Vintage 101: Showcase in the MODO Streets
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 diving headfirst into the Vintage Showcase Challenge from this past weekend. In addition to that we've got some info on this weekend's Magic Online Creator Showdown, which is Vintage. We've also got some Challenge data.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Vintage Showcase Challenge 3/8/2025
This past weekend was the first Vintage Showcase Challenge of 2025! These are Premier Play events, wherein the Top 8 of the event get invited to the Showcase Qualifier at the end of the Premier Play Season. This is a tournament that provides a path to the Pro Tour and MOCS for players who do well in it. This event had 165 players, which is a solid looking turnout, thanks to the efforts of the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Lurrus PO was the most popular deck of the event, but its overall win rate was just sort of okay. Raker Shops had at least one Top 8 finish but its overall win rate was also below 50%. Dimir Lurrus and Sphere Shops were the big winners above the cutoff, having very strong win rates, as did Doomsday. This event can tell us a lot about Vintage as it has gone on since the release of Aetherdrift as more and more decks approach adopting Stock Up as well as Raker Shops having increased popularity overall.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Esper Lurrus | 1st | cicciogire |
| Sphere Shops | 2nd | Patxi |
| Hermit Druid | 3rd | Sprouts |
| Doomsday | 4th | gr33nashe |
| Lurrus DRS | 5th | etoustar |
| Raker Shops | 6th | Koby |
| Sphere Shops | 7th | nicoprietob |
| Dimir Lurrus | 8th | nekonekoneko |
There is a lot going on in this Top 8. Lurrus looked very good, but it was combatted by Shops in a lot of places. The end of the event was a split finals, with the recorded "winner" being Esper Lurrus.
Not much is changed in this version of the deck. We still get to have both Frog and Bowmasters, but supplemented with the white removal and Lavinia.
The recorded Second Place finalist was Sphere Shops.
It is certainly interesting to see Shops do well in its more Aggro/Prison style variant. The biggest thing is being able to leverage four Null Rod in the 75, which is good against a lot of the other decks in the format right now.
Also in this Top 8 we had Hermit Druid.
Honestly super interesting to see a Hermit Druid pile here. It's a really cool deck and has a lot of interesting gameplay to it. Memory's Journey is some sweet crossover tech from Legacy Oops, for sure.
Further down the Top 8 we had Doomsday.
Very powerful list, and very well built. Doomsday feels like it's a reasonable place as long as you can pilot it well. It's got a lot of little intricacies to it but it looked great in this event overall.
Vintage Creator Showdown - March 15th
Every month our good friends at Magic Online do a tournament series for the members of the MTGO Creator Program. This month's event is on 3/15/2025, and this is the first month that it's going to be Vintage! This should be a rather exciting and fun event. They are six round, double elimination events, and are really cool.
I will be playing in this event myself as a member of the MTGO Creator Program. You'll be able to check out all the action over at https://twitch.tv/volrathxp starting at 12:00 PM EST on 3/15/2025!
Vintage Challenge 32 3/6/2025
The first regular Challenge event of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 49 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Raker Shops was the most popular deck of the event, and its win rate was very good. Lurrus PO also looked great, as did Dredge. Dimir Lurrus looked poor but it still put two Top 8 results. Initiative looked poor here, as did Jewel Shops (but it still also put up a Top 8 finish).
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | Gitaxian_Probe |
| Dimir Lurrus | 2nd | O_danielakos |
| Lurrus PO | 3rd | unluckymonkey |
| Raker Shops | 4th | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Jewel Shops | 5th | LucasG1ggs |
| Raker Shops | 6th | Thalai |
| Raker Shops | 7th | Jumba |
| Dimir Lurrus | 8th | nekonekoneko |
Basically 4x Lurrus, 4x Workshops decks here. At the end of the event though it was Lurrus PO that won.
Stock Up and Thundertrap Trainer both really did a lot to push this build of the deck. Momentum Breaker as well has proven to be as good as it was thought to be with Lurrus. The fact that it can also make your opponent discard is quite good.
In Second Place we had Dimir Lurrus.
Not a huge leap from the stock lists here. If anything, the only big change is no main deck restricted Vexing Bauble and instead playing Soul-Guide Lantern.
Vintage Challenge 32 3/7/2025
The second regular Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 50 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Raker Shops was massively popular here, and its win rate looked quite good. Lurrus PO also looked great, as did Jewel Shops and Sphere Shops. Both Dimir and Esper Lurrus seemed to fall off here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | DrPP |
| Raker Shops | 2nd | DelverFofoquiero |
| Raker Shops | 3rd | Ayyypeks |
| Raker Shops | 4th | choutin |
| Lurrus Breach | 5th | EmreKilic |
| Sphere Shops | 6th | haveaboavida |
| Oath | 7th | frostyyy_ |
| Initiative | 8th | IpseVenenaBibas |
Lot of Raker Shops here, but the end of the event was decided by Lurrus PO.
This is certainly a very powerful deck. Stock Up in general really pushed it hard.
In Second Place we had Raker Shops.
This deck has a lot of extreme variance to it sometimes, but when you mitigate that variance it is exceptionally strong. It does some very powerful things and ends games rather quickly.
Vintage Challenge 32 3/9/2025
The final regular Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 41 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.
Raker Shops was again the most popular deck of the event, and its win rate was very good. Sphere Shops was also popular, but it had less than 50% despite a Top 8 finish. Esper Lurrus also looked pretty good here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Raker Shops | 1st | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Oops! All Spells | 2nd | medvedev |
| Raker Shops | 3rd | RogeDeckWins |
| Doomsday | 4th | SingPanMan |
| Raker Shops | 5th | _Joseba_ |
| Jewel Shops | 6th | Hampuse1 |
| Lurrus DRS | 7th | _INF_ |
| Sphere Shops | 8th | kristofff |
Quite a bit of Workshops here, and the winner of the event was Raker Shops.
One of the really sick things you can do with this deck is loop Tops with Patchwork Automaton in play and then grow them very big. It's a solid backup plan if you don't have a Fleshraker. Scrawling Crawler is also a really strong card here.
In Second Place we had Oops! All Spells.
This is a solid looking Oops list. It has a lot going on for it, and I especially love seeing four copies of Into the Flood Maw in the sideboard here.
What I'm Playing This Week
I spent some time trying to prep for the MTGO Creator Showdown over this past week/weekend, and I got a Trophy with Oath of Druids! I posted a video over this, that you can find below.
Around the Web
- kindamtg has a video on Blue Raker Shops. Check it out here.
- So Many Insane Plays recently released their 2024 Year in Review. Check it out here.
- Justin Gennari always has great stuff for us:
The Spice Corner
Patchwork Gnomes?!?!
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!
