If look at the champion of Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering®—FINAL FANTASY™, you could easily come away with the impression that this Pro Tour had it all. The Mono-Red Aggro was the deck of the weekend, the event was won with a copy of Self-Destruct from the latest set, and the heartfire hero Ken Yukuhiro was crowned while wearing one of a FINAL FANTASY shirt. Plus, Javier Dominguez was spotted firing up a FINAL FANTASY game to play in between rounds, Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa was innovating in Standard, and we even ended up with a brand-new all-time classic winner's photo.

It was a lifelong goal—and dream—for Yukuhiro, who is now just one Top Finish away from breaking into one of the top spots on the list of Top Finishes.

"My next goal is to be a player that people will remember," Yukuhiro explained in the days after his victory. "I want to continue to compete on the Pro Tour so that I can be on par with my great predecessors."

With so few players from any country ahead of him, that's a very attainable goal for Yukuhiro, who is already well-known, liked, and remembered on the Pro Tour circuit—now he just has the trophy to match.

That story rightly dominated the headlines coming out of the PT. But here's the thing about latest Pro Tour: it really did have it all. The stories—which is really just a fancy way of saying the people—that made up the Top 16 and beyond give us just about everything that's right with Magic.

Take Ian Robb, who came in 2nd place at the event, for example. Robb has left his mark on the Magic Pro Tour this year, with his run of back-to-back Pro Tour Top 8 finishes—in exactly two Pro Tour appearances—standing as a debut for the ages. His performance is full of intrigue as we prepare for Pro Tour Edge of Eternities on September 26–28 at MagicCon: Atlanta.

B2B pro tour top 8s

— Ian Robb (@Ian__Robb) June 22, 2025

Second place at my second pro tour is pretty good

— Ian Robb (@Ian__Robb) June 22, 2025

Robb's success story also belongs to Flexslot Diamond, a new testing squad headed by Corey Burkhart and Mark Jacobson among others that gave a number of players a home at the latest Pro Tour. With a mix of new and "boomer" Pro Tour players, the team had to work to update and incorporate preparations that have drastically changed in the last five years or so. After such an impressive showing, it will be great to see how this team runs things back in Atlanta.

William Araujo has been on a rampage across the Regional Championship circuit and drew rave reviews from his countrymates. With a Top 16 finish at the Pro Tour for Araujo, I can report that his teammates told no lies: he is that good. While Araujo was making his mark on his way up, David Rood did so making a return—the 2005 champion of Pro Tour Atlanta 2005 alongside his teammates Nassif and Tsang—made a triumphant return to theTop 8 two decades later.

And Yukuhiro wasn't the only Monstrous Rage master, in an event that will forever be linked with the last Pro Tour the card was legal for. The banned and restricted list update earlier this week reshaped Standard, but the unique metagame and conditions that led to Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY will forever go down in Magic lore.

Having taken a long break prior to the event, Percy Fang was a relative unknown when he first qualified for Arena Championship 8 earlier this year. That Arena Championship run ended in a Mono-Red Aggro Pioneer mirror and a finals appearance where Fang fell to Kristoffer Lindqvist, but Fang was just getting going. Next came victory at the Regional Championship, then a Top 8 with Mono-Red Aggro at Pro Tour Magic: The Gather—FINAL FANTASY. While Heartfire Hero and Monstrous Rage may be gone from Standard, Fang is one of the Mono-Red masters who will surely be back at work tweaking it for the next Standard meta.

While Top 8 appearances may be how we measure someone's standings, any tournament Magic player knows that your Magic journey can be a few percentage points on a second tiebreaker. But often there is no difference in the records of the players who finish eighth and play on the Sunday stage, compared to those who finish just outside the cutoff. At Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY, three players (Edgar Magalhaes, Shaun Henry, and Mitchel Tamblyn) all found themselves in that exact position, missing the Top 8 by thousandths of a percentage point in Magalhaes's case.

This is why any considered examination of a career includes Top 16 apperance. They were a key part of consideration for Pro Tour Hall of Fame voting when that was active. And while missing the Top 8 is devastating in the moment, the players who finished in the Top 16 had every bit as strong of a tournament performance as anyone who squeaked in ahead of them. It's a career-launching—or sometimes defining—finish, and oftentimes a preview of Top 8s to come.

Magalhaes is one of those players who may be on the verge of even bigger success. Long known as an authority on Modern's Amulet Titan, Magalhaes has been a force to be reckoned with on the North American regional circuit for a decade or longer. But Magalhaes's return to the Pro Tour went on to include six Grand Prix Top 8 appearances, including a win at Grand Prix Columbus 2018. In short, he was flourishing.

Edgar Magalhaes

Magalhaes picked up the Regional Championship circuit where he left the Grand Prix circuit, collecting four Regional Championship Top Finishes since 2023. He qualified for Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY by playing Underworld Breach in Modern and entered 2025 with a goal of playing in all three Pro Tours as well as the World Championship.

And so far, it has been so good.

"I've had good success at the Canadian RCs and have managed to chain some Pro Tour invites together because of it. Hopefully now I can continue to chain off of Adjusted Match Points," Magalhaes explained. "My results at Pro Tour events since Pro Tour The Lord of the Rings have been fairly middling, sitting in the 7–9 to 9–7 range, and I was definitely itching for a good finish."

Testing with the legendary Team Channel Fireball certainly gave Magalhaes a great shot at that, especially coming off of Matt Nass's win at Pro Tour Aetherdrift with Domain Overlords. That would ultimately be the deck that Magalhaes and others from the squad sleeved up in Las Vegas, and the Draft expertise that he gained in the testing house helped him to a dominant 6–0 Limited performance that ultimately paved the way for the biggest finish of Magalhaes's Pro Tour career.

"The biggest standout from the testing process with the team is definitely just everyone's respect when it comes to communication and testing. The team obviously has some of the most decorated players of all time, but no one is unwilling to hear what another team member has to say," Magalhaes explained. "I felt I had a good grasp of the Limited format, despite losing a lot in house drafts."

To say it all came together for Magalhaes isn't quite true, the deep run proved that both his preparation and his perseverance have him on the path he wants to be.

"It still stings a lot, and I'm sure it will be a lingering feelings for a while, but it's still a great result that I'm proud of," he reflected. "I want to shout out my wife Brittney, who is always at my side at these events; it wouldn't be the same without her. I have a lot of support from my wife and friends and I know they were rooting for my breakers to get me there, but I'll have more opportunities. In terms of tangibles, I'm quailed for the next two Pro Tours and the World Championship, which will be my first time, and I'm in a good position to chain more Pro Tours after that.

"Making a Pro Tour Top 8 has been a goal of mine ever since I started watching coverage in 2012, but I wouldn't really call it a goal so much as something I think will happen as long as I continue to improve. I'm going to continue to grind and try to be the best player that I can be. I think I learned a lot, both in the game and out [of it], but I look to some other players I admire and know there is still so much more I can do to improve."