Funnily enough, first deck I faced on MTGO after the rules change was doing exactly that. It didn’t work too well, but I’m chalking that up to that specific deck being unrefined. There’s a lot of potential there, though I can’t say that it will actually be good.

Actually, I’ve been playing around with Lurrus in Merfolk. As anti-Jund tech, it’s very good since Vial helps dodge discard, the game goes long and you tend to flood. Kinda mediocre elsewhere, but there’s a lot of potential.

In my testing, maindeck Lurrus is pretty poor in Taxes decks, and not great as a companion. If you go really deep on flicker effects there’s value in spades, but I didn’t find the effort worthwhile.

I wouldn’t count the companions as a whole out just yet. Yorion in particular will remain a part of the meta. I’m not sure about how though. Some decks were on artifacts and Urza, some snow and value not sure how it will all shake out.

I’m not sure how the meta goes. I don’t think it reverts, but it also can’t remain as-is. Prowess is taking a big hit here, and I’ve always thought Amulet was overrated. This was especially true online when Ponza was everywhere, and given that it stands to take the weakest hit, may be The Deck.

I wonder if there are some corner cases where using something like Aether Vial will mitigate some of downsides of paying the companion tax. I don’t see this being the case in decks like Humans or Merfolk, but maybe something like a G/W D&T build that runs Vial along side Noble H to help with the tax. But I still don’t see if it’s be worth it, at that stage players are probably just better off running Lurrus as a main deck card. He’s certainly strong enough to justify it.

So, let’s discuss the future: If companions are functionally toast, do we just go back to a format that is dominated by mono-R Prowess, Amulet Titan, and Snow decks? I’d imagine so–at least until M2021 gives Merfolk a bomb 1 drop that rockets the archetype to tier 0 status. A fish player can dream right?