Happy Holidays and welcome back! Hopefully everyone has had ample opportunity to sit back, relax, and enjoy this happy time of year. Today’s article is the first installment of a two part article series where I will be looking back at the year that was and highlighting some of the most important and impactful moments in Vintage that took place.

In looking back at the year as a whole, it is very interesting to see how everything slowly evolved and unfolded, ultimately leading us to the point at which we have arrived.

Our looking back begins, as all years do, in January.

Meandeck Open, January 2012

Finals:  Gil Rivera (Dredge) Vs. Ben Weinburg (Bomberman)

The first MDO of the year was an interesting and memorable event for a number of reasons. For me, in particular, it was an event I personally attended and brewed a new and innovative deck for, which ended up being one of the standout moments of the tournament.

Looking back at this decklist, I am still pretty impressed with myself for brewing up this very innovative deck. Bant Midrange was an early attempt to harness the power of Stoneforge Mystic in Vintage.

“Mystic’s day will come…”

Stoneforge Mystic is one of those cards that seems extremely powerful but hasn’t yet crossed over into any sort of sustained Vintage success despite being clearly a potent and powerful card. I would be surprised if Stoneforge doesn’t become a bigger metagame player in the next year or so.

I wasn’t the only gunslinger battling with Bant creatures at the MDO:

Bloomsberg, January 2012

Finals: Joshua Potucek (U/R Landstill) vs. Brandon Brown (G/W Beatdown)

January 2012 was an interesting era in the history of Vintage, as it appeared that creature based aggro, midrange, and control strategies were coming to the forefront of the metagame as legitimate contenders. The appearance of a G/W beatdown deck in the finals at Bloomsburg showed us that G/W and Bant were decks that could legitimately win some matches of Magic in a format where creatures had long been considered “fringe” or “tier two” decks.

The G/W deck really brought the hate!

“Four maindeck Kataki, no big deal.”

A Fishy-aggro U/R deck also finished in third place at this event:

“Four maindeck Magus of the Moon, no big deal.”

Another thing of note is that the U/R Delver deck here played Viashino Heretic. The genesis of the short-lived “creature era” in Vintage was wrought with creatures to bring the beats and lots and lots of narrow (but extremely potent) hate cards. Magus of the Moon, Viashino Heretic, Kataki, and Trygon Predator were all shining like movie stars in January 2012.

At Bloomsburg, while some players were sleeving up and trying to figure out how to play with creatures in Vintage, some other crafty mages were demonstrating how to annihilate creature decks with Oath of Druids!

“You thought Vintage was safe for creatures!? It wasn’t safe at all!!!”

Show and Tell Oath is a deck that still sees some play now nearly a year later. The concept is simple: the deck uses Show and Tell and Oath of Druids to get Emrakul into play as quickly and easily as possible, and then the pilot crosses his or her fingers and hopes the opponent can’t beat an Emrakul!  Dragon’s Breath helps by giving the fatty haste.

Another popular Oath variant:

“Yes children, a long, long time ago, before Griselbrand, we played with this!”

Ah, the nostalgia. Remember Demon Oath?

LCV, January 2012

Finals: Sergio Herandez (Snapcaster Control) vs. Raul Roso (Slash Panther)

There was a time, in a world far, distant, and unimaginable, where there were a bunch of different Workshop decks all competed to be at the top of the heap. One of these decks was Slash Panther MUD Aggro, which rose in popularity as the “Cat Stax” creature passed the “Jace Test.”

“This card may be terrible, but it DOES pass the Jace Test.”

Remember when everybody talked about the Jace Test? Haha. What a change a year can bring!

The Snapcaster Control deck was also interesting because it was sort of a proto-Grixis deck that hadn’t yet brought Dark Confidant into the fold.

“Can you even imagine a world where Grixis only plays 2x Chewer!?”

Another interesting deck from this event that never really got off the ground (unless you count Jeff Anand playing it in every event he’s attended since 2005) is the Neo-Control Slaver deck that took third.

I like the way this deck has value Goblin Welders and the way he has Wurmcoil Engine and Myr Battlesphere. There was a time when we debated the merits of other Tinker bots besides Blightsteel Colossus, and though common wisdom seems to suggest that the much more powerful BSC is the way to go, there are still some (myself included) who’ve attested to the merits of playing utility bots instead. Here is a good example of that in practice.

Grudge Match, February 2012

Finals:  Shawn Griffiths (Gush Gro) vs. Mark Hornung (Cagebreaker Dredge)

If you would have asked me in 2011 what a “Cagebreaker Dredge” deck was, I wouldn’t have been able to even have speculated. The printing of a new Vintage playable sideboard staple, Grafdigger’s Cage, changed the game in February 2012.

“In a world where liking Graphs is a crime, a jail.”

