Season 9 of the Vintage Super League continues next Tuesday at 9 PM Eastern (GMT -5). We’re running a series of articles to celebrate, like our intro to VSL Season 9 and our rundowns of the Top 5 Decks in Vintage and the Top 10 Cards in Vintage. Plus, we’re running a few VSL fantasy leagues on Thousand Leagues!
Week 4 of the Vintage Super League’s ninth season is in the bag. This week, no one was eliminated from the playoffs and there were no undefeated players.
Season 9 of VSL is organized into four groups of four players. This week saw Group D, featuring Andy Markiton, Saffron Olive, Matt Sperling, Kevin Cron, play a full round-robin tournament on Tuesday night. The competitors brought a variety of decks to the event: Lavinia Xerox, Patriot Control, Pitch Dredge, and Esper Humans.
Results
So, how did week one go for the players?
R1: Kevin Cron (Lavinia Xerox) defeats Matt Sperling (Patriot Control) 2-1
R2: Andy Markiton (Pitch Dredge) defeats Saffron Olive (Esper Humans) 2-0
R3: Andy Markiton (Pitch Dredge) defeats Kevin Cron (Lavinia Xerox) 2-0
R4: Saffron Olive (Esper Humans) defeats Matt Sperling (Patriot Control) 2-1
R5: Kevin Cron (Lavinia Xerox) defeats Saffron Olive (Esper Humans) 2-1
R6: Matt Sperling (Patriot Control) defeats Andy Markiton (Pitch Dredge) 2-1
Andy Markiton (2-1)
Andy brought Dredge to the table and his draws were favorable…mostly. We saw some Turn 1 one Hollow Ones as well as Turn 1 double Hollow One. When Dredge does what it is designed to do it really delivers—and sometimes you mulligan to a one card Stinkweed Imp hand.
Kevin Cron (2-1)
Kevin’s performance was another example of how strong Lavinia, Azorius Renegade can be in Vintage, especially when combined with redraws in your cantrip-heavy deck. I really liked Kevin’s design for a UWR Xerox deck since I believe Balance, Lightning Bolt, and Swords to Plowshares are very good at the moment. Jace, the Mind Sculptor can really pull his weight, as well.
Saffron Olive (1-2)
Esper Humans had some tough draws, but it was a good experiment to see what direction this archetype could go in order to make a splash into the inbred five deck format that is Vintage. I can’t wait to see what Saffron Olive brings next time. Maybe we’ll get to see whatever he was tweeting about with Restore Balance?
Matt Sperling (1-2)
Matt played his matches really well but ultimately his draws fell short in several games. Matt was the lone contender to take out the Dredge menace and I think we can expect a lot of good things to follow from here.
Upcoming Schedule
Feb 12
Seth Manfield
Cyrus Corman-Gill
Andy Markiton
Andreas Petersen
Feb 19
Kevin Cron
Andy Probasco
Erin Campbell
Randy Buehler
Feb 26
Brian Coval
Rachel Agnes
Brian Kelly
Bob Maher
Mar 5
Saffron Olive
Rich Shay
Matt Sperling
Steve Menendian