Vintage 101: 2025 Format Tricks
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're going to be talking about some 2025 era format tips and tricks that you can use. In addition, we've got some Challenges to talk about from last week.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
2025 Tips & Tricks
It's been a hot minute since we did one of these articles for Vintage, but with Eternal Weekend Europe and Asia coming up, it felt like a great time to take a look at some heuristic tips and tricks in the year of 2025 Vintage and see what new things we can uncover about this format. Much thanks to the MTGO Vintage Discord for all their help with some of these. Those folks have been credited with their contributions in each section.
With that being said, let's see what cool things we can do with 2025 Vintage!
Offensively Using Orcish Bowmasters and Ancestral Recall (from: Maxtortion)
This is one I actually pulled from Maxtortion's recent appearance on Everyday Eternal podcast. Most people think about Ancestral Recall ever only targeting themselves, and generally that's a good heuristic. It's also often correct to target your opponent when they're on Doomsday and looping through their pile to try to win the game, forcing them to lose to drawing from an empty library.
But one other way you can offensively use Ancestral Recall is to actually boost your own Orcish Bowmasters. Max talked about using this tactic in a situation where the opponent had no way of casting any removal, so he cast Ancestral targeting his opponent which effectively gave the Orc Army +3/+3 as a combat trick, but in reality makes it more like +6/+6 because the opponent also takes damage from Bowmasters pinging them. You could also use this to clear a blocker if you need to with Bowmaster pings and be able to push in for lethal damage. With Bowmasters seeing a lot of play in Vintage, this is a really solid trick to understand and when to use it is key. You're trading off the fact that you're giving your opponent cards to close a game out, so you want to be able to do this in situations where it really will be closing out the game, not just whenever.
Attacking Jewel Shops Through the One Ring Still Steals Coveted Jewel (from: notmi)
I am sure this comes up quite a bit honestly, and I wouldn't be surprised if people miss this. The One Ring gives a player protection from everything, but did you know that protection is literally just damage, enchanting, blocking, and targeting? Protection says nothing about attacking an opponent under Ring protection. Why is this important?
Well, if you opponent has any copies of Coveted Jewel in play, attacking your opponent might actually be relevant. Jewel has a triggered ability that says "Whenever one or more creatures an opponent controls attack you and aren't blocked, that player draws three cards and gains control of Coveted Jewel. Untap it." This means if you swing into your opponent and they can't block anything, any number of Coveted Jewel they have in play are now yours and you get to draw three cards! This could give you an edge in beating them and also gives you the mana to do so. Pretty sweet.
Looping Dress Down with Lurrus
Lurrus is pretty powerful and enables you to use a lot of different and interesting cards to loop with its ability. One of the more interesting ones is using Dress Down. Since you can only use Lurrus' ability during your own turn, you can flash Dress Down in at the beginning of your end step, which not only draws you a card, but also allows you to turn off any opponents creatures for their entire turn, and then Dress Down gets sacrificed on their end step. This is helpful and relevant in situations where your opponent may also have their restricted copy of Urza's Saga to where you can turn off their constructs.
Spell Pierce/Daze vs Fetchlands (from: Maxtortion)
This one is more of a Legacy trick, but thanks to cards like Spell Pierce and Daze seeing further play in Vintage, it can be picked up here too. Say your opponent is casting a spell that you want to counter but your opponent also has a fetchland in order to get the mana to pay for the card. You have a Wasteland hanging out on your side. If you try to Daze or Spell Pierce your opponent will fetch in response and be able to pay for it. However, if you Wasteland their fetchland first before casting any spells, they will be forced to activate the fetchland to go get a land. This is where your timing window works out for being able to counter that spell. In response to the fetchland activation you can cast your Daze or Spell Pierce and then counter their spell without them being able to pay for it!
How to Beat Creeping Chill with Brain Freeze (from: harmonywoods)
Breach and cards like Brain Freeze are very powerful, but Dredge has one trick that makes it very difficult and that's the inclusion of Creeping Chill. Often times, Dredge has already gotten some damage in that hitting all four copies of Chill is pretty much lethal damage. However, you can beat that with Brain Freeze and Ancestral Recall!
