Vintage 101: A Gathering of Friends
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 talking about one of the purest forms of fun paper Vintage, the gathering of friends! In addition to that we've got two Challenges to discuss.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Hazard Team Serious Invitational 7
This past weekend was for me, one of the most important reasons behind playing Vintage and having fun with this format, and that was of course... the Gathering. Held annually through my friends in Team Serious, the Hazard Invitational is a celebration of one of our own (Matt Hazard) and his birthday. It's a great way to get friends new and old together for a fun day of Vintage.
These events are never that big due to the nature of being invitation only but they are full proxy friendly. Prize pools are based on donations across all the players who attend and prizing is done by drafting the prizes out at the end of the event. It's always a great time because there's really nothing on the line, and everyone is there to have a good time and hang out more than they are to really play Vintage.
Because we used MTGMelee, you can find the recorded decklists of 14/19 players over here.
Due to the nature of these events, every time I play in them it's usually a good method for me to test decks that I probably wouldn't play in a Magic Online league or Challenge event, but they're usually super fun to play around with. For this event, I opted to play Yorion Beanstalk Control featuring Triumph of Saint Katherine from the Warhammer 40,000 Commander decks.
Yorion Decks are REALLY hard to take good pictures of.
This deck was initially more heavy on the colors, playing cards like Omnath, Locus of Creation and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath. I definitely believe there should be more tuning done to it (and honestly I'd like to see a build using Leyline of the Guildpact as well), but it was honestly super fun to play. I did medium in the event itself, finishing at a 2-3 record overall. My primary losses were to a Thassa's Oracle + Divining Witch Combo deck, Beseech Storm, and Oath with wins versus Belcher and Esper Lurrus Saga.
Some of the major highlights of the event for me was getting to cast Commandeer on a Lorien Revealed with two copies of Up the Beanstalk in play, and also getting to also cast Commandeer on an Ancestral Recall. I also had one of my own Ancestral's get stolen by Misdirection which was super insane and really good for my opponent (and I can't even be mad about it).
Overall, I'd play something like this again. It really was super fun and I feel like something definitely is there for Up the Beanstalk.
I'd like to thank Hazard and the whole of Team Serious for hosting a really fun event and being so awesome. The Gathering at the end of the day was the most important aspect of this event, and it really was awesome to get to spend time with people I haven't seen in a long while.
Vintage Challenge 2/10
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the mid afternoon Saturday event. This event had 64 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Lurrus Saga was the most popular deck and it had a pretty solid win rate overall. Initiative was also quite popular and good here. Oath did very poorly while Dredge did insanely well in addition to Aggro Shops.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Initiative | 1st | Dr.Jon Osterman |
| Turbo Vault Key | 2nd | IamActuallyLvl1 |
| Lurrus Saga | 3rd | JakeTMS |
| Dredge | 4th | Jacobisboss |
| Dredge | 5th | bg88 |
| Aggro Shops | 6th | s8shock |
| 4C Lurrus | 7th | unluckymonkey |
| Aggro Shops | 8th | tao_bye_bye |
Fairly interesting Top 8 here in all actuality. At the end of the event it was Initiative that won.
Solidly straightforward list here. Anointed Peacekeeper as a nod to Bazaar is interesting over Dauntless Dismantler. I love the main deck Loran of the Third Path though.
In Second Place we have our good friend Justin Gennari on Turbo Vault Key.
New card Case of the Filched Falcon showing up here! We talked about this one in our set review and wasn't 100% sure about it, but could see it's usefulness. Seems like it was quite good after all!
Further down the Top 8 we had some Aggro Shops.
Patchwork Automaton continues to be one of the best and most powerful aggressive Shops threat in a long time. It gets big very quickly and the Ward makes it rough to deal with typically.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had 4C Lurrus.
Questing Druid is some sick tech here. Nice to see a Ragavan again after it being virtually nonexistent from the format for a while there.
Vintage Challenge 2/11
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Sunday event. This event had 48 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Initiative was the most popular deck and it's win rate was very good. Lurrus Saga also did well, as did Dredge and Aggro Shops. Jewel Shops, Doomsday, and Oath all did very poorly here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Initiative | 1st | Flossed |
| Dredge | 2nd | Elfkid |
| Dredge | 3rd | ziofrancone |
| Breach | 4th | wiky |
| WG Aggro | 5th | Wesal |
| Aggro Shops | 6th | Hampuse1 |
| Bant Whale | 7th | lordoflifegain |
| Lurrus Saga | 8th | discoverN |
Another really interesting Top 8, and another win by Initiative!
This list is slightly different than the Saturday winning list, but it's still very well constructed. It's a powerful deck and has some strong flexibility to it.
In Second Place we had Dredge.
Sort of interesting to only see two Silversmote Ghoul when that is typically a four of in the deck, but there's a lot else going on here to enable the primary game plan of the deck.
Further down the Top 8 we had WG Aggro.
GW Stoneblade is probably a better name for this deck, with the Stoneforge package here and all. Kaldra Compleat seems like a relative beating in Vintage.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Bant Whale.
I really really love Ethereal Forager, having gotten to play with it quite a bit. It's such a cool card in Vintage where you can re-buy all the best spells to recast them again and again.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari has some videos for us!
- Eric has an article on Long Goodbye in Vintage. Check it out here.
- Montolio has some videos for us as well!
- Charlotte Legacy League has a video on Esper Lurrus vs Oath. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Now that Leagues are posted throughout the week, let's go find some spice!
Not necessarily a League result but a Prelim result... it's LEYLINE OF THE GUILDPACT.
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!
