Vintage 101: Clowning It 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 going to be talking all about Clowns! That's right, Clown Car is now available on Magic Online, and it may have some very real play in Shops decks. In addition to that we've got some Challenges to look at for the past week.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Clowning It Up On MTGO
We had a few new things added to Magic Online very recently. Primarily the biggest thing was the Fallout Commander decks being added to the client, which adds a bunch more Eternal legal cards to the digital space, but we also had a Treasure Chest addition in the form of Clown Car!
This is certainly an Unfinity card that a good number of people had been asking about getting onto MTGO for some time now, majority of which is centered around Commander gameplay, but this card also is a really sweet for Vintage due in part that it's an artifact first and foremost (meaning that Mishra's Workshop is a big boost for it) and that it can generate some combination of a wide board state and a tall creature at the same time, provided you are putting enough mana into it. But is this good? Well, at the bare minimum our good friend Montolio thought so, piloting a sweet Sphere Shops list with Clown Car to an 11th place finish in one of the Challenges this past weekend.
The fact that the Clowns are also artifact creatures is pretty big. Being able to utilize them for cards like Arcbound Ravager or Steel Overseer to push past the fact that they're 1/1s initially is really strong. The crew on the Car itself is also pretty low for a deck like this, as many of its creatures will have two power for the crew, and you can always use something like Phyrexian Revoker that you don't want to put into combat to crew it.
The rest of the deck is very much old school Ravager Shops, which is sweet to see and I think can be good still today and part of that is possible by trying out new things like the Clown Car.
Montolio was kind enough to record this event, so check out the video embed below on it. And be sure to always send in the clowns!
Vintage Challenge 32 10/17
The first Challenge of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 40 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.
Dimir Lurrus was the most popular deck of the event and it has a very reasonable win rate. Jewel Shops also did very well here. Despite having a solid finish, Dredge had a less than positive win rate dragged down by the rest of the event. Sphere Shops and Esper Lurrus also did very well.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Breach | 1st | TrueHero |
| Lurrus DRS | 2nd | bless_von |
| Esper Lurrus Control | 3rd | fondaparinoux |
| Dredge | 4th | PocoBueno |
| Dimir Lurrus Control | 5th | Bezerra_da_Silva |
| Jewel Shops | 6th | Hampuse1 |
| Dimir Lurrus Control | 7th | _Shatun_ |
| Dimir Lurrus Control | 8th | ecobaronen |
Quite a bit of Lurrus Control here, as well as Lurrus DRS. At the end of the event though it was Non-Lurrus Breach that won.
Waterlogged Teachings continues to look like a very interesting card overall. Being able to fetch up a Hullbreacher at instant speed is pretty wild honestly, even if you are putting seven mana into that to cast Teachings + cast Hullbreacher. Being able to get a Brain Freeze too in order to go off with Breach is nice as well.
I honestly just like really seeing reasons to not have to play Lurrus. Having those options makes the format overall more diverse.
In Second Place we had Lurrus DRS.
This is not really a BUG Lurrus variant, it's more or less Dimir Lurrus with Deathrite and some green sideboard cards. I do like Seal of Primordium though. Cards like Seal that interact in neat ways with Lurrus are interesting to play with the card, despite how omnipresent Lurrus definitely seems to be.
Vintage Challenge 32 10/18
The second Challenge of the week was the Friday event. This event had 38 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.
Dredge was the most popular deck of the event, but it's overall win rate was extremely low despite having one Top 8 finish. Breach did very well, as did Dimir and Esper Lurrus. Oath did poorly as did Initiative.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Esper Lurrus Control | 1st | FranMtg |
| Breach | 2nd | TrueHero |
| Esper Lurrus Control | 3rd | kasa |
| Dredge | 4th | Munchlax446 |
| Dimir Lurrus Control | 5th | wiky |
| BUG Midrange | 6th | _Batutinha_ |
| Breach | 7th | chanel-santini |
| Dimir Lurrus Control | 8th | O_danielakos |
Lot of Lurrus here as well, and the event was won by Esper Lurrus Control.
