Las Vegas was already busy, but as Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering®—FINAL FANTASY™ entered its second day at MagicCon: Las Vegas, things inside the venue really began to take off. Of the over-300 players who came to the desert to compete at the Pro Tour—just a tiny portion of the crowd at the largest-ever Magic convention that even featured a somewhat-friendly pop-a-shot competition between the coverage desk—and when the dust settled on Friday, there were 209 players who performed well enough to earn a seat at Day Two of the tournament.
Day Two is where a nice run can turn into a legendary one. Christian Baker was hoping for just that, as he paced the Friday field with a perfect 8-0 record on the back of a strong draft and the format's best Standard deck in Izzet Prowess. But just behind Baker the field bunched up, and with three more rounds of Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY Draft followed by a final sprint through Standard, it was anyone's Top 8 as we headed into Day Two of the Pro Tour.
Over 22,000 in attendance here in Vegas. This event is just at such another level.
— Patrick Chapin (@thepchapin) June 21, 2025
6-5 after another 2-1 draft. Looking for 4-1 or better in constructed. #PTFINALFANTASY
Draft Sets the Stage
Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY Draft has been heralded as a particularly engaging Limited format. Coming into the tournament, it appeared that the strength of the colors was largely balanced. That meant that finding success in the draft—with all of its various sheets and bonus cards that create novel choices—was first and foremost a matter of patience. As the Pro Tour crowd described it, that was the key: wait around long enough to find the color pair that's most open in your seat, and then pounce aggressively.
Even if sometimes that means staying so open you never actually choose a second color—and sometimes that's okay! Just ask Jody Keith who, after turning in a perfect 3-0 Draft on Friday, employed the same strategy on Saturday to great success: a mono-black deck.
But the mono-black deck that Keith was able to build showed off the depth of the removal in the format, with
Sephiroth's Intervention
If a strength of Keith's deck is that its color choices allowed it to play out efficiently, Regional Championship winner Connor Mackenzie's deck leveraged the same efficiency via his mana curve. On his way to a heck of a demonstration of what was possible in the Draft rounds, Mackenzie echoed the strength of a straightforward deck.
nowthatswhaticallacurve.deck#PTFINALFANTASY pic.twitter.com/njncfn5pey
— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) June 21, 2025
In the end, only three players in the field of more than 200 Day Two drafters managed to win a second on the weekend: Edgar Magalhaes, Ha Pham, and Ian Robb. Each did it by mastering not just one or two draft archetypes, but all of them—that's the only way to truly stay open in a draft format that rewarded those who could read the signals well.
By the time the second draft closed, no undefeated players remained. What did remain was five more rounds of Standard, with Top 8 slots on the line.
Can Standard Spice Cut Down Cutter?
While the Limited rounds may have been largely a mystery to the field at large, everyone knew heading into Las Vegas that Izzet Prowess was the deck to beat.
Whether they could have will ultimately never be known, because the addition of
But there were players who went their own way, including some of the best Pro Tour players of the decade.
Perhaps the most notable of those is Eli Kassis, who not only put together an extremely strong run with a Golgari
"The reason to not play the deck everyone expects to be the most-played is you don't have a target on your back," Kassis explained. "I didn't want to play what everyone expected. The Roots deck plays an enchantment-based win condition that the Prowess deck can't interact with well. They can bounce it with
"I was the major proponent of this deck, and at one point had everyone on the team playing it," Kassis explained (five Handshake players ultimately sleeved it up). "Our matchups were around 70% against Red and Omniscience, and about 60% against Prowess. It was a big underdog to Control, but I wanted to make sure our deck beat those three, and I told the team I don't even care about the other matches; we were pre-boarded against Prowess."
Kassis' deck ended up finishing 8-2, with an 4-1 record against Izzet. And while decks like Kassis' outside of the big three did pop up—Mitchell Tamblyn finished in 11th with control—very few players found the success Handshake did with Golgari.
And they weren't the only ones. Jody Keith's own Golgari Graveyard deck provided some highlights, while Edgar Magalhaes missed the Top 8 on breakers with the Domain Overlords deck that won Pro Tour Aetherdrift in the hands of Matt Nass. You can find all the spiciest Standard decklists here.
