Hello and welcome back! I would like to once again apologize for not having the second part of The Vintage Year in Review up for last week, but unfortunately one cannot control when they need to write tournament reports for a good finish!

In the first part of the year in review, I covered several major tournaments that took place from January through June 2012, and we were right up to the Vintage Championships at Gen Con over the summer.

Let’s take a quick moment to summarize some of the major trends we saw emerging through the first half of last year:

I. Early in the year we saw a renaissance of different creature-based strategies. Noble Fish style and BUG Fish style decks performed well, as well as control decks that had a backup plan of attacking with creatures such as Midrange Bant and Bomberman.

II. Gush decks started the year strong but began to decline as Mishra’s Workshop gained in popularity with high-profile finishes.

III. The printing of Griselbrand gave Oath of Druids a very powerful new toy to play with.

IV. Grafdigger’s Cage was also a key printing that provided any deck (especially creature and Workshop decks) an efficient way to fight against cards like Oath of Druids and especially graveyard decks like Dredge.

V. Martello Shops began to separate itself from the pack as Vintage’s premier Workshop deck.

 

JULY

NEV Series Event

Finals: Nick Detwiler (Martello Shops) v. Matt Bliffurt (Merfolk)

The emergent trend of Martello distinguishing itself as the premier Workshop deck in the Summer of 2012 continued on into July, as Workshop Savant Nick Detwiler played the deck to yet another high-profile first place finish in the Northeast.

The July NEV tournament also led to me coining the phrase “Slaughter Smurfs” to describe the newly innovated Vintage Merfolk list that Matt Bliffert played to a second place finish.

“I like it when you call me big Papa.”

It didn’t take long for a new M13 printing, Master of the Pearl Trident, to find a home in Vintage. The deck basically uses the Legacy Merfolk shell and incorporates some of the powerful restricted cards into the archetype.

Another new printing also found a nice home in the Merfolk list:

“Where there are creatures, the caverns tend not to be far behind…“

Cavern of Souls found a spot in the Merfolk deck as a pretty central four-of card. Cavern is pretty excellent at protecting important threats from Force of Will, Mana Drain, Spell Snare, and Mental Misstep; as well as allowing a player to cast his or her creatures right into a Chalice of the Void. Later in the year, Bomberman and other aggro-control creature decks would also adopt this powerful land to great and similar effect.

Besides the innovative Merfolk list that took second, the rest of the July NEV Top 8 was rounded out by a slew of “the usual suspects,” with RUG Delver, Gush, and Bomberman all putting hats into the ring.

The Council Open

Finals: Rob Edwards (Martello Shops) v. Tim Kenney (Forgemaster MUD)

“It’s Hammer Time.“

So firstly, let’s discuss the difference between Martello MUD and Forgemaster MUD: The primary difference is that the Forgemaster MUD deck plays Metalworkers, while Martello MUD doesn’t. The Martello list was refined from Forgemaster MUD; it streamlined the deck to play fewer expensive Forgemaster tutor targets and Metalworkers to power them out instead of having faster, high-impact, disruptive spells.

Martello, with back-to-back wins in July, really began to distance itself from the rest of the pack, showing the world that not only was Workshop the strong-arm archetype of Vintage, but also that Martello was the front-runner best build.

The Council Open also featured yet another interesting combo deck that didn’t take off in popularity, but nonetheless is really fun to play.

“Going old school…“

The Neo-Academy deck has a really consistent and quick goldfish, and playing it is basically like trying to solve a puzzle every hand. Plus, you have to admire the resolve of a player who is willing to build and play an “all-in” Academy combo deck in a world where Mishra’s Workshop is at the height of its popularity!

LCV 12 July

Finals: Alex Delgado (Gush Tendrils) v. Pablo Ambrojo (Tezzeret Control)

LCV July was truly a battle of the blue decks, with Gush eventually getting the better of Tezz Control in the finals.

Pablo Ambrojo’s Tezzeret Control deck is an interesting hybridization of the Baleful Control lists from earlier in the spring, with more traditional Grixis Tezzeret Control decks.

“Before Martello took over Vintage, people played with Golden Planeswalkers!“

It is interesting that clearly Martello hasn’t at this point made the transition from the Northeastern United States across the pond to Europe. One need look no further than the fact that all of the Top 8 lists in Europe are Forgemaster MUD, while Martello is the dominant Shop archetype at this time stateside. The streamlined disruption of Martello makes its matchup against blue decks, particularly slower blue decks like Tezzeret, significantly better, which may account for why blue decks performed better in Europe longer into the summer.

 

AUGUST

Team Serious Open

Finals: Sam Krohlow (Bomberman) v. John Neal (Dredge)

For some reason Dredge always seems to pop up and perform really well in the Midwest at Meandeck and Team Serious Opens, and the July Team Serious Open was yet another example of this observation in practice.

