Vintage 101: On the Road to Thunder Junction
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're off to Thunder Junction for our look at Outlaws of Thunder Junction for Vintage! In addition to that we've got two Challenges over the weekend to look at plus the Vintage Showcase Qualifier.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Outlaws of Thunder Junction for Vintage
We've got a new set coming soon in the form of Outlaws of Thunder Junction, a new Standard set. There's a few new mechanics in this set, namely Plot, Crimes, and Spree. Plotting is a mechanic that lets you pay an up front cost to exile a card at Sorcery speed, which you can then cast for free at a later turn at Sorcery speed without paying its mana cost. Committing a crime is some new terminology that basically means whenever you are targeting anything of your opponent's cards or them. Spree is sort of like a modal Kicker effect that lets you mix and match modes.
With that being said, let's look and see what cards could be playable in Vintage!
Aven Interrupter
Being able to tag a critical spell is interesting enough, especially if you're tagging something that the opponent really needed to critically resolve where you may get to defeat them the following turn, since they can't cast plotted spells on the same turn. Giving them another turn to cast it for free +2 is a thing, but you could also have cards that can impact that too.
Geralf, the Fleshwright
Being Legendary is somewhat of a downside but this card is actually pretty interesting. Kind of like a pseudo-Monastery Mentor-like effect here, but one that can be tagged by Pyroblast of course. Still, there isn't a lot of Blast in the format right now, which might make this card intriguing to play around with.
High Noon
This being a Deafening Silence that you can cash in on later in the game for 5 damage is interesting. Being two mana is rough over the one mana of Deafening Silence, but we also play cards like Archon of Emeria in this format. Seems like it might find a home somewhere.
Nexus of Becoming
My Bolas's Citadel is now a 3/3 Golem! And it just died to Dismember... Yeah I'm not sure if this is any good, but it's goofy.
Slickshot Show-Off
A sort of pseudo Prowess effect on a 1/2 flier with haste that you can also plot and cast on a follow up turn for when you have the juice to start pushing on the gas for it. Seems like an interesting card for sure. I know I definitely saw Justin Gennari talking about this one.
Satoru, the Infiltrator
This is kind of a neat card, but I'm not sure where it fits in Vintage. It does some strong things with the Dredge mechanic, but Dredge isn't really playing colored mana lands anymore to cast this. It's got a cool vibe with 0 mana value cards though so it could be a cool fun deck, but probably not all that good in this format like it might be in Legacy.
Substitue Synthesizer
I actually think this card is pretty cool as the effect is pretty unique in of itself. It works well with cards like Phyrexian Metamorph and pretty much everything in Jewel Shops that is big (Jewel, Mystic Forge, etc.)
I think this could be something interesting to try out, I don't think you need a full four of them, but maybe 1-2 copies in these kinds of decks would be sweet. Might also be cool in blue Shops builds with aggressive game plans.
Vintage Challenge 3/30
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the mid afternoon Saturday event. This event had 56 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's win rate was also really good. Doomsday did well here, as did Initiative and Turbo Vault Key. Sphere Shops and Breach did rather poorly (0% win rate for Breach?!).
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus Saga | 1st | handsomePPZ |
| Doomsday | 2nd | discoverN |
| Turbo Vault Key | 3rd | shir kahn |
| Jewel Shops | 4th | oosunq |
| Lurrus Saga | 5th | Graciasportanto |
| Lurrus Saga | 6th | laughingrock |
| 4C Lurrus | 7th | unluckymonkey |
| Oath of Druids | 8th | firetruck |
Interesting Top 8. Lot of Lurrus here for sure. At the end of the event it was Lurrus Saga that won.
The addition of Timetwister here is sort of interesting. Not a card we see too much in the Lurrus Saga piles. Spreading Seas seeing play as a a card in these piles is always cool to see though.
In Second Place we had Doomsday.
Very solid list. This definitely is a deck that benefitted from from the Ponder unrestriction.
Also in this Top 8 in the first of two Top 4 appearances this weekend is shir kahn on Turbo Vault Key.
I really like this deck. It's definitely clear a lot of the math has been done on the slots here. Oswald Fiddlebender is super sweet too.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Oath of Druids.
Leveraging the ability to play more than one Ponder here is interesting. This deck hasn't traditionally played the card at all but it definitely can find the space. I also really like Serra's Emissary out of the sideboard here as a hedge against a wide array of decks.
Vintage Challenge 3/31
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Sunday event. This event had 50 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamers Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Lurrus Saga was again the most popular deck, and it's win rate was still pretty good. Jewel Shops and BUG both did well here, while Oath and Sphere Shops did poorly.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| BUG | 1st | billster47 |
| Lurrus Saga | 2nd | musasabi |
| Turbo Vault Key | 3rd | shir kahn |
| Jewel Shops | 4th | AJV20 |
| Initiative | 5th | _J0SE_ |
| Lurrus Saga | 6th | Mogged |
| Jewel Shops | 7th | ecobaronen |
| Jewel Shops | 8th | oosunq |
Interesting Top 8, again noting a 3rd place appearance by shir kahn on Vault Key. At the end of the event it was BUG that won.
Very interesting list here. Leaning hard on Ouphe and a single Opposition Agent is interesting with Leovold in the sideboard. Definitely intriguing.
In Second Place we had Lurrus Saga.
Oh Drown in the Loch is really slick. I like that card quite a bit. Also an Urza's Bauble as the fourth Mishra's Bauble!
Further down the Top 8 we had Jewel Shops.
A copy of Spine of Ish Sah in the sideboard is wildly interesting to me, as is the main deck copy of Transmute Artifact. Sick list for sure.
Also in this Top 8 we had Initiative.
Pretty solidly stock list at this point. Anointed Peacekeeper seems like a very strong card right now, since it can tag things like Bazaar and Saga.
Vintage Showcase Qualifier 3/30
This weekend was also the Vintage Showcase Qualifier for this past season of MTGO Premier Play. The Showcase Qualifier is an invite-only event fed from the Showcase Challenge Top 8s and Last Chance Qualifier events. The winner of this event receives an invitation to the MOCS and a Regional Championship. As such, this event had 30 players, and the fields are just generally smaller and more targeted metagames.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Lurrus Saga was quite popular and it did do very well. Lurrus DRS/Doomsday both did well on a single pilot each, and while Sphere Shops looked bad, it had a strong finish for one of its three pilots.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Jewel Shops | 1st | bennybo |
| Sphere Shops | 2nd | Magician15 |
| Lurrus DRS | 3rd | medvedev |
| Jewel Shops | 4th | ohN |
| Lurrus Saga | 5th | duke12 |
| Doomsday | 6th | Enrichetta |
| Initiative | 7th | SpicyLeche |
| Lurrus Saga | 8th | Gregoriusil |
Quite a bit of Lurrus decks as well as Jewel. In fact it was Jewel that won the event.
Solid looking stock list here. No frills or cute stuff, and there doesn't really need to be. Just strong clean Vintage magic.
The Second Place finalist of the event was Sphere Shops.
As I said above, this deck didn't have a good overall event, but Second Place for one of them is a great finish. This is a strong looking list for attacking a smaller metagame, as you can really hone in on beating specific decks with your deck construction.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari has some great stuff for us this week!
- Dr_Yanitor has a video on Doomsday. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Now that leagues are throughout the week, let's fine some spice!
Grixis Lurrus is pretty 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!
