Vintage 101: Hazardous Materials
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101. I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week I'm going to be providing a little coverage to a local Team Serious event known as the Hazard Invitational. This event is a local proxy Vintage event that is held in honor of one of Team Serious' members Matt Hazard as part of his birthday celebration, and this is the fifth year that this event has taken place.
Unfortunately, some unforeseen personal circumstances prevented me from making it to this event, but the kind and awesome folks of Team Serious were able to get me all the information I needed to provide coverage of it, so great thanks to my friends in Team Serious for not only giving me the info I needed but also for just being my friends!
Weekend at Hazard's
As I mentioned before, this is the fifth year that Matt Hazard has held this event, and is full proxy Vintage. The crew of Team Serious streamed and provided coverage of this event (with commentary by our good friends Nat and Geoff Moes) over at Twitch.tv/SeriousVintage. It's definitely worth the watch for some awesome paper Vintage action!
As is always the case with Team Serious Invitational events, entry fee is generally based on prizes that are donated by the player base. The prize pool and door prizes were pretty stacked for this event for sure.
Look at those prizes!
This event consisted of Swiss rounds plus a cut to Top 8 and it was certainly a pretty 1000% Top 8. Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| 4C PO Storm | 1st | Jason Jaco |
| Survival-Less | 2nd | Andy "Brass Man" Probasco |
| BUG Midrange | 3rd | Charles Rolko |
| PO Storm | 4th | Steve McGrew |
| PO Paradox Engine | 5th | Cody Napier |
| Ninjas | 6th | Phil Kwon |
| Survival | 7th | David Lance |
| Tiny Robots | 8th | Duane Haddix |
At the end of the event, the finals came down to Jason Jaco (of Eternal Central) and Andy "Brass Man" Probasco (of The Mana Drain) in a battle of PO vs Bazaar, with Jaco sneaking it out on PO Storm.
This list is sweet, especially with the inclusion of main deck cards like Dack Fayden and Pyroblast. In addition, leaning more on having multiple ways of ending the game either by Mentor or the Time Vault combo is great. There's no Tendrils here, but that's fine because this deck can win off sheer velocity and just making sure the opponent can't interact.
Congrats to Jaco on his win here, this places Jason in the annals of history as a three time TSI winner! I would be remiss if I didn't post the picture of Jaco's deck, because Jaco has some of the prettiest altered cards, so here it is in all its glory.
The big talk of the event however, was Brass Man's deck, as a "Survival-Less" Survival list playing all the typical Survival cards (Bazaar, Vengevine, Hollow One) but not actually playing Survival of the Fittest at all.
This list is pretty cool and seems pretty powerful. I especially like the choices of main deck cards like Collector Ouphe here, since they can give this deck an extremely good edge in the matchups where it matters by providing the opponent enough of an obstacle that the aggro plan can get through. Unlike the other Hollow One / Vengevine lists that are floating around that seek to be reactive and have countermagic, this deck is just seeking to be proactive and I like that a lot.
In Third Place of the event we had Charles Rolko on BUG Midrange!
Rounding out the Top 4 we had Steven McGrew on PO Storm!
In Fifth Place was Cody Napier on his PO Paradox Engine deck! Pretty cool idea for a deck!
In Sixth Place of this event was Vintage Ninjas, piloted by Phil Kwon! It's great to see this list show up more because it's super sweet.
In Seventh Place was actual Bant Survival, piloted by my good friend David Lance! David is a super accomplished Survival pilot and absolutely enjoys the deck!
At the bottom of the Top 8 was another "Brass Man" designed decklist for competitor Duane Haddix, who piloted Tiny Robots!
This deck is super sweet and is essentially Construct tribal, thus the presence of cards like Vanquisher's Banner here. Skullclamp is also a really cool way of being able to draw through your deck by feeding either Memnites or Hangarback Walker to. Super cool deck!
I of course, would be remiss if I did not mention the man of the hour himself, Matt Hazard, however. He piloted a RUG based deck he affectionately called "Christmas Beatz 2020". Here's the list in old school fashion!
