Vintage 101: November Metagame Check-In
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 taking a look at where Vintage is at prior to the next round of Eternal Weekend events coming up. In additon, we've got Challenge events from last weekend to look at.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Vintage Metagame Check-In November 2025
It's the middle of November, and it feels like a great time to check in on Vintage from a metagame standpoint. For this, I'm using data provided by the MTGO Vintage Discord, with the copied dashboard being located here. I copied this so that I can link to a specific point in time and not have the data changed later. This data set is pretty immense so I just want to focus on how things are since the printing of Tezzeret, Cruel Captain in July. This is around 3,047 entries, which is really solid data (equaling out to around 17,000 matches of Vintage).
Let's start by looking at Vintage in the graphical formats.
Initiative is the most played deck in Vintage in this time frame, which pretty well tracks with Vintage as a whole. Initiative has been a very popular deck in Vintage for a long time. Thankfully, the deck's win rate is pretty in line with the format overall at a very reasonable 51.12%. The deck is popular, but overall the format has been able to manage the deck's power level and keep it in check. Realistically... I think Initiative is likely replacing Dredge over the long run as "that deck that exists" in terms of a very good strategy, but if you have ways to answer it, it gets a lot worse. Dredge has always kind of been that deck in the format, as a deck that always forces the format to respect its existence, and if a deck doesn't, it could get overrun.
Speaking of Dredge itself, the fact that Dredge is sitting at an estimated 45.9% w/o mirror win rate is pretty wild. I think a lot of this comes from the fact that Lurrus decks are just generally capable of playing a lot of strong main deck cards that beat up on Dredge, and that does mean the deck is being respected so much that it's really pushing hard on the deck's existence in Vintage too. Dredge is still the third highest deck in this data set, but only at a 9.4% metagame presence compared to Initiative's 16.9% and Dimir's 11.9%.
Lurrus decks in general make up roughly 35-36% of the Vintage format in general at the moment, but the big thing to remember about that is that the over encompassing Lurrus archetype is split by multiple different Lurrus decks, from fair decks to combo decks. It's really important to make this distinction because not every Lurrus deck is the same deck. There's fair builds like Dimir and Esper Lurrus as well as combo decks like Lurrus PO and Lurrus Breach. Each of these decks have their own good and bad matchups, and the only indicative nature of lumping them together is to really just say that 35-36% of the time you're more than likely going to be facing down a Cat Nightmare in the Companion Zone.
One sort of wildly interesting aspect of the Lurrus decks is that thanks to cards like Stock Up, the format has functionally resurrected cards like Mana Drain and Gifts Ungiven. Those cards typically see play in your Lurrus PO/Lurrus Breach builds, where leveraging the mana from a Mana Drain into Stock Up is quite good, or having Gifts to basically win you the game. It's kind of cool to see cards that used to be kind of useless in Vintage see play again. I think this is owed more to Stock Up than Lurrus primarily, but it's incredibly interesting to see how much these builds have enforced playing these cards again.
The other big maco archetype here is Shops decks, with all three major archetypes of Shops having a piece of that pie, and not only that, all three having reasonable win rates overall. Jewel has the highest metagame percentage of the three, and it has roughly the worst MWP w/o mirrors out of the three at around 50.6%. I think realistically, the deck that is the most powerful out of the three is Raker Shops. The deck has a lot of action and has continually proven to be a powerful deck in current Vintage.
One of the big cards I love in these decks is Talon Gates of Madara. It's such a powerful card in this kind of deck in being able to just shut out a creature for a turn that might be causing some issues.
Overall though, Vintage does look like it's in a pretty healthy spot. There's a plethora of different decks within the Lurrus umbrella to play, but also a variety of pillar decks within the Shops area to also look at, but then decks like Oath and Doomsday also continue to have solid representation and win rates. If there's any big loser in the current metagame it's definitely the Bazaar strategies. Dredge is popular but its win rate is very poor and that doesn't help the overall aspect of Bazaar decks.
I am pretty happy regardless with Vintage. There are definitely still things to explore in the format, and I think there's a lot of interesting space to look into.
