Vintage 101: Otter 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 looking at Lurrus PO with Thundertrap Trainer (we picked a good week for this as you'll see from our event results). We've also got some Challenge data to look at.
Otters Are Good!
I do think it's always pretty cool when decks adopt neat Standard cards as it just shows how much Standard can influence older formats still and everything is not just Horizons sets. While Stock Up is one of the best examples of that... another is a slick little Otter Wizard called Thundertrap Trainer.
On its face it looks a little innocuous but the effect this card has is definitely pretty strong. Vintage is a format full of noncreature, nonland cards so the fact that this card just digs four cards deep and possibly finds one of those is pretty good. It's card selection where you get to dig for the card you might need. Hilariously the Offspring cost is very much flavor text in a lot of ways because you're rarely paying six for this card. Where is this card seeing play? Well, Lurrus decks of course, but specifically in Lurrus PO.
The great thing about this card with Lurrus decks is that you can be pretty liberal about using it to block other threats, since you can then just recast it from the graveyard with Lurrus' effect. It's also a really solid card to pick up with a value Paradoxical Outcome. It's also card selection that can't be hit with Force of Negation or Flusterstorm, which is really strong. In addition, the fact that it's a Wizard also allows it to work really well with Flame of Anor.
This is a sweet thing to see, and I think even without Lurrus this card is pretty strong in a PO shell that can abuse its ability. And certainly this deck is doing quite well in Vintage at the moment, as we'll see in our Challenge data. There are lots of solid results from this deck, and I think Thundertrap Trainer is a big piece of that.
With that said, Otter on!
Vintage Challenge 32 5/2/2025
The first Challenge event of the week was the Thursday event. Thanks to the Vintage MTGO Discord, this event had 37 players.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Dimir Lurrus was the most played deck of the event, and its win rate was pretty good. Initiative and Beseech both looked pretty poor here, while Esper Lurrus, Raker, and multiple other decks looked good.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | unluckymonkey |
| Dredge | 2nd | kaikas |
| Esper Lurrus | 3rd | VitoCorleone |
| Dimir Lurrus | 4th | AFX |
| Countervine | 5th | T1_Tinker |
| Dimir Lurrus | 6th | Montolio |
| Raker Shops | 7th | Koby |
| Stiflenought | 8th | mosh110 |
Fair amount of Lurrus here with some other decks sprinkled in. At the end of the event it was Lurrus PO (and spoiler... this deck did very well this weekend in general with the SAME PILOT) that won.
This deck and this pilot both were on top of the metagame through this entire weekend, and we talked about this deck a lot earlier here, but it's just very good, and it's definitely rewarding this player and their skill piloting it.
In Second Place, we had Dredge.
Very hyper-aggressive build and less controlling build. Silversmote Ghoul is for sure the build that when I see that card, I know this is a deck that's definitely more all in on reducing the opponent's life total than being a control shell.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Stiflenought.
I think this deck is neat. I played a few games with it, and it is interesting, if a little clunky at times. When you manage to do the thing, though it's insanely cool.
Vintage Challenge 32 5/3/2025
The second Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 43 players in it, thanks to the Vintage MTGO Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Dimir Lurrus was the most played deck again, and its win rate was good. Lurrus PO did insanely well, as did Doomsday. Mono White Initiative did not do well at all, and neither did Dredge.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | unluckymonkey |
| Doomsday | 2nd | thepowernine |
| Dimir Lurrus | 3rd | Navas |
| Dimir Lurrus | 4th | FerMTG |
| Doomsday | 5th | ecobaronen |
| Dimir Lurrus | 6th | O_danielakos |
| Dimir Lurrus | 7th | AFX |
| Azorius Initiative | 8th | TrueHero |
Quite a bit of Dimir Lurrus here. At the end of the event, it was... SURPRISE unluckymonkey with the STEEL CHAIR.
Stock Up? More like STONKS UP. This is basically the same list from the win the day before, and don't worry... you'll be seeing this again very soon.
In Second Place we had Doomsday.
Very solid looking list. Cannot go wrong with a very clean Doomsday list.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Azorius Initiative.
Stock Up continues to just buff so many different decks, it's not even funny. I think it looks great in this particular deck, where it can nab you some cool stuff like White Plume Adventurer and stuff to protect it.
Vintage Challenge 32 5/4/2025
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 37 players in it thanks to the Vintage MTGO Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Lurrus PO was the most played deck of the event, and it had a really good win rate for that. Initiative again looked pretty bad. Doomsday and Dredge did well, as did Jewel Shops.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | unluckymonkey |
| Dredge | 2nd | Munchlax446 |
| BUG | 3rd | Uzbek |
| Esper Lurrus | 4th | EVhuner |
| Doomsday | 5th | SingPanMan |
| Dimir Lurrus | 6th | _Joseba_ |
| Raker Shops | 7th | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Doomsday | 8th | ecobaronen |
This is a pretty solid Top 8. At the end of the event, though, marking a trifecta for the overall weekend was again UNLUCKYMONKEY (they're gonna have to change their name now) on Lurrus PO.
Flame of Anor is easily the coolest card in this deck. By far.
In Second Place we had Dredge.
This version is a bit more controlling than the Silversmote Ghoul version, since it gets a bunch of stuff like Mindbreak Trap and maxed out on all the Forces. The Hollow One split is certainly interesting.
Also, in this Top 8 we had BUG.
This could almost be a Lurrus list, but I do think Leovold and Oko are great cards. I'm certainly digging it.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari always has some stuff for us:
- JamesKisau is playing Vintage Grixis Control. Check it out here.
- Revenankioku is playing some Doomsday. Check it out here.
- Kindamtg is playing White Raker Shops. Check it out here.
- Montolio has a Dimir Lurrus league. 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!
