Vintage 101: Vintage Around the Globe
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 talking about paper Vintage! That's right, we have two paper events to touch on, all the way from Italy to Oklahoma! We also have some Challenge events to discuss, as well as some information on Eternal Weekend Online!
Without further ado let's dive right in!
The Italian Sensation - 4Seasons Autumn
We have had a few paper Magic tournaments happening, and over in Italy, the group that manages and runs the 4Seasons event series is continuing the awesomeness of having sanctioned paper Vintage! Their most recent event over this past weekend had 26 players overall in it. The 4Seasons Tournaments are doing a great job of keeping Eternal formats alive and well in an area of the world where those formats are very, very popular. You could tell by the energy on the streams for the various events at 4Seasons that the players were really happy to be out playing paper Magic!
You can find out more about the 4Seasons events over on their Twitter.
Let's check out the Top 8 for this sweet event!
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| Paradoxical Outcome | 1st | Cioffo86 |
| Golos Stax | 2nd | Angelo Gatto |
| Oath of Druids | 3rd | MarioBBrega |
| Hollow Vine | 4th | Tom De Decker |
| Breach | 5th | Magni_93 |
| Paradoxical Outcome | 6th | Giovanni Montecchi |
| BUG Midrange | 7th | Aguanile87 |
| Jeskai Control | 8th | Giovanni Manenti |
Not too far off of most Top 8s we see on Magic Online here in the Challenge metagames. At the end of the event it was a Paradoxical Outcome deck that took it all down.
This is pretty close to what a lot of the current PO strategies are doing in the current format within the Esper colorations, even adding previous win conditions like Monastery Mentor in addition to the Urza's Saga game plan. Solid list for sure!
The other Finalist in this event was on Golos Stax.
Hex Parasite in the sideboard as a way of removing counters from your Urza's Saga is pretty spicy. I love it.
Also showing up in this Top 8 was good friend Tom De Decker on Hollow Vine!
Haven't seen this deck online in a while but I really like it. Lots of free interaction and a powerful game aggressive game plan. Solid finish, Tom!
4Seasons is a sweet sweet Tournament series, and I do hope some day I might be able to make it over to Italy to play in one of their events. Kudos to the entire Italian Legacy/Vintage community for really keeping the spirit of Eternal Magic alive!
Oklahoma! Land Run
On the other side of the world, paper Vintage was being held earlier this month in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. This event, known as Land Run, had 34 players in it and it was held at Game HQ Inc. Big thanks to Edward Bonar II for promoting this event and helping to put it on. There were some stalwarts of the format at this event for sure, including our good friends Joe Brennan and Roland Chang!
You can find all the Top 8 decklists for this event over here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8!
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| BUG Midrange | 1st | Joe Brennan |
| BUG Midrange | 2nd | Stephen Harvey |
| Dredge | 3rd | Fletcher Risenhoover |
| Oath of Druids | 4th | Peter Coloyan |
| BUG Midrange | 5th | Roland Chang |
| Blue Tinker | 6th | Jared Lentz |
| Blue Tinker | 7th | Tyler Klein |
| Merfolk | 8th | Cooper Mcclung |
A lot of the Top 8 here is made up of two decks in BUG and Tinker variants, with a double BUG-off in the finals. However, we had reigning Eternal Weekend 2019 Champion Joe Brennan (that Joe Brennan, the one who animated an Alpha Black Lotus with Oko, Thief of Crowns and swung for the win) taking down this small event.
Joe continues to be a master at this archetype and one of the format's strongest players. If you want to play BUG, start by looking at Joe's lists for sure.
In fact, so much so that the Second Place list, which was also BUG Midrange isn't far from Joe either.
Yep it's pretty much the exact same list. Smart minds think alike!
The only other list that really caught my eye was the Eighth Place list in Merfolk!
Straight up aggressive Merfolk is pretty awesome stuff. Love seeing it!
Eternal Weekend Online 2021
We have some concrete information on Eternal Weekend Online! The Vintage events for Eternal Weekend will take place the weekend of November 26th - 28th, 2021 and will encompass three different events throughout the weekend. Each one is for a different painting of a card specially created for Eternal Weekend!
Better yet, All Access Tokens are back for these events, starting on November 15th for purchase in the MTGO store and All Access ending on December 1st. The tokens are entry for the events and it is $25 per event to enter. One entry gets access to the All Access Token.
