Vintage 101: Heroes in a Half-Shell
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're taking down the Foot Clan with a look at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for Vintage. In addition to that, we've got an update on the MTGO Decklist Debacle from last week (a good update!) and some Challenge data.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
MTGO Decklist Update
We have an update on the MTGO Decklist Debacle from last week. In what amounted to functionally 3-4 days worth of community feedback and pressure, Wizards of the Coast has decided to reverse the decision and revert the change entirely back to the existing Top 32 publications of decklists that existed prior to the announcement last Tuesday. You can find the announcement here.
The community pressure on this change was overwhelmingly against it, and for a lot of good reasons. The official reasoning for this was a claim that players were somehow inferring incorrect metagame information from online results to tabletop events. Reducing available information however will never force players to be "more creative about the metagame" or make better decisions about the metagame (the age old "puzzle" metaphor. Especially in older formats, it makes the formats look even worse, not better.
Wizards does state in their announcement that much of this decision was driven by the fact that there's a lot of MTGO data compared to tabletop data, and would like to figure out better ways to give aggregators (like Goldfish) a better representation of tabletop data and would be going back to the drawing board to figure out how to do this. Much of this relates solely to Standard, where they are trying to further drive tabletop engagement. There's a lot of ideas thrown about on how they can achieve this, so if you have feedback for them please reach out constructively and give it!
Thankfully Wizards was able to hear the feedback and listen to the community on this. I really appreciate seeing everyone recognize what an issue this was and step in and provide solid constructive feedback on the change.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming!
Turtle Power!
We are back in the city of New York for another Standard set. The last time we were here, we were talking about Spiders and Men. Now we're talking about Teenage Turtles and Mutant Rats. Definitely a tangled web we weave. This set has a few new mechanics like Sneak (a sort of weirdly fixed version of Ninjutsu that can also go on spells) and also a good amount of Affinity for Artifacts of all things.
There isn't a ton I feel for Vintage for this set, but we're going to look. As always if you don't see a card on here that you think should have been, let me know in the comments!
April O'Neil, Hacktivist
While the effect is cute, having to wait until your end step to get it is awkward. At the very least she draws you one card by herself, but yeah, this is probably not great.
Krang, Master Mind
I think even if you can get this for UU it's still kinda just okay. The draw effect is slightly cool though if you need to refill, and more than likely you can PO this and redeploy it. It could be useful in Jewel as like a one-of, where you could also use the fact that it's a big threat for Time Vault turns.
Raphael's Technique
Wheel effects really aren't that prevalent and one you can cast in combat with Sneak is kinda mid. I'm pretty sure this one is no good.
Tokka & Rahzhar, Terrible Twos
Another scam-aggro type card that hits on things getting cast for cheaper than its mana value. I think a 3/2 with menace in a black Scam package that can't be countered that also does some things is kind of neat. I wonder if there's just a Rakdos build with Squelcher.
Big Mother Mouser
This thing does become a 4/4 the first turn it attacks, which is kind of neat. I don't know if it has a home, but it does get big rather quickly.
Krang, Utrom Warlord
Nine mana is a lot, but its also like three Mishra's Workshops so that's kind of amusing. It's a big dude with big effect, but I don't think it meets the bar.
Skateboard
If only Urza's Saga were unrestricted, we could be kicking flips on Skateboards.
Looking for Feedback - Challenge Coverage
It's still early enough in 2026, and one thing I would like to start doing is to try to refine things within the article series and see what people might like to see from a Challenge Event Coverage perspective. Right now, I cover every Challenge event in a week, which when we only had 2-3 Challenges a week was not so bad, but now we have FOUR Challenges per week and that doesn't include other events that can occur like RC Qualifiers, Showcase events, etc.
The end result of this as you are aware is that the article can often feel like a decklist dump, especially during slow news weeks in the format. Often times it also means that a lot of the lists end up being the same as I am generally covering the 1st/2nd place list and at least one other list either in the Top 8 or Top 32 that wasn't one that showed up in the other events. Again, it certainly does end up being a lot.
I have an official feedback form linked here as to collect feedback on a few ways that I could approach a change to this. Here are the options laid out on the form:
- Keep everything the same as it has been. This means zero changes and people like the way it's working right now.
- Providing a weekly graphical breakdown: There are three sets of options associated with this, but essentially, I would aggregate the events for the week and display it as graphical data to give people a sense of where the metagame was specifically for that week. This is something I've considered doing anyway, because I think it could be valuable information. It is a slightly larger bit of work, but not a huge lift.
- Option 1 of this is to do the weekly graph and still keep everything the same
- Option 2 is to do the weekly graph and then only cover an event in depth if anything is interesting or worth talking about in that event. This would mean I would link to all of the data sheets/top 32s for each event that week, but then only events that have something worth talking about would be covered with their own graph, etc.
- Option 3 is to do the weekly graph and stop covering 1st/2nd Place and only cover any interesting decklists in the event (which possibly could also be in 1st/2nd place). I personally like this option the least because I know people who make it to the finals of events love to see their names in lights.
I would absolutely appreciate it if you used the form linked above to provide this feedback as to what you might like to see. I really appreciate all the readers and I think it's important to grow and change over time, and I would rather make a change that people are interested in seeing the execution of than throwing darts at a board on it.
Vintage Challenge 32 2/19/2026
The first Challenge event of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 40 players in it thanks to the MTGO Vintage Discord. This was unfortunately the one event of the week that fell into the Debacle and had only Top 8 posted and Goldfish only imported it once.
