Vintage 101: I Was Built For Speed
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're taking a look at Aetherdrift and whether any of the cards might be playable in Vintage or not. In addition to that there was some Challenges from this past weekend including a Showcase Challenge.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Aetherdrift for Vintage
We've got a new Standard set on the way in the form of Aetherdrift. This Death Race inspired set has a bunch of new mechanics themed around racing (including Speed and Exhaust) as well returning mechanics of Vehicles, Mounts, and Cycling.
The Speed mechanic is one of the weirdest ones of the set, as it's another game aid tracking thing that only ticks up once per turn from 1 to 4 (Max Speed) when an opponent loses life that turn. There's no other way to increase the speed of... well, Speed in the set.
I don't think there is a ton in this set for Vintage, but we'll do our best to take a look.
Repurposing Bay
A Birthing Pod for artifacts technically already exists in Vintage in Oswald Fiddlebender and unfortunately Oswald can be played with Lurrus. I do think this card is powerful and it has some strong applications but Oswald not being an artifact is a huge plus in his favor (since you can likely activate Oswald through a Null Rod effect and maybe get something like Argentum Masticore off The One Ring). I don't expect this will see a lot of play though being a mana value three permanent.
Momentum Breaker
The speed mechanic is the least valuable of this card because can at least cash this in for some life, but it is the main effect that's interesting. Being able to force sac a creature or discard a card is great, but after you cash it in, you get to bring it back with Lurrus. So yeah, that is a thing.
Brightglass Gearhulk
This one is interesting, but also because the card is likely never getting cast. It's probably getting cheated into play, but it can nab some interesting things. Unfortunately it's also highly likely that it sees zero play as well.
The Aetherspark
In all reality I think this card is kind of cool, and could see play here or there. It has some really strong things it does, and it's really easy to get onto a creature and equip. Being an artifact means you can use Shops mana for it, and that alone gives me pause. I'd be very surprised if I didn't see someone out there trying this thing.
Monument to Endurance
Interestingly enough, this card does exactly all three things when you activate Bazaar of Baghdad, which is kind of sweet. A sick Shops/Bazaar hybrid featuring this card would be really cool.
Radiant Lotus
I definitely got a few messages about this card, and frankly... I don't think it's all that good. There's a lot of setup here to this card, and realistically all it's doing is adding mana. This is the kind of card that you would not want to have a bunch of because you have to sacrifice a bunch of cards to get a bunch of mana off of it, but then it becomes a one of tutor target, and there are already a bunch of one of tutor targets that just kind of outclass it. Making a lot of mana is great, but if you're making that much mana, I think you were likely winning to begin with.
I'm not a fan, but I'm sure some people will try it. Some people have said in Jewel Shops, but I think it doesn't actually replace anything there and that deck's stock list is pretty well defined. I also don't like hanging the hat on Karn for a Karn tutor target because 99.5% of the time you're going to be getting Mycosynth Lattice off Karn, and Karn being restricted means you want whatever it's going to get to be high impact or just win the game on the spot. Making a bunch of mana doesn't always necessarily do that.
Country Roads...
...take me home. That is all.
Vintage Showcase Challenge 2/2/2025
This past weekend was a Vintage Showcase Challenge! These are premier-level events where the Top 8 of the event get invited to a special invite-only Showcase Qualifier event at the end of the season. This particular event had 183 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
Dimir Lurrus was the most popular deck of the entire event and it's win rate was just around 53-54%. Initiative was also very popular and had a reasonable win rate. Most of the decks across the upper board here all had reasonable enough win rates, except for Dredge which had a 41.4% win rate.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus | 1st | discoverN |
| Initiative | 2nd | Jositoshekel |
| Dimir Lurrus | 3rd | txepi |
| Doomsday | 4th | Gitaxian_Probe |
| Doomsday | 5th | Matti |
| Initiative | 6th | bernardocssa |
| Initiative | 7th | CrazyMorango |
| Jewel Shops | 8th | Marcola |
Lot of Initiative here, plus a reasonable amount of Lurrus and Doomsday. At the end of the event it was Dimir Lurrus that won in the hands of well known typical Doomsday expert discoverN.
