Kelly crushes Vintage Champs

Posted on August 24, 2015

Eternal Weekend is in the books, and what a weekend it was. Vintage saw an enormous resurgence in popularity this year, with 458 people signing up to play in Vintage Champs; one of the largest Vintage events ever held in the United States. More than that though, Vintage is a format that doesn't frequently end up in the spotlight, and this weekend showed that there is a growing and passionate community supporting the format.

We also saw just how deep and dynamic the format is. There's something special about paper Vintage that just can't be captured on Magic Online. Watching people shuffle up with moxen and other power is absolutely incredible, and the sheer variety and absurdity of some of the gamestates that are generated is absolutely mindboggling. On top of all of that, the format is continuing to grow and develop at a startling pace - at every big event there are new takes on classic archetypes featuring all kinds of awesome new technology. This weekend, for example, saw the debut of cards like Hangarback Walker, Dragonlord Dromoka, and Dark Petition.

After the dust settled on the Swiss rounds, the Top 8 featured one copy of Delver tempo, one copy of Dredge, one copy of Oath of Druids, one Jeskai Monastery Mentor deck, one Grixis control deck, and, one Jeskai Control brwe, and twoMishra's Workshop variants. While there is absolutely some amount of overlap between the busted cards that make the cut in each of these decks, each build has fundamental differences that set it apart in gameplay. Perhaps more importantly, there are zero combotastic decks trying to end the game as quickly as possible. Turn one kills are a perception of Vintage that the format has long struggled to overcome, but this is a Top 8 that really showed off the diversity of strategies and cards that are viable in Vintage. These are decks looking to cast cards like Dack Fayden and Hangarback Walker, not kill anyone on the first turn of the game.

Out of this Top 8, Dredge was considered a heavy favorite against the slower decks, giving Sullivan Brophy an opportunity to go back to back at consecutive large Vintage events. However, it was Brian Kelly and his techy Oath of Druids build that took down the event. Brian overwhelmed his opponents by Oathing into Auriok Salvagers plus Black Lotus to generate infinite mana and Pyrite Spellbomb opponents to death. Alternatively, many games were won by Oathing into Dragonlord Dromoka to lock his opponents out while he comboed of or Magus of the Moat to lock out the decks that are reliant on ground-based attackers.

Throughout this Top 8, we saw Kelly skillfully navigate his out from under multiple Sphere of Resistance Effects against former Vintage Champion, Paul Mastriano, as well as through complex stacks involving Force of Will, Pyroblast, and Flusterstorm against Robert Greene in the Finals. Brian picked a deck that was well-positioned against the field, with all kinds of cool options to keep his opponent guessing, and took down the event with this exciting new technology, showing that innovation and evolution are critical to success in Vintage.

Congratulations to your 2015 Vintage Champion, Brian Kelly.