All you have to do is mill your opponent until they hit the lethal chill. Then, in response to the Chill trigger, you counter your own Brain Freeze with really just about any spell (Flusterstorm works great here), and then still with the Chill trigger on the stack you cast Brain Freeze again (instants are lovely) and mill them out and then cast Ancestral Recall targeting them when the Chill trigger is on the stack still.
Doomsday Piles to Beat Ancestral Recall (from: reventantkioku)
This one is pretty good. We've talked already about how Ancestral Recall can be used offensively against Doomsday, now let's talk about how to counteract that. There are many Doomsday piles that use Ancestral Recall as the leverage to push through 5 cards in the library to be able to cast Thassa's Oracle, and one common offense against that is to cast Ancestral Recall in response to your Doomsday opponent casting it. They only have 5 cards or less in the library, drawing six would end the game.
But you can beat this as a the Doomsday player. If you suspect that your opponent is holding onto something like this, you can construct your pile so that you place something like Flusterstorm/Daze/Mental Misstep in the three cards that you would draw off your opponent's Ancestral. This way, when your opponent Ancestrals you, you draw three and one of those cards is a counterspell you can cast on your own Ancestral so it doesn't resolve.
Saga Restriction and Tutors (from: Solidsnake408)
This is more of a heuristic thing than a trick, but since Urza's Saga is now restricted, it is a pretty common line in mirror matches involving decks playing the card (namely Lurrus mirrors) to use a tutor effect like Demonic Tutor to go get it. While in the past it's generally considered poor to counter the tutor and instead counter the payoff, but more often if the target of the tutor is Saga, you can't really counter that. In those cases where you might realize that's what your opponent is doing to get a leg up in the match, consider countering the tutor, especially if you don't have access to an immediate Wasteland or Strip Mine.
More on Dress Down (from: Eibon)
Dress Down is certainly a very unique and interesting card. It does a lot of different things in the format, but there are some clever heuristics to know. The biggest is how the card interacts with creatures like Phyrexian Metamorph and Stonecoil Serpent. Due to how the rules work with effects like this, similar to how Blood Moon works now, Dress Down makes it so these cards simply do not function while it is in play. A Stonecoil Serpent enters with zero counters under a Dress Down, no matter how much mana you spent for it. This means it enters as a 0/0 and dies. Phyrexian Metamorph might sound tricky, but it functions the same way, no matter if you're copying a creature or a noncreature artifact with its ability, Metamorph loses the ability entirely and enters as 0/0 and dies.
Another thing to also remember with Dress Down is when you're using it with cards like Paradoxical Outcome. Cards like Hullbreacher still exist out there in 2025 Vintage, so if you use PO and bounce your Dress Down, your opponent could get you with a Hullbreacher on the way up before you can do anything about it. In those cases, don't bounce your own Dress Down. It's not a good idea.
Vintage Challenge 32 10/30/2025
The first Challenge event of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 33 players in it thanks to the MTGO Vintage Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Initiative was the most played deck, but its win rate kind of rode the 50% line despite having a strong finish. Dimir Lurrus did very well as did Jewel Shops and Lurrus Breach.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Initiative | 1st | jade-venus |
| Dimir Lurrus | 2nd | WadeB |
| Dimir Lurrus | 3rd | slaxx |
| Lurrus Breach | 4th | cicciogire |
| Sphere Shops | 5th | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Sphere Shops | 6th | _Shatun_ |
| Tinker | 7th | Aaa258 |
| Dimir Lurrus | 8th | AFX |
Fair bit of Lurrus, but the winner of the event was Initiative.
Very straightforward list here. Not even running any copies of March of Otherworldly Light which is wild. I don't like four Void Mirror personally in this deck myself, but it seems like its popular.
In Second Place we had Dimir Lurrus.