Very interesting list here. The singleton Snapcaster Mage is pretty cool. The card that's sticking out at me out of the sideboard is Legacy's Allure. That is pretty amusing and wild for sure.
In Second Place we had Initiative.
The big thing that jumps out at me about this list is that it contains absolutely not single white mana removal in the main deck. No March of Otherworldly Light, no main deck Swords to Plowshares, not even Solitude. The other thing is the main deck copies of Stillmoon Cavalier. Lot of reasonable ways to try to metagame against Lurrus here by just maxing out on the threats the deck can't actually kill easily main deck.
Vintage Challenge 32 1/30/2025
The first regular Challenge event of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 49 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
The top of the event was a three way tie between three different decks, but only one of those had a super positive win rate and that was Dimir Lurrus. Jewel Shops didn't but it did have three solid Top 8 finishes, just dragged down by the rest of the event.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Esper Lurrus | 1st | PierrePoilievre2025 |
| Dimir Lurrus | 2nd | LucasG1ggs |
| Dimir Lurrus | 3rd | cicciogire |
| Jewel Shops | 4th | _Chamytinho_ |
| Initiative | 5th | Cabezadebolo |
| Dimir Lurrus | 6th | Graciasportanto |
| Jewel Shops | 7th | etoustar |
| Jewel Shops | 8th | haveaboavida |
That's definitely a lot of Lurrus. In fact, the end of the event was won by Esper Lurrus.
This is exceedingly stock at this point. Not much to really call out here because it's all very good.
In Second Place we had Dimir Lurrus.
This is also a fairly stock list. I would love to see a surveil land here though. I think too many people sleep on including these in their manabase, or try to justify it by saying having a tap land isn't good, but the surveil lands are just quite strong and well worth inclusion.
Vintage Challenge 32 1/31/2025
The second regular Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 41 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Both Jewel Shops and Dimir Lurrus were very popular. Dimir Lurrus looked great here while Jewel Shops had one Top 8 finish but still a very sub par win rate. Initiative also didn't look great here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus | 1st | albertoSD |
| Lurrus DRS | 2nd | 416FrowningTable |
| Doomsday | 3rd | thepowernine |
| Dimir Lurrus | 4th | B-Carp |
| Doomsday | 5th | _INF_ |
| Dredge | 6th | MeninooNey |
| Jewel Shops | 7th | Marcola |
| Doomsday | 8th | CrazyDiamond513 |
Fair split between Lurrus, Doomsday, and a few other decks. At the end of the event it was Dimir Lurrus that won.
Functionally the same list we just talked about. No real frills to speak of here.
In Second Place we had Lurrus DRS.
Mockingbird is a very interesting card. Wildly enough it can indeed copy all of the creatures in the deck from the graveyard because the card only cares about the amount of mana spent to cast it not what X is. You can make X=1 and copy a Psychic Frog because you spent two mana from the graveyard with Lurrus' ability, but you couldn't do X=2 because that would make it mana value 3.
Vintage Challenge 32 2/2/2025
The final regular Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 35 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.
Dimir Lurrus was the most popular deck and it had a very solid win rate. Other Shops decks did very well as well with a very small sample size.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Fleshraker Shops | 1st | crK |
| Dimir Lurrus | 2nd | Folero |
| Doomsday | 3rd | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Doomsday | 4th | Redhotphil87 |
| Initiative | 5th | _Shatun_ |
| Oath | 6th | scalo94 |
| Esper Lurrus | 7th | vwxyza648204 |
| Jewel Shops | 8th | _Chamytinho_ |
Bit more diversity in this Top 8 overall. At the end of the event it was Fleshraker Shops that won.
The combo of Fleshraker plus two Tops is pretty gross, not to mention all the other busted stuff you can do with all the keys and The One Ring here. Also, yet another deck adopting Talon Gates of Madara as a thing, and I love it. The card is so versatile and cool.
In Second Place we had Dimir Lurrus.
This is just like discoverN's list that won the Showcase, which makes sense given this event occurred after that. I wonder if that catches on longer term.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari always has some great stuff for us.
- FiretruckModo is testing Dredge. Check it out here.
- Kindamtg is playing some Mono Black Chains. Check it out here.
- Montolio has a league with Esper Lurrus. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Absorbentthree being the absolute GOAT.
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!
