This Week in Legacy: The Return of the Eternal Weekend
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of This Week in Legacy! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're going to be discussing all about Eternal Weekend 2023! We got a huge announcement this past weekend with a lot of details on the events. In addition to that we've got some followups on some other paper Legacy events such as the Austrian Legacy Masters event this past month and the MXP Tacoma 5K event from this past weekend. We've also got some Challenges from this past weekend.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Eternal Weekend 2023 Announcement
We got a pretty big announcement this past weekend for Eternal Weekend 2023! This is a huge announcement that you can read over here.
We are getting three major Eternal Weekend events this year in Europe, Asia, and North America. It is worth noting that at this time there is no plans for a Magic Online Eternal Weekend event like there have been the past few years, putting Eternal Weekend firmly back into the paper Magic era.
The Top 8 competitors of each Eternal Weekend will all be getting a retro frame printed foil promo card (last year's promo was non foil). This year's promo is Dragon's Rage Channeler.
This promo looks superb! I love that they keep doing promos like this. It really makes it fun and interesting for players to have some form of extra reward for making Top 8 of the event. The fact that only 24 of these will exist though will mean these will be exceptionally pricy on the secondary market for sure.
Let's break down each of the events happening this year.
Europe Eternal Weekend
This year we have a European Eternal Weekend (last year's return to paper Eternal Weekend did not have European option), that is going to take place in Prague and is hosted by JK Entertainment. The dates for this event are on November 17-19.
The trophy painting for this event is an alternate art Force of Will!
Asia Eternal Weekend
The Asia Eternal Weekend this year is again hosted by BIG MAGIC in Aichi, Japan. The dates for this event are November 24-26.
The trophy painting for this event is an alternate art Volcanic Island!
North America Eternal Weekend
This year's North America Eternal Weekend is held by Card Titan once again but this time it's in the city of Pittsburgh, PA. The dates for this event are December 8-10.
The trophy painting for this event is an alternate art Lightning Bolt!
Austrian Legacy Masters (ELM Qualifier) Event Weekend
At the end of July here was a weekend in Linz, Austra held by the Austrian Legacy League. This event had several Legacy tournaments building up to a European Legacy Masters (ELM) Qualifier event where there were qualifications up for grabs to the ELM event later this year. You can find out all about these events in Austria over on the Austrian Legacy League Twitter. Big thanks to Philipp Klein for sending us all the info on these events.
Specifically over this weekend there were a few events with their Top 8s (which you can find the post for here) but the Main Legacy Event having the ELM Qualifier attached to it had a very healthy attendance of 59 players. Let's take a look at the Top 8 of that event.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Tempo | 1st | Lorenzo Tassone |
| Cephalid Breakfast | 2nd | Siegfried Spirek |
| 4c Uro Control | 3rd-4th | Claudio Bonanni |
| Death's Shadow | 3rd-4th | Timo Bertram |
| ANT | 5th-8th | Robert Swiecki |
| Jeskai Control | 5th-8th | Niccolo Covoni |
| The EPIC Storm | 5th-8th | Wing Vincent Cheung |
| Ninjas | 5th-8th | Dorothea Calmels |
The main event was won by a super cool Dimir Scam/Tempo variant!
Definitely a very interesting list here. Leaning hard on the Scam game plan alongside stuff like Sauron's Ransom and Bowmasters seems quite strong.
Definitely sounded like a super fun event, and if you're looking for some sweet decklists, all of the decklists were published to the Austrian Legacy League's Moxfield profile, which you can find here.
MXP Tacoma Legacy 5K 8/12
This past weekend was a paper event in Tacoma, WA held by Laughing Dragon MTG. This event was a Legacy 5K and it had a whopping 110 players in it.
You can find all of the decklists here and the data sheet here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Stoneblade | 1st (Split) | Neil Henley |
| Death's Shadow | 2nd (Split) | iKhada |
| Grixis Delver | Top 8 | Tjbrown329 |
| Death's Shadow | Top 8 | Derrick Jones |
| Red Painter | Top 8 | David Crosse |
| ANT | Top 8 | Sage Stetson |
| ANT | Top 8 | James Johnson |
| Omni-Tell | Top 8 | Jon Barber |
Definitely an interesting Top 8 here. Good amount of tempo variants and some Storm! At the end of the event it was a split finals between Death's Shadow and Stoneblade.
This is a really solid looking list. Forth Eorlingas! continues to be very impressive. Back to Basics main is also super strong given so many decks being super greedy in manabases now.
