Vintage 101: Super Duper!
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we've got a plethora of events to talk about including primarily the Vintage Super Qualifier from over the weekend. In addition to that we've got some other sweet event news and a Spice Corner.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Vintage Super Qualifier 4/16
This past weekend was a bonafide Vintage Super Qualifier event on Magic Online! This particular Qualifier was for the 23-24 Regional Championship Tabletop events, so its basically an RCQ style event for Vintage. It's always nice to see these kinds of events pop up on MTGO for older formats. This particular event had 186 players in it, which is a pretty healthy and respectable size of event for Vintage. The nice thing about Super Qualifiers is that they prize out well at the top end, with the Top 4 receiving the invitation to the Regional Championship event. Super Qualifiers are also pretty easy to enter since they cost either 40 Tickets, 400 Play Points, or 40 Qualification Points (QPs) to enter.
You can find all of the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Initiative was definitely the most popular of decks here and it had a reasonable win rate of 51%. The rest of the format here is very well spread out with a good amount of Tinker, splits of Bazaar + Aggro variants, Shops, Combo, and even Oath/DRS decks. This honestly looks pretty well rounded overall.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Prison Shops | 1st | LORiWWA |
| UB Tinker | 2nd | lorwy |
| Grixis Tinker | 3rd | LBBL |
| Doomsday | 4th | notmi |
| Initiative | 5th | tamarindo |
| Initiative | 6th | sandydogmtg |
| Combo Shops | 7th | Diatomic |
| Combo Shops | 8th | Cherryxman |
Interesting Top 8 here. Some Shops decks, some Tinker, Combo, and Initiative. No Bazaars here though. At the end of the event it was a split in the finals, with the first place technically going to Prison Shops.
Golos being the King of a Vintage Premier Level event sure is something. This deck has continued to have some solid results and has won several events in the past few months. Definitely not a deck to discount at all.
As part of the finals split, the other finalist was on UB Tinker.
Very streamlined list here that is definitely focusing on its different angled game plans. We also see cards like Virtue's Ruin and Portal to Phyrexia here which is very much attacking the Initiative matchups.
Speaking of Initiative, it showed up twice in the Top 8 so let's look at the highest placing one.
This deck continues to be a powerful and interesting addition to Vintage as a format. It's good, yes, but it's not overpowering and it seems to have settled well into the format.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had some Combo Shops, so let's look at the higher placing list.
This deck never ceases to impress me. It has a lot of really powerful things it can do and it does it very well. Being a blue based Shops deck really helps it a ton that is for sure.
Buffalo Chicken Dip Vintage Open
Our good friend Rob Wilson of the Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy series has a bit of a surprise for us! BCDL is going to hosting their first ever Buffalo Chicken Dip Vintage Open on Saturday, September 30th at the Brewdog Brewery and Hotel in Canal Winchester, Ohio!
In addition to having just a stellar event on hand here, BCDL is also offering up entries into the event as prizes to various upcoming Vintage events as part of their BCDL Vintage Open Trial events. This includes upcoming events such as the Oklahoma Land Run event on June 16th-18th among others.
Full details of the event is located here. Entry for the event is $145 + MTGMelee fees, and each player entry includes lunch.
This is a proxy allowed event, however there is a policy on how these work, so please read the full summary of the event in order to understand how the policy will work.
We are definitely looking forward to this event!
Vintage Challenge 4/15
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the mid afternoon Saturday event. This event had 75 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Initiative was quite popular here, but it didn't have a great win rate overall. Doomsday also did very poorly here (despite having a Top 8 finish), as did Grixis Tinker. Combo Shops and Breach did very well as did Prison Shops.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Initiative Tinker | 1st | karatedom |
| Jeskai Lurrus | 2nd | unluckymonkey |
| Combo Shops | 3rd | kanister |
| Oath of Druids | 4th | yPrincipe |
| Initiative | 5th | Wesal |
| Tinker Breach | 6th | desolutionist |
| Doomsday | 7th | discoverN |
| Dredge | 8th | Jenara19 |
Quite an interesting Top 8 here. Some Bazaar, some Doomsday and a few other decks like Tinker, Initiative, and even Jeskai. At the end of the event it was Initiative Tinker that won it all.
This deck has a lot of power behind it. So many different angles of attack exist with this that it can easily pivot from one to the next. Sign of solid Vintage deckbuilding for sure.
In Second Place we've got Jeskai Lurrus.
Seeing Mercurial Spelldancer stick around is pretty nice. The card is very powerful and does some really strong things with the Vintage card pool.
Also in this Top 8 we've got Oath of Druids.
I really like this version of the deck. Having both Oath and Show and Tell is definitely something, and Atraxa has made that really good.
While Initiative overall had a poor showing, we did have one in the Top 8.
I continue to state that I really like that this deck exists in Vintage. It's proven itself to be a solid contender in the format while not being incredibly overpowering and that is wonderful to see.
Vintage Challenge 4/16
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning 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 Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Quite a spread at the top of the event here with several decks being popular overall. Aggro Shops did very well, so did Prison Shops and also Oath + CounterVine variants. Doomsday did quite poorly, as did PO.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Grixis Tinker | 1st | Yamaro |
| Initiative Tinker | 2nd | starslights |
| Prison Shops | 3rd | Mogged |
| Aggro Shops | 4th | scalo94 |
| Aggro Shops | 5th | fatto10 |
| Aggro Shops | 6th | _shatun_ |
| Lurrus Vault Key | 7th | shir kahn |
| CounterVine | 8th | Magicofplayer1 |
So much Workshops here! Quite a bit of Tinker too. At the end of the event though it was Grixis Tinker that won.
The Wheels version of this deck is pretty fun. This is a lot like the Initiative Tinker deck in that it has a lot of angles of attack it can fight on either via Wheeling the opponent with Hullbreacher or Sheoldred in play, or by the classic Tinker game plan or Saga.
In Second Place we've got Initiative Tinker.
The sideboard juke here of mostly turning into traditional Initiative with the Archon of Emeria is kind of sweet.
Shops had a strong go in this event. Let's look at the highest placing Aggro list.
Nice and clean list here. It's definitely very strong and can catch people unaware if they aren't expecting it.
Near the bottom of the Top 8 we have shir kahn with another sweet Goblin Engineer list.
This deck looks super fun and super synergistic with Lurrus. Goblin Engineer is one heck of a card for sure.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari continues to give us spice! Check out this past week's stuff.
- Sweet Doomsday Sideboard Guide here by Max Vervoort. Check it out here on their Patreon.
- Andy Marktion has a solid TurboVine video for us. Check it out here.
- Awesome Japanese video on Initiative Tinker. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past weeks 5-0 lists here.
Reality Chip! This is super cool.
Esper Painter is pretty cool too.
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!
