells.
Firebending Lesson brings back Shivan Fire, showing that even a creature-only removal spell can get the job in a format like Standard. Iroh's Demonstration one shots a big creature or picks off lots of small ones, while Combustion Technique goes all in on super removing one creature out of the game. Even if they're not the core of the deck, they're still strong enough to warrant an inclusion here.
4. Marauding Mako
While the creature removal lessons may be having a real moment in the sun, I'd argue the remainder of these have done more interesting things in a broad scope. This includes both allowing new decks to exist or reviving old ones while being powerful in their own right. That's what makes Marauding Mako a much more noteworthy card than the Red lessons.
It turns out that players really like finding ways to discard cards as they churn through their decks. This put a lot of heat on Marauding Mako as players found ways to abuse it in a lot of formats. In the long run, this didn't really pan out, but it did allow some players to do some cool things in formats not often impacted by Standard-level cards. It even briefly enabled a resurgence of Hollow One decks in Modern, though those have fallen by the wayside as Modern continues to find new ways to boost its overall power level.
Perhaps most notably is its uses in Standard. The card's ability to snowball in size fast has made it a great pairing with Fear of Missing Out and Winternight Stories, among other cards. This made it a big player in many Izzet Cauldron builds prior to the banning of Vivi Ornitier and Proft's Eidetic Memory. Even after that ban, it's still shown up in a solid number of Izzet Looting lists that have emerged in the weeks since, making it a rock-solid card overall.
3. Nova Hellkite
This has been a pretty banner year for Mono-Red Aggro decks in Standard, with the power pair of Heartfire Hero and Monstrous Rage being banned. Then, most recently, Screaming Nemesis was also shown the door. Somehow, the deck is still kicking, and Nova Hellkite provides a great reason as to why.
First you cast it quite cheaply for an aggressive attack that also takes out a small blocker. It's only one turn, but you can then recast it for five mana later on once you have a chance to curve out into it. This has made it not only an outstanding top-end in Mono-Red builds, even prior to the Screaming Nemesis ban, but also made it an absolute house of Edge of Eternities Limited. It's easily one of the more narrow cards on this list, but it's hard to deny its strength that we'll no doubt continue to feel in the coming years.
2. Weapons Manufacturing
While I'd hardly consider Weapons Manufacturing to be one of the most powerful cards of the year, it's easily among the most innovative. It's rapidly found a surprising amount of play in all kinds of formats. Standard, Pioneer, and Modern have all made use of it in conjunction with a variety of artifacts. From there, you simply find ways to sacrifice the munitions tokens and dish out some heavy damage.
Even if you never do anything with those tokens, it's astounding how much they end up fueling your other strategies. Every one makes Kappa Cannoneer bigger, as well as the Construct tokens you make from cards like Urza's Saga and Simulacrum Synthesizer. Given all of this, it's almost surprising that it hasn't made much of an impact in artifact-heavy formats like Legacy and Vintage just yet. Still, the innovations it's enabled have been a real treat in making Magic a more expansive and enjoyable game, and that to me gets it a high ranking on this list.
1. Cori-Steel Cutter
Few cards have messed up multiple formats the way Cori-Steel Cutter has. It instantly dominated Standard, taking over as a whole host of Regional Championship events kicked off using the format. The Izzet Prowess deck born out of it was so dominant that it was determined it would've gotten the rare middle-of-the-year ban in Standard simply due to its win rate and overall meta share.
Its dominance didn't stop there, though! Multiple decks began using it in Pioneer, ranging from Izzet Phoenix to Hammer Time to repurposed Izzet Prowess builds. Those Prowess builds weren't merely limited to Standard and Pioneer either, as Modern saw a resurgence in Izzet Prowess lists largely on the back of this card - which has put it firmly towards the top of the metagame ever since. It's even managed to make its way into Legacy Izzet Delver lists which currently rank among the archetypes with the highest meta share in the format!
All of this is to say that Cori-Steel Cutter has proven itself to be one hell of a card. Not only is it the best Red card of the year, but it's a pretty strong contender for the best card of 2025, period. It really is that good and has gone to show that even now, brand new cards can cause tectonic shifts in nearly every format imaginable.
Paige Smith
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