Vintage decks are the knife’s edge, so to speak. The card pool is both wide (~20K unique cards) and deep (B&R List). Even Legacy boasts access to ~15K unique cards. Deck building in eternal formats should use the best of the very best.
I don’t know how I feel about Vintage between London Mulligan and War of the Spark. The new London Mulligan rules favor aggressive mulligans and draw sevens, and Lavinia and Workshops favor more lands. These two axes are dichotomous to deck building even with a both wide and deep card pool.
Better questions, better answers
Looking at recent tournaments results for decks that either 5-0’d Leagues or finished in the Top 8 between March 16th, 2019 and April 14, 2019 for a total of 98 results, we have the following breakdown:
Dredge 19%
Xerox 19%
Storm 16%
Workshop 11%
Survival 7%
Oath 6%
BUG 5%
Grixis Thieves 4%
Esper 3%
Assorted 10%
The assorted decks are as much a classification problem as anything else. Since the volume was small, I checked, and they all lump together into various forms of creatures backed by counterspells, with notable omissions being Eldrazi (1%) and Death & Taxes (1%), both established archetypes.
Analyzing the Data
We need to be careful. For example, the data spans before and after the London Mulligan change (April 10th, 2019), and the post-change data is small. We can, however, ascertain recent trends. Deathrite Shaman is banned in Legacy, and its frequency is increasing in Vintage. Leyline of the Void is also seeing more play. With Dredge making up a fifth of the expected top finishes, and Survival taking another 7%, you have a ~1:4 chance of Leyline and/or Deathrite Shaman really shining. Sideboard slots are limited, and DRS is played main, so this level of consolidation is a real treat for us.
The current Storm variants are primarily counterspell protected and run one Hurkyl’s main. Nobody seems to be going the full nine yards in combo. Lavinia appears to be doing work, and Oath is still packing maindeck Ancient Grudges. And, Mishra’s Workshop fueled aggro decks, as long as Workshop remains unrestricted, will continue to function as the checks and balances of the format.
What does the future hold?
Unless some absurdly powerful card is spoiled in War, I’ll probably run either Karn the Creator Oops, I win! Kefnet. The latter supports Lavinia. Heck, maybe the former does, too. Both Karn and Kefnet are absurdly powerful. Resolving an Ancestral is usually enough to win a game in Vintage, and Kefnet says you can make you opponent fight over a copy instead of the real thing. I’m not sure if that’s more powerful than new Karn (I’ve tinkered with Mycosynth Lattice/Null Rod/Tabernacle, and Lattice/Rod combo is very strong), but I think they are both worth exploring.