The deck didn’t go as far as playing maindeck Ingot Chewers (which we would see later on in the year), but it was an innovative deck that aspired to answer the question of the Cage almost as quickly as players thought to ask it!

“People used to play this card.”

As of February, Gush was at the height of its game and even got a victory at the Grudge Match. While Gush started the year at the height of its prowess, as the year progressed it came down a peg or two.

Speaking of strategies that got knocked down a couple of notches…

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

It is so uncommon to see TPS decks just a year later that I thought it only fair shine a light on this relic!

Creature decks still continued to perform well and be popular choices among Vintage players. I really liked the look of this BUG Fish deck, which plays a lot of really powerful and synergistic cards. A deck like this might be a really good home for Deathrite Shaman.

NEV II, February 2012

Finals:  Tom Dixon (BUG) vs. Raffele Forino (Martello)

“And Forino said unto the people: let there be Martello…”

While it didn’t win the tournament, Forino’s innovative Workshop build ultimately went on to change the Vintage format over the course of the next six months.

Forino fused the power of Kuldotha Forgemaster with a more potent and finely tuned supporting cast of MUD cards. Instead of playing weak, clunky, and situational cards like Metalworker and a bunch of big situational dorks,  Martello cuts out the fat and streamlined the deck into a sleek butt-kicking machine.

I wrote an article about this tournament earlier in the year and was basically amazed at how dominant Workshop appeared to be at this event. It is also interesting that there were four different Workshop builds all performing well: Martello, Slash Panther, Espresso, and Welder Stax!

NEV II was certainly a moment where Workshop put all of its finest variations on display for the world to see and really announced its arrival as a future contender for the top of the heap in Vintage!

LCV, March 2012

Finals: Jordi Corbonell (MUD) vs. Adria Marti (Mono-White Hate)

The March LCV was the first time I can recall seeing the Mono-White Hate deck, an innovative deck that has continued to thrive as time has gone by.

Basically, if it is a hateful card against something that people commonly do in Vintage, well, then it’s probably in this deck’s 75 somewhere!

Another deck that came out of this event was a Grixis deck that looks like actual Grixis…

“Finally, Bob finds a home!”

NEV III, March 2012

Finals:  Scott Hughs (Mono-Red Shops) vs. Tom Dixon (Remora Gush)

The finals of this event summarizes the entire tournament and the direction the format was headed up to this point in 2012. In an epic moment, Mishra’s Workshop and Gush squared off and fought for their lives to decide which was going to take the driver’s seat moving forward.

Workshops won the tournament and moving forward surpassed Gush as the top deck in Vintage.

Another sweet deck from this event that never really took off:

“Isn’t a Wizard, but seems like a nice fit in this deck anyway.”

Meandeck Open, March 2012

Finals:  Smennen (Doomsday) vs. Edwin Nieves (Dredge)

Not quite the resurgence of Doomsday, more or less an episode of Steven plays his favorite pet deck… Nonetheless, Doomsday got one this year, which is pretty interesting and sweet.

Another interesting deck came from Jon Johnson:

Jon’s deck was a hybrid of G/W Hatebears and Noble Fish and has the best of both worlds, plus he has Daze, which is basically out of this world! 

“Not from this planet.”

From the non-planet that was this particular Meandeck Open and from nowhere else….

“Take a Glimpse at this unnatural metagame!”

So this event was won by Smennen playing Doomsday, and the other contenders were Jon Johnson playing the world’s most hateful Bant deck, an Elves deck, a Tezzeret deck, and I’m pretty sure everybody else played Dredge! 

Only at a Meandeck Open can the metagame be 29 players on Dredge and one on Doomsday. (That’s a joke).

Bloomsberg, March 2012

Finals: Josh Potucek (Night’s Whisper Gush) vs. Phillip Bergeman (Cat Stax)

Gush and Workshop faced off in what was ultimately the title fight of the month for top deck in the format.

Gush continued to be a player and won this event at the very end of March.

Both modern Grixis and modern Bomberman decks brought up the rear behind the eventual champion Gush and runner-up Workshop. Interesting…looks kind of like the last hurrah with all the eventual overtakers being slightly edged out!

Full of Vintage, April 2012

Joe Canada (Cat Stax) vs. Alex Bastecle (Noble Fish)

Another Bant deck checked into the Top 4! The Full of Vintage event for me encapsulates a moment where Vintage could have gone a certain direction but ultimately didn’t. Creature decks like Bant and Noble Fish squared off against Aggro Shop decks and Gush. Completely and utterly a moment that has passed us by and does not exist as the current metagame 3/4ths of a year later.

LCV, April 2012

Finals:  David Morales (White Barcelona) vs. Miguel Alcoriza (Bomberman)

OMG! WHAT THE HECK IS THIS DECK!?

The answer: AWESOME.