I do think out of the Lurrus Control lists that Esper is likely the better of the two despite how popular straight Dimir usually is comparatively. Gaining access to things like Lavinia and Swords to Plowshares is a huge deal and very good in the mirror matches, as well as handling decks like Jewel Shops. I do think that unless something comes along that makes Psychic Frog power-crept (and that's insane to think about really) that Frog will continue to be one of the best threats in all of Vintage. It's a scalable threat that draws cards and it's incredibly strong.
In Second Place we had Breach.
This is the same pilot that won the previous day's Challenge. They definitely have a strong sense of deckbuilding for the format overall here. I also just love seeing Dack Fayden back in the format.
Vintage Challenge 32 10/19
The third Challenge of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 55 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.
Jewel Shops was the most popular deck of the event and it's win rate was pretty good. Breahc also did very well, as did Lurrus decks. Dredge did below 40% win rate, and Initiative appears to have really tanked it in this event.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus Control | 1st | ecobaronen |
| Breach | 2nd | izzy-wilde |
| Doomsday | 3rd | discoverN |
| Jewel Shops | 4th | Johnni |
| Esper Lurrus Control | 5th | Dr. Jon Osterman |
| Esper Lurrus Control | 6th | burrarun |
| Esper Lurrus Control | 7th | JakeTMS |
| Esper Lurrus Control | 8th | WadeB |
Wow that is a LOT of Lurrus in the Top 8, given that the entire bottom half of the Top 8 is Esper Lurrus. At the end of the event it was Dimir Lurrus that won.
The upside of Dimir Lurrus is that you do get access to some cards like Spell Pierce and things like Fatal Push (which does seem very good right now given how popular Psychic Frog is). It's sort of neat seeing Stern Scolding in the sideboard as well, since it also counters most of the commonly played creatures of the current format (Frog, Bowmasters, Hullbreacher, Lavinia, etc) and with Initiative on a bit of a down swing it makes good sense.
In Second Place we had again Breach.
This isn't the same pilot as the previous two events but it's the same list functionally as the one that did well in the past two events. This is telling me that a lot of this deck is just very, very good and not just on one player making it look good. I think this is possibly a really strong deck in current Vintage and has a great chance of being great in events ongoing. I would certainly keep it on the radar for Eternal Weekend.
Vintage Challenge 32 10/20
The final Challenge of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 39 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.
Dimir Lurrus was the most popular deck here, but it's win rate was dragged down a bit despite a top 8 finish. Jewel Shops did very well here, as did Doomsday and Breach. Initiative had a bit of a better go this time at around 50% win rate.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Jewel Shops | 1st | musasabi |
| Jewel Shops | 2nd | AJV20 |
| Doomsday | 3rd | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Jewel Shops | 4th | oosunq |
| Dredge | 5th | Munchlax446 |
| Dimir Lurrus Control | 6th | Condescend |
| Doomsday | 7th | discoverN |
| Breach | 8th | morenoHARDCORE |
Bit of Jewel and in fact the finals was Jewel vs Jewel, so let's look at the winner first.
I do believe that we're quickly approaching a place where we will regard Sink into Stupor as one of the best cards for Vintage from Modern Horizons 3 and it isn't even close. This card definitely pushed Jewel Shops into the stratosphere and it was already a very good deck before it came along. While Bauble might have been the restricted card, Stupor is the card that really has pushed Jewel very far.
Let's look at the Second Place list.
Displacer Kitten! I do think this is a card that is really interesting a deck like this and should see more play. It definitely allows a lot of the deck's more pressing lines of being able to go off definitively and never miss on anything by just being able to blink a Coveted Jewel a bunch. Transmute Artifact is also super cool here. Turning a Ring into a Jewel seems super sweet.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari has some new videos for us:
- Both ecobaronen and BoshNRoll had a gauntlet against each other. Check out both their videos:
- FiretruckModo has a video on Dredge. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
YORION BOROS INITIATIVE?!
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!