You can read all about these events here.
| Event Name / Prize | Times |
|---|---|
| Mox Emerald |
|
| Timetwister |
|
| Mox Ruby |
|
Vintage Challenge 10/16
We had two Challenge events this past weekend, the first of which was the mid afternoon Saturday event. This event had 54 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.
PO reclaimed a lot of the top spot of popularity this week, pushing down the Golos Stax decks down a bit, while BUG decks came in second in popularity. Performance wise they did pretty okay, despite PO's below average win rate, it brought two players into the Top 8 this event.
Let's take a look at that Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Mono White Lurrus | 1st | grymn |
| Paradoxical Outcome | 2nd | Falkoneye |
| Dredge | 3rd | Viceroy_ |
| Paradoxical Outcome | 4th | Andreas_Mueller |
| Oath of Druids | 5th | WingedHussar |
| 4C Midrange | 6th | Dazai |
| Blue Tinker | 7th | Slasher21 |
| Doomsday | 8th | XShockWaveX |
Very interesting Top 8 for sure here. At the end of the event it was a Mono White Aggro Lurrus deck that took it all down!
What a really interesting deck for sure. Leaning hard on elements like Thalia, Spirit of the Labyrinth and various two mana hatebears. This list seems super solid for sure.
The Second Place finalist was on PO.
This is super close to the list Nathan Lipetz won with last week. Definitely a strong way to approach the current format from both a competitive and fun "Vintage-y" style of game play.
Also down the Top 8 we had Oath.
This is the Tinker Saga Oath shell, more focusing on either just getting Griselbrand into play or Tinker for Citadel, while having Saga as a backup plan. Serra's Emissary in the sideboard is pretty sweet. That card can be utterly brutal.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we've got good friend Slasher21 on 8-Cast Tinker.
I love this deck. I've been playing it myself lately and it's really a super huge amount of fun. Stringing together one mana draw two cards has been incredibly rewarding.
Vintage Challenge 10/17
The second 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.
Almost as if things were completely different, Golos Stax reclaimed a spot at the top in popularity in this event. This is what I love about the two Challenges because they are very different often enough. Golos didn't have a great win rate overall, but did put two in the Top 8. PO was well represented as well and had a solid win rate.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Paradoxical Outcome | 1st | moatzu |
| Golos Stax | 2nd | Mogged |
| Jeskai Control | 3rd | _INF_ |
| Paradoxical Outcome | 4th | Condescend |
| Golos Stax | 5th | _Shatun_ |
| UR Aggro | 6th | notmi |
| Blue Tinker | 7th | snoopy-magic |
| Doomsday | 8th | revenantkioku |
Definitely a strong Top 8 here with half of it being Stax and PO. In fact, it was PO that won the event!
Another deck slightly close to the UB variant floating around now, with some minor changes such as Opposition Agent in the main, and Karn, Scion of Urza (which also makes constructs) in the sideboard. Solid looking list for sure!
The Second Place list was on Golos Stax.
Nothing super spicy here. As we've discussed before, the Shops variants have really coalesced and converged on this sort of stock looking list. There is a Bojuka Bog in the sideboard for Golos to fetch which is fairly sweet though.
Further down the Top 8 we've got good friend notmi on a sweet UR Aggro variant.
I saw Thieving Skydiver and was immensely happy already, but this list goes deeper than that. Court of Cunning! Curiosity! This list is just really super sweet.
Further down the Top 8 we had a Grixis Tinker shell.
Red in these lists grants some access to things like Dack, Pyroblast and sideboard material, but one of the big things here is also baking in the Underworld Breach / Brain Freeze engine as well. Seems like a smart plan to me.
And then there's Justin.
Okay actually I lied, this list is super sweet. Turbo'ing out Murktides and Thing in the Ice being just a really strong card, combined with four main deck Dress Down seems like a fun way to attack the metagame. I always enjoy the lists Justin comes up with. He is always a super fun deckbuilding machine!
Around the Web
- We've got a video on Eternal Weekend prepping with Jeskai Control. Check it out here.
- Engwar01 continues their Tour of Vintage with Golos Stax. Check it out here.
- As always, Justin Gennari has a bunch of stuff for us.
The Spice Corner
Don't see Humans too much. Now featuring new cards Cathar Commando and Augur of Autumn!
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!