It took a few months, but somebody finally found something new and innovative to do with Stoneforge Mystic in Vintage; even I couldn’t have predicted it would be to fuse the 2CC creature with Workshop! Although the deck never really took off outside of this tournament, it was an interesting moment and for sure an interesting decklist worth checking out.

The other interesting thing about this Top 8 is that it was completely infested with Landstill and Bomberman decks and was the crystallization of a shift that took place during this portion of the year where pilots seemed to switch away from Gush towards Landstill and Bomberman. The new blue decks, Landstill and Bomber, were both better at facing off against Mishra’s Workshop than Gush (especially as pilots began to switch from Espresso and Cat Stax to Martello), and it is also non-trivial that Landstill has a tremendously effective Gush matchup.

From this point forward Landstill and Bomberman began to take over as primary blue decks in the metagame and would be later joined up with by Grixis Control.

Grudge Match, May 2012

Finals: Raf Forino (Martello) vs. Mike Hajduk (RUG Delver)

This was probably my favorite Top 8 of the year, as it had a lot of different kinds of decks in it. It is kind of cool too that Martello won the event and went on to become a major metagame force.

We’ve already taken a look at Martello, but in this instance it ended up winning the tournament and continuing to make Vintage players take notice.

RUG, on the other hand, had a standout performance at this tournament, taking second place in the hands of Mike Hajduk.

Here is a deck that became very popular up until Vintage Champs and even enjoyed quite a bit of success.

John Jones and his Turbo Tezz also had a big showing here at the Grudge Match, eventually taking third place.

Turbo Tezz is a decklist that I think people might want to look to as a possible direction for blue decks moving forward in the world of Martello Shops. The deck has fallen out of favor for other options, such as Bomberman and Grixis. However, there may be unforeseen metagame merits in choosing a more explosive, artifact-fueled strategy, especially in a world where beating Workshop on the draw is a concern.

Midrange Bant showed up to the party and took 4th place.

And for those of you who thought Intuition Tendrils wasn’t a deck anymore… KA-BLAM!

“Not just for Psychatog decks in 2004.”

Council Open, May 2012

Finals:  Rob Edwards (Vintage Control) vs. Shawn Griffiths (Bant Midrange)

A finals that truly warms my heart, Vintage Five-Color Control against Bant Midrange!

Rob made some interesting choices here for his control deck that ultimately served him well in eventually becoming the champion, among them maindeck Sower(s), Balance, and Pernicious Deed!

“You don’t see one of these getting played every day!”

And check out the updated Bant Midrange decklist played to a second place finish by Shawn Griffiths. Note how difficult the world was for Bant style decks before Rest in Peace was printed! Sideboard? No thanks! I don’t get one of those because I’d like to not auto lose to the graveyard…

Also, Kohler didn’t let anybody have any fun with this deck that became popular up through the summer months.

Bazaar of Moxen, May 2012

Finals: Erik Hegemann (Dredge) vs. Daniel Majano (MUD)

Dredge came and once again conquered a huge field in a major Vintage tournament.

The new and innovative version of the deck this time evolved to include maindeck Ingot Chewers and land in order to fight Workshops, Cages, and whatever else got in its way!

Aside from Workshop once again proving it had the right stuff to win a big event, the tournament was also the first event that closely resembled the current iteration of the metagame with Grixis, Martello, and Bomberman all making an appearance in the Top 8!

Also, check out this Stoneforge U/W deck. Perhaps something like it could be good moving forward.

I think Stoneforge Mystic may be one option for a strategy that could be well positioned moving forward, and it will be interesting to see, if it gets played, which of these shells might be successful. The straight U/W is elegant, and I like that it has good mana.

Team Serious Open, June 2012

Smennen (Baleful Strix Control) vs. Kevin Poenich (Dredge)

“NOT a 2/1, but still good.”

So Smennen continued his yearly trend of beating Dredge in the finals of a tournament with an off the wall, crazy deck.

The Strix Control deck enjoyed popularity in the early summer months and actually performed quite well until the metagame became better defined post Vintage Championships, where it was eventually edged out by better control decks like Bomberman and Grixis.

NEV, June 2012

Finals:  Justin Kohler (Bomberman) vs. Brad Jarman (Landstill)

These two decklists ultimately shaped the metagame for the next three or four months. Both decks are outright powerful, interactive, and adaptive in their own right, and both are very good against a lot of different strategies in the abstract. Finally, with the rise of Bomberman and Landstill, Vintage had established, known, and powerful control decks, and the rest of the format had to conform to them.

It is also interesting that Martello Shops finished in third place in this event. It was very much a transition of the Euro Bazaar of Moxen metagame to the Northeast as the Euro and American metas synced up while the format pushed forward into the summer months and toward the Vintage Championship.

Tune in next time for the second part of the Vintage 2012 Year in Review, which will cover July-December.

Happy Holidays, cheers, and thanks for reading!

Brian DeMars