Vintage 101: Catching Up
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're playing catch up a bit as I'm back from vacation. We've got some news about MTGO Season 3 Premier Play and some updates on Win Traders as well as multiple events from the past two weeks.
Because of the level of events we have to cover I'm only going to be covering the top two decklists from each event. This isn't the norm going forward, of course. This is only because there were a lot of events.
Without further ado, let's dive right in.
Magic Online Season 3 Premier Play - No Vintage
We have to start off our catch up article with some ultimately somber news that MTGO Season 3 of Premier Play will not include Vintage as a format. Season 2 had not included Vintage either, instead rotating Pauper into the slot that Vintage occupied from Season 1. For Season 3, Wizards has chosen to rotate in Standard over Pauper into this position.
You can find the update on this over here.
While this is definitely not a pleasant decision to hear, I do expect that Vintage may return for next year's Season 1, but only time will tell. I do hope for an Eternal Weekend event this year, but having a path to the MOCS from Vintage was pretty nice to have.
Win Trader Update
A few weeks back we talked about the League changes to MTGO for Vintage and Standard leagues in terms of payout. Well, it seems that despite losing a ton of value the Win Traders are back at it again, however this time they are not getting published like they were before. Instead of going to 5-0s and getting noticed, these users are sticking to making 4-1s so they avoid trophies. This allows them to fly a little bit more under the radar overall and not get noticed as much. You can find out more from Justin Gennari's post on Twitter here.
While I was hopeful that the League changes would be somewhat helpful, it seems that what's really needed here is a systemic change to Magic Online to really make it impossible to do this. Anything like removing the option to decline joining a match would be a very positive change in the right direction for these issues.
It's unfortunate to continue to see this, but hopefully we can get some input from Daybreak Games and the Magic Online team to correct this issue.
ManaTraders Vintage Monthly 7/30
This past month's ManaTraders Monthly event was Vintage! The Swiss + Top 8 portions took place over the 7/30-7/31 weekend, and the Swiss had 108 players qualified for it and entered into the event thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find the data sheet here and all the decklists here.
While Hogaak and other various decks sat at the top, the overall spread of decks in this event looks pretty good and the win rates are pretty solidly even across the board as well. If anything, Prison Shops did quite well in general.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Prison Shops | 1st | Oderus Urungus |
| Hogaak | 2nd | SknerusMcKwacz |
| Prison Shops | 3rd | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Hogaak | 4th | swiftwarkite2 |
| Doomsday | 5th | Diem4x |
| Grixis Tinker | 6th | desolutionist |
| Paradoxical Outcome | 7th | pyghio |
| BUG Midrange | 8th | t1_tinker |
Good amount of Shops and Hogaak in this Top 8 as well as some Tinker variants. At the end of the Top 8 though it was Prison Shops that won the top prize.
Golos has been on a particular upswing as of late with seemingly no real reason why other than the fact that the deck is still reasonably powerful and has some game versus various decks, especially when utilizing cards like Crucible of Worlds and whatnot to repeatedly abuse effects like Urza's Saga and Wasteland.
The Second Place finalist was on Hogaak.
Very interesting here to see the red splash here just being solely for Blazing Rootwalla. Zero red spells in the sideboard like we would normally see and in this Top 8 that makes sense given that a majority of it was Shops related stuff. Definitely also seeing some tech here for Doomsday as well with Archive Trap in the sideboard.
Vintage Challenge 7/30
The first Vintage Challenge of this particular weekend was the Saturday event, and it 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 data sheet here.
Hogaak and Aggro Shops was super popular, but honestly did just fairly okay. Everything else was all over the place a bit, with the real standout having been Oath of Druids.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Oath of Druids | 1st | Miharu_Fuyumiya |
| Oops! All Spells | 2nd | medvedev |
| Paradoxical Outcome | 3rd | romanmy |
| Breach | 4th | trunks132 |
| Dredge | 5th | notmi |
| GW Aggro | 6th | Wesal |
| Hogaak | 7th | fingers1991 |
| Lurrus Standstill | 8th | MadMaxErnst |
This is a super diverse Top 8 with a lot of various strategies represented. And lo and behold at the end of it all it was Miharu on Oath that won it all.
Haven't seen a Niv-Mizzet, Parun in a hot minute (well, a few weeks at best I'd guess) so it's sweet to see Miharu back on this train. Boseiju looks very powerful here as well in the main especially with Gaea's Blessing to possibly shuffle one back in.
