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Vintage 101: Buffalo Chicken Dip Vintage Open I

by Joe Dyer // Oct 6, 2023

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 diving into the Buffalo Chicken Dip Vintage Open I that took place over the weekend in Canal Winchester, OH! This event was a lot of fun and very interesting. In addition to that we've got two Challenges plus a Qualifier event to look at!

Without further ado, let's dive right in!

Buffalo Chicken Dip Vintage Open I

This past weekend in Canal Winchester, OH at the Brewdog Hotel and Brewery was the very first Buffalo Chicken Dip Vintage Open. This tournament organizer usually runs Legacy events (under the Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy moniker) but decided to get together a full proxy Vintage event as well. All of BCDL's event info and links can be found on their Twitter. The VOD for this event should be up at some point soon on their YouTube. The First Place prize for this event was an Unlimited Time Vault, so definitely a prize worthy of Magic's oldest format.

I was able to attend this event myself and it was really a ton of fun. I'm going to break down my own event and the Gathering aspect of this event first before diving into the actual metagame statistics of this event.

My Event

Heading up to this event even when I knew I was going to be able to play in it, I had a pretty hard time trying to decide what I wanted to play. I have been pretty thoroughly enamored however by the new versions of Oath of Druids and how powerful Atraxa, Grand Unifier was in those decks that I initially settled on playing Oath for this event.

Of course, as things happen, I nearly ran off the rails in my desire to be unconventional the week before the event and started messing around with the Optimus Prime, Hero Sneak Scam list I had in last week's article, thinking I might play it instead. I did play one league with the deck and realized I wasn't vibing well with that deck (combine this with the fact that MTGMelee doesn't even have the Transformers cards in their database making for a sort of awkward thing) that I defaulted back to the deck I knew I felt comfortable with, which of course was Oath.

For the most part, I ended up fairly pleased that I chose this deck, despite as we will see later on that it was the most represented archetype in the room. I definitely felt the presence of other Oath players sitting around me throughout the event. Still, I was really happy with the deck overall and it was a lot of fun to play.

At the end of the event I ended up 4-2 for 15th place. Not a Top 8, but still a happy and reasonable result. My wins in this event were versus two Initiative decks, one Beseech Storm, and one Cradle Vine deck, while I lost to the Oath mirror (to the guy with the sickest ALL WHITE BORDERED real Oath deck of all time) and to Lurrus Saga piloted by Marshall Arthurs.

A lot of my deckbuilding decisions didn't really take the mirror into much account and I think in the future I would tweak more to the mirror because the mirror match is a very interesting and grindy thing. I did want to have strong tech versus Initiative because I feel that deck is still very good, so cards like Portal to Phyrexia felt important to have (and I think pretty much most Tinker decks should have this card in the sideboard).

Regardless, I had a really great time with the deck and there are certainly things to tune about it, but it's a super fun deck and felt interesting to play. I was also pretty proud of my proxy work (seriously, old bordering everything was the perfect theme for a Vintage event).

The Gathering

The real big reason to come to events like these is really just the Gathering. It's always so nice to get to hang out with folks at these events and also to get to meet people we've never gotten a chance to meet before. In this vein, I finally got to meet and chat a bit with our good friend and renowned Vintage Streamer Justin Gennari as well as getting to meet and hang out with Edward Bonar II of the OK Land Run folks.

Furthermore, this event had a great friendly presence felt throughout by my good friends in the Team Serious crew, from the best person ever in 2022 Vintage Champ Rajah James to folks like Jerry Yang, Matt Hazard, Steven McGrew, Duane Haddix, Eric Caffrey, and others. Y'all make events fun and interesting. Several of the TS crew even showed up in chicken outfits.

At the end of the day, doing well is nice and all, but the Gathering is what we really come for, and everyone involved in this one made it a great day for me.

Of course, this event also had lunch provided (which is baked into the event entry fee), and the food was pretty good. Brisket tacos were tasty, and the buffalo chicken dip (the venue's recipe not Rob's) was much better this time around from the Legacy Open.

Kudos to Rob Wilson for running events like these because they are simply super fun.

The Event Metagame

This event was fairly well attended overall, at the end of the day having 48 players in attendance.

You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.

Oath of Druids was the most represented deck in the entire room, with ELEVEN players on the deck, and its win rate was quite good at 58.7%. Lurrus Saga was also quite popular as was Combo Shops variants (both Jewel and decks like Smelting Vat combo) and Beseech Storm. Initiative had a reasonable number of players but it performed rather poorly as did Jeskai and Aggro Vine decks.

Let's take a look at the Top 8.

Deck Name	Placing	Player Name
Oath of Druids	1st	Justin Gennari
Counter Vine	2nd	Crouchsnap
Lurrus Saga	3rd	Joe Brennan
Beseech Storm	4th	Sgiambi
Lurrus Saga	5th	Robert Hayes
Beseech Storm	6th	Ryan Chimzar
Aggro Shops	7th	Steven McGrew
Beseech Storm	8th	Matt Hazard

Quite a bit of Beseech Storm in this Top 8 coupled with Lurrus Saga, some Bazaar, and some Aggro Shops. At the end of the event though it was our good friend Justin Gennari who came from afar to get his name on the big chicken trophy and win the Time Vault.

Justin's list was quite well tuned for the mirror here, with cards like Serra's Emissary and Karakas to deal with opposing Atraxas. I would probably play something closer to this sideboard configuration myself in the future as it looked quite good. Justin did recount to me a game where he got to steal an opposing Lurrus with Oko, Thief of Crowns and then replay an Oath from the graveyard, which sounds amazing.

