Of course, Vintage needs a Constructed focus too. That's where the Holiday Festival Vintage Championship comes in. This championship has a different qualification system: You can qualify for this December 20 event by going 4-0 or 3-1 in any of the Vintage Daily Events from Wednesday, December 10, through Friday, December 19. Even if you don’t have a robust Vintage collection, you’ll have a shot at qualifying for the championship. You can qualify through Legacy Daily Events during the same time period—but it’s a bit harder; you’ll have to go 4-0 in a Legacy Daily Events to get in that way.

If you qualified through Legacy, you might be asking yourself, “Why should I bother playing in a Vintage championship event if I don’t have all the Vintage cards I want for my deck?” Well, good news! In addition to the prizes listed in the tables below, we will award a nonfoil set of Vintage Masters to each of the top three finishing players in the Vintage Championship who don't have any of the Vintage Masters special rarity, or Power Nine, cards in their deck! Note, that's not the top three finishing players over all, but the top three who are not playing any of the Power Nine. Theoretically, you could come in 20th place and, as long as 1st through 19th all had at least one the Power Nine in their decks (including sideboards), you would be the first of three to receive a nonfoil Vintage Masters set. This set will be in addition to any prizes those players win based on their final standing in the event. If you win one of these sets, we hope it will help you to join the ranks of the Magic Online Vintage community! (Note: These sets will be granted by Wizards of the Coast within a few days of the championship’s completion.)

I actually really like a singleton Null Rod.  I was running a single Null Rod in my Delver decks for the last few months when the metagame shifted to alot of UW decks and Slaver briefly after that.  

The main reason to run a Null Rod is if you are going to play in the Northeast, where lots of control pilots rely on Engineered Explosives type cards to wipe your board. Also, Null Rod is REALLY good against Bomberman.  You only need 1 for it to make a big difference.

I found that pre-Cruise Delver sometimes has trouble with Bomberman, which can assemble the combo just before you can tempo them out.   Null Rod is the super answer to that.  I played a singleton Null Rod in my Delver deck at the last local tournament, and beat the Bomberman pilot that knocked me out of top 4 the last time.  

Finally, it's great in the late game against control decks because it makes your Spell Pierces/Flusterstorms relevant in the late game.  After alot of testing, one Null Rod total between maindeck and SB was perfect.  It's fine in the SB, but I actually felt that I had more room in my maindeck, so I slipped it in there.

As I said in the VSL interview, Null Rod is tactical, not strategic here.  It's not to deny mana per se, it's to deal with the kinds of things I just described, while also slowing Will, etc.

If that is what Smmenen had in mind, I would be very surprised. Ideally, the deck should be more reliant on Cheap artifact destruction, while beating down. If you can resolve Trygon due to your Grudges and claims blowing up their spheres, then that is a great bonus. Trygon should not be the main plan, it should be a support plan, because you can't count on resolving trygon every game.  


Another thing Green gives you is a better Oath matchup, as well as the ability to destroy random enchantments like moat. I agree with you on Trygon however, it feels rather clunky and slow, and Delver very much wants to leave up mana.

Make sure you have an Ancient Grudge, 4 bolts, and a mystical tutor maindeck. Running Wastelands helps a lot in this matchup too.

I'm writing a tournament report that will answer those questions.