The end is nigh! 2025 is very nearly over. It's been one hell of a year for Magic: The Gathering with tons of amazing new cards being released throughout the year. With several excellent sets (as well as a couple of questionable ones) there's tons of sweet stuff to cover as we enter the second-to-last area: Gold cards!

Gold cards are among some of the most popular in the game. Not only is the idea of having multiple colors on one card sweet, but they also provide interesting tools for the game's premier format: Commander. As a result, there's a lot of awesome stuff to cover, including quite possibly one of the most busted cards of the year!

I've already written five previous articles covering each individual color up to this point. If you'd like to read those - along with many other great year's end pieces by other CoolStuffInc writers - be sure to check out this article as well!

With that, there's plenty to cover this week, so let's not waste any time and get right to it!

5. Hashaton, Scarab's Fist

It's not often that Commander cards dominate these lists, as there's often a focus on competitive impact. That usually bleeds over a bit into Commander as well, which leads to the lists skewing in a rather specific direction. Hashaton is a rare example of this, becoming an instant staple of Commander and cEDH in particular.

What makes this all the more impressive is that it's a precon card but not the face commander! Usually the secondary commanders find their niches, but aren't always high contenders. Sure, we've had some notables in the past like Animar, Soul of Elements; Veyran, Voice of Duality; Chainer, Nightmare Adept; and of course the partners. Despite this, it's a rarity to see secondary ones make such an impact, which has led to Hashaton already cracking the top 50 commanders according to EDHREC.com, thereby making it easily one of the year's very best.

4. Superior Spider-Man/Kavaero, Mind-Bitten

Marvel's Spider-Man has proven itself to be a pretty major dud among a rather stellar year. Still, even with a pretty rough release, there can still be a couple of gems along the way. No that's not an infinity stone reference, but rather a nod to the handful of cool cards that have made an impact on different formats. Superior Spider-Man - or, as its known online, Kavaero, Mind-Bitten - just happens to be one of those cards.

If you've been paying attention to Standard, odds are good that you've been seeing this one show up there lately. The card combos exceptionally well with Bringer of the Last Gift, allowing you to have it enter as a copy of the Bringer and get the Living Death trigger. This has made it a mighty contender in the current format, but its utility goes beyond that! It's even made a bit of a splash in Goryo's Vengeance decks in Modern thanks to its ability to enter as one of the deck's powerful threats should you be unable to use the deck's namesake. This ensures that Superior Spider-Man will remain a top contender for quite some time!

3. Ketramose, the New Dawn

At this point in time, Ketramose isn't as huge of a driver as it once was. Right now, it only shows up in a handful of decks, and usually in small numbers of those archetypes. For example, looking at the meta share on MTGGoldfish, Goryo's Vengeance - one of the bigger decks in Modern right now - it's only showing up in 14 lists (at time of writing). Despite this, I don't think that really paints a picture of just how impactful it was this year.

To really see just how big it was, you need to look back to the beginning of the year. Underworld Breach combo decks were everywhere and the deck needed to find a way to answer it. Ketramose introduced the Orzhov Blink deck, which became a top notch way to fight the Breach decks as well as other top decks in the meta. This led to Ketramose having an absolute vicegrip on the format while simultaneously being a big player in Commander. This would inspire many other decks that have come out since, so while its hype may have cooled off quite a bit, it remains one of the very best 2025 has had to offer.

2. Pinnacle Emissary

As I was making this list, I debated whether to have this at rank 2 or 3 because its uses are fairly similar to what Ketramose has done for Modern. It's mostly only used in one deck when it comes to Modern, having pushed Izzet Affinity/Metalcraft/etc. decks to the top of the meta with the aid of Weapons Manufacturing. So then why does this one rank higher and why is the answer not simply recency bias?

For my money, it's a pretty simple answer: Pinnacle Emissary has seen a bit of multi-format play thanks to Legacy. With the format's penchant for brutally fast artifact synergy decks, it's not hard to understand why this would also be making a splash there. While also in low numbers similar to how Ketramose looks nowadays, the simple fact that it's showing up a modest amount in a format like Legacy is enough to give it the higher rating here, though needless to say: both have proven their worth as top choices for 2025.

1. Vivi Ornitier

Could any other card really be number one here? Final Fantasy fans have loved Vivi for his adorable innocence in trying to deal with a complex existential crisis. For as beloved as he is in the classic Final Fantasy IX, many Magic players have grown to despise him for the impact he had on formats like Standard and Commander. Commander definitely had the more immediate push, with competitive Commander players utilizing Vivi to cruise through games, but it wouldn't take long for the little mage to hit Magic's premier competitive format.

By the time Final Fantasy released, Izzet Prowess was already tearing up the scene when it came to Standard. Players tried out Vivi fairly quickly, but there wasn't much of a consensus on how good it was going into Pro Tour Final Fantasy. Not only did it end up tearing up the event, but it continued to do so long after the June 30th bans. This led to the mighty Izzet Cauldron that completely dominated Standard, which ended up requiring even more bans including Vivi himself.

Sine the banning, Vivi hasn't quite broken out in other formats yet. Some have speculated that if a Pioneer RCQ season is on the table in 2026, there might be a shell discovered that pushes Vivi Ornitier to be a major player once again. Without a doubt, however, he is easily one of the biggest cards of 2025 - and by a country mile at that.

Paige Smith

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