Exploring the Vintage Metagame: Insights and Trends

Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, and this week we're taking a peek at where Vintage is sitting at the moment. The plan is to do this, I think, at the beginning of each month provided we have the capability. We've also got an announcement on Eternal Weekend events and some MTGO Challenge recaps.

Vintage May Be Fine So I think what I will begin doing is try to do one of these metagame looks every month, unless something crazy is going on or we have a BnR, etc. With that being said, as always, we rely on the MTGO Vintage Discord and their tireless work on gathering data.

Let's look at the graphical data and then talk sort of high level. I am not going to go deep on each deck's spot in the metagame, but I will touch on some specifics here or there. This data is since 7/29/2025 when the last major thing in Vintage (Tezzeret, Cruel Captain) was printed.

Overwhelmingly, Vintage is in a space where close to 37% of the format is made up of decks that play Lurrus of the Dream-Den as a Companion. Of course, as I've mentioned before several times, this is sort of a misnomer since this only denotes the decks that play the Companion. Underneath that umbrella, there's fair decks, aggro decks, and combo decks that exist. If the data were slightly reorganized in that fashion, things would look slightly different. However, I do think it is important to recognize how much of an impact Lurrus of the Dream-Den has on the format at large. It requires really minimal deckbuilding constraints, and while it has a lot of different decks, it does have a lot of samey cards, which is not uncommon to Vintage in many cases (Power, etc.) but is more centered on cards that this usually doesn't happen with (Psychic Frog, Bowmasters, etc.).

Overall though, despite how much Lurrus of the Dream-Den is in the format, I think that from a high-level perspective, Vintage looks to be in a really solid place. The metagame fluctuates week to week around the various pillars of the format like it is supposed to, and those pillars remain heavily present. Lurrus of the Dream-Den, Oath of Druids, Bazaar of Baghdad, Shops, Initiative, and Combo all seem to have a fair place in the format, and I do think it seems like there is still plenty of space to have fun and brew around in the format, which is great.

New sets have continued to impact Vintage in positive ways since the release of Tezzeret, Cruel Captain, and I've consistently heard that gameplay is fun and interesting.

Eternal Weekend 2026 Announcement We have an announcement for Eternal Weekend, sent out on May 5th through the magic.gg site. Again we have three major Eternal Weekend events in North America, Europe, and Asia. It is worth noting that this year marks a major change for North America Eternal Weekend. Typically, the TO that has worked with Wizards on Eternal Weekend for literally forever has been Card Titan. This year, Card Titan has been replaced by Pastimes. My understanding of this from seeing some posts from Card Titan implies that this was not Card Titan's decision and that Wizards did pass on them for this event. This is rather unfortunate, as Card Titan has always generally put out a great event. However, I do hope that Pastimes will put on a great event this year.

That being said, here are the dates of the three events:

• October 29 - November 1 - Eternal Weekend North America: Pittsburgh, PA - hosted by Pastimes
• December 3 - 6 - Eternal Weekend Europe: Lucca, Italy - hosted by 4Seasons
• December 5 - 6 - Eternal Weekend Asia: Ikebukuro, Tokyo Japan - hosted by Hareruya

As has been done in the past few Eternal Weekends, there is a promo card given out to the Top finishers of the event. The Top 32 finishers receive a non-foil copy of the card, and the Top 8 players get both the non-foil and a foil copy of the card. For Vintage this year, that card is Treasure Cruise with new art by Ralph Horsley.

Weekly MTGO Recap This was a relatively typical week, with just the normal Challenge events on the docket. We had the following events this past week:

• Vintage Challenge 32 4/30/2026 - 46 players
• Vintage Challenge 32 5/1/2026 - 34 players
• Vintage Challenge 32 5/2/2026 - 49 players
• Vintage Challenge 32 5/3/2026 - 32 players

Overall, we had around 159 decklists for the data set for the past week. This is slightly up from 159 entries last week.

As I like to note every week, while the format is a lot of Lurrus of the Dream-Den, the Lurrus of the Dream-Den macro archetype really encompasses a bunch of different decks that use it as the Companion. These decks filter into different categories like Control and Combo, etc.

Esper Lurrus was the most played deck of the week at 20 copies, sitting at around a 51.1% non-mirror win rate. This deck was the most played last week, but its non-mirror win rate was below 50%. This seems like just subtle shifts in the deck over time, which is good to see the metagame do this.

While it falls out of the Top 5 decks for the week, it is important to mention Dimir Lurrus because it had a much better week than Esper Lurrus here, and both decks combined had a 54.49% win rate. It's pretty easy to combine both because their game plan is pretty much the same game of being a fair deck that turns creatures sideways to win. Which of the two is better than the other shifts from week to week, which is always a good thing to see when you have two fair decks like this.

Jewel Shops was the second most played deck at 19 copies, with just around a 55.9% non-mirror win rate. This is way up from last week at 7 copies, replacing where Raker was in the popularity scheme of things. I like that the Shops decks keep bouncing back and forth. It keeps the metagame interesting and is realistically reacting to what it is supposed to be reacting to. The win rate on this was slightly better from last week too, but not by much.

card-ref:Dredge took up the third place spot at 18 copies and just seemed to flounder at 38.6% non-mirror. This is around where it was last week too. I don't think the reason is because of Petrified Hamlet either. I think more than anything, Lurrus of the Dream-Den decks often have a super strong matchup against card-ref:Dredge. They play a lot of repeatable graveyard hate they can get back with Lurrus of the Dream-Den, and their creatures are often far better quality (Psychic Frog is a beast).

With Lurrus of the Dream-Den having such a huge presence in the metagame, I don't think it is surprising that card-ref:Dredge did poorly and has been doing poorly week to week. It is popular because it is a deck that plays on an axis the rest of the format does not, but I don't think it's super well positioned at the moment.

Oath of Druids came in fourth with 16 copies, boasting around a 52.7% non-mirror win rate. I think Oath of Druids is one of those decks that is always going to have a reasonable spot in Vintage. It's one of the more "Vintage-y" Vintage decks that exists in the format and is one of those classic strategies. I liken it a lot to Sneak Attack in Legacy, where it's just always going to be around no matter what.

Initiative rounded up the final decks of the Top 5 at 13 copies, but with a 42% non-mirror win rate. It seems like a fine to mid option to play, but realistically it has had more bad weeks than good.

Overall, Vintage seems healthy week to week, and I remain happy with the format at large.