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 it had a pretty good win rate overall. Oath did super well here, while Initiative dropped off a bunch and had a pretty poor win rate. Jewel also did very poorly.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Oath | 1st | etoustar |
| Dimir Lurrus | 2nd | La_Ele |
| DPS | 3rd | WingedHussar |
| Raker Shops | 4th | bless_von |
| Lurrus PO | 5th | 4FunNoWin |
| Oath | 6th | Ecoscuro |
| Sphere Shops | 7th | Srogers90 |
| Dimir Lurrus | 8th | Aced5 |
Fair bit of Shops and Lurrus here. The winner of the event however was Oath.
Oh neat. It has been a minute since I've seen RUG Oath pop up. Because this version doesn't play a full four Atraxa, it also doesn't play Show and Tell. It's largely because it has the Planeswalker-centric control package to hold down the game as well until you can get a threat into play. The only awkward notion here is that the deck isn't playing any other Oath targets for sideboard consideration. Usually in these cases I see things like Serra's Emissary, etc.
In Second Place we had Dimir Lurrus.
Quite a diverse sideboard setup. It's kinda funny how good Yixlid Jailer was back in the day that it's back around again. I like it.
Also in this Top 8 we had DPS.
Always nice to see something like Storm pop up. Lowkey a little surprised at no Stock Up.
Vintage Challenge 32 2/20/2026
The second Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 38 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.
Dimir Lurrus was the most played deck, and it did have a slightly better than 50% win rate. Raker Shops did very well, and again Initiative did very badly.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Raker Shops | 1st | chevetteprateado |
| Lurrus PO | 2nd | xfile |
| Raker Shops | 3rd | crK |
| Oath | 4th | Univerce |
| Dimir Lurrus | 5th | boytriton |
| Dredge | 6th | __Neptune__ |
| Lurrus PO | 7th | CLTLegacyLeague |
| Sphere Shops | 8th | musasabi |
Again a good amount of Shops. In fact Raker Shops won the event.
I love how this is a deck that absolutely wants to play four Talon Gates of Madara just so it can be like "got your Collector Ouphe" or "nab your lethal attacker" or "phase out your Thassa's Oracle" or whatever it decides it wants to do. Don't judge, you don't know these Gates.
In Second Place we had Lurrus PO.
Yessss... I kinda knew it wasn't gonna be too long before people really started honing in on Hexing Squelcher once it became readily apparent that the card is kind of gross.
Going down into the Top 32 we did have some Initiative.
This deck had a pretty bad week, and I think it has been dipping down slowly over time for a while. I do think there's a certain amount of deckbuilding that could be done to these decks, and I think I would reasonably start with cutting down on Void Mirror (I really dislike that card in this deck quite a bit). I think there are things that could be done to the deck's construction that could help keep it invigorated, but also a lot of the format has just really adjusted to its existence.
Vintage Challenge 32 2/21/2026
The third Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 48 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 did very well. Dimir Lurrus did not do well here, while all the other decks did pretty okay to good.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | Miharu_Fuyumiya |
| Raker Shops | 2nd | Shuichi_Saito |
| Lurrus Breach | 3rd | desolutionist |
| Lurrus Breach | 4th | thedeck84 |
| Jewel Shops | 5th | ziofrancone |
| Raker Shops | 6th | Terminus0 |
| Oath | 7th | Dr. Jon Osterman |
| Jewel Shops | 8th | __Neptune__ |
So much SHOPS. At the end of the event however it was Lurrus PO that won.
The Squelcher train continues! I love this card in multiples especially, so it's cool to see at least two. Also, just an entire playset of Commandeer in the sideboard?! Wow.
In Second Place we had Raker Shops.
If your opponent Commandeers your One Ring, that probably is the absolute worst feeling of all time, right? Seems incredibly groovy.
Outside of Top 8 in the Top 32 we had BEANZZZZ.
I think it's very important to just never discount how good Quantum Riddler is as a card. It's an incredibly powerful card that allows you to store late game threats while accruing card draw. It's so good.
Vintage Challenge 32 2/22/2026
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 33 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 again (SENSING A THEME) and it had a really strong win rate here. Sphere Shops did poorly, as did Initiative. BUG had a good event!
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | Erik157751 |
| Raker Shops | 2nd | adm29 |
| Dredge | 3rd | Munchlax446 |
| Lurrus PO | 4th | MyPotatoes |
| BUG | 5th | mei0024 |
| Lurrus PO | 6th | KingHairy |
| Raker Shops | 7th | Shuichi_Saito |
| Lurrus PO | 8th | _Chamytinho_ |
Four out of Eight is Lurrus PO, and it won the event.
This looks a bit more like a traditional Lurrus PO sideboard. Even with cool stuff like Overencumbered tech.
In Second Place we had Raker Shops.
Definitely a unique list. It goes from Raker Combo to full on aggro Shops in the post board. Stonecoil Serpent and Wurmcoil Engine? Let's go!
Further down the Top 8 we had an interesting PO/Tinker build.
When your Tinker target is Inkwell Leviathan I think you're making a statement. Also, sick playset of Azure Beastbinder in the sideboard.
Around the Web
- FiretruckModo has a video on Welder Stax. Check it out here.
- Justin Gennari always has some things for us:
- Kindamtg has a BR Scam Aggro video. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Ok Sneak and Show is kinda cool.
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!
