Vintage 101: The Holiday Tradition
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and it's the holiday season. We're going to continue a tradition we started last year of telling a fun holiday story through hilarious Vintage decklists! I make no promises any of these will be playable, so it's purely just for fun and flavor (although some of the lists are based on competitive lists with some changes). We've also got some Challenge data to talk about and a Spice Corner!
Without further ado, let's dive right in.
The House of Horror - A Vintage Holiday Story
Night falls in the land of Pendrell Vale, the snow coming down in sheets of white. Amidst the white snow, a lowly Monkey traverses the frozen woodlands looking for shelter. The Holiday of Horrors is coming, and he must be inside before it arrives in the Vale. Everyone in the Vale knows of the past horrors inflicted by the Dreaded Santa Claws during the last Holiday, and the Monkey knows he is in danger from the current Spirit of the Holiday.
The Monkey finds himself in a forest in the Vale, surrounded by the denizens of the forest. Narrowly dodging through the forest and its dangers, he finds himself in a beautiful grove. A massive Treefolk oversees the grove, growing from within it a Dryad who watches as the Monkey passes by. She too knows of the coming dangers of the Holiday, protecting the Monkey with the grove's trees. The Monkey nods appreciatively and continues forward, seeking out his shelter to keep him safe. The Dryad manipulates the power of the grove to prevent the intrusion of the Holiday, filling the grove with powerful beings and giants to defend it as the Monkey leaves the grove.
The Monkey continues on, thankful for the Dryad's protection. She has protected him in the past, and he makes a quick plan to reward her properly once the Holiday has passed. He moves quickly up into the mountains, finding himself at the base of what appears to be a massive factory. Cautiously, he moves to check inside of it as a possible shelter. The factory is deserted, styled after a giant Dollhouse. As he continues deeper in, he finds that the creations of the Dollhouse have come alive, searching for him.
The denizens of the Dollhouse hunt for him relentlessly, and the Monkey has but a few moments to run and hide. Able to evade their notice, he slips back outside into the snow. Sounds of discord and destruction emanate from down the mountain near the grove. The Holidays are nearer than before. He continues to move, headed down the other side of the mountain when he spots another shelter at the far end of the frozen lake. He starts to race across the lake, when a cracking in the ice reveals a massive eldritch horror preventing him from going forward. The horror howls and cries loudly at the Monkey.
The Monkey runs around the side of the lake, narrowly missing the attack of the horror. The horror turns but a sound catches its attention. The Monkey freezes as the Holiday arrives over the top of the frozen lake. The horror cries in pain, unable to withstand the sounds of the Holiday. The Monkey tries to use the opportunity to make a break for the shelter, but the light of the Holiday overtakes him. He looks up in fear as the Spirit of the Holiday appears, blaring the sounds of its power across the frozen lake.
"LAST CHRISTMAS.... I GAVE YOU MY HEART..."
The Monkey curses silently to himself. "WHAM... they got me again," he says, before passing out and allowing the Spirit of the Holiday to take him away.
THE END
Okay that was short, but fun and amusing. I hope you enjoyed my fun little jaunt, and I'm sorry I got that song stuck in your head. I hope everyone has a safe and happy Holiday season and always gets to keep their 7s in Dredge!
Vintage Challenge 12/18
We had two Challenges this weekend, the first of which was the mid-afternoon Saturday event. This event had 45 players in it, thanks to the data provided by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Quite a bit of Aggro Shops in this event, with both reasonable representation and solid win rates. It's fun to see this deck coming back up and down in the metagame and how the metagame is reacting to it over the weeks. Everything else was very reasonably positioned and nicely spread out. It definitely seems like a great metagame.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Blue Tinker | 1st | thepowernine |
| Doomsday | 2nd | discoverN |
| Jewel PO | 3rd | IdraftTheBeatz |
| Breach Saga | 4th | duke12 |
| Aggro Shops | 5th | ecobaronen |
| BUG Oath | 6th | HeyNongMan |
| Blue Tinker | 7th | Karatedom |
| Hollow Vine | 8th | S_P_O |
Reasonable Top 8 here. Some Tinker decks, some Shops, and some Combo variants. At the end of the event it was our good friend thepowernine who took it all down on a Tinker variant.
Definitely a solid list for sure. Tinker is definitely one of the big things to be doing in the format right now, and this is a good way to abuse that.
The Second Place finalist was forever Doomsday end boss discoverN.
Doomsday continues to be a solid deck right now and discoverN is a powerful wizard of the deck. This list is A+ discoverN quality and a great place to start if you want to play this deck or learn it.
Also in the Top 8 we've got IdraftTheBeatz with a sick PO/Coveted Jewel deck.
Coveted Jewel as a draw three you can pick up with PO despite costing six mana is pretty sweet, because you make a ton of mana with Moxen and stuff. Really sweet deck especially with Phyrexian Metamorph to copy Jewels.
Vintage Challenge 12/19
The second Challenge of the weekend was the early morning Sunday event, which also had 45 players in it thanks to the data provided by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Dredge and Aggro Shops were well represented, with solid win rates, but the Squee Hollow Vine list had a very good event overall and a great win rate. Again, the diversity is solid and the win rates don't look overly concerning for a single event given the fact that next week will probably flip on its head.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Hollow Vine | 1st | sora1248 |
| UR Tempo | 2nd | HotaruTenshi |
| Paradoxical Outcome | 3rd | JOANANTON |
| Dredge | 4th | kasa |
| BUG Oath | 5th | ktmr-39 |
| Aggro Shops | 6th | billster47 |
| Aggro Shops | 7th | fistfullofmetal |
| Dredge | 8th | NekoReality |
Again, a really solid Top 8 with a great amount of diversity. At the end of the event, it was Hollow Vine that took it all down.
Maze of Ith in the sideboard is very interesting for sure. It's a great way to fog out Sphinx of the Steel Wind since very few of the creatures in this deck can beat one if it gets to keep attacking.
The Second Place Finalist was on UR Tempo!
Quite a bit of interesting cards here between having traditional UR staples like Ragavan, Arcanist, but also having great cards like Scab-Clan Berserker and Magus of the Moon. Also, there's a Disrupt in the main deck which is super sweet.
Further down the Top 8 is a sweet BUG Oath list.
This is functionally the same deck that has been seeing a lot of play but instead of going on cards like Archon of Cruelty we've got new card Hullbreaker Horror! Seems very interesting indeed.
Around the Web
- Our good friend Alex McKinley was on Everyday Eternal recently to talk about his win of the Mox Emerald Vintage Eternal Weekend! Check it out here.
- Engwar01 continues their Tour of Vintage with Tinker PO. Check it out here.
- Japanese player Tomohappy on YouTube posted a video on PO. Check that out here.
- World Champion Yuta Takahashi posted an article on Hareruya discussing the latest Vintage metagame. Check it out here (it's in Japanese so use Google Translate!)
- Justin Gennari continues his content machinations! Check out his videos this week:
The Spice Corner
Definitely an interesting Oath list with Void Winnower!
Hermit Druid 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 Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and Patreon! In addition you can always reach me on the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the Vintage Streamers Discord.
Until next time!