Vintage Challenge 32 11/13/2025
The first Challenge event of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 40 players in it thanks to the MTGO Vintage Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. There was no data for this event.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus | 1st | Schiaveto |
| Dimir Lurrus | 2nd | JakeTMS |
| Dimir Lurrus | 3rd | albertoSD |
| Raker Shops | 4th | bless_von |
| Raker Shops | 5th | LucasG1ggs |
| Raker Shops | 6th | monzatubarao |
| Raker Shops | 7th | HoldTheElle |
| Dimir Lurrus | 8th | TheManLand |
Well this is a Top 8. Would you like some Lurrus or some Raker? Well, the finals was just double Dimir Lurrus, so you get Lurrus.
The only big major difference here is the sideboard it seems like. Ray of Enfeeblement is a sweet way to beat up on Initiative. Other than that, primarily stock lists all around.
Vintage Challenge 32 11/14/2025
The second Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 42 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 despite a Top 8 it had a pretty sub 50% win rate. Initiative looked great here, as did Lurrus Breach. Dimir Lurrus utterly tanked it here in terms of win rate.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Initiative | 1st | _Shatun_ |
| PO | 2nd | XShockWaveX |
| Raker Shops | 3rd | musasabi |
| Initiative | 4th | DEJAIR_LAMARCA |
| Lurrus Breach | 5th | wiky |
| Oath | 6th | GrunnTLK |
| Dredge | 7th | TadalaDe20 |
| Initiative | 8th | SuperCow12653 |
Fair bit of Initiative here, with a bunch of different stuff sprinkled in. It was Initiative that won though.
Super clean list overall. I still don't like multiple Void Mirror (maybe bare minimum two but I don't think it's a 100% slam dunk four-of) but people seem to be having success with it.
In Second Place we had PO.
Big PO list here is neat. The Planeswalker package here is kind of cool. Got a lot going on for sure. The wild aspect of this is that their Tinker is in the SIDEBOARD.
Vintage Challenge 32 11/15/2025
The third Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 57 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 its win rate was quite good. Lurrus Breach also looked very powerful. Dimir Lurrus again tanked really hard here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Initiative | 1st | badgods |
| Lurrus Breach | 2nd | notmi |
| Lurrus PO | 3rd | IamActuallyLvl1 |
| Raker Shops | 4th | _Batutinha_ |
| Sphere Shops | 5th | BERNASTORRES |
| Initiative | 6th | Imperia86 |
| Oath | 7th | maouthunder |
| Initiative | 8th | VitorCarvalho01 |
3/8 Initiative but otherwise a solid spread of other decks. At the end of the event though it was again Initiative that took the crown.
I like this list a lot. It looks a lot like Jeremy Henry's list from EW, honestly. I love March of Otherworldly Light because it seems quite powerful against a wide range of decks.
In Second Place we had Lurrus Breach.
I do really dig this deck. It's incredibly interesting and powerful. Unable to Scream in the sideboard is a super cool inclusion that shuts down a wide array of creatures.
Vintage Challenge 32 11/16/2025
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 41 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 and despite having two Top 8s it had a less than 50% win rate. Lurrus Breach did very well too, and Dimir Lurrus also did very good.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Initiative | 1st | AlpInco |
| Lurrus Breach | 2nd | desolutionist |
| Dimir Lurrus | 3rd | vwxyza648204 |
| Raker Shops | 4th | Terminus0 |
| Dimir Lurrus | 5th | trinity |
| Raker Shops | 6th | musasabi |
| Dimir Lurrus | 7th | Mogged |
| Initiative | 8th | luvadepedreiro |
Primarily Lurrus, Raker, and Initiative here. At the end of the event it was Initiative that won.
Another list like we've already seen sofar here. This shell continues to be very strong.
In Second Place we had Lurrus Breach.
This is the same list that placed Second in the previous event. The really fun one here is Overencumbered as a sideboard option. Pretty good against the Artifact decks of the format for sure. Very unlikely to be able to attack with this in play.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari has some great stuff for us:
- Kindamtg has a BUG Survival video. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
BIRGI!
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!