In addition to having an affinity for Grave-Troll and Bazaar of Baghdad, the Buckeyes also love their “Wizards” decks. Not only do Wizards decks tend to fare well in these Ohio events, but they are also constantly being revamped and reinvented! Take a look at Randall’s list from the August Serious Open, which he called “Invitational Wizards” because it featured four Invitational cards!

“A few ‘famous’ wizards.”

Another thing I noticed: Neither Tiago Chan nor Kai Budde can block Jon Finkel because he has fear. Does that mean they are afraid of him? Also, isn’t it weird that if they had printed Shadowmage now and he had intimidate instead of fear, they could block him? Deep thoughts…

Vintage Championships At Gen Con

10AM PRELIMINARY TOURNAMENT
Finals: Mike Solymossy (RUG Delver) v. Nick Ponce (RUG Planeswalker Control)

Mike Solymossy’s victory in the first preliminary tournament made RUG a popular last-minute deck choice among players for the main event. After being unable to find a deck that I liked for the event—with the Bant deck I had planned to play a horrible underdog to RUG’s Delvers and Bolts—I also switched. Unfortunately, I got absolutely annihilated by big blue control decks in the main event, which RUG traditionally has a difficult time dealing with.

RUG, along with U/R Landstill, was a popular deck choice among many seasoned veterans at the Vintage Championships yet ultimately proved to be poor choices, as none actually cracked the Top 8 with these archetypes!

Although it didn’t play in the finals for the byes in the preliminary, it is worth noting that Bomberman took up both the third and fourth spots in the event and continued to be one of the best performing blue decks in the metagame.

4PM PRELIMINARY TOURNAMENT
Finals: Joshua Butker (Doomsday) v. William Rosa (U/B Jace Control)

The second preliminary tournament for byes was won by a Gush Doomsday deck.

I remember later that evening after the preliminary had ended that I was out to dinner with a few of the Meandeck guys when we read on Twitter that Doomsday had won the second grinder. Obviously, Smennen was really excited because his pet deck had won—but equally humorous was when one of the guys asked me: “Do we need to adjust our sideboards to account for more Doomsday decks since it won?”

I replied, “No, because there are probably only two people at Gen Con deranged enough to play it, and we already know one of them, Steve, is on GUSH!”

Speaking of Steven, he also made Top 8 of the preliminary grinder tournament with his Cobra Gush deck, which he sleeved up and played in the main event:

And then it was time for the big one:

Vintage Championships At Gen Con

Finals: Marc Lanigra (Grixis Control) v. Blaine Christiansen (Espresso Stax)

In the end, Marc Lanigra stood victorious at Vintage’s most high profile and prestigious event of the year. Once again, it was a blue deck that weathered the storm, but while blue was ultimately victorious, the real story of the tournament was the dominance of Workshop MUD decks.

A large part of Lanigra’s surgical, tactical dismemberment of a very Workshop-centric Top 8 was the fact that he finished 1st in the Swiss rounds, which allowed him to take advantage of the new play-draw rules for competitive REL events which states that: “The higher seeded player in the Swiss gets the choice of play or draw in game one of each match in top eight.”

The Top 8 featured a bunch of familiar Workshop builds, notably Forino playing his signature Martello list. However, the breakout innovative deck of the tournament was Blaine’s bizarre Espresso Stax brew:

Although there were several Workshop decks that made up the Top 8, I decided to feature Blaine’s because it is the most distinctive. His deck features Smokestack, a relic of the olden days of Vintage, and maxes out on Buried Ruin to recur his artifacts!

“Counter-sack-tap-fade“

LCV August

Finals: Adria Romero (Martello Shops) v. Pablo Ambrojo (Tezzeret Control)

And finally, Martello Shops found their way into the old world, and Workshop’s worldwide conquest was coming to fruition.

It is also significant that the Workshop lists in the Top 8 of this event switch away from being the traditional Metalworker / Forgemaster MUD lists that we find in this metagame into Martello.

Pablo Ambrojo once again took second with his Tezzeret Control deck.

Another interesting list, Deadguy Ale:

An early example of the Junk style decks that begin to emerge as a possible meta solution to Martello style decks.

SEPTEMBER

NEV September Event

Finals: Rob Edwards (Martello) v. Peter Ingram (Espresso)

Top four for this event was three Workshops and a Dredge; clearly the “fun police” were out in force at this event…

Workshops continued on into autumn separating themselves from the pack as the premier Vintage strategy. As Workshops continued to put up near dominant numbers, the rest of the metagame struggled to stay above water by trying to solve the “Workshop problem” through creative and innovative technology.

