Vintage 101: Beseeching the Mirror
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 looking at the first weekend of Wilds of Eldraine on MTGO, specifically in relation to how much Beseech the Mirror has impacted the format. In addition to that we've got a reminder on the BCD Vintage Open at the end of the month as well as two Challenges from over the weekend.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
It's Getting Wild Out There!
We're one weekend into the release of Wilds of Eldraine, and it's very clear from just the first weekend's events that one card from that set is definitely making waves in Vintage already.
Beseech the Mirror has already proven that it's a powerful card in Vintage, heralding a return of cards like Dark Ritual to a format where the predominant Dark Ritual deck was Doomsday. It's made for an exceptionally interesting set of decks to come out of this.
Beseech's power lies in its sheer versatility. If you really need a way to prolong the game or wait a turn, you can get The One Ring. If you need a Citadel, you can get Tinker. If you need to win the game off enough Storm count, you can get Tendrils of Agony. It's representative of extra copies of all of these cards at the same time, and the mana investment into the card is quite low as is the ability to cast it with Bargain. Vintage as a format is built off of cards like Moxen and Lotus, so being able to Bargain away a card is pretty easy here.
It's amusing and worth noting too that Urza's Saga is an Enchantment, so it can easily be sacrificed to Beseech, but so can the tokens it generates. One of the best ways to think about this card is consider that you can now play five copies of Tinker, but instead of just Tinker it's five copies of everything else you'd want to get out of your deck that costs four mana or less.
It will be interesting to see just how deep this rabbit hole goes and how the metagame will react to it, but I think Vintage will continue to do what it's always done and integrate and assimilate this new card quite well.
BCD Vintage Open 9/30/2023
The Buffalo Chicken Dip Vintage Open is still ongoing at the end of this month on 9/30/2023 at the Brewdog space in Canal Winchester, Ohio, and the event is still now 100% full playtest cards. You can find all of the registration information over here.
I will be at the event playing! If you are going to be there, please come say hi!
Vintage Challenge 9/9
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the mid afternoon Saturday event. This event had 60 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
The Beseech the Mirror decks came right out of the gate in this event, being the most popular deck and doing quite well in win rate. Combo Shops also did very well as did Dimir Lurrus decks.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Beseech Storm | 1st | thepowernine |
| Oath of Druids | 2nd | BERNASTORRES |
| Combo Shops | 3rd | teichou_aisu |
| Combo Shops | 4th | gregoriusil |
| Grixis Lurrus | 5th | unluckymonkey |
| Beseech Storm | 6th | Musasabi |
| Dimir Tinker | 7th | Capriccioso |
| Combo Shops | 8th | Nammersquats |
Quite a bit of Combo Shops in this event. However, at the end of the event it was thepowernine that won on Beseech Storm.
As we indicated in the main part of this article, Beseech seems quite powerful in being able to nab any piece you need in whatever situation which is what makes it so powerful. Bargaining in this format is very easy to do, making this card very powerful.
In Second Place we had Oath of Druids.
I really like this deck a ton. It has a ton of power behind it and Atraxa is absolutely super good.
As noted, a lot of Combo Shops in the Top 8 so let's look at the highest placing one.
This deck is always pretty interesting to look at. It plays such a wild game, and Displacer Kitten having something of a home is pretty cool.
Further down the Top 8 we had Grixis Lurrus.
This deck being more of a tempo build that leans on the general creature suite that Jeskai often does, but also has Bowmasters is pretty sweet. Seems like a very powerful way to play around with space.
Vintage Challenge 9/10
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Sunday event. This event had 52 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Both Beseech and Oath were very popular and they both had solid win rates. Doomsday however, did much better as did Prison Shops and Aggro Shops. Combo Shops performed poorly in this event.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Doomsday | 1st | duke12 |
| Beseech Storm | 2nd | Musasabi |
| Prison Shops | 3rd | ChessNight5030 |
| Aggro Shops | 4th | adm29 |
| Lurrus Vault Key | 5th | shir kahn |
| Oath of Druids | 6th | Jamesses |
| Initiative Tinker | 7th | burrarun |
| Dimir Lurrus | 8th | lavaridge |
Good amount of Shops, but also a reasonable amount of variety. At the end of the event it was Doomsday that won.
I definitely can get behind the four Subtlety in the sideboard here. Initiative is still exceptionally popular despite people trying out new toys. It's a strong answer to the deck for sure, especially if you're ensuring you have the critical turn to win the game off Doomsday.
In Second Place we had Beseech Storm.
I have a feeling we'll be seeing variants of this type of deck for days to come. Beseech definitely seems very powerful.
Also in this Top 8 we had Prison Shops.
Some sweet inclusions here, but notably having something like Oswald Fiddlebender as a way to tutor artifacts into play is pretty cool. I also really like Argentum Masticore here.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Dimir Lurrus.
This deck certainly has had a lot of continued success, so it seems like a really good thing to have in the current format.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari has some great videos for us this week.
- Brian Coval is playing some Tinker Breach. Check it out here.
- FiretruckModo has a video on Squee in the Beseech meta. Check it out here.
- Montolio (aka Andy Markiton) has some videos for us this week too:
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 lists here.
Montolio with NULL ROD SHOPS.
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!
