Vintage 101: First Showcase of 2026
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week for our first article of 2026 we're going to be taking a look at the first Showcase Challenge of 2026! Vintage is back on the menu for Premier Play, so let's check it out! We've also got two other regular Challenges to look at. We'll be doing our set review for Lorwyn Eclipsed next week, so if you have something you want me to look at from that set please let me know.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Vintage Showcase Challenge 1/3/2026
This past weekend was our first Showcase Challenge of this current Premier Play season. Vintage gets to be a Premier Play format for this season, which means there are Showcase Challenges and a Showcase Qualifier event at the end of the season. These events require Qualification Points to enter them (QPs), specifically 40 QPs. The Top 8 of this event gets to go on to the Showcase Qualifier at the end of the season. This particular event had 161 players in it, which is a really solid number of players for Vintage.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Initiative was the most played deck of the event by at least 10 copies, and its win rate was reasonably just above 50%. Jewel Shops and Doomsday both looked solid here, while really most of the decks had a nice range between 45-55% win rates.
Honestly, it's kind of refreshing to see a nice spread of decks here, and all of them having a really good performance overall. Vintage still feels like it's in a really solid place, and bigger events like that really show how much fun the format is.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus | 1st | O_danielakos |
| Dimir Lurrus | 2nd | HJ_Kaiser |
| Initiative | 3rd | MayhemDJ |
| Oath | 4th | BERNASTORRES |
| Jewel Shops | 5th | wongdeck |
| Dredge | 6th | Munchlax446 |
| Lurrus Breach | 7th | morsaaa |
| Lurrus Breach | 8th | discoverN |
Half of the event was Lurrus decks, but split between Dimir and Breach. At the end of the event it was a Dimir Lurrus finals, so let's look at each one.
Wan Shi Tong, Librarian is a really cool card. It is awkward that you can't cast it for X>0 from the graveyard with Lurrus' ability, but at least it's not a 0/0 on entry but a 1/1. Just nullifies the ETB trigger entirely and you're more wanting it to get it back into play for the secondary trigger. Still, I love the big owl and he looks like a lot of fun for this deck.
In Second Place we had the other Dimir Lurrus deck.
This pilot is a regular Eternal Weekend champ (with multiple titles under their belt). One of the really interesting things here is the singleton copy of Demonic Consultation. Given that there's no Thassa's Oracle here, it's interesting to see the card being used basically as a fair tutor effect.
Also in this Top 8 we had Initiative, the most played deck in the event.
Yes, March of Otherworldly Light! I absolutely love that card and think it should be played a lot more in Initiative. It's such an incredibly flexible card. It can absolutely remove just about anything with the right pitches to it if you need to do so.
Further down we had Jewel Shops.
This is a fairly straightforward Jewel list. I think Tezzeret is fairly powerful here, but not nearly as powerful as other decks like Raker. Two copies seems like a reasonably correct number. It can get your Keys and Lotus, etc, and untap your Rings, but you are already drawing a ton of cards with PO/Jewel.
Vintage Challenge 32 1/1/2026
The first regular Challenge of the weekend was the Thursday event. This event had 61 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 of the event, and it had a pretty solid 52.5% win rate. Lurrus PO and Oath did extremely well here. Esper Lurrus did not perform well here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus Breach | 1st | morsaaa |
| Oath | 2nd | etoustar |
| Lurrus PO | 3rd | Sommertroll |
| Lurrus Doomsday | 4th | Chocolate_Branco |
| Sphere Shops | 5th | HyuugaHeir |
| Dimir Lurrus | 6th | Schiaveto |
| Initiative | 7th | duke12 |
| Initiative | 8th | MayhemDJ |
Fairly reasonable Top 8 here, At the end of the event it was Lurrus Breach that won.
The entire sideboard being singleton one-ofs with a fair bit of overlap in some places is pretty sweet. Main deck Mindbreak Trap is also great.
In Second Place we had Oath.
This is a pretty solid looking list. I like the mixture of spells here, and the Serra's Emissary in the sideboard. I think this is so much better than trying to jam the Tinker package into Oath.
Vintage Challenge 32 1/2/2026
The final regular Challenge of the weekend was the Friday event. This event had 45 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.
Raker Shops was the most played deck of the event, and its overall win rate was right on the line of 50%. Dimir Lurrus looked strong, as did Sphere Shops.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus | 1st | Schiaveto |
| Lurrus Breach | 2nd | CLTLegacyLeague |
| Sphere Shops | 3rd | ChessNight5030 |
| Initiative | 4th | badgods |
| Dimir Lurrus | 5th | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Raker Shops | 6th | bless_von |
| Doomsday | 7th | blub_blub |
| Oath | 8th | Ecoscuro |
This is honestly another pretty good looking Top 8. At the end of the event it was Dimir Lurrus that won.
This is very straightforward of a list. I like playing multiple Spell Pierce in current Vintage. There's just a lot of things the card catches, which makes it really powerful against a wide array of decks.
In Second Place we had Lurrus Breach.
Rebuild is a card I just haven't seen in some time, so that's just pretty amazing. Seems really absurd against a number of decks where you get to pick up your stuff and replay it kind of like PO, but it also bounces your opponent's artifacts. That's pretty solid rate.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari always has stuff for us:
- Kindamtg has a Longshot. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Merfolk is always spicy, and I hope it gets more in Lorwyn Eclipsed.
Literal Jeskai Control. Wild.
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!
