Vintage 101: EU Eternal Weekend 2024
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're taking a look at the results of Eternal Weekend Europe's Vintage event! In addition to that we're going to be looking at an aggregate of all three Eternal Weekend 2024 events, as well as some Challenges from last week.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Eternal Weekend Europe 2024 Vintage
This past weekend in Prague was the final of our Eternal Weekend events for 2024. This event was held by J.K. Entertainment. The Vintage main event during this weekend brought out 155 players, which seems to be the lowest of all three Eternal Weekend events (194 for Asia, 407 for North America). This is a little rough honestly, but I did hear some things about the venue that may have impacted tournament attendance, in addition to a lot of people just not opting to go it seems. Still, a Vintage event at 155 players is still a Vintage event, so we can take a look and see what we have going on with this event's metagame.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Esper Lurrus was the most popular deck of the event, which given its performance across the other two events does not surprise me. It had a very reasonable win rate at 52.4%. Below this a huge smattering of decks goes down from 15 copies to 8 copies with things like Oath, Dredge, Jewel, and Initiative. All decks we've come to know in the current format. Jewel Shops had a very strong win rate at 62.2% with only 10 players on the deck.
For the most part across the spread of decks the win rates are fairly all over the place. A number of off-meta decks at the moment didn't do super well, while a good majority of the decks hovered just above and below the 50% win rate mark.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| Dredge | 1st | Samuel Mistygatz |
| Esper Lurrus | 2nd | Juan Eliso |
| Initiative | 3rd | Thilo Schramm |
| Esper Lurrus | 4th | Brian Coval |
| Jewel Shops | 5th | Oscar Basart |
| Initiative | 6th | Cheng Guo |
| Dimir Lurrus | 7th | Javier Dominguez |
| Doomsday | 8th | Stefan Schütz |
I think for the most part a good majority of this Top 8 was expected. Lurrus especially is a deck that was definitely going to make a Top 8 appearance, and here we had three of them. Initiative also had some strong representation here, putting two in the Top 8. At the end of the event though, it was Samuel Mistygatz who won on Dredge.
Dredge is a deck that absolutely commands respect in this current metagame. And even with the metagame attempting to respect it with a lot of graveyard hate in sideboards, it still came out triumphant in this event. That says a lot about how this deck is constructed at the moment. One of the biggest shifts for this deck I think that really improved upon it was abandoning things like Silversmote Ghoul and even cutting out Bridge from Below and Cabal Therapy. I view Dredge as sort of functionally the "Delver" deck of the format, and so a lot of its game plan is focused on very similar things. It needs to deploy its game plan and then lean on the tools it has to protect that game plan, while other times it can be controlling and then deliver the punch of its game plan once it has asserted control over the game.
To do this I think the best thing for the deck was to cut a lot of the fat out and very much lean on the added tools it gained from those cuts. More countermagic and cards like Grief and Noxious Revival are very powerful things to be doing with this deck.
In Second Place we had Juan Eliso on Esper Lurrus.
I think most people definitely expected a Lurrus deck to show up in the finals of this event. Lurrus has been rather omnipresent in the format (and we'll talk a lot about that in the next section) so having it be one of the finalists is somewhat normal to the current standards of the format. Historically I've never been a big fan of Lurrus as a card, and I wish there were ways to address it being one of the defacto best things to be doing in Vintage without having to handle it via the BnR.
This list is definitely what we've come to expect out of the Esper Lurrus builds. Primarily the white cards in the deck are Swords, Lavinia, and Containment Priest and that usually about covers it, but those extra additions are great at managing various aspects of the format currently, especially in the mirrors.
Eternal Weekend 2024 Aggregate Data
Now that all three Eternal Weekend events are over, our good friend Justin Gennari was awesome enough to put together an aggregate sheet of all three of the Eternal Weekend events. You can find all of that data here.
Let's start by checking out the graphical data provided by this sheet below.
This is quite a bit of data to look at. Over the three events there were a total of 756 players! This is a lot of Vintage and I love to see it. As we sort of expected at the top of the heap in terms of metagame representation was Esper Lurrus.
Esper Lurrus quickly rose in response to the Dimir Lurrus decks after the restrictions of Saga and Bauble, and it did extremely well in all three Eternal Weekend events, including winning two out of the three events. Over the course of these events, Esper Lurrus had a very strong 56.3% win rate. Combined with Dimir Lurrus as a fair deck, both decks made up around 16% of the overall metagame, which is quite a lot. Lurrus archetypes in general (not just counting those two) was around 22.6% metagame share and a combined 55.4% win rate.
It's no shocking thing that Lurrus is a very popular card in Vintage. Initially after the card came off the banned list it seemed as if the card might not really be as good as it has ended up becoming, but in hindsight I think there was always the potential for Lurrus to go back to being one of the best strategies in Vintage. A lot of this is due in part to many new cards reinforcing Lurrus' ability to leverage the very "free" aspect of it being available at all parts of the game. The restriction of Urza's Saga didn't really do anything to slow down Lurrus as an archetype, it more or less just shifted to a slightly different list and still ended up being just as good if not better.
