Vintage 101: Wild Wild Eldraine
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 Wilds of Eldraine and how any of those cards might impact Vintage! In addition to that we've got two Challenges to look at from this past weekend.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Something Wild This Way Comes
We are looking ahead to the next Standard product with Wilds of Eldraine and what cards from this set could see play in Vintage. This set brings back at least one returning mechanic with Adventures as well as some new mechanics such as Bargain and Role Tokens. Bargain is the more interesting of these, tacking on an additional effect to cards if you sacrifice an artifact, enchantment, or token as you cast it.
Let's take a look at some of the cards that could see play in Vintage out of this set as well as the Wilds of Eldraine Commander decks. There isn't a lot out of this set for Vintage, but what is there is reasonable enough.
Beseech the Mirror
This is one of the more talked about cards in the spoiler season, due to how powerful some of the payoff cards this card can get are. Vintage is a format of artifacts just sitting in play that can be sacrificed to Bargain very easily, and you can just fetch some really powerful cards with this in the current format. This can nab the Time Vault in the deck or anything like Yawgmoth's Will (which is insane) or just literally any good restricted card, and you get to play four of these in a deck.
It does generally require something like Dark Ritual and those decks have not been very good as of late, but Beseech could make for some interesting new space for those. This is certainly my favorite of the new cards for Vintage.
Court of Ardenvale
There's a new cycle of Courts in the Commander product for this set, and while most of them are pretty me, Court of Ardenvale is interesting enough. It can return permanents to the battlefield which is really good for a deck like Initiative that can bring back creatures like Archon of Emeria and White Plume Adventurer.
It's probably not playable, but it is cool.
Questing Druids
Unfortunately, Quirion Dryad is currently not playable in Vintage, and tacking on a Reckless Impulse to that card doesn't make it any more playable. Still, there was a time when something like this was super great, but no longer.
Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender
Aggro Shops has not really existed in a Ravager form for some time, but this would be a really solid creature in that sort of deck. This is weird in that it's a card that dodges Dack Fayden, Oko, or W6 but actually wants you to leave those cards in play so you can keep the trample and hexproof.
Neat card, but doubtful it sees much play in the current format.
Vintage Challenge 8/26
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the mid-afternoon Saturday event. This event had 47 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 was quite popular but it had a really poor win rate. Tinker decks and Jeskai decks did very well overall as did Breach. Oath and BUG did poorly.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Initiative Tinker | 1st | Capriccioso |
| Dimir Tinker | 2nd | burrarun |
| Jeskai Lurrus | 3rd | duke12 |
| Cradle Vine | 4th | s8shock |
| Dimir Tinker | 5th | _BOI_ |
| Lurrus Breach | 6th | Michelino |
| Dredge | 7th | Lord_Beerus |
| Doomsday | 8th | Thiim |
Lot of Tinker variants here as well as some Bazaar. No Shops to be seen here. At the end of the event, it was Initiative Tinker that won.
This is a very powerful list and Lorien Revealed seems quite good in this deck in being able to fix colors for cards like Lavinia. This variant of the Tinker decks is definitely a strong place to be in the current format.
In Second Place we had Dimir Tinker.
Soul Rend is a super cool sideboard card here. I am definitely digging it. This list is really good and has a lot of powerful stuff it is doing.
Also in this Top 8 we have Cradle Vine.
I really dig Cradle Vine. It's such a super powerful and fun deck. It does some really strong stuff and Hexdrinker is sweet.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we have Dredge.
This is definitely how Dredge has been built as of late. It's evolved into a very strong thing for sure. Great place to start if you're thinking about Dredge.
Vintage Challenge 8/27
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 datasheet here.
Both Initiative and Oath were popular, but both had pretty poor results despite Oath having a reasonable finish. Jeskai did well and so did Breach. Aggro Vine and Doosmday both did poorly, again despite the latter having a Top 8.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus | 1st | Mogged |
| Breach | 2nd | Capriccioso |
| Jeskai Lurrus | 3rd | John1111 |
| Dimir Tinker | 4th | Musasabi |
| Esper Tinker | 5th | discoverN |
| Oath of Druids | 6th | Fantaman95 |
| Doomsday | 7th | sixmp |
| Counter Vine | 8th | helvetti |
Quite a bit of Tinker and Lurrus here, in addition to some Oath and Doomsday. At the end of the event, it was Mogged on Dimir Lurrus who won.
This list is really cool for sure. Bowmasters and Lurrus seems really powerful. In addition to having Saga here this is a really strong deck.
In Second Place we had Breach.
Continually seeing Lorien Revealed in these lists is quite interesting. I think it is very good in these lists as both a fixing of mana and it also pitches to both Forces. Seems quite good.
Further down the Top 8 we had Oath of Druids.
I really love these Atraxa / Show and Tell decks with Oath. They seem quite good and Atraxa is a very powerful card.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we have Hollow Vine.
This deck is lean and mean and does some incredibly powerful things.
Around the Web
- Frank Karsten has a great article on the Vintage metagame by the numbers. Check it out here.
- Justin Gennari has some great videos for us this week.
- Andy Markiton has some great videos as well.
- Mogged has an article about their Vintage Challenge win. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 lists here.
When in doubt, Jund em out!
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!
