Vintage 101: Stocking 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 taking a look at a card we missed in our set review of Aetherdrift. In addition to that we've got some Challenges from last week to check out. Also, this weekend I will be in Chicago for MagicCon Chicago, so if you're out there say hello!
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Stocking Up in Vintage
For the most part I try to be as comprehensive as possible in my set reviews, but I am only human and occasionally I miss a card. For Aetherdrift, I missed a card that I think will have a lot of potential going forward in the format, which is Stock Up.
At first glance one might gloss over this card and its effect, but when you look at it further it is a very powerful effect for the mana cost. For three mana, you can do a slightly smaller version of Dig Through Time's effect by looking at the top five cards and getting to take two of them. There are some obvious comparisons to Dig. This is one mana more than your average Dig (since with Delve it's often just UU) and also Sorcery speed, but it does only have one blue pip in the cost which makes it much easier to have a single blue mana to cast. You are only getting five cards to look at besides seven, but the rate is still very good.
The big kicker with this card that puts this in big contention to see play is obvious. It's not restricted. If you really want to, you can play four of these in your deck. It's got that raw power rate of being able to chain them and find the cards you need to win the game, and even just getting to look at five cards is really strong because you're getting two out of those five.
So where is this being seen at sofar if it's such a big deal? Well, Aetherdrift is now on MTGO, and it's getting seen in a lot of different decks.
My inkling sofar on this card is that it is a very strong card and I expect we'll continue to see it showing up in decks. This is exactly the kind of card that definitely feels very Vintage and being an uncommon also means its a cheap addition to try to any deck that wants it.
Vintage Challenge 32 2/13/2025
The first Challenge event of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 47 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.
Dimir Lurrus was the most popular deck of the event, and its win rate rode the 50% line. Sphere Shops was also popular and had a slightly less than 50% win rate despite a Top 8 finish. Both Initiative and Raker Shops did extremely well, while Doomsday seemed to suffer.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Raker Shops | 1st | Schiaveto |
| Initiative | 2nd | musasabi |
| Dimir Lurrus | 3rd | mashirorc |
| Initiative | 4th | LasVegasChaos |
| Esper Lurrus | 5th | wiky |
| Sphere Shops | 6th | mRichi |
| Dimir Lurrus | 7th | _Joseba_ |
| Lurrus PO | 8th | unluckymonkey |
Bit of Lurrus, bit Shops, bit Initiative. At the end of the event, it was Raker Shops that won.
Hey, an official name for this deck! Big thanks to Justin Gennari over on the Vintage team for managing the classifications on their end, as we tend to follow suit on our end here at Goldfish with these. This is now updated across the board for all these Fleshraker decks. This deck has risen to quite a popularity over the past few months and it's not hard to see why because of how good the Fleshraker + Sensei's Divining Top combo is. Definitely a fun deck I'd like to try out at some point.
In Second Place we had Initiative.
Very solid looking stock list of Initiative here. Stillmoon Cavalier in the main still very much speaks to how the current metagame is structured with Lurrus being heavily represented.
Also in this Top 8 we had Sphere Shops.
Very clean and straightforward. While this deck is already great at being a Null Rod Workshops deck, its sideboard allows it even further with things like Metamorph and Wurmcoil Engine.
Vintage Challenge 32 2/14/2025
The second Challenge event 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 the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Initiative was the most played deck, but its win rate was less than 50% despite a Top 8 finish. Dimir Lurrus rode the 50% line, while both Jewel and Doomsday were in good spots. Raker Shops and Dredge both were below 50% this go around.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus | 1st | O_danielakos |
| Countervine | 2nd | MeninooNey |
| Oath | 3rd | Wesal |
| Jewel Shops | 4th | Raydan |
| Lurrus PO | 5th | unluckymonkey |
| Initiative | 6th | _Batutinha_ |
| Jewel Shops | 7th | Ignotus97 |
| Dimir Lurrus | 8th | cicciogire |
This is a pretty reasonable Top 8, and the winner of the event was Dimir Lurrus.
This is fairly stock for how the Dimir lists have looked for a bit now. Definitely not a deck where you need to really be playing fun-ofs because all of the cards are really extremely powerful, so there's just not a real large amount of flex spots. I really like Yixlid Jailer right now. Seems like a strong card.