Surprisingly, the card that had so much impact on Vintage last year in Lorien Revealed was dropped hard like a rock in the Lurrus lists, especially in Esper variants. The need to play this card lessened quite a bit once Saga was restricted, mainly because the deck didn't need to play over 8 colorless lands anymore and need Lorien to fix mana. It got to operate more as a tempo fair deck and because of that it has definitely arisen has the defacto best deck in the format.
I'm torn on what could be done with this. I am typically invested in seeing more organic solutions appear to combat these sorts of things, and I know there's certainly a lot of chatter out there about Lurrus in general and the fact that people aren't very happy with it. I personally don't much like Lurrus myself as I indicated earlier. It homogenizes so much deckbuilding and there's very little incentive to play things that aren't Lurrus, which cuts out a lot of the more unique cards that Vintage traditionally has played.
Unfortunately the only real way to handle Lurrus from a BnR perspective would be to ban it again. There's virtually no other way of dealing with the card. Restricting it doesn't do anything to it, so the only possible way of managing it is to ban it. I would be surprised if Wizards did this next week, as I don't think Vintage is largely on their radar, but maybe the results of Eternal Weekend would spur something to occur in Vintage.
Beyond Esper Lurrus, the other two top decks in the top three of metagame share were Oath and Dredge. Oath looked very reasonable, and it's a popular deck in paper events because of how Vintage-y the deck often feels. This means we tend to see the deck feel very over-represented in the metagames for these events, and with a 50.6% win rate, I do think that Oath is still a reasonable deck as a longtime pillar of the format. The deck received one of the best upgrades in Atraxa, Grand Unifier, but even Atraxa hasn't made the deck continue to be insanely overpowered even on MTGO.
Dredge is a unique conundrum. It won one of the Eternal Weekend events and didn't have any good representation in the Top 8s of the other two events, and firmly sits at just below 50% win rate at a 49.4% win rate. Dredge as a deck attacks the format at a lot of various angles as we've already discussed and it has a lot of power behind it. Game one especially is very good for this deck usually, with Games two-three centered mainly on what the opponent's sideboard cards and the Dredge player's mulligans look like. The deck does still have a limiting factor that it mulligans very aggressively, needing a copy of Bazaar of Baghdad in its opening hand always, and sometimes your opponent's sideboard cards line up very well against what you have going on.
I'm curious to see if Wizards chooses any possible thing to needle in on Dredge, especially if they possibly make any changes to Lurrus as a deck, as such a change would continue to open up Dredge to be fairly dominant. I'm not sure what Wizards would do if anything to Dredge, although I think there have been on-and-off cases to possibly restrict Hollow One and remove one of the deck's angles of attack that doesn't involve the graveyard from it, which may force the deck to seek out different plans to adapt. That being said, this is a deck that I don't expect them to touch because overall a 49% win rate and only a 2.63% X-2 conversion rate isn't actually all that good for a deck that's 10.1% of the metagame and lines up with the fact that the deck has ways to attack it. On the other hand of this however, its popularity does stretch sideboard space quite a bit to the point where you may need 2-3 different things that attack the deck on its fundamental levels.
At the bottom range of the Top 5 most represented decks of the format we have both Jewel Shops and Initiative. Jewel Shops was definitely a deck that was impacted in some slight ways with the Saga restriction, but instead of hurting that deck, it too managed to adapt and continue to do well. That being said, Jewel also is like Dredge in the sense that if you really want to metagame against it, it's not hard to do so, and you can easily shut this deck out of its primary game plan. A 52.3% win rate isn't too hateful really, and I think that Jewel is likely a reasonable deck to have around right now. It's sort of replaced PO as the big "Vintage-esque" deck of choice, and that in of itself isn't bad.
Initiative on the other hand was popular but it's overall win rate was 48.7%, which seems like the deck has its fans but it's not really doing all that well right now. It's definitely settled into the metagame and players are trying different things to attack the current format, but for the most part this deck seems like it is just fine for Vintage right now. Even if there were any changes to the format, I don't think Initiative really ever re-gains that initial burst of "this is broken" that it had when it first appeared in the format. Honestly, I'm okay with this. It's a deck that can do very well if you know how to play it well and also how to best construct the deck to play to the current format, and I think it will always remain in that sort of space. It's kind of like the Death and Taxes now for Vintage, and I think it's great that a deck like that exists.
