Vintage 101: WAAAGH!
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 new cards from the Warhammer 40,000 Commander sets and whether any may apply to Vintage. I know we just started another spoiler season for Unfinity, but we will be tackling that once the full set is out. In addition to that, we've got two Challenges to discuss as well.
Without further ado let's dive right in!
Red Orkz Go Faster!
The Warhammer 40,000 Commander decks have been fully spoiled and since these decks are Eternal legal, we do get to look at them and see if there's anything for Vintage here. Since there are four different decks we're going to break down our spoilers by the deck.
The Tyranid Swarm
The Tyranids are massive apex predators, devouring their opponents with veracity and ferocious strength. The primary mechanics of this deck deal with +1/+1 counters and the Ravenous mechanic, which funnels X spells into drawing cards when paying X = 5 or greater.
Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph
This card is pretty weird and does some unique things with cards like Grapeshot. Being blue and red is a big downside in Vintage, especially though and being a 3/2 even more. I doubt this sees play like most other 1UR legendaries.
Toxicrene
Green having a card that is sort of like a Blood Moon is wildly interesting to say the least. This is probably not so good because giving Shops/Bazaar the ability to tap their lands for mana can be a little awkward still, but it does kill Sagas. Who knows if this is that good or not, but it's a cool design.
The Ruinous Powers
The powers of Chaos fuel this deck, which utilizes chaotic magic like Cascade as a mechanic and the usage of instants/sorceries.
Chaos Defiler
Goblin Welder hasn't seen a ton of Vintage play in a long while, but this is a wildly good synergy piece with that card. Definitely very intriguing card for sure but maybe a little too slow for current Vintage.
Poxwalkers
This card is really interesting given that it triggers off things like Madness and Flashback. I doubt this makes it into Dredge because Dredge does not actually cast many spells from zones other than the hand anymore since ditching Therapy, and the Hollow Vine deck has a sheer space problem with this card in terms of finding room for it. Hogaak might be the best home overall, simply because it can do Madness and potentially Therapy as well as casting Hogaak from the graveyard.
Necron Dynasties
The Necrons are an ancient race of skeletal robotic warriors. Much of this deck focuses heavily on artifacts, so if there's anything to be Vintage playable it's going to be here.
Anrakyr the Traveller
Five mana is a bit, and it has to attack to do its thing, but being able to cast an artifact spell for basically free is pretty wild. Given that it only has to attack this could be reasonable even with the black mana pip.
Canoptek Scarab Swarm
This has some very unique effects especially in Vintage where you are more than likely to hit both types of these cards with Moxen and fetch lands. Generating a quick army with this is pretty neat.
Ghost Ark
This card is kind of sweet. Being able to Unearth creatures from the graveyard for a quick blitz is super cool and it's pretty easy to crew this.
Night Scythe
What I like about this card is that it comes with a creature for crewing it. This also holds equipment quite well for a blitz turn because it flies. Very solid card for sure.
Skorpekh Lord
An artifact lord that grants a buff and menace is pretty reasonable on rate. We've seen Chief of the Foundry before in decks. The limiting factor here could be the black mana pip, as colored artifacts tend to not work so well with Mishra's Workshop.
Technomancer
This card is wild and I doubt it's actually that good, but the combo potential of what it can do is super cute and fun.
The Forces of the Imperium
The Imperium Man is the war machine of humanity, serving their Emperor on his Golden Throne with mechanics devoted to tokens and go-wide strategies. The other key mechanic in this deck is Squad which lets you pay a cost for creatures that have it any number of times and in turn receiving a token copy of the creature for each time the cost was paid. There wasn't much from this deck compared to the others, but there was one card of note.
The Golden Throne
This is certainly a wildly interesting card. It's yet another strange way for Lich's Mirror + Channel decks to make mana and avoid dying which is kind of cool. Just a side note that this does not beat Thassa's Oracle because it is worded just like Lich's Mirror.
Vintage Challenge 9/17
Our first Challenge of the weekend was the mid-afternoon Saturday event. This event had 55 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 datasheet here.
Pretty even spread across the top decks here, and even more even down the line. Hollow Vine (Squee decks) had a good showing here, as did Breach and Prison Shops.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Breach | 1st | Falkoneye |
| Dredge | 2nd | satu2112 |
| Jeskai Lurrus | 3rd | NooxTom |
| Hollow Vine | 4th | Breckoroni |
| Paradoxical Outcome | 5th | thepowernine |
| Hollow Vine | 6th | _Milhouse |
| BUG Midrange | 7th | jankyb |
| Lurrus Standstill | 8th | duke12 |
Quite a lot of Bazaar decks here. At the end of the event though it was Breach that won it all.
Slightly still toeing the line here between actual Breach and Tinker to be honest. Many of these decks tend to blend in with each other these days in this regards that it's hard to really go deep on the Breach classification. Still, this deck and the card makeup here is very powerful.
The Second Place finalist was Dredge.
Pretty solid list overall and pretty much where Dredge has been for a while now. There is some play with the main deck numbers of some cards but the card makeup is pretty nominal.
The other Bazaar list in this Top 8 was Hollow Vine. Let's take a look at the highest placing list.
The amount of sheer free cards this shell gets to run is pretty wild. Definitely makes for some very strong defenses while making a bunch of free creatures to attack with.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Lurrus Standstill.
Kind of weird seeing Jace, Vryn's Prodigy around. That card used to be so much more ubiquitous in the format back in the day.
Vintage Challenge 9/18
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning 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 Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Tinker was the most popular deck here but it had a pretty middle of the road win rate overall. Hogaak did exceedingly well here, as did Dredge.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Prison Shops | 1st | yPrincipe |
| Hogaak | 2nd | kanister |
| Lurrus Standstill | 3rd | duke12 |
| Jeskai Lurrus | 4th | NooxTom |
| Oops! All Spells | 5th | medvedev |
| Grixis Tinker | 6th | Butakov |
| Hogaak | 7th | moon11 |
| Aggro Shops | 8th | Thomas Serra |
Decent amount of different archetypes here, with some Bazaar, Shops, Combo, and Fair decks. At the end of the event it was Prison Shops that took it all down.
This is the first time seeing one of the newer Dominaria United cards in Karn's Sylex in the main deck here. I have to wonder how good this card actually was for sure, because it didn't seem all that impressive. Definitely interesting though!
In Second Place we had a really inventive take on Hogaak by kanister.
Hexdrinker seems like quite an interesting card once you have mana sinked into it with Gaea's Cradle. It makes for a very big threat that can quickly push itself out of Bolt+Plow range and then quickly become a game-ending threat. Seems very strong indeed.
Further into the Top 8 we had a repeat weekend performance by NooxTom on Jeskai Lurrus.
NooxTom has continually had some pretty insane results with this deck. The power level of the deck is pretty apparent, so it's easy to see why!
At the bottom of the Top 8 we've got Aggro Shops.
Lean and mean, this deck is a death-dealing machine!
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari's content machine cannot be stopped! Here's what we got this week:
- Our good friend Andy Markiton (Montolio) also has a bunch of videos for us this week as well.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 decklists here.
Go for the Eyes, Boo!
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!
