Type 1 used to be a household name in Magic the Gathering. The format that allows all the cards, the anything goes format, the boogeyman format. In the mid 2000s to early 2010s, Vintage gained a new identity that it’s never completely shaken: the rich boy’s club. Game pieces that cost a thousand dollars apiece is enough to scare off 99% of players. Now, Vintage is viewed largely as a dead format. Luckily, MTGO and Untap both afford great ways to play the format without taking a loan or selling an organ. What is dead may never die.

Let’s dive into the identity and essence of Magic’s first, oldest, most powerful, most expensive, and not actually dead format.

The Basics

Vintage is a highly unique format, and strangely most akin to EDH than any other format. If that statement surprises you, let’s break down some of the things that make for great overlap between the formats. 

Both formats utilize singleton cards. While not all cards in Vintage are required to be singleton, the Restricted List for the format means there’s a sizable number of cards that are played widely and only as single copies. These singletons make the games vary widely depending on if and when they’re drawn. This is especially because of the number of restricted cards that are tutors or cards that draw a lot of others. 

Of the 50 cards restricted, 8 are tutors (or in the case of Karn, a Wish card). They are Karn, the Great Creator, Demonic Tutor, Imperial Seal, Merchant Scroll, Tinker, Demonic Consultation, Mystical Tutor, and Vampiric Tutor. 

An additional 13 are cheap or free draw spells. These are Narset, Parter of Veils, Gitaxian Probe, Mind’s Desire, Timetwister, Treasure Cruise, Wheel of Fortune, Windfall, Yawgmoth’s Will, Ancestral Recall, Dig Through Time, Gush, Necropotence, and Library of Alexandria. 

Demonic Tutor, Dig Through Time, Timetwister, Wheel of Fortune, Yawgmoth’s Will, Necropotence, and Windfall are all cards that many EDH players are at least familiar with, if not cards you’ve played with personally. Strip Mine is another card that sees wide play in both formats, as it’s important to be able to snipe important utility lands such as Library of Alexandria and Bazaar of Baghdad. 

The other major feature of both formats as a result of this is decks built around core engine pieces that execute a gameplan in the same basic way, while flexing around what singleton cards they draw. For example, Dredge in Vintage is built around Bazaar of Baghdad, but flexes around whether it draws a Golgari Grave-Troll or Petrified Field. Shops is built around fast artifact mana in the Moxen and Mishra’s Workshop, but games play out vastly different if they draw Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, or Lodestone Golem. 

The Decks

Vintage is probably the most affected by new printings of any format, but not with raw, powerful cards. Because of the dearth of options available to play with and the raw number of cantrips, card draw, and tutoring, Vintage can near uniquely make use of cards that no other format can. During New Phyrexia and for several sets after, Mishra’s Workshop decks were utilizing Slash Panther as an answer to Jace the Mind Sculptor. Now, they’re utilizing Gingerbrute and Foundry Inspector. 

This volatility means that having a set in stone metagame isn’t as usual as having some core shells that people will weave in and out of. I’ll outline the pillars as of writing and talk about some of the card choices. For specific decklists, I recommend looking at MTGTop8 or asking on TheManaDrain. 

BUG 

Ever since Deathrite Shaman was banned from Legacy, people have been trying to make it work in Vintage. Since 2019, DRS-based BUG decks utilizing plenty of restricted cards have been widely played and found their own. This is a great deck to play if you like dissecting an opponent’s gameplan and playing individually powerful cards in a flexible shell.

The core of these decks is utilizing interactive pieces such as Force of Will and Force of Vigor to slow the game down, allowing for Deathrite Shaman to come online. They utilize powerful stax pieces in Collector Ouphe and Narset, Parter of Veils to further shut off angles of attack, and then pound in with beaters like Tarmogoyf and Endurance. Some builds will also play Tinker for Bolas’s Citadel as a main win condition.

Stax

While the Mishra’s Workshop deck of choice was for the longest time Ravager Shops, recently this has shifted in favor of the slower cousin deck: classic Stax. This is the deck to play if you want to lock down your opponent beyond any hope of escaping while slowly squeezing the life from them.

This plays 4 Urza’s Saga and essentially every single restricted artifact on the list. One of the most important pieces is Golos, Tireless Pilgrim. Tutoring for any land lets the deck flexibly find Saga, Mishra’s Workshop, Wasteland, and Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. Saga provides the beatdown needed to end the game with its constructs.

Hatebears

What if you wanted to mix the above two decks? If you like a mixture of beating down and locking down, Hatebears is a great way to play the format.

Hatebears plays creatures that double as stax pieces such as Collector Ouphe, Lavinia, Azorius Renegade, and Archon of Emeria. The core gameplay is to both attack the opponent while disabling their gameplan. To pair with this, countermagic in Force of Will and removal in Swords to Plowshares and Prismatic Ending remove issues from the board to let creatures swing through. Finally, it frequently plays Sylvan Library, Dig Through Time, and Treasure Cruise to refill its hand.

