Vintage Is Magic's Healthiest Format
Written by: Michael Depa
Many things have been said about Vintage:
- “Vintage is only for millionaires or people who have played since 93’-94’.”
- “Vintage is a turn one format where everyone just combos off.”
- “Vintage is determined by the coinflip.”
- “Early game is the die roll; mid-game is turn one; late game is turn two.”
I’m here to tell you those commonly held notions among the Vintage-inexperienced are false. The expensive part is only true for those who play sanctioned Vintage, such as Eternal Weekend (EW) events and even then, there are caveats. Given Vintage's baggage, perhaps a preamble is required.
The Potentially Required Preamble
I played Magic briefly from 1993-1995. I owned none of the cards and didn’t seriously enter the game until 2015. I didn't get into Legacy until 2022. I don’t own Power (the five Moxen, Black Lotus, Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, and sometimes Time Twister), I’ve had to buy dual lands and other Legacy pieces at exceptionally high prices. Vintage always seemed too far away. I’ve been playing Vintage for one year.
I heard all of the Vintage truisms and accepted them. Vintage was not for me; it's too expensive, too inbred of a meta; just prison and combo. I accepted all that until a funny thing happened: our local South China EW returned after a COVID-19 hiatus with a two-day event featuring Legacy and Vintage tournaments. It was the only paper Vintage event on my calendar. I had to try.
My heart was set on a weird Dredge list from EW Asia that won with Thassa's Oracle as a plan B. In testing, I kept taking rough beats to various graveyard hate, Wasteland, Strip Mine, and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.
I pivoted between day one and day two to Beseech Storm, having a grand total of one MTGO league with the deck. With approximately no experience with a traditional blue deck in Vintage, I proceeded to lose every single game but somehow still prize (two of my opponents dropped to buffer my 2-3 record for 12th overall).
Despite getting thoroughly dumpstered, I came away enamoured with Vintage. The games played out nothing like what I had anticipated. Decisions were deep, choices were plentiful, and meaningful game actions happened throughout. I was hooked. I was determined to play Vintage whenever I could, whether on MTGO or proxy Vintage when possible.
Vintage is Too Expensive
Vintage is expensive. Power has a hefty price tag. Yet the vast majority of Vintage events in paper are proxy friendly and spiking them offer a path to acquiring the sought-after Vintage jewelry.
Entrenched Legacy players likely already have sufficient dual lands and competitive playables for Vintage. Power can be proxied at everything except EW and other sanctioned events — sanctioned events do not allow proxies.
Vintage lives on MTGO. It has a small community of players who love the format and are generally nice and welcoming. The cost of Power on MTGO is infinitesimal compared to their paper counterparts. You can buy the Power 9 on MTGO on Goatbots.com for sub-$70 at the time of this article's publication.
Vintage Is Too Fast
Vintage does have two fast combo decks in Oops, All Spells and Doomsday. Doomsday is not just jam combo.dek, though. In some matchups, Doomsday plays as a control deck. Though Vintage has an inherently higher higher power level than Legacy lending to games getting out of hand quicker, "fast" isn’t the right descriptor.
Vintage is compressed; decisions have substantial impact early. A mistake on turn one can lead to a game getting out of hand quickly, but that is also true in Legacy. Vintage has tools that can exacerbate and counter that dynamic. As a result, the format encourages tight and technical gameplay.
Vintage's power level allows for for situations where an otherwise lost game is an epic topdeck away from fundamentally changing. As Legacy has sped up due to power creep, similar truths have emerged. You don't play Vintage to put a governor on your sports car, you play Vintage to go on a test track and push your car to the limit.
Vintage Is Fun and Diverse
Vintage is defined by the five horsemen*: Tinker, Bazaar of Baghdad, Doomsday, Mishra’s Workshop, Lurrus of the Dream-Den. *It used to be four but Lurrus exists now.
Control
Lurrus Control has many flavors, including UB, Esper, Jeskai, and BUG varieties. They generally include on-color Moxen, Power (Time Twister typically only included in combination with Orcish Bowmasters), and win through creature combat via Psychic Frog. Some Lurrus decks include Time Vault plus Manifold Key or Voltaic Key for infinite turns.
Aggro-Prison
This is a unique macro archetype to Vintage. They win by turning creatures sideways but typically include prison elements to help those creatures cross the finish line. Decks include Mono-White Initiative, Aggro Shops, Prison Shops (some overlap; greatly depends on the build), Mono Red, SqueeVine/HollowVine variations (which fall in the Bazaar of Baghdad camp).
Tempo
Pitch Dredge and Countervine function as the format's tempo strategies, both of which function on Bazaar of Baghdad. It feels right that the Tempo decks don't require mana for any of their spells.
Countervine is essentially Pitch Dredge with more lands, worse creatures, and more Force effects, including Force of Vigor, Force of Will, and Force of Negation. They typically include Gaea's Cradle as a way to activate Basking Rootwalla's ability and counter an opposing The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.
Midrange
BUG Midrange is the common go-to option for unpowered stategies. BUG leans on Collector Ouphe to shutdown the foundational aspect of Vintage's artifact mana, Deathrite Shaman, and Oko, Thief of Crowns. Oftentimes, BUG Midrange sometimes includes Tinker into Bolas's Citadel as well since they are not Lurrus of the Dream-Den decks.
Combo
Vintage having access to restricted fast mana and most of Legacy's banlist means most decks have some type of combo as secondary plan. The deckbuilding cost of Time Vault plus Manifold Key and a single copy of Urza’s Saga is low. The same is true for one copy each of Tinker and Bolas's Citadel.
Exceptions to this are Mono-White Initiative and Mono Red, since they lean more on prison pieces like Archon of Emeria, Blood Moon, and Null Rod to lock opponents out of taking game actions. Blood Moon shines in Vintage as many manabases are the greedy. Vintage is, after all, the only place where players can put Mishra's Workshop and Bazaar of Baghdad into play outside of Vintage Cube.
Doomsday
Legacy Doomsday is clunky and inelegant compared to is Vintage counterpart, which has access to game-winning piles that are easier to assemble with Ancestral Recall, Black Lotus, Gitaxian Probe, and Gush, among other tools.
Oops, All Spells!
Black Lotus and Moxen are better than Chrome Mox and Spirit Guides.
Underworld Breach
Underworld Breach decks run the gamut of the Lurrus control package with creature-suite swapped for Underworld Breach and Brain Freeze. Paradoxical Outcome is another option which allows players redundancy and a way to rebuy their Underworld Breach in positions that aren't yet game-winning.
Jewel Shops and Paradoxical Outcome
Jewel Shops and Paradoxical Outcome combo decks share much overlap. The general strategy is to play out artifacts and draw your deck. For Jewel Shops, that's in the form of copying Coveted Jewel with Phyrexian Metamorph. For Paradoxical Outcome, that's picking up and replaying Moxen and other mana rocks. Sometimes, Jewel Shops plays Paradoxical Outcome t