Vintage 101: NYSE Open VIII

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 about a very recent paper Vintage event, known as the NYSE Open VIII! Also, this article is going to be a bit short this week, due in part to the fact that there's some ongoing maintenance with the MTGO decklist pages, so that means we don't have much in the way of actual Challenge results to speak about. We'll be primarily focusing on the NYSE for this article. We've also got a small bit of commentary on the Banned and Restricted Announcement from this past week.

Without further ado, let's dive right in!

NYSE Open VIII

The NYSE Open VIII, held and organized by the New York Stack Exchange (headed by TO Nick Detwiler), was a 15 proxy non-sanctioned Vintage event held at the Four Points Sheraton in Plainview, New York. This event was an insanely high roller type event, as the entry for the event was a whopping $500, but the prizes for this event was eight pieces of Power to the Top 8. That's right, the winner of this event would ostensibly walk away with a Black Lotus, an incredibly sought after piece of Power. In addition, the NYSE did a bunch of giveaways at the event as well, including some sweet playmats and all sorts of cool things.

The cap for this event was around 134 players or so. In the end, 109 players showed up to battle Vintage for a Black Lotus and other Power.

This event also had coverage on Twitch. You can find the Twitch channel here.

You can find all the decklists here and the data sheet here.

Jewel Shops was the most popular deck in the event, but it's overall win rate was lower than 50% despite a Top 8 appearance. BUG and Lurrus Saga were also very popular, with Saga having a very strong win rate. Wildly, Oath had a sub 50% win rate, but as we will see... it did very well. Turbo Vault Key had far more players on the deck than I think I usually see in MTGO Challenges.

Let's take a look at the Top 8.

Incredibly interesting Top 8 here. Quite a bit of Lurrus decks here, as Vault Key + Lurrus Saga are all Lurrus decks. However, there was some very interesting additions as well. In the end though, proving that he is truly a Vintage gamer to be feared, it was Brian "Bosh N Roll" Coval who won the entire thing on Oath.

Brian has been very well known for playing this archetype and has had a lot of success with it. I very much like the addition of Thoughtseize to the main deck here. It's a very powerful inclusion overall.

The Second Place finalist and recipient of another piece of Power was Hank Zhong on Turbo Vault Key.

This deck is super interesting. I really like Oswald Fiddlebender here. It's an incredibly fun and powerful card, especially in being able to locate your Time Vault in the deck. This is a super powerful list and frankly, I'm surprised it doesn't see that much more play on MTGO. It's so very good.

Also in this Top 8 we had one Jewel Shops.

Vexing Bauble seems quite strong in this deck, given that it wants to prevent its opponent from stopping its Coveted Jewel and Metamorphs. Being able to bounce it with Paradoxical Outcome and then recast it after all your 0 drops seems quite good.

At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Bant NADU.

We talked a bit about Nadu in Vintage last week, and it turns out it's still exceedingly real. Interestingly, this list doesn't have something like Thassa's Oracle. It's generating a lot of crazy value and winning the game that way. Wildly cool.

Banned and Restricted Announcement 6/24

There was a Banned and Restricted announcement this past week, and nothing was changed from a Vintage standpoint. The commentary on Vintage was that the format continues to look healthy and Wizards will continue to manage it from a community satisfaction standpoint.

I think right now, with the advent of MH3, and some things shifting, I think this is fine to not have a change at this point in time. While some are still worried about things like Vexing Bauble, Urza's Saga, etc., I think it's okay to give this format time to shift on its own, given how slow things often move.

Around the Web

• Nico Bohny has an article on Turbo Vault Key. Check it out here.
• FiretruckModo has a video on Dredge. Check it out here.
• Montolio has a video on UB Psychic Frog. Check it out here.
• Revenantkioku has a video on Doomsday with Nethergoyf. Check it out here.

The Spice Corner

While the decklists for MTGO aren't working we can look at the NYSE for anything wildly interesting.

Archmage's Newt!!!

This hybrid Shops/Bazaar deck is SWEET.

DRS SCAM.

PLANESWALKER OATH.

Finally, someone went full in on Necrodominance Combo.

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!