Vintage 101: Sewer Technology
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 at how well TMNT is shaping up in Vintage the first week, and we're going to be trying something new with Challenge recaps to see how it looks.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Sewer Tech
One of the card I was ultimately very curious if people would try out this week in the first week of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles being legal on MTGO was none other than Sewer-veillance Cam.
This card, when combined with Goblin Welder and a third artifact does some really goofy things. Basically, all you have to do to get started is either sacrifice an artifact with Welder to get back the Cam, or vice-versa. Cam's triggered ability will untap Goblin Welder, which allows you to keep swapping artifacts. At this point, you basically have infinite mana with any Mox, infinite draws with cards like Arcum's Astrolabe or Melded Moxite and the ability to just end the game with Legion Extruder. You can even go a step further with some lists and play Chaos Defiler and blow up all of your opponent's nonland permanents (even if that permanent has hexproof/shroud.
It's a pretty groovy setup, and I was not disappointed to see a few results already from these types of decks.
It's incredibly interesting to see how things might evolve for this card going forward. Goblin Welder tends to lend people towards Painter as a combo, but I actually sort of love having an artifact-centric combo deck in the format that doesn't actually need to push a Null Rod off the table in order to win, and it's also super sweet to have Goblin Welder as a card again in Vintage in a capacity where this could actually be pretty good. I especially am thrilled to see how good this makes Hexing Squelcher, and I would absolutely say at bare minimum play two copies in any deck with this kind of combo.
Another thing that might be worth exploring, too, is looking at cards like Meteor Sword as a way to just destroy all of your opponent's permanents and then be able to just go off and demolish your opponent however you like. It's a fun idea to think about for sure. I certainly hope to see more of how this combo might look in the next few weeks, because I do think it's something really worth looking into, and it's also superb to see a deck that doesn't automatically need to play Lurrus to be good, but it can if it really wants to.
Weekly MTGO Recap
We're going to keep doing the data recap each week like we started in last week's article. This week I am going to try something a little different in that I'm only going to look at an event in more detail if it looks interesting to cover. This is a bit of a trial so if this is something you find you like or don't like, please let me know in the comments. This is also how well I like it too, so I will be taking that into account. The overall goal of this is to test whether this makes things feel like it's less "decklist-dumpy" and more of an opportunity for more discussion and less repetition.
As always, thanks to Justin Gennari for his community supported data and weekly recaps. You can find his social media info here.
We had the following events this past week:
| Event Name | Top 32 Link | Data Sheet Link | Number of Players |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vintage Challenge 32 3/5/2026 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 40 |
| Vintage Challenge 32 3/6/2026 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 36 |
| Vintage Challenge 32 3/7/2026 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 42 |
| Vintage Challenge 32 3/8/2026 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 37 |
Overall, this means that there were around 155 total decklist entries for this past week. This is generally within the range of events that I see week to week. With that said, let's look at some graphical data for the past week, thanks to Justin's weekly data recap.
As we kind of expected, a good majority of the past week's format was mostly Lurrus-based. This week was up a little from 58 copies to 63 copies of a Lurrus deck. Again, this is sort of misleading since the various Lurrus decks are all very different decks, and the Lurrus macro archetype is just encompassing all decks playing Lurrus as a Companion. What this really means is that over the past week, you were going to see a Lurrus deck of some form a lot more than average.
The top played deck of the past week was Lurrus PO at 27 copies (down from 30 copies last week). Its overall win rate was fairly poor at about 46.8% non-mirror. Last week, this deck did okay enough at around 50.8% non-mirror, but slipped down this past week. I think players have figured out appropriate ways of beating this deck and how to sideboard against it. I believe this will wax and wane a little, and is a little on the downswing now.
Raker Shops was pretty popular at 26 copies (up from 21 copies last week), and its overall non-mirror win rate was around 58.6% for the week, which is incredibly solid. Last week the deck sat around 52.4% non-mirror so it's week to week definitely improved. I don't think this deck is necessarily doing anything truly new here. It may have some sideboard updates to address certain aspects of the format, but sometimes a deck has a really good week like this. I do think the fact that the deck's win rate without mirrors is substantially higher by a few percent is something to think about. While ultimately I think Vintage is fine and healthy, keeping track of the shifts week to week for a deck like this can tell a good story about how good the deck really is and how contextual it fits into the metagame.
Esper Lurrus came next at 19 copies (up from 11 copies last week), and it too had a pretty solid-looking week at a 56.9% non-mirror win rate. This is slightly down from last week's 59.2% non-mirror win rate, so Esper did win slightly less on more copies this week. I do think that it's beginning to slowly feel like Esper Lurrus is the correct variant to play of the Lurrus fair variants than Dimir Lurrus, which only had 3 copies this past week overall. I think a lot of this is tied to the fact that removal like Swords to Plowshares is very good, and Lavinia is also very good. Dimir does not have the removal suite that Esper does, and I think that makes a big difference in the current metagame.
