Vintage 101: Vintage Data in Peril
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 talking about a major change to decklist data on MTGO, how it's published, and how this will relate to Vintage. In addition, we've got some Challenge data for last week to cover.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Major Changes to MTGO Decklist Data
This past Tuesday, Daybreak Games posted a major update to how decklist data will be published via MTGO.com and I will be frank... this is bad.
If you have figured out by now, after reading thi,s that many of the current Vintage Challenge events will never have anything published outside of the Top 8, then you'd be right. Most Vintage Challenge events never get close to over 64 players, most sit in the 30-upper 40s range, and thus will always be limited to Top 8 data. This is awkward and terrible. What this does for Vintage is that it cuts out a huge swath of data from each publication, and cuts out getting to see decklists that come close to the Top 8, but maybe had an issue or ran into a bad matchup, but still did well enough to originally be in the Top 32.
This further exacerbates issues where Vintage as a format will continue to look stale or awful, because the decks that rise to the Top 8 are going to be popular decks or possibly overplayed decks. If you look at any random Top 8 on a Vintage Challenge, you might think that this format is pretty stale. There's a lot of Lurrus, there's a lot of Shops, and it can look like the format is only 2-3 decks tops. Top 8's are not a good representation of the metagame. It doesn't help players brew, it doesn't help players find new ideas or concepts, and it doesn't let players see the metagame at a larger perspective and be able to poke holes in a metagame. As my good friend Justin Gennari put it... it's like trying to solve a puzzle where your dog ate 30-40% of your pieces, and you don't even have a picture to compare to that you did it right in the first place.
I mentioned this in my Legacy article yesterday initially and a video on my YT channel (which I will embed below along with Justin Gennari's video) and since then, Daybreak has had some commentary on their Discord that much of this decision was a joint effort by both Studio X (the modern day Wizards R&D) and Daybreak, and to me this makes things ever more frustrating. In the past Daybreak has been consistently pro-data, even going to the point to try to modernize their data infrastructure when they took over MTGO with the API. After Wizards intervened on this, that API was shut off and we went back to Top 32 decklists in Challenges instead of all the lists.
I am very much against this change, and I am hopeful that public pressure on both Daybreak and Wizards will show them how much data means to people. This provides a massive disadvantage to everyone, not just Vintage, but everyone. I absolutely encourage if you are on social media to add your voice to that conversation, to keep raising the concerns this has. Be respectful and be concise about it. Talk about what this means to you as a player. In some cases, I've seen a number of people come forth on the MTGO Discord stating that this change will actually drive them to play MTGO less, not more. That kind of bottom-line aspect is also helpful in getting effective change to occur, so keep at it.
Vintage Challenge 32 2/12/2026
The first Challenge event of the week was the Thursday 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.
Lurrus PO was the most-played deck of the event, and despite having one Top 8, its overall win rate wasn't too good. Raker had two pilots but one of them did very well in the event so it had a really high win rate. Oath did well here, while Dredge did not.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Raker Shops | 1st | musasabi |
| Dimir Lurrus | 2nd | boytriton |
| Lurrus PO | 3rd | xfile |
| Oath | 4th | Esocuro |
| Oath | 5th | atraxa77 |
| Jewel Shops | 6th | mechrataal |
| Jewel Shops | 7th | Ignotus97 |
| Sphere Shops | 8th | _Shatun_ |
Quite a bit of Shops here. In fact, the event was won by Raker Shops.
This feels pretty straightforward and mostly stock at this point. I think the sideboard juke of boarding into Spheres is pretty well established at this juncture. I haven't seen a lot of Raker lists that aren't doing this.
In Second Place, we had Dimir Lurrus.
Stern Scolding is kind of a cool card when you consider just how much of the format is Lurrus-based, that you're always gonna have something like a Frog or Bowmasters to catch with it. I do love when metagames like this force clever decisions like that.
Way further down, we had Azorius Riddler?
Sort of surprised at no Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd here, but Quantum Riddler is just such a cool card. It is very powerful just to Warp in and then just cast later. Really sweet list.
Vintage Challenge 32 2/13/2026
The second Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 39 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.
