Vintage 101: A Whole New Vintage?
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're talking about a major change in Vintage that occurred this past week. Because of this change, we will not be covering last week's events due very much in part to how impactful this change is. As such this will likely be a somewhat short article this week.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Banned and Restricted Announcement 8/26 - RESTRICTIONS IN VINTAGE?!
This past week we had a Banned and Restricted Announcement, one that was initially thought to just be touching on mainly Modern and Legacy. While those formats did indeed get touched, we also had a change in Vintage. You can read the full announcement here.
We had restrictions in Vintage once more.
Urza's Saga and Vexing Bauble are now restricted in Vintage. This is very unexpected, as for the most part, the common thread we've heard over the past year has been that Wizards has felt that Vintage was rather healthy. Let's see what Wizards has to say at the beginning of this rather lengthy explanation, as there is a lot to unpack here.
So right off the bat, we get an understanding of how Vintage has evolved since the unban of Lurrus of the Dream-Den, and how slowly Vintage evolves as a format. We can note that Lurrus decks certainly have become a large portion of the Vintage format, and a lot of this is primarily due in part to the evolution of cards like Lorien Revealed lowering the deckbuilding cost of Urza's Saga massively. For some time now, the jockeying back and forth of Lurrus Saga and Jewel Shops has been ongoing over time. Lurrus Saga's overall win rate for the format has been well in line around 53-54% for a long while, and while it certainly was the most popular deck in the format overall, I don't feel that the win rate of the Lurrus Saga decks warranted the action. The top deck of the format being essentially a "fair" deck is almost always a good thing for a format to have, as it allows the decks in the format to revolve around the fair deck and allows for natural metagame forces to cycle back and forth.
That being said, win rate was definitely not a factor in this decision. Let's read on to talk specifically about Urza's Saga.
So, Saga was one of the top five most played unrestricted cards in Vintage. I have to believe that somewhere above that was Wasteland, given how much that card has seen play to directly combat Urza's Saga. The reasoning given here for Saga however, is fairly sound. It's a card that forced the metagame to warp around its existence and its very existence was polarizing to many players across the format. It definitely has had an impact on Vintage as a whole, and that impact and how much that card's deckbuilding cost and opportunity cost has fallen is reason enough to go ahead and restrict it. At the end of the day, I personally believe in more organic solutions, but I understand that a good portion of the community either advocated for or against the restriction of Saga. It was absolutely contentious, and it's fine that it's restricted.
Before we talk about the impact that this restriction has, let's address the other restriction. Reading on.
The Vexing Bauble restriction is a bit weird, but in the context of it being a card that impacts the format's ability to play the cards that you show up to play Vintage, I can see why it makes sense. At the same time I don't think Bauble was too insane to warrant a restriction. In fact, according to a good amount of the data we do have available, Bauble in general was starting to fall in play. I think the impact of this restriction is quite low overall.
So let's discuss what happens next. Vintage as a format is very much changed by the restriction of Urza's Saga. There's a lot to unpack with this, so let's talk about how this impacts the decks it saw play in, starting with Lurrus ex-Saga. Surprisingly enough, I don't think this restriction hurts this deck a ton. The deck now gets access to several different mana options, and now also has access to cards like Psychic Frog that are very powerful. The Lurrus decks get to reorganize greatly by getting to cut three Saga, and that in of itself will be interesting to see what happens with the deck once it fully reconfigures and people figure it out. That being said, I do not expect to see Wasteland go away at all. In fact, I very much believe that we'll see more Wasteland in the format instead of less. The Lurrus decks can leverage it well, and continue to push their fair game plan. I do expect that we will see less reliance on the Vault Key combo though, and the Turbo Vault Key is likely just dead overall.
I think this is secretly a good thing for Lurrus Saga. Getting to change its deckbuilding slightly and still play some really strong threats like Frog and to a lesser extent Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student is very good.
As far as Jewel Shops is concerned, Jewel does lose a portion of its backup plan. Jewel is likely still a very good deck as its primary game plan is really strong, but losing a portion of its backup plan is a huge change to the deck, and does force the deck to explore other angles if it's primary game plan is prevented, and that primary game plan is very easily affected by cards like Collector Ouphe and Null Rod.
The big question I keep hearing is whether or not this impacts Bazaar decks in some meaningful way. Countervine/Aggrovine variants had largely fallen off in the metagame, and while I do think we'll see people certainly try the deck, I think an increased presence of a UB Lurrus build playing Wasteland certainly impacts that. I do think that Dredge continues to be a good deck, as it's proven itself to be good in the past few months.
I've also heard a lot of murmurs that this helps Doomsday combo decks while also really hurting Beseech Storm. I don't know if I buy either of these theories. Yes, Saga was good against Doomsday and also good for Beseech, but I think Doomsday might run into cards like Flusterstorm returning (whereas prior it wasn't seeing that much play overall) and I think Beseech is probably fine as it can find things to utilize to sacrifice for Bargain, and may have an interesting time reorganizing itself as well.
It's going to be interesting seeing how this shakes out. There's a small part of me that worries that the format may end up in a worse spot than it was prior to the restrictions. I hope I'm wrong. I'm hopeful and curious to try the new format that we will find ourselves in for sure, because I do enjoy new things in the wake of changes like this, but I do think things will be interesting going forward for Vintage as a whole.
What are your thoughts on the restrictions? Comment and let me know what you think!
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari posted a solid reaction to the Banned and Restricted Announcement. Check it out here.
- Our friends at the Legacy Gambit also have a video reacting to the announcement, which does involve a section on Vintage! Check it out here.
- Bryant Cook posted a Doomsday video! Check it out here.
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!