Paradoxical Outcome 

Paradoxical Outcome is an amazing card in Vintage. Soon after its print in Kaladesh, Vintage brewers identified it as a draw engine that also allowed them to go up on mana. If you cast PO with at least 5 mana rocks on the table, you net mana while also drawing more cards. Each PO feeds into the last. PO has been played as a Tendrils of Agony storm list in the past, but presently tries to kill with Monastery Mentor. This is a fantastically fun deck to play if you like finding your place to get in and pop off with a wild turn.

The basic idea is to play all the restricted mana rocks, 4 Paradoxical Outcome, and spells like Tinker to win on huge turns where you get to draw a plethora of cards. The kill conditions are Monastery Mentor, Urza’s Saga, and Time Vault. Tinkering for a Time Vault lets you take infinite turns if you have a Manifold Key. 

Doomsday

Another former storm deck, Doomsday as a deck really took off after Theros Beyond Death gave everyone their favorite empty library win condition Thassa’s Oracle. Where before, Doomsday had to win with either clever piles letting them find a lethal Tendrils of Agony or play and protect a Laboratory Maniac. Now, Doomsday is a great deck to play if you like playing blue-black reactive piles that rapidly morph into a combo kill. If you want the de facto resource for the deck, the Doomsday Wiki is invaluable.

Doomsday itself is necessary, getting the library down into range to Thassa’s Oracle easily. Dark Ritual can allow for turn 1 combos, while Daze, Force of Will, Flusterstorm, and Mental Misstep help with reactive play. It also plays restricted mana and tutors. 

MadVine

The new Bazaar of Baghdad deck in the format is also probably the better positioned one. This is a deck that will mulligan down to its gameplan, and even plays Serum Powder to get there near-guaranteed (99.999% within 6 mulligans). If you like going back to the exact same gameplan game after game, abusing weird mechanics, and going fast, check out this deck.

Bazaar of Baghdad would normally be a pretty bad card… unless you want to discard a lot of cards. Basking Rootwalla, Blazing Rootwalla, Hollow One, and Vengevine all want a lot of cards to be discarded. Squee, Goblin Nabob and new card Master of Death both become free fodder to discard to get card advantage. Splash in Force of Will, Force of Negation, and Force of Vigor to interact and MadVine comes together.

Underworld Breach

After posting an absurd winrate in the hands of competent pilots, Underworld Breach also made its way into Vintage. Being able to play actual Black Lotus in place of Lion’s Eye Diamond gives the deck a huge boost in power needed to tango with the much higher power level of Vintage. Underworld Breach is a great deck to play if you like cute interactions in a tempo-based combo deck.

The basic idea of the deck is that, when Underworld Breach is on the field, Brain Freeze will mill enough cards to recast a free spell and itself. So if you can generate at least 2 mana via another spell, you can infinitely mill yourself and generate a ton of mana simultaneously. Luckily for us, Black Lotus generates 3 mana per cast. Loop the two together, and then start milling an opponent. The rest of the deck is a similar blue tempo shell as Paradoxical Outcome, but splash in Pyroblast, Lightning Bolt, and Abrade. 

Dredge

The stalwart Bazaar of Baghdad deck may be slightly outshone by its younger MadVine counterpart, but Dredge is still a deck you need to keep on your radar. If you do not prepare for Dredge and its tricks, you will get crushed by it. Dredge is a great deck to play if you want to never play by normal game lines, enjoy very difficult boarded games, and love tracking triggers.

Bazaar of Baghdad may as well have been tailor-made for the Dredge mechanic. By refilling your hand while simultaneously emptying into the graveyard, the entire deck operates around dredging to start the turn, then activating a Bazaar or two to dredge more. Hollow One is the only card that’s ever really cast, and never for five mana. In sideboard games, beware the deck’s ability to pivot to a Dark Depths gameplan, or it may simply board into a billion reactive spells.

Oath

Oath of Druids saw play after its initial printing as a control piece. But, as time went on and bigger creatures became better and better, it morphed into a brutal combo deck. Playing Oath is about utilizing a few creatures to great effect while keeping enough control over the rest of the game to not die. 

Oath of Druids seems like it might be hard to make work, especially against creature-light or creatureless decks, but Forbidden Orchard fixes that problem. The big bodies of choice to utilize are Griselbrand, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Gaea’s Blessing prevents you from decking yourself accidentally. The rest of the deck utilizes great blue and green cards to stop the opponent’s gameplans, seeing a resurgence in play since the printing of Oko, Thief of Crowns.

Wrap Up

Vintage is a wild format, and a lot of fun to play. If you like seeing a lot of weird decks and interactions not found elsewhere, like playing said weird decks and utilizing said weird interactions, like a format that’s open to brewing around powerful engine cards, and like the swingy feeling that inherently comes with Restricted cards, then I can heartily recommend that you give Vintage a try. 

If you have further questions or want to explore other decks in the format (as I only scratched the surface), feel free to hop in our discord’s Vintage League channel. This season’s Vintage League fires on August 18th. You can check out our About or Get Started pages for more info, or find signups on our Vintage page.