Late summer and into early fall was perhaps the height of Mishra’s Workshop’s supremacy in Vintage; one reason for Workshop’s prolonged stay at the top of the heap was that people hadn’t really figured out how to fight back against Workshops yet. Once people began to realize that throwing an extra Nature’s Claim or Ancient Grudge into the sideboard wasn’t going to drastically swing game three on the draw, people began to discover better ways of attacking MUD. From this point forward, Mishra’s Workshop’s presence would become the singular most important force in shaping what Vintage decks look like moving forward.

Joe Brown has been on the scene for a while and went pretty retro with his 5C Stax technology.

“Wee Goblin Elder”

It makes me happy that Goblin Welder got one this year!

Team Serious Open

Finals: Sam Krohlow (RUG Delver) v. Nat Moes (Forgemaster MUD)

While RUG Delver may have won this tournament, the metagame pretty quickly adapted to be able to hand the deck. As one would expect, RUG’s popularity begins to decline drastically from this point forward.

As is always an exercise in awesomeness, check out this Mark Trogdon brew that checked in with a third-place finish.

Welder, Check. Solemn, Check. Sword of Fire and Ice, check. Magus of the Moon, check… It appears to be an original, authentic Trogdon…

Australia Vintage Masters Tournament
Finals: Daniel Unwin (Grixis) v. Thomas Ribert (Grixis Control)

In Australia’s first big event of the year, Grixis Control faced off against Grixis Control in the finals. I don’t really know very much about the Australian Vintage scene, so I can’t speculate as to why this was the case, but it seemed worth noting…

Also, this deck seems pretty sweet to me, as it is Grixis splash green for Trygons and other spicy stuff…

The deck reminds me a lot of Owen Turtenwald Vintage Championship deck from a few years back with Dark Confidants and Trygon Predators fighting side by side.

Also, check out the miser’s Izzet Charm (legal from the Izzet vs. Golgari Duel Deck) in September!

“The first Izzet Charm in Vintage; Niv Mizzet would be so proud!”

The Australian metagame appears to have been very blue-centric, which is interesting nonetheless…

OCTOBER

Team Serious Open

Finals: Randell Witherell (Belcher) v. Jacob Hilty (Two Card Monte)

And again the Midwest again doesn’t disappoint with some very bizarre and interesting deck choices facing off in the Top 8. Degenerate combo decks anyone? Well, here are two, which showcase how the Midwest was quite literally the wild west of Vintage in 2012…

“Brings new meaning to the phrase: My opponent vomited all of his cards into play…”

The above-mentioned ridiculous combo deck beat out this next degenerate combo deck in the finals of the tournament:

I don’t really know what to make of this finals, and if I did statistics for the review (which I THANK GOODNESS don’t have to do), I’m pretty sure this finals is a pretty big outlier based upon everything else going on in Vintage at the time.

LCV October

Finals: Alex Mateu (Dredge) v. Miquel Alcorize (Gush Tendrils)

A lot of blue decks in this Top 8, so it is unsurprising that a Dredge player would eventually hoist the trophy. An interesting list I found looking through the Top 8 that I hadn’t seen before is this Death’s Shadow Fish list. You don’t see Death’s Shadow getting sleeved up with much success very often in Vintage, so I thought I’d give Ivan de Castro some props for finding a way…

NEV VII

Finals: Justin Kohler (Bomberman) V. Brian Ritter (Bomberman)

Immediately after Gen Con, it looked as though Grixis Control would emerge as the premier blue deck and eventual darling of Vintage. However, as summer moved into fall, Bomberman just continued to outperform Grixis across the board. Is it possible that a U/W deck would eventually take up Control Slaver’s mantle as the best combo-control deck in the format?

Perhaps…

The Bomberman deck is defined by its resiliency and versatility and provides its pilot many routes to victory. The deck can beat down with creatures, combo out with Black Lotus + Auriok Salvagers (or some versions have Key + Vault), or simply control the game with Jace, the Mind Sculptor and permission.

“Oooh, I found a Black Louts! Oooh, and another! And another!”

Bomberman’s inevitability, raw power, and ability to adapt and stay relevant cause me to draw a lot of comparisons between it and Control Slaver back in the day. People always hated on CS (the same way they hate on Bomberman) by saying the deck was clunky, not as powerful as other decks, etc., but for all the criticism the deck gets, basically all it does is continue to win events. Sound familiar?

NOVEMBER

Player’s Guild, Bloomsburg

Finals: Justin Kohler (Bomberman) v. Mason Sokol (Grixis Control)

If you played Vintage in the Northeast during the fall of 2012 and your name wasn’t Justin Kohler, it basically sucked to be you because he and his Bombermen probably kicked your butt. For a long time I wasn’t sure if Bomberman was actually a good deck or whether Kohler was just a maniac from another planet. In actuality, it was probably a little bit of both.

Again, Kohler and his Bomberman deck emerged victorious at Bloomsburg.