Lurrus PO was the most played deck, and it had a positive close to 50% win rate. Initiative did very well, as did BUG and Jewel. Dredge had a Top 8, but its overall win rate was dragged down hard.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | cicciogire |
| Initiative | 2nd | medvedev |
| Lurrus Breach | 3rd | atraxa77 |
| BUG | 4th | GoblinElder |
| 5c Heroes | 5th | IAmActuallyLvl1 |
| Lurrus PO | 6th | JustABee5 |
| Dredge | 7th | blackdecks99 |
| Lurrus PO | 8th | CrazyMorango |
Lot of Lurrus PO. At the end of the event it was a split with the officially recorded winner being Lurrus PO.
This is pretty much what I've come to expect out of these lists, most notably known as the unluckymonkey lists (who I don't think has been seen on MTGO for a long while under that name), but they were the ones that really popularized the Jeskai slant with Forth Eorlingas! and stuff. I love the tech of Overencumbered for beating up on Dredge.
The official Second Place list was Initiative.
I guess there are four Plows, but I still just absolutely loathe Void Mirror as a play set in these lists. It just has always felt very bad to me.
Also in this Top 8 we had Justin Gennari being Justin Gennari.
I have no words. This would probably be in a Spice Corner, but it's too cool for that. Gotta love crazy Justin brews.
Vintage Challenge 32 2/14/2026
The third Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 49 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.
Lurrus PO was again the most popular deck and it had a great win rate. Sphere Shops also did very well as did Dredge. Jewel Shops and regular PO underperformed.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | Sommertroll |
| Sphere Shops | 2nd | DaveKaplan |
| Raker Shops | 3rd | AFX |
| DPS Tinker | 4th | desolutionist |
| BUG | 5th | duke12 |
| Sphere Shops | 6th | DelverFofoquiero |
| Dimir Lurrus | 7th | AyeItsNick |
| Initiative | 8th | ScoobySnacks |
Fair bit of Shops here as well. At the end of the event, it was Lurrus PO that won.
I can dig the copy of Hexing Squelcher here, but I wish that we could find room for more than one. My experience both with and against that card has been that while one Squelcher is a rough thing to fight through, it's when you have more than one in play that things get kind of nutty, because the Ward costs all stack. So, if you think about it as two instances of Pay 2 Life (and not Pay 4 life) it really helps keep things in context. Also, always make your opponent pay the Ward costs before just straight-up countering their spell. Always.
In Second Place, we had Sphere Shops.
Pretty straightforward list here. One of the best cards for these Shops piles has been Scrawling Crawler, which first took root in the Raker decks, but then people quickly realized how good it was in just regular old Sphere Shops, and now here we are.
Also in this Top 8 we had some Dark Petition Tinker action.
Kind of sick. Haven't seen a good Storm deck in a long while in Vintage, so I love to see it. Also old school cards like Rebuild are just sweet.
Vintage Challenge 32 2/15/2026
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 38 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.
Lurrus PO was the most played deck, and despite two Top 8s its win rate was around 45.7%. Raker Shops looked great here as did Dimir Lurrus. Oath and BUG both had issues here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus | 1st | NiZee |
| Raker Shops | 2nd | haveaboavida |
| Lurrus PO | 3rd | MyPotatoes |
| Raker Shops | 4th | Terminus0 |
| Raker Shops | 5th | 532at |
| Lurrus PO | 6th | KingHairy |
| Sphere Shops | 7th | magiclaszlo |
| Esper Lurrus | 8th | Ark4n |
Lot of Shops and Lurrus. This is unfortunately, the kind of Top 8 that would make Lurrus look too busted and broken under these new MTGO decklist changes. At the end of the event it was Dimir Lurrus that won.
This seems fairly stock overall. I feel like it would be cool to see what Grixis Lurrus looks like with Hexing Squelcher (I love this card if you can't tell).
In Second Place, we had Raker Shops.
Extremely stock-looking list here. If it isn't broke, don't try to fix it!
Outside of the Top 8, which stinks because this feels like the last time I'll get to do this we had BEANS.
Oh man, this is pretty sick. I've played around already with a build doing Wistfulness but also having Solitude is rather sweet. This is exactly the kind of list we'll never get to see again with these new MTGO changes and I absolutely hate it.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari always has good stuff:
- FiretruckModo has some RUG Oath. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
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!
