Vintage 101: Scorching July Metagame Review!
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 and seeing where Vintage is after a month and just what is happening in the metagame. In addition, we've got some Challenges to look at from last week!
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Vintage in July
With Edge of Eternities upon us now and things moving along, I thought it might be a good idea to see where Vintage is right before this release just to get some feels later on this next month as to how this set may impact Vintage. With that, I am using the data provided by the Vintage MTGO Discord Community. I made a copy of the dashboard with the data from 8/2024 (Saga/Bauble restriction) until now. This amounts to a stunning 9,000 entries of Vintage decks since then. Pretty cool stuff.
Let's take a look at the Vintage metagame from a graphical overview.
A little over 31% of the Vintage format at this point in time is a Lurrus deck of some type. This is a weird misnomer in some ways, because Lurrus itself is indeed spread out across a bunch of different kinds of decks, with the predominant most popular variants being Tempo/Control shells that are functionally fair decks. But in general, 31.7% of the time, you are going to see Lurrus as a Companion in a deck. That's quite a bit for sure.
The next highest primary macro archetype here is Shops decks, at close to 20%, followed by things like Combo and Aggro decks.
As far as individual decks are concerned though, the most popular deck in Vintage continues to be Initiative. Overall the Initiative deck's win rate in the format has been pretty consistently medium for a while. This deck is good, and it has gotten a lot of cool stuff like Clarion Conqueror in recent times, but the format has managed to settle on it.
The other big deck that sees a lot of play currently is Dredge, and while Dredge is popular and it can have a good event here or there, it's win rate is also very medium. It's played primarily because it is the best Bazaar archetype in the format, it catches people off-guard, and it plays in a wholly different fashion than other decks in the format at large. The deck hasn't gotten anything really new so to speak in a long while so it continues to move along as it does.
Both Esper and Dimir Lurrus round out the third and fourth spot here, and frankly these decks are indeed extremely similar in gameplay. Technically both combined they are far more played than Initiative. Esper has proven slightly more popular than Dimir, but this separation is really only for classifying which version of the deck is more popular. From a raw gameplay standpoint, they're mostly the same deck and Esper's color splash is only for removal like Swords to Plowshares or sideboard cards.
Now obviously, I've stated multiple times in these columns my feelings on Lurrus in general so I won't get into that, but I will admit having a fair deck as one of the best decks in the format is not a bad place for a format like Vintage to be. I just wished it didn't force you into heinous cards like Companions.
Jewel Shops is also near the top here and has proven itself to be a very good deck, with a fairly in line win rate. This deck has gotten some better things over time and Modern Horizons 3 was very good to it in general.
Lurrus PO rounds out things and frankly this deck has risen up and become a very powerful contender and primarily its thanks to Stock Up if I had to really pinpoint one single card. It's proven to be a powerful boon to a deck like this, and Lurrus PO is doing quite well for itself, but still within that acceptable range of win rate and play rate.
Vintage does look fine, despite how much Lurrus exists, and I'm very curious to see what effect Edge of Eternities will have on the format. While the set is now just released, we won't have any big event news for Challenges and stuff until next week.
Vintage Challenge 32 7/24/2025
The first Challenge event of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 50 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.
Dredge was the most popular deck of the event, but its win rate was pretty poor despite one Top 8 appearance. Esper Lurrus, Lurrus PO, and Jewel all looked good. Initiative seemed to have a very negative win rate despite also having a Top 8.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Jewel Shops | 1st | NathanOfTheGiltLeaf |
| Lurrus PO | 2nd | TheManLand |
| Esper Lurrus | 3rd | BERNASTORRES |
| Dimir Lurrus | 4th | littledarwin |
| Tinker | 5th | Erik157751 |
| Dredge | 6th | Zony |
| Countervine | 7th | T1_Tinker |
| Initiative | 8th | mortr3d |
This seems rather reasonable. At the end of the event it was Jewel Shops that won.
This seems fairly on point for most Jewel lists. I think by far the best card for this deck in recent years has been Sink into Stupor primarily. Having a bounce spell stapled to a Force-pitch as well as a Land is insanely good.
In Second Place we had Lurrus PO.
The more focused Esper route here. Seems very powerful still when you consider how good Orcish Bowmasters is against other PO decks.
Vintage Challenge 32 7/25/2025
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.
Initiative was the most played deck and its win rate was pretty great. Dimir Lurrus did extremely well here, as did Shops.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus | 1st | 2plus2isfive |
| Dimir Lurrus | 2nd | bless_von |
| Initiative | 3rd | LasVegasChaos |
| Doomsday | 4th | sixmp |
| Sphere Shops | 5th | hermanomlg |
| Initiative | 6th | medvedev |
| Sphere Shops | 7th | almana3 |
| Dredge | 8th | xDingusKhan |
Quite a bit of Shops and Lurrus here. At the end of the event it was a pair of Dimir Lurrus decks in the finals.
Really our only major differences here lie in some main deck flex spots and some sideboard cards. The overall game plan between the two decks is the same.
Vintage Challenge 32 7/26/2025
The third Challenge event of the week was the Saturday 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.
Esper Lurrus was the most popular deck this go-around, and it did have a good win rate. Lurrus PO, Doomsday, and Initiative all did well, while Sphere Shops and Dredge seemed to suffer.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Initiative | 1st | Bawer |
| Lurrus PO | 2nd | Jujkata |
| Lurrus PO | 3rd | unluckymonkey |
| Doomsday | 4th | CrazyDiamond513 |
| Esper Lurrus | 5th | 416FrowningTable |
| Doomsday | 6th | sixmp |
| Dimir Lurrus | 7th | Montolio |
| Esper Lurrus | 8th | WingedHussar |
Quite a bit of Lurrus here. At the end of the event though it was Initiative that won.
The sideboard here is super wild. Sanctifier en-Vec and Void Mirror? Wild.
In Second Place we had Lurrus PO.
This is more of the 4C version that is more typical of this deck, getting to use cards like Forth Eorlingas! as a win condition.
Vintage Challenge 32 7/27/2025
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 40 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.
Esper Lurrus was the most played deck of the event, and it had a super solid win rate. Doomsday did very well here, as did Oath. Jewel Shops, Initiative, Dredge, and Lurrus PO all did somewhat poorly overall.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Esper Lurrus | 1st | etoustar |
| Esper Lurrus | 2nd | Bezerra_da_Silva |
| Doomsday | 3rd | SingPanMan |
| Sphere Shops | 4th | crK |
| Esper Lurrus | 5th | EmperorOppai |
| Esper Lurrus | 6th | SimoCr |
| Doomsday | 7th | Jujkata |
| Oath | 8th | musasabi |
Again a fair amount of Lurrus, and the finals was decided by a pair of Esper Lurrus decks.
The winner here has a ton more white sideboard cards to bring in, but there's not a huge amount of differences between the two decks besides this.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari always has some cool stuff for us:
- Montolio has a video on Top 8 with Frogs. Check it out here.
- Revenantkioku has a video on Scam. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Our first look at Tezzeret, Cruel Captain!
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!
