After several weeks of running through various Magic cards, it all comes down to this. 2025 has come to an end as we ring in 2026 and it's been a blast running through the best cards of the year by color. 2025 has truly been jam packed with some extremely strong cards and others that are spectacularly splashy.

Now we've got one last area to touch on: the Colorless cards from the year. This is going to encompass everything including lands and artifacts alike. Oh, and actual Colorless spells, of course. With only a handful of contenders in each, it simply made the most sense to do it this way.

If you'd like to read the rest of the best-of articles - as well as other year's end lists from many CoolStuffInc authors - be sure to check out this article. It compiles them all into one place for your reading pleasure!

With that out of the way, let's get to ranking these Colorless cards!

Before we get going, I did want to give a shout-out to all the different lands. This isn't so much an honorable mention but rather noting just how many sweet cycles of lands we got in 2025. There were so many, in fact, that I probably could make a list for them all on their own! Rather than doing that, I wanted to quickly give them a bit of collective shine because wow have our lands been good this year!

5. Festering Thicket, Vernal Fen, Glittering Massif, and Radiant Summit

That having been said, there are a few lands that absolutely are worth mentioning. Chief among these is the group of brand new dual lands that came with the Edge of Eternities precons. Now why talk about these over something like the hotly anticipated return of the shock lands or the finishing of the Verges? It's because of what they represent and a fresh innovation Wizards is taking going forward.

This isn't the first time Wizards has finished cycles of lands via Commander decks. The original Odyssey dual land cycle - a favorite of designers for precons - was completed with enemy color versions in Fallout (and later Outlaws of Thunder Junction). Following years of trying to make them work in Standard to no avail, Wizards finally is completing the Battle for Zendikar and Amonkhet dual land cycles through Commander precons. This is huge for Commander players everywhere as well as select Cubes, signaling major innovations to come with land and mana fixing designs in future precons.

4. Tezzeret, Cruel Captain

Tezzeret is a card that might make you scratch your head a little bit. If you usually pay attention to formats like Standard, Pioneer, and Modern, he's not really showing up anywhere at all. Even in Commander, his uses are often limited aside from artifact-centric decks, which make up only a small segment of the format - even if they're quite good there.

The real draw of Tezzeret, however, is in older formats like Legacy and especially Vintage. Both of these formats rely heavily on low cost artifacts to enact their gameplans. As a result, Tezzeret is an outstanding fit. Imagine casting this off of a Black Lotus and then dumping several Moxen and other artifacts soon after. That's the kind of thing you can do in Vintage with Tezzeret, making it a shockingly powerful card in a very specific slice of the Magic: The Gathering multiverse.

3. Starting Town and Multiversal Passage

I couldn't really decide which of these to put on this list and it didn't seem right to put them on with separate rankings given how similar they are. As such, both of these powerful Universes Beyond lands are getting included on this list together.

Starting Town is an excellent five-color land that allows you to fully fix your mana as you need to. Sure you have the problem of it coming into play tapped on later turns, but that's not too different from the typical fast land experience anyways. It's allowed players in Standard and Pioneer to effectively fix their mana without worry and to do so efficiently. That's made it a mainstay of the format and a huge inclusion for several decks.

Multiversal Passage has seen an even deeper amount of play. In some ways it's not too far off from Thran Portal, a land that was played begrudgingly by many players during its Standard tenure. Multiversal Passage ends up being substantially better, though, by not being so limited on when you can have it enter untapped. Additionally, you can pay the life costs up-front and not need to take so much damage later on. Best of all, though, is the fact that it pairs exceptionally well with the Verge lands that are all over Standard right now, making this perhaps the better option as far as Standard - and Standard alone - goes.

2. Ugin, Eye of the Storms

It's amazing that both planeswalker cards found in Tarkir: Dragonstorm managed to be impactful right out of the gate. Often planeswalkers find niche homes or end up not being super noteworthy, so it's quite impressive to see. Elspeth, Storm Slayer made my top White cards thanks to her utility in Standard control shells, but Ugin's uses went far, far deeper. In fact, he's tearing it up a decent amount in older formats!

It didn't take very long for Modern players to determine that this card was quite good in Eldrazi Tron lists. Not only could these lists cast Ugin easily, they could get more exiles out of the deal thanks to all the eldrazi in the deck. This even made Ugin find a home in the other Eldrazi Ramp lists despite being more difficult to cast. More impressively, it also proved to be a hit in Cloudpost and Mystic Forge decks in Legacy, ensuring that Ugin, Eye of the Storms would be among the best cards of the year.

1. Monument to Endurance

At one point, I had Ugin at a higher placement than this. Ugin's multi-format appeal seemed to give it a little more juice, but then things changed. You see, Monument to Endurance was mostly just a Pioneer card for Orzhov Greasefang decks and perhaps a small chunk of Modern decks utilizing Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar. It's hardly what I'd call a major player at the moment despite having some solid play where it does show up.

The real bonus points this card gets, however, come from the powerful Izzet Lessons deck that is now dominating Standard. The deck seemed questionable initially, but the combination of Artist's Talent and Monument to Endurance gave it the juice it needed to cross the finish line. This made it a dominating force at Worlds and has made the deck continue to shine in the weeks since, making it easily among the top contenders of the year.

Paige Smith

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