Pretty stock list here, but I love seeing cards like Seal of Removal in these kinds of decks. Lurrus does make all kinds of niche cards playable.
Vintage Challenge 32 10/31/2025
The second Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 33 players in it thanks to the MTGO Vintage Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Dimir Lurrus was the most played deck of the event and its win rate was pretty good. Lurrus Breach also did super well with two pilots making Top 8 and only two in the event (so pretty good). Dredge had a poor showing here, as did Oath.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus | 1st | Solidsnake408 |
| Lurrus Breach | 2nd | CrazyMorango |
| Lurrus Breach | 3rd | desolutionist |
| Dimir Lurrus | 4th | VintageCulture |
| Initiative | 5th | Edraros3 |
| Raker Shops | 6th | LucasG1ggs |
| Lurrus DRS | 7th | Shamwowfella |
| Dimir Lurrus | 8th | O_danielakos |
Most of the Top 8 is variations of Lurrus decks here, and in fact it was won by Dimir Lurrus.
Timetwister is solid with the Orcish Bowmasters plan in the deck. Being able to possibly kill your opponent in one turn is gross.
In Second Place we had Lurrus Breach.
This deck is pretty strong, not gonna lie. It's very laser focused on the game plan too, and cards like Gifts, Stock Up and Mana Drain all get it there across the finish line.
Vintage Challenge 32 11/1/2025
The third Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 44 players in it thanks to the MTGO Vintage Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Not one single deck was the most played, but instead several decks at six copies each. Initiative looked pretty bad despite a Top 8, so did Lurrus PO. Dimir Lurrus and Sphere Shops both had strong win rates.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus | 1st | Vonador |
| Lurrus Breach | 2nd | discoverN |
| Dimir Lurrus | 3rd | O_danielakos |
| Dimir Lurrus | 4th | Martinho1111 |
| Lurrus PO | 5th | parkss |
| Raker Shops | 6th | LucasG1ggs |
| Jewel Shops | 7th | Peppembr |
| Initiative | 8th | ElCucuy |
Quite a bit more Lurrus here, but also some Shops. At the end of the event it was Dimir Lurrus that won.
We talked a bit earlier about looping Dress Down with Lurrus, which is pretty sweet to do. Tamiyo is a strong card here too and probably should be played more.
In Second Place we had Lurrus Breach.
I do like Thundertrap Trainer in these decks. I treat it as more of a spell than a creature because it really just has a very spell-like effect to it, and its recastable with Lurrus.
Vintage Challenge 32 11/2/2025
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 37 players in it thanks to the MTGO Vintage Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Initiative was the most played deck but its win rate was super bad at 40%. Lurrus PO looked very good here, as did Dimir Lurrus and Lurrus Breach (sensing a THEME).
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | shir kahn |
| Tinker | 2nd | Erik157751 |
| Lurrus PO | 3rd | reojund |
| Lurrus DRS | 4th | medvedev |
| Doomsday | 5th | SingPanMan |
| Lurrus Breach | 6th | desolutionist |
| Dimir Lurrus | 7th | AFX |
| Scam | 8th | Thomas_Serra |
Some interesting stuff going on here and even an unpowered Scam list in the Top 8. At the end of the event it was Lurrus PO that won.
Pretty solid looking list here, honestly. Flame of Anor is a super cool card when enabled by Thundertrap Trainer and friends, and it can do similar things to what we talked about with Ancestral Recall earlier.
In Second Place we had Esper Tinker.
Big mana Tinker gets pretty good with Mana Drain and Stock Up. Kind of cool actually.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari always has fun stuff for us:
- Revenantkioku has a video on THE DECK (2000). Check it out here.
- Cabal Therapy is my favorite Magic card too.
- Kindamtg has some Atraca PO with Pattern of Rebirth. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Unpowered Scam.
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for your continued support of the column and join me next week as we continue our journey into Vintage!
As always you can reach me at my Link Tree! In addition you can always reach me on the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the Vintage Streamers Discord.
Until next time!