The Second Place finalist was on Oops! All Spells.
This deck does a lot of stuff and has a solid multiple angles of attack to win the game with, not just by the Thassa's Oracle kill but also with Goblin Charbelcher and Sphinx of the Steel Wind. Having room for these multiple angles makes for some very powerful games for sure.
Vintage Challenge 7/31
The second Challenge of the weekend here was the Sunday event, which had 43 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.
Aggro Shops and Doomsday were the popular decks of this event with Aggro Shops having a slightly more positive win rate. Overall this looks pretty good for a smaller event.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Aggro Shops | 1st | Nerdkneereape |
| Oops! All Spells | 2nd | kasa |
| Paradoxical Outcome | 3rd | mechrataal |
| Doomsday | 4th | discoverN |
| Aggro Shops | 5th | Thomas_Serra |
| Doomsday | 6th | Diem4x |
| Doomsday | 7th | SingPanMan |
| Oath of Druids | 8th | burrarun |
A lot of Doomsday in this Top 8, as well as Shops and Oops. At the end of the event it was indeed Aggro Shops that took it all down.
Unlicensed Hearse seems to be the real deal in these decks. It's very good, easy to cast, easy to activate, and can easily become a creature long game with cards like Phyrexian Revoker to crew it (where you don't necessarily want to attack with your Revoker). Definitely has been very powerful here.
The Second Place finalist was on Oops! All Spells.
Having seen this deck a bunch this weekend already with placings in other Challenges and in the ManaTraders event, it's definitely not surprising to see it here again. It's a very powerful and proactive strategy that does some really busted things.
Vintage Challenge 8/6
Last weekend's first Challenge was the Saturday event which had 64 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.
Aggro Shops was again super popular as was Hogaak but both did just fairly medium enough with Aggro Shops only having a 46.5% win rate. Dredge had a solid performance here as did Breach and Tinker decks.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Grixis Tinker | 1st | ReneRandrup |
| Doomsday | 2nd | Diem4x |
| Doomsday | 3rd | Tsubasa_Cat |
| 4C Tinker | 4th | desolutionist |
| Aggro Shops | 5th | thedoc96 |
| Hogaak | 6th | SknerusMcKwacz |
| Aggro Shops | 7th | _Shatun_ |
| Dredge | 8th | matttothec |
Lost of Shops and Doomsday, with two Bazaar decks in the mix as well. At the end of the event though it was Grixis Tinker that won it all.
The red is merely a little splash here for Blasts and stuff like Dack Fayden. Most of the time these lists are generally playing Ragavan, but this one is leaning on full four copies of Hullbreacher.
The Second Place finalist was on Doosmday.
Seeing more and more of these lists trying out additional cantrip measures like this list having two copies of Portent which is pretty interesting as another pseudo Ponder effect. Unrestricted Ponder for sure would boost this deck's power level a ton, which is why it is definitely still restricted, but having "additional" copies even if a bit slower is very good.
Vintage Challenge 8/7
The second Challenge event of this weekend was the Sunday event, and it had 46 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.
Tinker was the most popular deck here followed by Aggro Shops, but both had subpar performances overall. Hogaak had a great performance as did BUG and Lurrus DRS variants.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Hogaak | 1st | Sarlanga |
| Esper Tinker | 2nd | snoopy-magic |
| Breach | 3rd | Yamaro |
| Oath of Druids | 4th | kanister |
| BUG Midrange | 5th | FedericollMaao |
| Hollow Vine | 6th | hopeof130 |
| Aggro Shops | 7th | _Shatun_ |
| Doomsday | 8th | Diem4x |
Definitely an interesting Top 8 with a lot going on here in terms of pillar representation. At the end of the event though the event was split by the two finalists, with the First Place spot technically going to Hogaak.
The red splash here specifically for only Rootwallas and a single Pyroblast in the sideboard is interesting. Run Afoul is definitely an interesting sideboard card, but I can definitely see it's relevance against stuff like Murktide Regent.
The Second Place finalist was on Esper Tinker.
This is a pretty standard Tinker list at this point for Esper colors. Definitely powerful and very proactive.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari has a bunch of content for us! Check out the past two week's videos:
- Revenantkioku is losing with Doomsday for Fun and Profit. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 lists here.
DRAGONLORD DROMOKA. That is all.
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!
