Vintage 101: Canned 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 taking a look at whether Up the Beanstalk is a reasonable strategy in current Vintage. In addition we've got some Challenges to look at.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Beans Beans the Magical Fruit
I'm always on the lookout for spicy decks and always trying to think of ways to approach the Vintage metagame in unique ways. I tend to think like this because well, I do believe that there are things that can occur in a format that people are not seeing or not playing primarily due to lack of hive mind on non-established metagame players. I think the recent success of Phyrexian Dreadnought decks is a big pointer that things can appear and do well if enough work is put into them.
I also always try to look at other established formats and archetypes within those formats for things that could be interesting or right on the cusp of interesting. One of those cards that has long intrigued me in Vintage is Up the Beanstalk.
I've played around with these shells before in Vintage, but more recent printings from within the past two years have made for some interesting ideas on how best to approach this kind of decks. One of the big cards that more recently hit was Rakshasa's Bargain from Tarkir: Dragonstorm and also This Town Ain't Big Enough from Outlaws of Thunder Junction.
Both of these spells have some form of inherent cost reduction to them in a sense. This Town costs 1U if you're targeting their thing and your thing (which thankfully enough there's a bunch of things always worth targeting with Moxen and stuff) but still triggers Beanstalk because its mana value doesn't change. Same with Rakshasa's Bargain since it can cost BGU, but the mana value is still six. Both cards being instant is pretty cool.
To be clear though, there have been virtually zero actual tournament results with a deck like this in the past three months, much of this is just theory crafting. There are a number of inspirations one can take on this, by either playing low to the ground with Lurrus (since you get access to both Psychic Frog and Bowmasters) and putting all of your big spells into your noncreature spells. There's also some measure in ditching Lurrus and getting to play big threats like Murktide Regent and Oko. Having something pretty big like Murktide can be reasonable since much of the format is rocking Fatal Push as one of the premier removal spells, and dodging Push seems like a reasonably strong place.
I'm not sure what the correct angle is here, and frankly, maybe this strategy never does go anywhere in Vintage, but it's fun to think about how things could be and how things could be. What are some fun and interesting concepts you might be interested in for Vintage that you don't normally see? Let me know below in the comments.
Vintage Challenge 32 5/8/2025
The first Challenge event of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 41 players in it thanks to the data collected by the MTGO Vintage Community.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Lurrus PO was the most played deck of the event and its win rate was pretty good for that representation. Dimir Lurrus seemed to do rather poorly, while it was "Other Lurrus" decks that did very well at two copies with a strong win rate.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus Stiflenought | 1st | Ark4n |
| Lurrus PO | 2nd | unluckymonkey |
| Dredge | 3rd | Munchlax446 |
| Raker Shops | 4th | GodOfSlaughter |
| Lurrus PO | 5th | etoustar |
| Raker Shops | 6th | mortr3d |
| Beseech Lurrus | 7th | Aaa258 |
| Azorius Initiative | 8th | TrueHero |
So yes, a good amount of Lurrus here. At the end of the event it was one of the "Other Lurrus" decks that won, aka Stiflenought!
This deck is honestly really cool and interesting. I like that Stiflenought exists as a part of Vintage, as it's always been a deck I've loved in Legacy. I hate that it's a Lurrus deck, but I get why. Still, Doorkeeper Thrull is a sweet sweet card.
In Second Place we had Lurrus PO.
This PO variant has certainly made its runs over the current format. It's no surprise to see it do well, and of course, the pilot here did a trifecta the weekend before of winning literally every challenge on this same deck. It's hard to deny how good it is, and how strong Stock Up has enabled it to be.
Vintage Challenge 32 5/9/2025
The second Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 42 players in it thanks to the data collected by the MTGO Vintage Community.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Lurrus PO was again the most played deck of the event, and its win rate looked really good. Jewel Shops looked great at 1 of 2 copies hitting Top 8. Initiative had a weirdly poor win rate despite making one Top 8 appearance.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | IamActuallyLvl1 |
| Lurrus PO | 2nd | _Batutinha_ |
| Jewel Shops | 3rd | satu2112 |
| Lurrus PO | 4th | TheMagePower |
| Azorius Initiative | 5th | TrueHero |
| Lurrus Breach | 6th | desolutionist |
| Lurrus PO | 7th | Neymar_Jr |
| Initiative | 8th | VitorCarvalho01 |
Lot of Lurrus PO specifically and Initiative/Jewel. At the end of the event, it was two Lurrus PO decks that won, but the First Place one by Justin Gennari was slightly different.
So obviously the big thing here is the lack of being 4C and having some of the splashier effects like Forth Eorlingas!, but the deck construction is solid. Your mana is a little cleaner here and you do have the ability to have Vampiric Tutor, which is nice.
In Second Place, we had the more "unluckymonkey" style of Lurrus PO.
Always nice seeing Surveil lands in a deck. They really make for some very interesting gameplay overall and are generally very fun to play with.
Vintage Challenge 32 5/10/2025
The third Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 41 players in it, thanks to the data collected by the MTGO Vintage Community.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Dredge was the most played deck, but its win rate wasn't very good. Lurrus PO looked strong still here, as did Raker Shops.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | RatherBplayingMTG |
| Azorius Initiative | 2nd | Cazuza |
| Raker Shops | 3rd | _Shatun_ |
| Dimir Lurrus | 4th | discoverN |
| Raker Shops | 5th | Marcuzinho |
| BUG | 6th | Uzbek |
| Initiative | 7th | almostomniscient |
| Lurrus PO | 8th | Diem4x |
This is a bit more diverse of a Top 8. At the end of the event it was the Esper Lurrus PO that won.
I have to imagine that as long as Stock Up is a 4x card in Vintage, these kinds of decks will tend to reign supreme over the regular Lurrus variants. It just feels like such a much more powerful strategy than playing fair Lurrus.
In Second Place we had Azorius Initiative.
Balance in a deck in 2025 is superb. Sign me up.
Vintage Challenge 32 5/11/2025
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 41 players in it thanks to the data collected by the MTGO Vintage Community.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Dredge was the most played deck and it looked quite good. "Other Lurrus" looked great too here (mostly Stiflenought). Lurrus PO dipped off but had a Top 8 appearance.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Stiflenought | 1st | medvedev |
| Dredge | 2nd | blackdecks99 |
| Oath | 3rd | etoustar |
| Esper Lurrus | 4th | Fantaman95 |
| Lurrus PO | 5th | unluckymonkey |
| Stiflenought | 6th | _Babbuja_ |
| Sphere Shops | 7th | kristofff |
| Raker Shops | 8th | Jinjaa |
Fairly neat Top 8. At the end of the event, it was Stiflenought that won.
To compound on earlier, Doorkeeper Thrull does a wide variety of things, and it's wild that we keep finding things that it shuts off. Shutting off stuff like Glaring Fleshraker damage triggers, Thundertrap Trainer, the list goes on and on, what this card deals with besides just enabling Phyrexian Dreadnought. The best part is that it has flash, and that's what really sells it.
In Second Place, we had Dredge.
Incredibly aggressive variant. It doesn't even go up to eight Forces post board for countermagic. Pretty wild.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari always has some cool things for us.
- LSV has a Vintage PO league. Check it out here.
- Revenantkioku has a Vintage Lands league. Check it out here.
- Kindamtg is playing Black Initiative. Check it out here.
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!
