By any accounting, Michael Plummer's year of Magic in 2025 was a dream come true. He made his Pro Tour debut early in the year and just a few weeks later catapulted to the headlines when he made the finals of a giant Regional Championship in the United States. It was at the time the culmination of years of playing and progressing in the game for the Worcester native.

It was also only the beginning. Plummer went to Pro Tour Edge of Eternities in September, and his incredible championship run surprised a great many Magic players who were not familiar with Plummer's game, not least of all Plummer himself. For all the work he had put into improving, he didn't quite envision himself as the player with the meteoric rise through the ranks.

But that's exactly what Pro Tour Edge of Eternities represented, and by the time we made it to Magic World Championship 31 last year—where Plummer was in contention for multiple invites and year-end honors—his game was no longer surprising anyone. His teammates, and especially his competitors who had been carved up on his run to the Pro Tour title, knew what he was capable of.

Still, Plummer worried it might all be an illusion of fortune.

In December, Plummer reflected on his journey to the World Championship. "This year was insane for me," he said. "I played Pro Tour Edge of Eternities with no real expectations and somehow ended up in the Top 8 with one of my friends, and then won. For the rest of the year, I want to prove to myself that it was not a fluke and that I can continue to play at a high level against the best players in the world."

I'd say fast forward from there, but that was just a month ago—fast forward too much, and you'll miss it. Because it took all of one tournament for Plummer to prove that his run through the Pro Tour was no fluke, it was a preview of things to come. At the World Championship, Plummer once again cruised through Constructed rounds, this time taking Izzet Prowess to a 7-1 finish in Standard and finishing the World Championship with a 10-4 record and a real shot at another Top 8 appearance. Alas, Plummer missed on tiebreakers. However, the virtual Top 8 was more than enough to prove he was a rising star.

It wasn't the beginning, but it wasn't quite the end either. There was one more event in 2025, nestled around the holidays in the wake of the World Championship and the breakout Gran-Gran Lessons list.

The Arena Championship.

It's time for Arena Championship 10! Tune into https://t.co/HwRvRboe13 now as we crown a champion through two days of Arena's wildest format: Timeless! pic.twitter.com/HCP2JhfvdZ

— MTG Arena (@MTG_Arena) December 20, 2025

Arena Championship 10, to be exact. This was the highest level of competition on MTG Arena, with 112 of the best online players competing for an event as prestigious and as challenging as the Pro Tour, as demonstrated by players like Plummer and fellow Pro Tour winners Matt Nass and Ondrej Strasky qualifying. The event featured a $250,000 prize pool and invitations to the Pro Tour and 2026's World Championship 32 on the line.

The format of choice this time around? The debut at this level for the Timeless format, MTG Arena's Vintage equivalent that allows truly the most powerful and unfair cards ever printed into the game. We're talking Dark Ritual- and Necropotence-level shenanigans here. The format was largely unexplored with the MTG Arena card pool, and the field included an array of format specialists, MTG Arena experts, and Pro Tour powerhouses. For Plummer and a handful of other Magic World Championship 31 competitors, the preparation and exploration time for the format was condensed into a whirlwind-within-a-hurricane of Magic testing in November and December.

"I had a great team although we failed to settle on a team name, a lot of us played Worlds before," Plummer said of the squad he leaned on to get up to speed on the format. "My preparation for this event was much better than some in the past, I was very mindful of playing against teammates instead of a lot of random opponents in closed decklist settings. Shout out to Liam Etelson for building the deck against the expected meta of Energy and Force decks."

"The deck" in this case was not any of the incredibly silly combo decks available in the format, or even a counterspell-heavy control deck built to beat the combo. It was Mono-Red Prison, featuring hits like Broadside Bombardiers, Pinnacle Monk, Sundering Eruption, and Pyrokinesis. Not exactly game-ending combo pieces.

But the power of the Mono-Red Prison deck comes in its ability to indeed prison people out of games. Ancient Tomb and Chrome Mox power out first-turn Chalice of the Voids, where X equals 1, or Magus of the Moon sends an opponent to the Mountains on the first or second turn of the game. With Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer keeping opponents honest on the front end and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and The One Ring doing the same at the top, it exemplifies a Legacy archetype unto itself—and one that Plummer clicked with heading into and throughout the Arena Championship. And by the time the dust had settled on the final Swiss round of 2025, Plummer had added a third straight Top 9 finish.

Three rounds later, at the conclusion of the last premier Magic match of the year? Plummer added a second trophy, plus a final exclamation point on one of the best six-month stretches of Magic we've seen in the last few years.

Congratulations to the winner of Arena Championship 10, Michael Plummer! He caps off an incredible year of Magic with a hard-fought victory over Ondrej Strasky in the finals to win the title! #AC10 pic.twitter.com/70KSVRW74R

— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) December 21, 2025

Plummer's victory came over Mono-Black Necro in the finals, surprising no one after it placed five pilots into the Top 8. Another point of no surprise was the fact that Plummer's finals opponent was Strasky, perhaps the most famed MTG Arena deck builder of the past half-decade. As part of the MTG Arena trailblazing Czech House or later on his own, Strasky's final run meant another unretirement for the champion.

But the weekend belonged to Plummer, whose mastery switching between tabletop and online play is a distinctive element to his breakout game.

Looking back at both the Arena Championship and the year overall, Plummer is confident now it was no fluke. He's come into his own as one of the game's top players right now and will be one of the leading faces of the Pro Tour as we kick off 2026 at Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed.

"Last year was incredible. I not only got to play all the major events of the year but also made a ton of deep runs in them," he reflected. "My preparation for events got much better, and I also found ways to not get in my own head and to trust my reads. When I did, a lot of the times it felt like my opponents were playing with their hands face up. This year, I want to maintain my level of preparation, play in everything throughout the year, and put up an equal showing."

Plummer's quest begins in Richmond, Virginia, at Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed three weeks from now.