Jewel Shops was the fourth most popular deck at 13 copies (up from 11 copies last week), but it had a pretty even keel middle of the road win rate at 50% across the board (w/ mirrors and w/o). This is a drop from the close to 58% non-mirror that it had last week, but it's not super surprising to me. Jewel is a deck that, if you really want to hate it out, the pieces are there for multiple decks to do it.
Sphere Shops came in final fifth at 12 copies (tied with Dredge, and this was up from 5 copies last week). It had a really solid 56.2% non-mirror win rate which was up from last weeks 50% win rate. Realistically, when I mention hating out Jewel Shops, this is a great deck to do it with because its a Shops deck that generally plays four Null Rod main, and sometimes its good enough to make your opponent stumble in Game 1 and then work on beating them in post board games. The threats grow quite large in Sphere Shops, thanks to Patchwork Automaton and it's just a Shops deck to really keep an eye on.
As noted, Sphere did tie with Dredge, but Dredge had a pretty poor win rate at a 44.8% non-mirror, and then Initiative (a deck which often was the most played deck week to week) also did rather poorly this week at a 46.7% non-mirror win rate.
There were definitely some shifts from last week, so we will have to continue to see how it holds or whether it holds at all into the next week and beyond.
Vintage Challenge 32 3/5/2026
The first Challenge we're covering was the Thursday event. This event had 40 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.
Raker Shops was the most popular deck of this event, and it had a pretty reasonable 54.3% win rate. Sphere Shops also did super well, as did Esper Lurrus. Dredge seemed to suffer here a bit, as did Oath and Dimir Lurrus.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Raker Shops | 1st | Arca_de_Karn |
| Esper Lurrus | 2nd | Ark4n |
| Sphere Shops | 3rd | _Shatun_ |
| Initiative | 4th | HugoVenda |
| Raker Shops | 5th | mortr3d |
| Sphere Shops | 6th | duke12 |
| Initiative | 7th | Cachorrowo |
| Lurrus PO | 8th | _Chamytinho_ |
Good amount of Shops and Initiative decks here, and in fact Raker Shops won the event.
This is a pretty solid-looking list. I really like the miser copy of Phyrexian Metamorph in the sideboard. Seems like some really fun tech for a lot of different matchups.
In Second Place, we had Esper Lurrus.
Main deck Stony Silence is certainly a thing. Shops variants like Jewel have definitely been pretty popular lately and Silence is good against a bunch of other decks too at preventing them from getting off the ground. Also, being an Enchantment makes it a little more difficult to deal with than Null Rod. Having more of them in the sideboard definitely makes a lot of sense.
Outside of the Top 8 we had some Jeskai Lurrus action.
Not a super typical build, but four main deck Hexing Squelcher is one heck of a mood. Also, THREE COPIES of Commandeer? I am in love with this list quite a bit and I don't even like Lurrus!
Vintage Challenge 32 3/7/2026
The second Challenge we're covering was the Saturday 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.
Both Raker Shops and Lurrus PO were well-played here, with both decks having a solid win rate. Initiative and Lurrus Vault Key were the only sub 50% decks in the cutoff. Everything else performed pretty well.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Sphere Shops | 1st | grymn |
| Raker Shops | 2nd | Arca_de_Karn |
| Esper Lurrus | 3rd | _Batutinha_ |
| Lurrus PO | 4th | Sommertroll |
| Jewel Shops | 5th | TonyScapone |
| Lurrus PO | 6th | Plagic86 |
| Esper Lurrus | 7th | AyeItsNick |
| Lurrus Breach | 8th | desolutionist |
Quite a bit of Lurrus here, but the event ended up being won by Sphere Shops.
I always love explaining to folks that the more traditional Aggro/Midrange Shops decks just all run four Null Rod main now. This would have been relatively unheard of back in the day, but now there's so many cards that you can play that just don't care about Null Rod being in play at all. Patchwork Automaton is definitely one of the best threats this deck has likely ever received, because it gets really big very fast.
In Second Place we had Raker Shops.
This is the same pilot who won the previous Challenge we talked about. Solid run by them! It's crazy how much this deck went from having a few more creature threats to just Fleshraker and Scrawling Crawler after Tezzeret came into being.
Outside of the Top 8 we had a sweet Grixis Lurrus list.
I dig a list playing four Ragavan in this economy. This list is kind of sweet. Miser's Reanimate? That's crazy interesting. Three copies of Daze? Incredible. I can absolutely get behind the thoughts on this list for sure.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari always has some stuff:
- Revenantkioku is making Lurrus Cooler and Ruder. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Hullbreacher Tinker is pretty sweet.
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!
