Lets have a thread where we can discuss the weekly happenings of the VSL since it is probably the most visible and viewer accessable vintage tournament out there, even for non Vintage players.

The structure:
This season wont feature some gimmick like the past couple did, it will be pretty straight forward Vintage as far as i can tell.
Each player has to submit 2 Decks that have to be different, while beeing different seems to be handled by a common sense "dont make us make rules, what different means" mentality.
We have 8 weeks of competition and each player will play on 2 of those weeks in different pods of 4 players.
After that the playoff will start and go on for 3 weeks.

There are 16 players in the Tournament this time:
Rachel Agnes
Randy Buehler
Erin Campbell @Oestrus
Cyrus Corman-Gill
Brian Coval
Kevin Cron @CHA1N5
Brian Kelly @brianpk80
Bob Maher
Seth Manfield
Andy Markiton @Montolio
Stephen Menendian @Smmenen
Saffron Olive
Andreas Petersen
Andy Probasco @Brass-Man
Rich Shay @The-Atog-Lord
Matt Sperling

For more information on tournament structure and player profiles go to :
https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2019/01/introducing-vintage-super-league-season-9/

The first weeks pod will play tonight at 9 PM Eastern (GMT -5).

The players will be Anders Peterson on Bant, Bob Maher on Pyromancer Xerox, Rich Shay on Pitch Dredge and Cyrus Cormann-Gill on DPS.
You can find the full Decklists and matches here: https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2019/01/vintage-super-league-season-9-week-1-decklists/

The twitch stream will be over at: https://www.twitch.tv/magic

Edit: fixed time

I enjoyed the game play and I like that DPS performed so well. Rich Shay's points about the meta-game are interesting. I do not whole heartedly agree with them but I understand them.

His article at hipsters of the coast goes into more detail https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2019/01/talking-vintage-with-rich-shay/

Watching these games makes me want more combo and play more broken stuff not less. I found the control matches the least interesting but that's probably just me.

@moorebrother1 I always love to see some fine rituals. I think Cyrus played the deck quite well, despite missing lethal one time (thankfully he didn't get punished for it). I think he got pretty unlucky in match one game 1 losing to his own necro not finding a tutor.
I was pretty surprised he won against pitch dredge without any sideboard cards. DPS is one of the few decks that can skim on dredge hate a bunch, but not having any and just planning to be faster especially against pitch dredge with MM, FoW, mindbreak, therapy and unmask is very risky.
Iam sad that bob underperformed so much, especially his match against Andreas was very interesting to me.

@aelien Like I said, it is probably me then. I got bored and turned out that match. It was interesting to see that Library did not win the game for Andreas, but I am just not very interested in control v control anymore. I was heavy into Blue Moon with Niv-Mizzet and I am taking a break from control for a bit. The lines of play are not just that fun or interesting to me anymore.

Do not get me wrong, it is difficult to play control in Vintage and the mirror is a nightmare. I have respect for those who can navigate it.

The second pod will play today at 8 PM Eastern (GMT -5).
This Pod consists of:
Brian Coval on Survival with Lavinia
Stephen Menendian on PO with Lavinia
Randy Buehler on Xerox with Lavinia
and Andy Probasco on Deaht's Shadow without Lavinia

Full decklists and matches can be found here:
https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2019/01/mtg-vintage-super-league-season-9-week-2-decklists/
Watch the stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/magic

Pretty spicy stuff, epescially Death's Shadow. Lavinia really goes into anything it seems, iam very intersted how these decks fair against each other.

It's rare that we get a new VSL episode that features cards from a new set before they are actually legal in paper vintage tournaments. And then to have that card featured in three different strategies, so that viewers get to examine it's impact from multiple perspectives - that's virtually unheard of.

Tonight should be super entertaining.

Death’s Shadow started the night looking pretty promising but in the end seemed kind of meh, and hasn’t overturned the conventional wisdom that in Vintage, horizontal growth trumps vertical growth, especially since decks in the near future will run rampant Plows in addition to the already rampant Missteps.

I also want to commend the commentators for doing a top notch job tonight. There were a few head scratchers (such as the suggestion that Steve might cast Chain of Vapor while trying to win with Blighsteel Colossus?!) but the vast majority of the commentary was crisp and insightful.

@evouga I would caution this thinking. @Brass-Man got pretty unlucky flooding out multiple times in his 20 mana deck with 4 preordains vs some of these other decks running more land and in some cases fewer smoothing cantrips. That can happen, but I think if all these matches played more times, on paper, death's shadow would come out on top against most of them (the exception potentially being the MU he won, against Survival).

I enjoyed the show. I watch these anyways but I was really interested to see how all the Lavinia decks played out in this series. My take-away from this session was that while the card might be horrible to play against when it is out, the decks that play a strategy where a hate bear like this makes sense tend to have less dynamic win conditions.

Is Saffron Olive going to play next week?
"Hello everyone it's Seth, proooobably better known as Saffron Olive, and today we're going to be playing Panharmonicon Turbo-Jank iiiiiiiin Vintage..."
I can't wait.

Week three decklists are up: https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2019/01/vintage-super-league-season-9-week-3-decklists/

All four of this week's decks are more fringe. That should be fun.

The third pod will play today at 9 PM Eastern (GMT -5).
This Pod consists of:
Brian Kelly on Rector Flash
Seth Manfield on BUG Leovold
Erin Campbell on 2Card Monte
and Rachel Agnes on a EsperLaviniaThief list.

Full decklists and matches can be found here:
https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2019/01/vintage-super-league-season-9-week-3-decklists/

Again really intersting lists. While i dislike seeing Lavinias again, iam still really interested in Kellys, Erins and Rachels list.
Seeing Painter and Rector Flash should be awesome!

Edit: See the matches on twitch at: https://www.twitch.tv/magic

@evouga Saffron Olive will play next week.

Brian Kelly with the sickest of lists as usual. Always a pleasure when his subtle machinations come to fruition.

@juice-mane said in VSL Season 9 Thread:

Brian Kelly with the sickest of lists as usual. Always a pleasure when his subtle machinations come to fruition.

Indeed! Like most of his decks this one looks like an inconsistent pile of unusual singletons (Mikokoro? Spellseeker??) that somehow manages to hum together in practice.

@evouga Exactly. Really looking forward to the games, and his commentary this coming stream.

The fourth pod will play today at 9 PM Eastern (GMT -5).
This Pod consists of:
SaffronOlive on Esper Humans
Matt Sperling on UWR Control
Kevin Cron on Lavinia's Xerox
Andy Markiton on Pitch Dredge

Full decklists and matches can be found here:
https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2019/02/vintage-super-league-season-9-week-4-decklists/

See the matches on twitch at: https://www.twitch.tv/magic

I suspected Saffron playing humans since he showed up on geekyjacksons stream with the deck yesterday, but i really hoped he would change his mind. Many people expected some cool brew from him, instead we get a pretty boring and easy to play deck. At least its uncommon (and hopefully stays that way). I guess it is not fair to expect from a new Vintage player to come up with a innovative brew, while only really knowing the format for a couple of weeks.

The other thing i want to complain about: Damn Lavinia, Azorius Renegade ...shes everywhere. Normally i dont have any problem with good new cards slipping in a lot of decks, but she is so damn boring. I guess this is not the Thread to rant about the card again, so lets leave it at that. At least Kevin packed a cool card with Spell Queller.

Andy of Pitch Dredge is cool to see in my opinion, especially with three spicy Spinning Darkness in the sideboard. If you look at the other decklists, you can see they are ready to deal with dredge, should be a fun night!