It’s late January 2026 and I’m still thawing myself out after a short jaunt to Montreal at the beginning of the month where it was a lovely -16 degrees (Celsius) on the warmest day that I was there! Not that it’s much warmer here as we await another storm to sweep in.

Before January wraps up, let’s take a look at the last year quickly. 2025 was a year of many firsts, some that were great fun and some not so much.

A lot less Magic than before

First, there was definitely a lot less Magic played in our household in 2025. As much as I could try to blame WOTC’s Universes Beyond, the reality is simply that the boys are all grown up and doing their own thing now! And that’s a lot less Magic – at least with their dad. Throw in the fact that Noah is now studying out of province and our regular Commander games have dwindled to a handful. It was much the same with pre-releases as Christian has not gone to one since Tarkir: Dragonstorm. Noah was in the same boat until he attended the Lorwyn Eclipsed one earlier this month.

Add to that the proliferation of Universes Beyond sets and I deliberately skipped a pre-release, the one for Avatar, for the first time in over 10 years in 2025. And I expect that trend to continue this year with more of those sets than traditional Magic lore ones.

We did not even have time for a much of a Christmas Magic season. All we managed to squeeze in was a Tarkir: Dragonstorm box opening. After selecting our packs, we did a sealed event with six of the packs. Christian handily won that little contest with a fast deck. And sadly, that was all the Magic we had time for as the holidays were packed with lots of other activities. It just went by too fast!

Time for some RPGs

So, what to do with all this free time? Well, 2025 was the year that I got back into Dungeons & Dragons in a more regular way. Not having played in decades, the local group TorontoDND scratched an itch but I still missed the campaign side of things. Lo and behold, I actually joined a group with a number of complete strangers and things are going well enough that we are now several months into a campaign, playing roughly every two to three weeks for several hours. A blast so far!

2025 was also the year I tried the new RPG Daggerheart. I joined an intro game but was not immediately won over. It may have had more with the fact that the DM was not particularly strong as one of my DnD group players absolutely loves it. I expect that I may dip my toe into the game again later but not sure that I need another fantasy RPG in my life.

I also tried another RPG called Outgunned! And that was some serious fun! It may have had something to do with the GM but the 80s action movie setting helped propel the game at a fast clip with plenty of silliness and bad one-liners. I managed to get two games in and both were good fun. It remains to be seen if the game will gain enough traction for more games this year. I did pick up the rulebook for both it and the Adventure add-on in the hopes to play more this year.

A quick look at Genesis: Battle of Champions

As far as other card games go, I still keep an eye on Genesis: Battle of Champions, the “Canadian tactical tactical card game” in the hope that it will finally take off. Sadly, 2025 did not appear to have been a good year for it.

Hints and promises of a digital version of the game came and went but have gone quiet in recent months. I suspect that trying to build a video game of this nature with limited resources is the biggest challenge that the company is facing. Particularly if you’re also trying to grow the game’s exposure and get the next set out at the same time. Unfortunately, the latest Kickstarter campaign failed to meet its goals, leaving players waiting to see where the game goes next. Edge of Exile is now looking to get the new set out by locking in enough pre-orders – We’ll have to see if that approach works.

Back to Magic

2025 was the year that Universes Beyond finally insinuated itself fully into Standard. It was something that many predicted as far back as when the first such cards were announced. While I recognize that many will not agree with me (and some in this family don’t), I still have a fundamental issue with the blending of IPs that is now happening across the format.

Having said that, I recognize that Final Fantasy was a great set in many ways. It is lore that I am not familiar with and while the set was quite good, I did not connect with it from that perspective and perhaps more importantly from a wallet one. These sets are simply too expensive for my taste. But I did have fun at the pre-release with Moogles’ Valor, even if I don’t quite know what a Moogle is.

I can only imagine what Final Fantasy could have been had it been a Universes Within set with art and story in tune with Magic’s own lore. As such, I cannot call it my favourite set of the year. That honour instead goes to Tarkir: Dragonstorm. I know many will disagree but dragons are always a lot of fun and the set had some pretty awesome cards.

As for some of my favourite cards of the year, here are a few that come top of mind in no particular order:

Cori-Steel Cutter was so strong that it got banned in Standard. As for Ouroboroid, it is also a potent card but not completely busted. If I can get my hands on one or two, it will definitely make its way into some of my Commander decks. And Aerith Gainsborough was a fun card to have in my Orzhov B01 Clerics deck for Arena. Not a particularly powerful card but it did help my Clerics pack a stronger punch.

As for my favourite deck of the year, I’ll go with my Crimes Pays deck. I don’t play a lot of Black so this was an unusual deck for me. I enjoyed the combination of the Crime mechanic with one forcing my opponents to discard cards from their hand. It felt somewhat unique and while not a Tier 1 deck, still did relatively well.

All right, enough looking back at 2025. It’s now time to focus on 2026.