As far as the actual metagame of this event is concerned, let's take a look at a basic breakdown of the event.
| Archetype | Number of Decks | Percentage of Metagame |
|---|---|---|
| Misc Combo | 5 | 17% |
| Misc Fair | 5 | 17% |
| PO Storm | 4 | 13% |
| Dredge | 2 | 7% |
| Jeskai Xerox | 2 | 7% |
| RUG Xerox | 2 | 7% |
| Oracle Combo | 2 | 7% |
| Shops | 2 | 7% |
| BUG | 1 | 3% |
| DPS | 1 | 3% |
| Eldrazi | 1 | 3% |
| Ninjas | 1 | 3% |
| Survival | 1 | 3% |
| Survival-Less | 1 | 3% |
A lot of the Team Serious members really like their combo decks, so it's no surprise that there were a good number of them in this event, from random decks like Breach Combo (modeled closely after the Legacy variant) to TPS and even Thassa's Oracle combo. However, there were also several Xerox variants present, as well as some Dredge and Shops. All in all, it seemed like a pretty sweet metagame.
Lastly, some pictures of the action at the event, including some of the other decklists that we had pictures of!
Cody Napier's sweet Paradox Engine Paradoxical Outcome deck from Top 8
Steven McGrew's PO Storm from Top 8
Rajah James' BUG Oracle Combo Decklist
At the end of the day it is the community who holds these kinds of events for camaraderie and fun more than anything, putting the "Gathering" into Magic: The Gathering. Thanks again to everyone at Team Serious for representing and staying 1000%.
Community Vintage Events
I've only got one update for this week. Deal Me In Games in PA is holding a Vintage tournament kickoff event to their 2020 series in conjunction with a Chili Cookoff, so it's bound to be a spicy event! You can check out information on that here.
As always if I need to be made aware of something, please don't hesitate to reach out and let me know.
Vintage Challenge 2/8
We had yet another Vintage Challenge this past weekend with 59 players, so let's dive right in!
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Jeskai Mentor Breach | 1st | ChubbyRain (Matt Murray) |
| PO Storm | 2nd | ThePowerNine (Justin Franks) |
| Dredge | 3rd | Kasa |
| Jeskai Arcanist | 4th | LordEgg |
| Hollow Vine | 5th | Hanchobai |
| 4C Walkers | 6th | Kikurek |
| Oath of Druids | 7th | AlbertoSD |
| PO Storm | 8th | PProteus |
This was a super intriguing Top 8 and is continually showing that Vintage as a format is very push pull right now as each week is proving to be different and exciting. The format is continually evolving and changing week to week and I see this as a great thing.
The winner of this event however, was none other than our good friend Matt Murray, who as always was able to collect and provide data on the event over on his Twitter page. He won the event on a Jeskai splash black list slotting in the combo of Underworld Breach + Brain Freeze.
This list looks powerful and fun to play. Congrats to Matt on his finish!
In Second Place, we had another good friend of ours, ThePowerNine (aka Justin Franks) on his go to deck, PO Storm.
Powerful list indeed, and proving still that PO is good, but it isn't overpowering the format right now.
Further down the Top 8, we see the return of Hanchobai and Hollow Vine, who was the only undefeated player in the Swiss rounds.
It's quite possible that Hanchobai is the only person really able to pilot such a wild deck, but the results speak for themselves. Very powerful deck indeed!
Outside of the Top 8, we had a few solid showings of the Thassa's Oracle Combo decklist that we talked about last week, including this Esper one by our good friend Justin Gennari.
Again these Thassa's Oracle lists seem to be pretty good, and not only that it seems like the card has enforced a new archetype in the format, which is actually really cool. While most people may be talking about Underworld Breach, Thassa's Oracle seems to be the real deal.
With that in mind, let's take a look at the 2020 cards appearing in this Challenge event, shall we?
| Card Name | Number of Cards |
|---|---|
| Thassa's Oracle | 9 |
| Soul-Guide Lantern | 8 |
| Underworld Breach | 5 |
The only cards this event to come from Theros: Beyond Death, Thassa's Oracle was easily the most popular, but was in less decks overall than Underworld Breach. Does this mean that Breach is merely hyped or have we yet to scratch the surface of this card? In addition, Soul-Guide Lantern popped up quite a bit in Shops sideboards, and I have to say I like it. It is a great graveyard hate option for Shops decks so I'm not surprised to see it show up more.
The Spice Corner
My friend and fellow Team Serious member Jacob Hilty has been playing around with a focused Breach deck in the format so that definitely qualifies as Spice!
What I'm Playing This Week
Well, I had tested a deck for the HSI, so if I could have made it to the event, this is what I would have played.
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks. Next week I'll be taking a look at another new deck that's popping up here or there utilizing Underworld Breach from Theros: Beyond Death with the card Oath of Druids and Sun Titan!
As always you can reach me on Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and Patreon! I'm a little behind on "The Bazaar of Moxology" but I promise to get an episode out soon! In addition, you can always reach me on the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the Vintage Streamers Discord Server!
Until next time, keep casting Doomsday!