Justin did do a full recount of this event on his YouTube Channel, which you can see below.

In Second Place owe had Counter Vine.

This looks like a very straightforward and clean list. Very strong for sure. This deck can muscle out a lot of power quickly and it looks very good.

As noted we had a lot of Beseech Storm in this Top 8 so let's look at one of those.

The main deck Sheoldred, the Apocalypse here is pretty sweet. I also like The One Ring as a Beseech target if you really need it. This deck just does some really powerful things and it's very good at what it does and it looked great whenever I saw it throughout the day.

Vintage Challenge 9/30

The first Challenge event of the weekend was the mid-afternoon Saturday event. This event had 54 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 datasheet here.

Initiative and Oath were the two most popular decks, with Oath having a much better win rate despite Initiative having a super good top finish. Lurrus Saga did very well as did AggroVine, while CounterVine, BUG, and Combo Shops all did poorly.

Let's take a look at the Top 8.

Deck Name	Placing	MTGO Username
Initiative	1st	_against_
Lurrus Saga	2nd	Solidsnake408
Aggro Shops	3rd	Cuikui
Aggro Vine	4th	Montolio
Oath of Druids	5th	rdfi
Oath of Druids	6th	Fantaman95
Initiative	7th	marceliiine
Aggro Vine	8th	J0SE

Not a huge amount of variety in this Top 8. At the end of the event despite the overall win rate it was Initiative that took it all down.

Solidly powerful list here. I am loving the Mirran Crusaders in the sideboard here. Seems quite good versus these Lurrus decks with Bowmasters, and seems very good in general in being able to push past an Atraxa damage.

In Second Place we have Lurrus Saga.

This deck continues to have a lot of strong finishes despite it being an utterly super fair deck. I think this is just an evolution of BUG dropping green and moving deeper into Dimir colors for sure. It trades well in a lot of situations and is quite good at refueling.

Also in this Top 8 we had Aggro Shops.

Null Rod Aggro is definitely a good place to be for this deck in my opinion. This deck seems really good against a wide array of things in the format at the moment for sure.

Vintage Challenge 10/1

The second Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Sunday event. This event had 43 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 datasheet here.

Lurrus Saga was the most popular deck here, but its win rate was exceptionally poor. Doomsday also was dragged down hard by most of its three pilots while one did very well. AggroVine, CounterVine, and Initiative all did well.

Let's take a look at the Top 8.

Deck Name	Placing	MTGO Username
BUG Midrange	1st	lordoflifegain
Lurrus Vault Key	2nd	shir kahn
Doomsday	3rd	SingPanMan
Initiative Tinker	4th	TunnelGaan
Beseech Storm	5th	Musasabi
Oath of Druids	6th	Thalai
Oath of Druids	7th	_Batutinha_
Counter Vine	8th	Firetruck

Fairly interesting Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was BUG Midrange that won.

I do so enjoy seeing copies of Energy Flux in decks for sure. Fun card. Spell Pierce has also been heavily ticking up in general and I think that's pretty strong right now. So many things it hits for sure.

In Second Place we had Lurrus Vault Key.

This deck is always so very cool to look at. I love seeing a Goblin Engineer deck in this format, not to mention sweet cards like Haywire Mite.

Further down the Top 8 we had Initiative Tinker.

I can dig a lot of this list for sure. Lorien Revealed has very quickly found its way into the format and it's super good. Main deck Mindbreak Trap honestly seems like a strong thing too right now as well.

Vintage Qualifier 10/1

This past weekend on Sunday was also a Vintage Qualifier event. These events are not like Super Qualifiers as they only cost QPs to enter and only give Regional Championship invites to the two finalists. This event had 159 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 datasheet here.

Lurrus Saga was the most popular deck by a lot but its win rate was a little less than 50%. Oath was also exceptionally popular and it had a really strong win rate. Of the decks that did poorly here, BUG and Doomsday as well as Oops underperformed while Bazaar variants and Beseech Storm all did well.

Let's take a look at the Top 8.

Deck Name	Placing	MTGO Username
Lurrus Saga	1st	duke12
Oath of Druids	2nd	Wizard_2002
Lurrus Saga	3rd	Jpsn54
UB Tinker	4th	LeoFa
Combo Shops	5th	Parrotlet
Beseech Storm	6th	Musasabi
Breach	7th	Cdnewlon
Grixis Saga	8th	ReneRandrup

Very interesting Top 8. Good variety it seems like. At the end of the event in a really wild turn of events the winner was also the winner of the Legacy Qualifier this same weekend in the form of duke12 on Lurrus Saga.

As I noted earlier, Spell Pierce has really ticked up and it's putting in a lot of work in these decks. These decks need small edges to win and require a lot of really tight play and that's what makes it interesting.

In Second Place we had Oath of Druids.

Gaea's Blessing is one I haven't seen too much in these Show & Oath builds, but it makes sense. Lorien Revealed creeping into these lists as well.

Further down the Top 8 we had Beseech Storm.

I saw and played against a number of these decks this past weekend and they looked pretty good once they got going.

Around the Web

Justin Gennari's video roundup is here:
- Dreadnoughts!
- Burning Wish PO (Hilarious side note: yours truly shows up in this one)
Jarvis Yu has a video on Lurrus Saga. Check it out here.
Andy Markiton has a video on CradleVine. Check it out here.
DasSourKraut has a video on Esper Tinker. Check it out here.

The Spice Corner

The last week's 5-0 lists can be found here.

UP THE BEANSTALK OATH.

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!