The Martello deck continued to put up strong numbers and held a couple of spots in the Top 8. Another interesting deck that finished in the top four of the event was an Empty the Warrens / Gush combo deck, which I will now share:

“Remember when the combo decks were Academy and Necromancer decks and not all Gobliny?”

This deck is interesting because it doesn’t necessary try to ensure the win when it starts comboing by “actually” ending the game, but it simply attempts to go big enough that its opponent will probably lose. Can you beat 16 Goblins on turn 2? Well if you can’t, I win…

LCV November

Finals: Benjamin Crouzet (Forgemaster MUD) v. Laurent Maillier (Grixis Control)

While the Top 8 of this event was almost all blue decks, Mishra’s Workshop had the last laugh by eventually winning the day. The Top 8 had two U/W Landstill Decks, which would later become popular in the United States.

“Standstill and Stoneforge fighting side by side”

Stoneforge Mystic seems really well positioned in a world filled with other creature decks and Mishra’s Workshop decks. Stoneforge is kind of like a movie trailer against MUD: “If you only cast one spell against Mishra’s Workshop this game, CAST A STONEFORGE!”

DECEMBER

Team Serious Open

Finals: Duanne Haddix (Forgemaster MUD “Tribal Constructs”) v. Paul Blakey (Belcher)

Once again, Belcher performs well at the Team Serious Open, this time spewing its way to a second-place finish. The first-place list, Duanne Haddix’s Forgemaster MUD list, utilizes Cavern of Souls to make its expensive and powerful artifact creatures uncounterable.

“A land that makes sure you land your creatures.”

Another interesting deck that made top four of the December Team Serious Open is this Naya aggro deck.

If you anticipate having to play against a bunch of Bomberman and Mishra’s Workshop, this Naya deck has got some pretty sick game. I’m really impressed by this aggro deck and could actually see myself playing a deck like this in Vintage at some point.

NEV VIII

Finals: Raffaele Forino (Terra Nova) v. Dave Gans (Dredge)

Forino struck again with a new MUD variant called Terra Nova that utilized a second playset of manlands (Mutavault) and a full playset of Dismembers to clear out opposing creatures.

“Has the creature types Mutant, Ninja, and Turtle… Also, Assembly Worker…“

The rest of the Top 8 was very heavily rounded out with Landstill and Bomberman, which really made Terra Nova a very strong deck for the event. Through the winter, Bomberman has really been a popular deck choice, as has Landstill.

Bloomsburg

Finals: Rob Edwards (Four-Color Control) v. Matthew Gottshall (MUD)

Two very interesting decks faced off in the finals of this Bloomsburg tournament. Rob Edward’s deck is basically a singleton control deck, packed with tutors and spicy targets; whereas Matthew Gottshall’s MUD deck backs away from the current trend of playing Kuldotha Forgemaster in order to be a little bit faster and more streamlined.

The good news is that if you lose to Rob in a tournament you never feel bad because every card he draws is the ‘miser’s _____.’

Matthew’s deck is very straightforward. He attacks. He makes it difficult to cast your spells. He attacks your mana. And you die.

Team Serious Open

Finals: Stephen Menendian (Burning Tendrils) v. Anthony Michaels (Espresso Stax)

Check out Smennen’s new brew that he used to win essentially the last Vintage event of 2012!

Steve’s deck is a Burning Wish combo deck that plays a big portion of the combo cards on the restricted list and also has the plan of being able to Oath up a Griselbrand to start off the combo! The list basically hybridizes a combo deck with an Oath deck, which is able to attack an opponent in a number of different and potent ways.

There was also another Burning Tendrils / Oath deck in the top four, a strong showing for a powerful combo deck.

Summing It All Up

Whew! That was a lot of decks!

2012 was a pretty crazy year for Vintage, and though I didn’t get to play in a bunch of tournaments like I usually do, I have followed the format with a lot of interest. We have seen Mishra’s Workshop rise to heights in power and dominance that the archetype hasn’t seen since before the restriction of Trinisphere. We have seen Gush go from being the most popular strategy in the format to falling to only being a role player. And other role players like Landstill and Bomberman have risen up to become major players in the metagame!

There are a lot of questions that I look forward to seeing answered in 2013. For instance, is Workshop going to trail off in the wake of a metagame that moves toward Stoneforge Mystics, Bomberman, and Oath of Druids—or will it come back with yet another powerful iteration?

Is the Griselbrand Burning Tendrils going to be a real player moving forward, or is it only a flash in the pan? Oathing a Griselbrand is obviously something people will be doing for years to come, but is Burning Wish really going to prove to be the best thing to do with him?

I look forward to seeing how these things play out in 2013!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed my 2012 Vintage review. I noticed that a few people posted corrections to the first part, particularly about name spellings and other things. I have tried to be more careful here in the second part, and apologize in advance if I misspelled any names or got lists wrong, but it is simply a gigantic task to go through all these lists and write an article like this.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Brian DeMars