Vintage 101: A Look at the Vintage Metagame in 2024
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 diving into a look at how the Vintage metagame is shaping up sofar in 2024! With all this new data, we have a lot to look at! In addition to that we've got a paper event announcement to discuss, and both Challenges from this past weekend to look at.
Without further ado, let's get to it!
Vintage Metagame Update - First Month of 2024
We're now one month into 2024, so let's start taking a look at how Vintage is doing after the first month. We've got a lot of data now from Daybreak Games, and our good friend Justin Gennari and the data collection efforts of the Vintage Streamer's Discord have helped put that data in a great format for us to look at. I've taken a copy of their current Dashboard and filtered it down to the first of the year to 2/6/2024 to see what's going on with the format. You can find this sheet here.
Let's look at some graphical data from this data set.
At a high level overview, combinations of Mishra's Workshop decks actually make up the most macro archetype in the past month. A good majority of that number is Jewel Shops, which is sitting in second place in regards to metagame share. Right above it as part of the "Blue Control" number is Lurrus Saga, which makes up a huge chunk of that number overall (140 copies out of 162). It is definitely understood that these two decks seem to be the most populous decks, and being roughly 20% and 12% of the format at the moment means you will be seeing these decks quite a bit in events.
That being said, of the two decks Lurrus Saga's win rate is quite strong at a close to 54% (and close to 55% non-mirror), while Jewel Shops has a more even keel close to 50% win rate. Jewel has a lot of hate gunning for it at the moment, and that hate can be easily leveraged against it by a wide array of decks.
Right below those two decks, Initiative is still a strong portion of the metagame, but it's overall win rate is just below 50%. Still, this is a deck I would have a plan for right now in Vintage, as you can definitely expect to see it. In the right hands it's a powerful strategy, and it can easily decimate the unsuspecting opponent.
Oath of Druids continues to also be a good portion of the metagame, boasting a reasonable slightly over 50% win rate. The deck has a strong proactive game plan and it is something to keep in mind for an event, especially since it can squeak out so many little free wins.
At the lower end of the Top 5 decks of the format we have another big pillar of the format in Bazaar of Baghdad, but with Dredge and not AggroVine and CounterVine. Dredge has seemingly retaken the spot as the top Bazaar deck of the format for now, boasting a reasonably solid 51.55% win rate over the past month. A good portion of this is on the back of the fact that Dredge has a pretty reasonable win rate versus Lurrus Saga, being slightly positive over the deck as well as being positive over Initiative. Dredge has often been a rather explosive deck and it tends to operate better through Orcish Bowmasters due to the fact that dredging != drawing.
The overall losers of the current format over the past month appear to be decks like CounterVine (being the worst of the Bazaar decks at the moment), Aggro Shops, and decks like Beseech Storm. Quite a few other decks are below 50% win rate here, with a few outliers above 50% at lower metagame shares. Tinker in general appears to have suffered greatly overall, not looking like it's done well at all in multiple flavors (Esper, Grixis, and Initiative). DRS decks like BUG and Lurrus DRS are also on the lower end and aren't looking great at the moment.
The format definitely looks very interesting at the moment, and it seems that the current pillars of the format are really things like Saga, Workshop, Oath, Bazaar, and Initiative and the format is definitely rotating around those. Still, the general consensus is that the format is interesting and gameplay is interesting, so I'm curious to see how things go as we continue looking ahead into 2024.
NYSE Open VIII
A while back I mentioned that there was a possibility of a NYSE (New York Stax Exchange) event happening in 2024. We now have a lot more details on that event, coming up in June 2024. NYSE Open VIII is taking place on 6/22/2024 at the Four Points Sheraton in Plainview, NY.
This is a pretty high roller style event it seems. The event entry is a whopping $500 but the Top 8 of the tournament will get to draft based on final standings a prize pool that contains (all Unlimited printing):
In addition, the event has some scaling prizes based on how many players they get that are added to the pool.
You can check out the event registration page for this event, which went live on 2/6 this past week over here.
Vintage Challenge 2/3
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the mid afternoon Saturday event. This event had 66 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Lurrus Saga was the most popular archetype, but it's win rate was slightly below the 50% mark. Initiative did quite well, as did Dredge and Breach. Doomsday did somewhat poorly as did CounteVine and Jewel Shops.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Initiative | 1st | RogeDeckWins |
| Dredge | 2nd | ecobaronen |
| Oath of Druids | 3rd | DInglis |
| Dimir Tinker | 4th | karatedom |
| Oath of Druids | 5th | Xwhale |
| White Shops | 6th | adm29 |
| Initiative | 7th | _J0SE_ |
| Jeskai Lurrus | 8th | unluckymonkey |
What a really interesting Top 8. Good amount of Oath and Initiative, with the winner having been on Initiative.
Definitely an interesting take on the Initiative formula here. Anointed Peacekeeper being able to make it hard to use Urza's Saga is very cool and Leonin Arbiter seems like a super sweet card.
In Second Place we had Dredge.
Very straightforward Dredge list here. It's really what we've come to expect from the archetype overall at this point.
Also in this Top 8 we had Dimir Tinker.
Haven't seen a Sedgemoor Witch in Vintage in a long while, so that in of itself is sick. This is a very old school Tinker Saga list for sure.
Further down the Top 8 we had White Shops.
The white "splash" in this is very specifically for Stony Silence, which is a reasonably difficult permanent type for Vintage decks to deal with, but also coupled with four copies of Null Rod providing different typed redundancy. We also get a sideboard white card in Bronze Guardian which is pretty powerful.
Vintage Challenge 2/4
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Sunday event. This event had 48 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Lurrus Saga was the most popular deck of the event and it did the best in the event in terms of win rate. Initiative and Dredge were also very popular and did very well, while Doomsday, Oath, and Shops decks did somewhat medium to poor.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dredge | 1st | ElfKid |
| Lurrus Breach | 2nd | kasa |
| Lurrus Saga | 3rd | burrarun |
| Initiative | 4th | _Shatun_ |
| Lurrus Saga | 5th | discoverN |
| Jewel Shops | 6th | Sarlanga |
| Doomsday | 7th | Gerschi |
| AggroVine | 8th | MadMaxErnst |
Reasonable variety here. Lot of Lurrus hanging about. At the end of the event it was Dredge that won.
Very similar deck to the one from the Saturday event. The shift back to Silversmote Ghoul is pretty interesting when it seemed as if the deck might have been shifting back to Cabal Therapy and Bridge from Below for a hot minute.
In Second Place we had Lurrus Breach.
Bowmasters as the additional threat/punisher piece here makes so much sense overall. It's a very powerful card and it works well with the game plan of creating alternative threats to the main game plan of Breach.
Further down the Top 8 we had some Lurrus Saga in the Azorius flavoring.
I like the usage of Seal of Cleansing in a deck like this. Lurrus does enable some super neat cards to be used in creativre ways, that's for sure.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had AggroVine.
I love love love seeing Legolas's Quick Reflexes in something like this. It seems absolutely insane in a deck with Hogaak and other threats. The Questing Beast in the sideboard is pretty cool as well.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari has some videos for us for this past week.
- FiretruckModo has a video on Dredge. Check it out here.
- Benjamin Wheeler has some videos for us as well.
- Charlotte Legacy League has a video with CounterVine and Oops! All Spells. Check it out here.
- Montolio has a video on Scam. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Now that League results are spread throughout the week, let's find some Spice!
Oswald Fiddlebender!
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!