As noted the other deck in the split here was Death's Shadow.
iKhada is definitely one of the strongest players and deckbuilders of this archetype and the choices here really show it. Having cards like Dismember push the deck's goal of lowering it's life total to pump your Shadows, but also the deck's threats are so much more dense now with both Troll and Murktide, as well as Bowmasters. This is a super strong archetype in the format right now, and possibly one of the best tempo decks in the format.
Legacy Challenge 8/12
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Saturday event. Despite having incomplete data we know there was 58 players for this event, thanks to the efforts of the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the incomplete data sheet here. There wasn't any data for this event due to no available data helpers.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Black Stompy | 1st | mephidro |
| Jeskai Control | 2nd | Oceansoul92 |
| Lands | 3rd | The_Bza |
| Doomsday | 4th | ZerossBZH |
| Lands | 5th | Al1Baba |
| Grixis Delver | 6th | JakeTMS |
| Grixis Delver | 7th | JPA93 |
| Death and Taxes | 8th | l337erhosen |
Very interesting showings here. Good number of Lands and Grixis Delver, all of which seem really good versus decks wanting to play Mind's Desire since the unbanning. At the end of the event though it was Black Stompy that won.
This deck really is quite powerful. I think it's only gotten better with Bowmasters around. It really has a lot of haymaker-esque plays that the opponent has to answer and ways to just win the game on the spot like Helm/Leyline.
In Second Place we have Jeskai Control.
Forth Eorlingas! has slowly become one of the really truly powerful cards out of the LOTR set. It scales so well with the game and ends the game really quickly in a lot of ways. It's super strong.
Also in this Top 8 we had Lands.
Main deck 4 Sphere of Resistance Lands is I think such a really strong place to be with this deck in the current metagame. Definitely an incredibly strong variant of this deck.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Death and Taxes.
75 card D&T not too prevalent in this day and age for sure. Very interesting to see here. I love Serra Paragon here though for recursive value. Seems sweet.
Legacy Challenge 8/13
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the mid afternoon Sunday event. Despite the data issues we know that there was 93 players in this event thanks to the efforts of the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the incomplete data sheet here. There wasn't any data for this event due to no available data helpers.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Death and Taxes | 1st | xJCloud |
| GW Depths | 2nd | Sprouts |
| Grixis Delver | 3rd | kentaro_hokori |
| Red Stompy | 4th | Xerk |
| Doomsday | 5th | Manahandler |
| Death's Shadow | 6th | Wizard_2002 |
| Death's Shadow | 7th | elementix |
| Lands | 8th | The_Bza |
Good variety here, with some Tempo, some Combo, and Prison decks. At the end of the event though it was xJCloud on Death and Taxes that won.
Bowmasters in D&T alongside Thoughtseize is incredibly sweet. I also really like The Battle of Bywater in the sideboard here. It demolishes larger creatures and creates tokens to sink mana into if you need it.
In Second Place we had GW Depths.
The Abzan version of this deck is incredibly strong as we saw a few weeks back with Nicholas French-Seat's win at the BCDL. This deck gains a lot of powerful cards like Bowmasters and Grist and combo hate like Thoughtseize out of the sideboard.
Also in this Top 8 we had Red Stompy.
Heavily aggressive and prison-heavy, this deck really punishes all the people trying to push Mind's Desire. Between cards like Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void followed up by quick pressure (Caves of Chaos Adventurer still quite insane), this deck can close out games so fast.
Near the bottom of the Top 8 we had Death's Shadow.
We spoke about this deck earlier but I definitely think it's a strong deck that has a lot of tools for the format right now, and it now has a strong distinct identity to it as well. Super cool.
Around the Web
- iKhada has an article on The EPIC Storm site on the TES vs Death's Shadow matchup. Check it out here.
- Bryant Cook breaking Mind's Desire. Name a better duo. I'll wait. Check it out here first though.
- The Eternal Glory Podcast has a new episode on the unban. Check it out here.
- Sahar Mirhadi has a second Vlog on her visit to Barcelona! Check it out here.
- Everyday Eternal has a new episode on the unban as well. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here.
Varolz, the Scar-Striped in a Dreadnought shell? HOT.
Grief + Chain of Smog combo is sweet.
The One Ring + Mind Over Matter in Omni-Tell? Sweeeeet.
Killabee casually doing Killabee things.
TWIN.
I found a stupidly sweet deck here playing both Creative Technique and Mind's Desire.
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for continuing to support the column and join us next week as we continue our journey into Legacy!
As always you can reach me at all my associated links via my Link Tree! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the MTGLegacy Discord Server.
Until next time!