"I've been playing a lot of black midrange this year—I qualified for the next Pro Tour with Orzhov Pixie at the Regional Championship—and those decks beat up on Mono-Red and Prowess but Omniscience was getting more popular online and that matchup is pretty bad. So I was looking for something else," Magalhaes explained. "Meanwhile, Reid [Duke], Gab [Nassif] and Seth [Manfield] had been on Domain the entire time so I knew I had that fallback of a good list—which I ended up needing the morning of decklist submission."
That's the benefit of having a team, especially a team full of Hall of Famers and Standard savants; Magalhaes went on to finish in ninth place with the list.
In the end, Izzet lived up to the hype;
Memorable Runs from Memorable Players
As Saturday competition wore on and the race for the Top 8 picture began to clear, something else became clear the same time: we were witnessing some very special runs.
Like Nick Odenheimer's, for instance. While we spent much of the tournament talking about the dozen Hall of Famer members who were competing, quietly down the table from them was the champion of the first-ever Magic Spotlight Series. Piloting Izzet Prowess, Odenheimer showed that the skills that took him to the finals in Atlanta traveled cross-country quite well, and when an incredibly tense match with Christoffer Larsen in Round 13 ended with Odenheimer the victor, he couldn't help but let loose a very long, very happy sigh it was his tenth win of the tournament and the one that secured his invitation to the next Pro Tour—with more to possibly come this weekend.
"Doing this well at my first Pro Tour, it's amazing. I'm so happy," Odenheimer marveled after securing his invite to Pro Tour Edge of Eternities in Atlanta later this year.
He's not the only recent winner to go on impressive runs. Recently crowned US Regional Champion Percy Fang brought the same Mono-Red deck that had sent him to the Top 8 of both an Arena Championship and the RC, and he rattled off another very deep run in Las Vegas—as did his teammate and fellow Mono-Red aficionado Quinn Tonole. But Fang's run just kept going, and with a Round 14 victory over Toni Portolan, he found himself in yet another Top 8 with Mono-Red.
And how about some of the Hall of Famers in attendance? Former World Champion and all-time great Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa battled his first Pro Tour in years, finishing 10-6, including an 8-2 performance with an innovative Standard deck. Hall of Famer Patrick Chapin as well as the great one Bob Maher were battling, and Maher delighted old-school fans with a long undefeated run on Friday.
The Top 8 is Set
With twelve wins in the first fourteen rounds as the requirement to guarantee a Top 8 berth, every Pro Tour is a sprint to see if the last few undefeated players can keep things rolling on into an early Top 8 spot, or if things devolve into a free-for-all in the final rounds.
Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY saw our Top 8 began to form early. The first players to reach the twelve-win breakpoint were Ian Robb and Ken Yukuhiro in Round 14. For Robb, an all-around gamer playing the event's trademark deck in Izzet Prowess, it was his second Pro Tour Top 8 appearance—in a row.
B2B pro tour top 8s
— Ian Robb (@Ian__Robb) June 22, 2025
Next to qualify was Yukuhiro, who did so in the fast and almost carefree way that has made his career so special to follow, and with an absolute drumming of Shuhei Nakamura's Izzet Prowess deck, Yukuhiro secured an astounding eighth career Top Finish. From there, things began to fill out, with Yuchen Liu, former Pro Tour winner David Rood, and reigning Regional Champion Percy Fang all punching their ticket in the final day of the event.
Congratulations to @death_snow, the second player to lock up a spot in the #PTFINALFANTASY Top 8!
— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) June 22, 2025
More win-and-in Magic coming your way at https://t.co/GF4H5s70hq pic.twitter.com/oJfKvobedo
With three spots open heading into the final round, the tiebreakers would end up making the final determination. With the dust settled, here's what the Top 8 of Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY looks like:
- Ken Yukuhiro (Mono-Red)
- Ian Robb (Izzet Prowess)
- David Rood (Izzet Prowess)
- Percy Fang (Mono-Red)
- Yuchen Liu (Mono-Red)
- Toni Portolan (Izzet Prowess)
- Christian Baker (Izzet Prowess)
- Anthony Garcia-Romo (Mono-Red)
Congrats to the Top 8 of Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY! These players will return on Sunday morning for the Top 8 and their chance at the trophy and title of Pro Tour champion!
