Vintage 101: Eternal Weekend 2022
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're going to be talking about all things Eternal Weekend! We had two Eternal Weekend events over the weekend, one of which was North America Eternal Weekend in Philadelphia!
North America Eternal Weekend Vintage Championships
This past weekend was a super weekend for Vintage and Eternal Magic in general as we had our first North American Eternal Weekend in several years. Vintage has always been a huge part of Eternal Weekend, so the NA Vintage Championships is usually a pretty big deal. This year, with very short notice overall, we had 186 players show up to play fully sanctioned Vintage. This event looked like a ton of fun and it is absolutely stellar to see so many Vintage masters out and about for this.
The event itself had coverage as provided by community stalwart Anuraag Das, with commentary provided by some true Vintage celebrities such as Brass Man, Kevin Cron, and Stephen Menendian. Be sure to check out the VODs over on Anuraag's Twitch channel and look for them I assume at some point on his YouTube.
Let's take a look at some of the cool action shots from around the event. Big thanks to Jordan Baker for taking these photos and making them available via Facebook.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
One of the wildest aspects of this event was the advent of Mono White Initiative being one of the most popular decks in the entire event at 10.2% of the event, sharing this spot with Hogaak. 19 copies of Mono White were in this event, and it was evident all over coverage that this deck was the talk of the town. Not only was it popular, but it was very very very good, boasting a 66.4% win rate overall in the entire event, making it the highest win rate deck in the event.
Further down the metagame was very diverse overall from a metagame perspective and Vintage looked really good on coverage all weekend.
Let's take a look at the Top 8. All Top 8 competitors here received a unique Gush promo that is absolutely sick.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| Mono White Initiative | 1st | Rajah James |
| Jeskai Lurrus | 2nd | Hans Jacob Goddik |
| Doomsday | 3rd-4th | Brian Pallas |
| UB Tinker | 3rd-4th | Peter Coloyan |
| Grixis Tinker | 5th-8th | Kiet Ngo |
| Mono White Initiative | 5th-8th | Lee Webb |
| Mono White Initiative | 5th-8th | Stu Somers |
| Hogaak | 5th-8th | Michael O'Malley |
We talked about how Mono White had the highest win rate in the event, and that held true into the Top 8 with three copies breaking into the Top 8 alongside some Tinker, Jeskai, Doomsday, and Hogaak. At the end of the event though, in an incredibly decisive two games the winner of the Time Walk painting was Rajah James on Mono White Initiative.
Rajah is a good friend of mine, and so the entire weekend was filled with a lot of tense action as myself and the crew of Team Serious cheered Rajah on from the sidelines. There are some absolutely stellar moments on coverage with this deck, from watching Rajah beat a Turn 1 Bolas's Citadel while being on the draw to the finals match where being on the draw both games just never seemed to faze him. This list is powerful, and one of the big things about this deck was how well it was built to beat up on the mirror because of the power of cards like Stoneforge Mystic and Kaldra Compleat.
It is not absolutely surprising at all for those who have been following the column that this deck is something that had the potential to do well at this event. We've been talking about these cards since they got put on MTGO. This shell in general was very good prior to the advent of White Plume Adventurer and Seasoned Dungeoneer, but those two cards really juiced up this deck a ton.
Congrats to Rajah on taking home a win for Team Serious!
The Second Place finalist was repeat Eternal Weekend Legacy Champion Hans Jacob Goddik on Jeskai Lurrus.
I think out of all the aspects of this deck, having three copies of Lavinia, Azorius Renegade main deck is really what makes this deck tick. Lavinia is ultra strong against a ton of decks right now as it makes it difficult for decks like the Tinker decks to resolve cards even if they do manage to roll into a Bolas's Citadel (as Lavinia just counters them) and having multiples means it's easy to deploy another if the first one is removed. It seems quite powerful against a lot of decks, but maybe not so much against the Mono White decks due to the fact that they play a lot of creatures. Hans is a strong player regardless, and the deck looked very good on coverage.
Also in this Top 8 we had some Doomsday action by Brian Pallas.
It was actually just wild to see this list, because it was noted on camera that this deck had no ways of handling a resolved creature threat/hatebear such as Lavinia, which ended up being very impactful in the semi-finals match versus Hans Jacob Goddik. The sideboard juke here of transitioning into Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is quite strong though against a lot of these kinds of decks, but with the Initiative decks being so populous, we just had to wonder. Even a Fatal Push could have been quite impactful here. Still, Brian showed off some very skillful gameplay such as setting up a Doomsday pile where his opponent could hit him with Ragavan and all it did was just get him closer to drawing and casting Oracle. Solid and skillful gameplay all around here.
