Vintage 101: Thinkin' About Them Beans
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 Up the Beanstalk and the amount of play the card has seen in Vintage thus far, as well as theory-crafting how good this card could be. In addition to that we've got some Challenges to look at as well as a surprise announcement of a possible upcoming high-end Vintage event.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Beanstalks for Days
Up the Beanstalk has certainly caused a lot of interesting things for various formats, including getting banned in Modern and having redefined Midrange/Control decks in Legacy. But can a two-mana uncommon cut it in Vintage?
It turns out actually that the answer can be yes! There is a wide enough plethora of cards available that can trigger a Beanstalk once it's in play that it can be worth trying this card out. Specifically, some of the big hitters here are cards beyond Force of Will with effects like Ethereal Forager, Gush, Treasure Cruise, and Dig Through Time.
A lot is going on with this kind of list. It's got a lot of things that it's doing that are very controlling, utilizing effects like Lorien Revealed as both pitch spell, fetch land, and draw spell. There's a great number of ways one can approach this kind of deck and I do think that Beans could be a real thing in Vintage if people spent the time to tune it.
Most especially I think this deck gains a bit more in the world of paper Magic, where similarly to Legacy, cards like Triumph of Saint Katherine help become low-cost and high mana value threats for the deck that also trigger Beans, but also provide a very hard race versus other decks.
This one requires a lot more tuning for sure, and I expect that it will be fun to try out despite not being able to play it on Magic Online.
I do think that there is room in the format for these kinds of decks and it will be interesting to see if people will be willing to give them a try in various places because Beanstalk as a card seems very powerful overall and has a place in the format.
NYSE Open VIII Announcement
During this past week, Nick Detwiler, one of the OG Vintage folks who was the head of the NYSE Tournament series posted a curious poll about the interest in a Vintage tournament in the vein of NYSE (NYSE is an older tournament series that is a 15-proxy unsanctioned event) that would be for some big prizes.
A few days later, Nick did confirm that this event would be the NYSE Open VIII and would be a similar tournament construction but the prize pool would be a Black Lotus, seven other pieces of power, four Mishra's Workshop, and four Bazaar of Baghdad. What an insane prize pool! It's possible that the event entry for such an event would be quite high (Detwiler specified probably $500) but it's certainly something.
We'll have more information on this event as details come through, but for now, you can find the post over here.
Vintage Challenge 1/6
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the mid-afternoon Saturday event. This event had 67 players in it thanks to the Vintage Streamer's Discord and Daybreak Games.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
Both Jewel Shops and Lurrus were very popular with Jewel Shops having a subpar win rate despite a Top 8 finish. Lurrus Saga and Countervine performed quite well as did Oath. Doomsday performed quite poorly.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus Saga | 1st | Miharu_Fuyumiya |
| Prison Shops | 2nd | shir kahn |
| Initiative | 3rd | JuanmaAT |
| Prison Shops | 4th | TVigs |
| Lurrus Saga | 5th | musasabi |
| Jewel Shops | 6th | teichou_aisu |
| Countervine | 7th | goyf_daddy89 |
| Prison Shops | 8th | TaJoordan |
Lots of Workshops in this Top 8 between Jewel and Prison, but the end of the event was decided by Lurrus Saga.
Seal of Cleansing is a super sweet include in a Lurrus deck for sure. Being able to recur artifact destruction versus Shops seems insane.
In Second Place we had Prison Shops.
Solidly well-built list here. A bit of a mixture of aggressive and Prison elements overall.
Also in this Top 8 we had Initiative.
Super clean list here. Dauntless Dismantler continues to be a super cool card in this deck for sure.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Countervine.
Echoing Deeps as a possible copy of a Bazaar in the graveyard is super duper sweet. I love it.
Vintage Challenge 1/7
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Sunday event. This event had 46 players in it thanks to the Vintage Streamer's Discord and Daybreak Games.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
Lurrus Saga was very popular and it had a pretty strong win rate. Prison Shops had a middle of the road win rate, while Initiative did very well. Countervine and Aggro Shops underperformed.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus Saga | 1st (Split) | Mogged |
| Lurrus Saga | 2nd (Split) | duke12 |
| Jewel Shops | 3rd | yPrincipe |
| Bant Control | 4th | lordoflifegain |
| Prison Shops | 5th | kasa |
| Rhinos | 6th | Byvci |
| Initiative | 7th | Cachorrowo |
| BUG | 8th | TeamLeaderNA |
Highly interesting Top 8 here. At the end of the event, it was a split finals between two Lurrus Saga decks. Let's look at the recorded winner.
Ledger Shredder is honestly a pretty sweet card to pair with Lurrus, since you can use it to bin cards you can replay with Lurrus. Very cool.
The Second Place was also Lurrus Saga.
This version has the Spreading Seas in it that I think is super cool. Feed the Swarm in the sideboard here is also pretty sweet.
Also in this Top 8 we had Bant Control.
I like this deck quite a bit. Ethereal Forager is such a sweet card, as pointed out earlier in the article.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had RHINOS.
Alright yes it's kind of cool that someone made Rhinos in Vintage. I love it for sure. Super hilarious.
Around the Web
- RiskyDiceMTG has a video on Esper Tinker. Check it out here.
- Justin Gennari has some videos for us this past week.
- Revenantkioku has a video on Throes of Tibalt. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Let's look at some of the crazy spicy lists over the past week!
Chrome Host Seedshark is a SICK card, especially when paired with Urza, Lord High Artificer.
FASTBOND VALAKUT EXPLORATION LET'S GO.
SEN TRIPLETS.
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!
