TLR 2025 Recap
Hello everyone,
It’s been quite a year in Tiny Town.
2025 brought a lot of meaningful changes, some big, some small, that reshaped how we operate, how we connect, and how Tiny Leaders: Reborn continues to grow.
Committee Evolution & Structure
One of the earliest changes this year happened within the Committee itself. Fishe stepped back from her role as a Core Member, and I transitioned into that seat. Around the same time, the Committee expanded with the addition of new Consultants: Esper, Adri/Urza, and Cosmerian. Not long after, Lyon also joined the Core Members, bringing that group to three, our favorite mystical number.
These additions kicked off a broader effort to better define how the Committee functions. Alongside this, we formally introduced the Advisor role, which had existed informally for a while. Fishe, Olivier, and Plaguerat stepped into those seats, continuing to provide valuable experience and some long-term perspective.
Another big step was the creation of the Local Play Organizer (LPO) role, initially filled by Laglaunt. This was meant to help us reach beyond Discord and better understand local metas and communities that don’t always have a strong online presence. What started as an experiment quickly proved worthwhile, and after refining how the role works, we recently welcomed three additional community members as LPOs, Nushio, vvhizard, & Xaggaroth.
Taken together, these changes gave us something we hadn’t really had before: a clearer, more intentional, and more robust Committee structure.
A Major Milestone for the Format
The most significant Committee development of 2025 was bringing Charlotte, the original creator of Tiny Leaders, on board as a Consultant midway through the year.
That was exciting for a lot of reasons. For us, it felt like validation that we were stewarding the format in a way that resonated with its original intent. For Charlotte, it marked a return to a format she created over a decade ago, and this time within a community that deeply understands and appreciates what she was trying to build.
Her involvement also helped us finally put clear words to the relationship between Tiny Leaders and Tiny Leaders: Reborn. Rather than treating them as competing formats, we can now talk about them as part of a natural evolution. Tiny Leaders: Reborn exists as the actively curated, up-to-date continuation of the format, carrying forward the spirit of the original while staying responsive to Magic’s modern designs.
That clarity matters. It strengthens our legitimacy outside the server, opens doors to collaboration, and helps everyone understand what Tiny Leaders: Reborn is meant to be today.
And on a more personal note, it’s genuinely exciting to work alongside the person responsible for a format so many of us care deeply about.
Beyond a Rules Committee
As I often say, we’re not just a rules committee. With more people involved, we were able to do more this year.
One of the biggest additions was the launch of the Official Committee YouTube channel. Through it, we’ve put out a guide that explains the format, an explanation of how the server works, gameplay videos, streamed tournament matches, and even cross-promotion with larger creators, most notably ThatMillGuy. Those efforts helped dramatically increase visibility and brought a lot of new people into the community.
We also launched Tiny Talk, a podcast spearheaded by Cosmerian, focused on the format, the community, and the people who make it what it is.
All of these efforts resulted in the server growing quite a bit this year. Not everyone engages daily, and that’s totally fine. Some folks play locally and check in for banlist updates, others jump into brewing, discussion, and tournaments. However you participate, we’re glad you’re here.
Tooling & Format Support
Somewhat by happenstance, we were also made aware this year that ManaBox, developed by SkillDevs out of A Coruña, Spain, is the first deckbuilding app to officially support Tiny Leaders: Reborn.
One of their developers, David (known as Martyns on Discord), is actually a member of our server and receives notifications for our banlist updates. As the year wrapped up, we started talking about how best to represent Tiny Leaders: Reborn within ManaBox, especially now that we’ve more clearly defined the Rule of Three.
There’s still some work to do on both sides, particularly around expressing card legality cleanly in a JSON format, but we’re excited to keep that conversation going. Having tooling support like this is a big deal for the format, and we’re very grateful for their interest and support.
If you’re already using ManaBox, let us know what you think and flag anything that seems inaccurate so we can pass it along. And if you’re not, now’s a great time to check it out.
Competitive Highlights
From a competitive standpoint, 2025 was a standout year. We ran a full slate of monthly tournaments, Spring and Fall SCT qualification periods, and two exciting Second Chances Tournaments. Participation hit new highs, including a monthly event with over 50 players, well beyond previous records.
All of that momentum leads into January 5th, when we kick off the Tiny Titans Tournament and crown the mightiest Tiny Leader. We’re incredibly excited to see how that plays out.
We also debuted Tiny Rivals this year, an event that pitted the NorCal local meta against the Discord meta. It was a blast to watch them clash, and fittingly, the finals ended with two Committee members facing off. It was Laglaunt on Acererak for NorCal and Cosmerian on her baby, Grist, for the Discord community, with Laglaunt taking the top prize.
Ongoing Play & New Offerings
Weekly Tiny Brawl also saw an uptick in participation, particularly from players who enjoy having a steady pool of opponents to pick up games with throughout the week, enough so that Esper joined the team as an Admin to help support Cosmerian. Alongside that, our Rules and Policy Manager Gray began running drafts of his curated Tiny Cube, a passion project that’s steadily found a growing audience.