Further down the Top 8 we had a UB Tinker shell by Peter Coloyan.
Hullbreacher and wheel effects are one of the big reasons to play this deck. I will point out a side note that Sheoldred does not work at all with Day's Undoing (a mistake I have corrected from a past article) in that the triggers don't actually go on the stack because the turn is ended before the triggers can be put on the stack which exiles them. However, it does work with Hullbreacher which is one of the big draws to play this deck with four copies of that. Definitely a very powerful deck for sure.
Vintage Eternal Weekend 12/11
We also had this past weekend an Eternal Weekend Online event, mainly scheduled in timing to be available for the European players as there was no EU Eternal Weekend event this year. This event ended up having 282 players in it, which is pretty stellar given that there was no All Access Token for this event. This event preempted the regular Challenge event on Sunday the 11th so there was no regular Challenge while this was going on.
You can find all of the Top 16 decklists for this event here. Due to a lot of technical difficulty in getting people together to collect data for this event, there is no data sheet for this one, so no graphs.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Hollow Vine | 1st | JUJUBEAN__2004 |
| Esper Tinker | 2nd | ziofrancone |
| Jeskai Lurrus | 3rd | taruto1212 |
| Breach | 4th | LuisMJ |
| Mono White Initiative | 5th | Hakumei1234 |
| Oath of Druids | 6th | Miharu_Fuyumiya |
| Mono White Initiative | 7th | KingSedris |
| Mono White Initiative | 8th | MentalMisstep |
Again, we saw a good amount of Mono White Initiative decks break into this Top 8, definitely showcasing the power level of this deck. At the end of the event though it was Hollow Vine that took it all down.
There is a lot of power in this kind of deck, utilizing many of the free spells in the format to push out free creatures and Squee/Master of Death to offset the card disadvantage of Bazaar. It's certainly an incredibly strong deck and I'm not at all surprised to see it do well here.
In Second Place we had Esper Tinker.
Lavinia is a good reason to be in these colors, as is Monastery Mentor. Having removal like Prismatic Ending and Swords to Plowshares is also quite helpful. Teferi is also extremely powerful in current Vintage. Solid list overall.
Vintage Challenge 12/10
This weekend also had a regular Challenge event, but we don't know exactly how many players were in this one due to not having any data.
You can find all of the Top 32 decklists for this event here. Due to a lot of technical difficulty in getting people together to collect data for this event, there is no data sheet for this one, so no graphs.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Jeskai Lurrus | 1st | ecobaronen |
| UB Tinker | 2nd | Ozymandias17 |
| Hollow Vine | 3rd | oosunq |
| Doomsday | 4th | Diem4x |
| Dredge | 5th | Lord_Beerus |
| Tinker Storm | 6th | desolutionist |
| Esper Tinker | 7th | JOANANTON |
| Paradoxical Outcome | 8th | jewdan |
Pretty varied Top 8 here, with some Tinker and Bazaar. At the end of the event though it was Jeskai Lurrus that won.
Third Path Iconoclast is a sweet card to see thrown into these decks for sure. I think it's definitely strong and it works well with the myriad of noncreature spells the deck plays. However, it doesn't make Elementals, and therefore I don't like it over Young Pyromancer (you will pry my Risen Reef from my cold, dead hands).
In Second Place we've got some UB Tinker action.
As we noted before, Sheoldred and Hullbreacher are big stars in this deck, but it is also just a Tinker deck too which gives it that solid angle of attack alongside Urza's Saga as a backup. Very powerful decks these are for sure.
Around the Web
- Our good friend Brian Coval posted a video on Breach in prep for Eternal Weekend. Check it out here.
- Justin Gennari's content can't even be stopped by Eternal Weekend! Here's what's on the docket this week:
- Our good friend Montolio posted a ton of leagues lately, so check out his channel!
The Spice Corner
You can find this week's 5-0 decklists here.
Perennial Behemoth Ziasbond!
From NA Eternal Weekend, we had a sweet Hogaak list featuring Poxwalkers from the 40K Commander decks.
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for your continued support of the column and join me next week as we continue our journey into Vintage!
As always you can reach me at my Link Tree! In addition you can always reach me on the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the Vintage Streamers Discord.
Until next time!
