Over the past few weeks, I've been going through and looking at the top cards of 2025 for each color. It feels just like yesterday when I started it, but now here we are, nearly through December and ready to ring in the new year. With four colors down, there's still a couple more to tackle. This time, I'm going to be covering the best Green cards of the year, and let me tell you - there are some doozies this time around!

If you'd like to check out what I had to say on the other colors, I've got you covered! In previous articles, I've listed out all of them individually here. Well now I can do you one better! You can check out all of the previous articles in this best-of series - as well as other lists from fellow CoolStuffInc writers - right here! There's tons of great content to explore, so please check it out!

With that out of the way, let's start going over the best Green cards of 2025!

5. Tifa Lockhart

Kicking things off with this list, we go back once again to Final Fantasy. A fan favorite for the year, the set was packed with awesome cards for players of all kinds - from casual to competitive. Tifa Lockhart is an excellent card that represents the best of both worlds, offering players the opportunity to go massively tall in the right deck. It just so happens that her printing - along with Traveling Chocobo and Sazh's Chocobo - provided the basis for a fun Standard deck: Landfall.

Various builds of Landfall decks have existed, but the most common version seems to be Temur Landfall. Using the likes of Bristly Bill, Spine Sower and a variety of lands like Evolving Wilds and Fabled Passage, players are able to get their creatures gigantic in short order. Tifa Lockhart leads the pack, though, growing exponentially fast and enabling fast kills. The deck is hardly a top contender in the meta, and never really has been, but remains a favorite on MTG Arena for its appeal to a wide variety of players.

4. Dredger's Insight

Dredger's Insight lives up to its name by fueling all manner of sweet graveyard-based strategies. This one is a bit more of a niche roleplayer than a serious contender, but it's really hard to deny the amount of utility this has had on Magic as a whole. If you play Standard, Pioneer, or Modern, then odds are quite good you've seen this one show up in the past year.

Standard has clearly had the biggest showing here. With Insidious Roots decks being a beloved albeit niche player, just about every flavor utilizes this card. It's not hard to gain absurd amounts of life with it and take over a game. This has also extended into Modern where players can loop the lifegain extensively with Yawgmoth, Thran Physician decks to take over games. Perhaps most notably, though, is the way it allowed a sort of Dredge list to become viable in Pioneer (along with Bloodghast). That's to say nothing of the boost it gave to Cauldron Familiar decks as well. It's surprising how strong of an impact this card has had, but its versatility certainly won out, even if it's little more than a roleplayer on the whole.

3. Icetill Explorer

If there's one thing Commander players everywhere love, it's the ability to play lands from their graveyard. It also just so happens that many Commander decks love being able to self-mill and fill their graveyards further. It's not hard at all to take advantage of the graveyard as a resource, which has made Icetill Explorer an instant staple in the format. Perhaps more impressive, though, is its utility in other formats.

This is the rare example of a recent card not showing up in Standard so much as it is in older formats. Modern is where it seems to ruly be at with this deck, with Amulet Titan lists running this in some capacity pretty much across the board to help slam the door on games. It also has some play in various Eldrazi lists as well, allowing you to rebuy your critical lands if they get Stone Rained. But what's more surprising is that it's even seeing play in Legacy, with decks like Selesnya Depths and Cradle Control lists making use of it.

The instant staple nature in Commander and utility in older formats make this one a slam dunk among top cards of the year. What's crazier is that we're only halfway through with plenty more still to come!

2. Ouroboroid

If there's two things players really enjoy it's +1/+1 counters and hydras. So why not give players a hydra that can dish out tons of those counters? That's Ouroboroid's MO and has become a fan favorite in short order. At first blush, it doesn't seem like much, which is how many players viewed the card when it was initially revealed. Just how good could it really be? The answer, as it turns out, was quite a bit.

It wasn't long before players discovered just how much the card could decimate games of Limited. Moreover, it soon started making a splash in Standard, albeit in smaller numbers thanks to the menace of Izzet Cauldron. Once the November 10th bans happened, Ouroboroid decks like Simic Aggro and Golgari Ouroboroid began showing up as big players in the meta. Not to mention good ol' Commander once again, where fans of the card can make it as bursty as they want thanks to the format's myriad power up effects.

1. Badgermole Cub

I'm not sure I'd have expected to see a card from Avatar: The Last Airbender taking top place so soon after release, but here we are. It turns out, producing extra mana like this is quite good - especially when you have additional ways of generating your mana! Badgermole Cub has had an impact on decks from just about every format in only a few short weeks. Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, even a handful of Vintage decks! That's to say nothing about Commander and Cube where the card is destined to become a staple for years to come.

In the case of Standard, it's made a huge splash with Simic Aggro, Bant Airbending Combo, and Temur Otters Combo. In the case of Simic Aggro and Bant Airbending, it provides an aggressive body while letting you turbo out massive threats. With Temur Otters, it enables you to generate mana infinitely with Valley Floodcaller - a strategy that is reviving Jeskai Ascendancy in Pioneer among other decks in that format. For Modern it's Yawgmoth and Legacy is tearing it up with Cradle Control.

This is merely scratching the surface of the card's utility as there are even more decks I can scarcely mention. It is without a shred of a doubt the best Green card of the year and one of the very best 2025 has had to offer.

Paige Smith

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