Paper Play & Local Metas
Play hasn’t just been healthy online, paper Tiny Leaders continues to thrive as well. In NorCal, the Reborn Rumble series organized by Laglaunt remains a cornerstone of in-person play. That meta pushed real innovation, including the rise of Ketramose (which ultimately led to its banning) and demonstrating that Ral Storm is a legitimate competitive strategy. Notably, Adri also found success piloting Ral Storm with a different build, highlighting that the archetype has depth beyond a single list or local approach.
Just as importantly, we’ve seen a growing feedback loop between NorCal and the Discord meta. Decks and ideas move in both directions, strengthening the format as a whole.
NorCal isn’t the only place where paper play is happening. This year, we learned about a long-running Tiny Leaders tournament in Cranbrook, British Columbia, held annually to celebrate the opening of a local game store. The event has grown steadily and reached over 40 players this past September which is a fantastic sign of the format’s reach.
With the addition of new Local Play Organizers, we’ll also be building closer connections with organized playgroups in Newfoundland, Alabama, and Nuevo León. Having these direct lines of communication will help us better understand how the format is being played across different regions and metas.
Our hope is that this broader perspective helps us manage Tiny Leaders: Reborn in a way that reflects the full range of how and where it’s played.
Format Changes
We also saw some real shake-ups to the format itself this year.
On the lighter side, we adjusted our Ban & Watch update schedule, moving it to the Monday following each new set release. That puts us on a roughly every-two-months cadence. It’s a fast pace, but it’s helped us stay consistent and proactive.
Bans & Legality Updates
Several cards changed legality in 2025:
White Plume Adventurer was banned early in the year after causing problems for a while, and its removal was generally met with relief.
Lutri, the Spellchaser, followed midyear. Lutri had long been controversial in a singleton format, and over time it became harder to justify keeping it legal.
Ketramose was banned from the command zone after extended time on the watch list. While it saw play online, the NorCal meta really pushed the deck to its limits and showed just how dominant it could be. The ban announcement included a great write-up from Darth Rainbows, clearly laying out the reasoning.
These weren’t knee-jerk reactions, rather each decision reflected issues that became more pronounced over time.
Trying Something New: Unbans
One of the bigger philosophical shifts this year came from having more voices and perspectives on the Committee. That opened the door to discussions we’d mostly avoided in the past, including unbanning cards.
This led to our first round of unban testing, spearheaded by Laglaunt. It’s still early and very much a work in progress, but it resulted in the unbanning of Edric, Spymaster of Trest (from both the 49 and the command zone) and Metalworker.
Whether these changes stick long-term remains to be seen, but they reflect a willingness to re-evaluate old assumptions and see what the modern format can support.
Clarifying the Rule of Three
The biggest change this year wasn’t a ban or an unban, rather it was tightening up what we mean by the Rule of Three, the core idea behind Tiny Leaders.
Modern card design has pushed more and more power into cards that technically cost three mana or less, often by hiding effects behind alternative characteristics. After a lot of discussion, we landed on a simple principle:
If a card effectively functions as more than one “card” on the same piece of cardboard, each part needs to independently meet the three-mana requirement.
That idea eventually became known as Cost Identity, a term coined by community member Jesh, who many of you also know for his work customizing the software that keeps Weekly Tiny Brawl running. The comparison to color identity helped the concept click.
While the rule itself wasn’t especially controversial, the way we rolled it out made us reflect on how we communicate and involve the community in decisions like this.
Looking Ahead
That experience pushed us to ask some important questions:
How should the community be involved in format discussions? When should feedback directly shape decisions, and when should it help guide internal debate?
Those questions are still very much on the table as we head into 2026. We’ve got a slate of active discussions and potential initiatives lined up, including:
Governance & Committee Operations
Committee Structure and Responsibilities Discussion
New Member Discussion
Taking Community Feedback
Community Engagement & Identity
Server Survey
The Eternal Hall of the Tiny
TLC Emblem & Logo
Format, Rules & Design
Is a 10 card sideboard enough???
Multiplayer TLR Design
Metagame Data Collection
Events, Tournaments & Competition
Funding tournaments and the TLC
Potential SCT Changes for 2026
Tools, Experiments & Creative Initiatives
Moxfield attempt #2, Electric Boogaloo
Taste Testing – Deckbuilding Challenges
I won’t dive into all of these here, partly to keep a bit of mystery, and partly because many of them are better explored through discussion. Some are already being talked about, others are still taking shape, and a few are things we’d love to hear your thoughts on directly. If something catches your eye, feel free to talk it out with each other or reach out to any of us on the Committee.
Thanks for being part of Tiny Leaders: Reborn this year. We’re excited about where things are headed, and we’re looking forward to 2026 being another year full of Big Plays & Tiny Leaders! Thank you and Happy New Year to Everyone!
Stay Tiny,
M1-K3