In Second Place we had Countervine.
With Dredge seemingly in a bad spot in the metagame despite its popularity, the circular nature of Bazaar decks tends to lend itself to people pushing over to this deck in order to combat the Dredge hate, which this deck doesn't have a ton of issues with because most of its free creatures are cast off Madness or are Hollow One (now granted, stuff like Leyline does shut off Squee/Master and Vengevine but it's not lights out). We haven't seen this deck in a hot minue but it is strong when it wants to be.
Also in this Top 8 we had Oath.
Solid looking Oath deck here. The sideboard has some hot spice, like a singleton copy of Chains of Mephistopheles! With all the Psychic Frog roaming about, converting their draws into card disadvantage is pretty sweet.
Vintage Challenge 32 2/15/2025
The third Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 53 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.
Dimir Lurrus was the most popular deck, and its win rate was excellent as was Esper Lurrus. The decks that suffered here were Doomsday, Dredge, and Countervine (after having a strong previous event it CRATERED to a 0% win rate).
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus | 1st | Navas |
| Esper Lurrus | 2nd | wiky |
| Lurrus PO | 3rd | helvetti |
| Jewel Shops | 4th | Caleb_Yetman |
| Raker Shops | 5th | Schiaveto |
| Dimir Lurrus | 6th | discoverN |
| Initiative | 7th | LasVegasChaos |
| Initiative | 8th | danlogan |
Pretty split even between Lurrus, Shops, and Initiative. At the end of the event it was Dimir Lurrus and Esper Lurrus with the winner being Dimir.
I think the only thing really keeping Lurrus so spread out over the format at the moment is the fact that there's not a really solid consensus on the Dimir vs Esper variants. They both do a good job at the fair game plan thing, and the gameplay between them is much more blue control mirror style gameplay, so having the different variants of the control shells does make for some interesting aspects even if I still don't care for Lurrus in general.
Also in this Top 8 we had Lurrus PO.
One interesting thing that sticks out at me about this list is no Saga at all, and Psychic Frog as the big game-ending threat. It makes sense, but it is intriguing to see a build like this. The sideboard has some clever pieces of tech in it too like Seal of Cleansing.
Vintage Challenge 32 2/16/2025
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 46 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 datasheet here.
Dimir Lurrus was the most popular deck but despite a Top 8 finish, its win rate was not great. Esper Lurrus, Raker Shops, and Jewel Shops all did very well while Doomsday and Initiative both suffered.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Esper Lurrus | 1st | Kenzaburo |
| Jewel Shops | 2nd | RogeDeckWins |
| Sphere Shops | 3rd | _Shatun_ |
| Raker Shops | 4th | crK |
| Dimir Lurrus | 5th | etoustar |
| Raker Shops | 6th | Schiaveto |
| Jewel Shops | 7th | Callenutg1 |
| Sphere Shops | 8th | JOANANTON |
Lot of Workshops in this Top 8. At the end of the event however, it was Esper Lurrus that won.
Fairly solid and straightforward no-frills list here. Not surprised to see a bunch of Consign to Memory in these sideboards given how strong it is against certain decks.
In Second Place we had Jewel Shops.
The singleton Simulacrum Synthesizer is pretty slick. It can be pretty sweet when you're chaining stuff like Coveted Jewel and Phyrexian Metamorph or The One Ring by just making a steady stream of Constructs.
Further down the Top 8 we had Sphere Shops.
Fairly similar deck to one we already saw here. I love Dismember at the moment in many of these decks because it answers a lot of threats like Ouphe but also Lurrus and stuff very cleanly.
Around the Web
- Kindamtg has a video with Monument to Endurance! Check it out here.
- Andrew Markiton has a video with Dimir Lurrus. Check it out here.
- Justin Gennari always has some good stuff for us.
- Revenantkioku has Doomsday Balemurk Scam? Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Haven't seen Hogaak in a minute, but this is like Mono Green Hogaak.
This PO list slaps. Haven't had Jace, the Mind Sculptor pop up in quite a while.
RAVAGER SHOPS ALERT.
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!
