Vintage 101: Master, Master!
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we are back from our vacation and ready to talk about cards! We're going to be poking at Commander Masters and the precon decks there in addition to checking out any cool reprints for Vintage purposes. We've also got some Challenge data from this past weekend and a new video from Justin Gennari on getting into Vintage!
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Commander Masters and Vintage
We've got a new set and while most of it is reprints, Commander Masters also came with several Precon decks with new cards in them. There were definitely some interesting cards but nothing too insane for Vintage purposes. In fact a good majority of the cards didn't really scream Vintage at all, which is sort of a good thing I suppose.
Abstruse Archaic
Not sure if this actually goes anywhere currently but the effect is pretty cool. It copies Keys, Time Vault, it also copies Wasteland. Somewhat interesting enough for sure.
Omarthis, Ghostfire Initiate
Somewhere, someone playing Hardened Scales Workshops is super excited.
Reprints
Despite the fact that many of the cards in the new cards section didn't really scream out Vintage, there were some pretty interesting reprints here or there for Vintage related decks. Here's a few.
Introduction to the Vintage Metagame - 2023 Edition
Justin Gennari always provides some great videos on Vintage, so it was a welcome thing to see an update to his "Introduction to the Vintage Metagame" series. If you're ever on the fence of understanding Vintage and its metagame, Justin is a great resource here.
Vintage Challenge 7/22
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the mid afternoon Saturday event. This event had 49 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.
Doomsday was the most popular deck here, but its win rate was dragged down a bit despite some top finishes. Combo Shops did quite well as did Blue Ring Tinker variants. CounterVine performed poorly here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| BUG Midrange | 1st | duke12 |
| Dimir Tinker | 2nd | ecobaronen |
| Jeskai Lurrus | 3rd | unluckymonkey |
| Doomsday | 4th | discoverN |
| Initiative | 5th | kanister |
| Oath of Druids | 6th | gr33nashe |
| Combo Shops | 7th | Musasabi |
| Doomsday | 8th | IamActuallyLvl1 |
Definitely an interesting Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was a split finals with the recorded winner being BUG Midrange.
This list looks pretty good overall. It's got some solid gameplay against the artifact decks of the format with four Collector Ouphe and some hate versus blue decks with Bowmasters. Very strong list.
The Second Place list is Dimir Tinker.
Four copies of Lorien Revealed is a pretty interesting thing really, in addition to utilizing The One Ring in this kind of shell. No Bolas's Citadel is an interesting choice for sure.
Further down the Top 8 we had Mono White Initiative.
Very powerful stock-looking list here. Phyrexian Censor is a card that I would love to see played more, because it does some really cool stuff as an additional Archon of Emeria effect.
In the bottom of the Top 8 we have Oath of Druids.
I love the Oath and Tell lists. It's a super fun and interesting deck. Atraxa has continually proven itself to be a powerful card in the format.
Vintage Challenge 7/23
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Sunday event.
You can find all of the Top 32 decklists for this event here. There was no data sheet for this event due to technical difficulties.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Tinker | 1st | Musasabi |
| Paradoxical Outcome | 2nd | shir kahn |
| Aggro Shops | 3rd | Sommertroll |
| Doomsday | 4th | Kuvalda |
| Initiative | 5th | kanister |
| Initiative | 6th | MarcusMPV |
| Oath of Druids | 7th | KingHairy |
| Combo Shops | 8th | lucajak |
Very interesting Top 8 here. At the end of the event, it was Dimir Tinker that won.
Lorien Revealed might just very be an actually super interesting card in these kinds of decks. It's ability to cycle for Islands is very strong (since it can cycle for Underground Sea). The One Ring in these shells is very strong as well.
In Second Place we had Paradoxical Outcome.
The One Ring in PO shells is absolutely where I considered it would see play due to how powerful bouncing the Ring with PO is. Seems like it's starting to pick up for sure.
Speaking of the Ring, we also had Aggro Shops here.
The Ring seems really good in a deck playing Workshops where it can power it out and use it to draw cards while creating an aggressive front to win the game off of. The fact that this deck also technically has 8 Rings due to Phyrexian Metamorph is pretty good too.
All the decks here have the Ring in it, it seems, as does our bottom list of Combo Shops.
This list has both PO and Workshops, so yeah, it seems like a great place for the Ring indeed.
Around the Web
- Our round-up of Justin Gennari videos just doesn't stop!
- Revenantkioku has a Doomsday video on a Vintage Prelim event. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 list here.
Breach featuring Hurkyl, Master Wizard!
Lurrus featuring Samwise the Stouthearted.
Mono Black Scam Depths is sweet.
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!