I think that right now, Vintage to me doesn't really feel all that innovative and while there's certainly fun to be had, I think the format has grown rather stale just a tad. I still very much enjoy the format and I think there's some fun things to try to do if you're not trying to be incredibly sweaty at it (Pyrogoyf Oath and stuff like Nadu comes to mind) but if you're in the weeds of being super competitive I don't think it is superb. I don't know what I would really do either, personally. I would prefer Wizards to come up with ways to address things in the format with card printings but I think that is difficult to compete with cards like Lurrus. If Wizards did decide next week to ban Lurrus for good, I don't think I would be too upset about it myself. I don't really like the card, and I would be fine with it being gone. I also don't really see that occurring, but hey maybe Wizards could prove me wrong in that regards.
Vintage Challenge 32 12/5
The first Challenge of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 42 players in it according to the MTGO website. There was no data for this event.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | unluckymonkey |
| Esper Lurrus | 2nd | _Shatun_ |
| Breach | 3rd | KingHairy |
| Esper Lurrus | 4th | _Batutinha_ |
| Scam | 5th | FranMtg |
| Jewel Shops | 6th | Jumba |
| Breach | 7th | _Shikamaru_ |
| Jewel Shops | 8th | _TOP_G |
Lurrus and Jewel Shops had a lot of representation over this Top 8. At the end of the event it was Lurrus PO that won.
Versions of this deck have picked up a lot of steam on MTGO, but weren't well represented at Eternal Weekend events. Often times paper events take a bit to catch up with MTGO (outside of breakout performances like Initiative had years back) so this isn't surprising. I like this list a lot though. Questing Druid as a both a piece of card draw and a threat that can be leaned on late game is really cool, and Forth Eorlingas! as just a Fireball is neat to see.
In Second Place we had Esper Lurrus.
One thing that I think has definitely carried over from Eternal Weekend events into the MTGO world is the dominance of Esper Lurrus as the most played version of the fair Lurrus control shell. We often see these sorts of things emerge as a part of the "Blue Arms Race" that happens in formats where various blue decks are directly seeking a way to one up the other deck. One of the more common ways to do that is to splash into a color and go a little bigger, in this case white since cards like Swords to Plowshares deals with Psychic Frog very cleanly. It also helps that white grants access to Containment Priest which is good against both Dredge and Oath.
Vintage Challenge 32 12/6
The second Challenge of the week was the Friday event. This event had 38 players in it according to the Vintage Streamer's Discord data.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Initiative was the most popular deck here but it's overall win rate wasn't really that good. Jewel Shops performed even worse, while Dredge, Doomsday, and Esper Lurrus all did very well.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus PO | 1st | DrPP |
| Doomsday | 2nd | CrazyDiamond513 |
| Esper Lurrus | 3rd | BERNASTORRES |
| BUG | 4th | ipbanned |
| 4C DRS | 5th | HanktheObese |
| Dredge | 6th | Lord_Beerus |
| Dimir Lurrus | 7th | Montolio |
| Breach | 8th | _J0SE_ |
Bit more varied of a Top 8, with a lot of really fair decks in BUG, Esper Lurrus, 4C DRS, etc. At the end of the event however it was Lurrus PO that won.
The major card that sticks out of this deck that is incredibly interesting to me is Portable Hole. Despite not being fetchable by the restricted copy of Saga, this card does deal with a lot of cards that this deck does not want to see on the other side of the table very well, primarily stuff like Collector Ouphe or Null Rod, but also stuff like Lavinia, Azorius Renegade. It's some really sweet tech for this deck to adopt as a main deck way of handling these kinds of cards.
In Second Place we had Doomsday.
I don't know how much I can really say about this list. It's pretty much a stock list all over here, but Vintage Doomsday has not really needed to devolve into any sort of arms race or innovation. What it does works, and it works well, and you don't always need to improve upon a list that's tried and true.
Vintage Challenge 32 12/7
The third Challenge of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 46 players in it according to the Vintage Streamer's Discord data.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Jewel Shops was the most popular deck here, and it's win rate was right across the middle of the board but it did have a good finish. Dredge was very good here, as was Oath and Lurrus DRS. Breach and Dimir Lurrus seemed to do poorly.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dredge | 1st | LucasG1ggs |
| Initiative | 2nd | _Shikamaru_ |
| Dredge | 3rd | Lord_Beerus |
| Jewel Shops | 4th | MayhemDJ |
| Lurrus DRS | 5th | Shamwowfella |
| Lurrus Breach | 6th | Artie_Bucco_Jr |
| Esper Lurrus | 7th | BiggestBird |
| Lurrus PO | 8th | wiky |
All the Lurrus decks fell to the bottom half of the Top 8 here, leaving the winner of the event to be Dredge.
The amount of tools that Dredge has access to now is incredibly strong: Multiple Forces, a fast clock, and a lot of angles versus typical graveyard hate. It's no wonder that this deck won Eternal Weekend. It is in a really good spot right now and even with people attempting to respect it, it's still doing well.
In Second Place we had Initiative.
I actually really like the Stillmoon Cavalier tech in this deck. Having a threat that can't be answered by Swords to Plowshares or Fatal Push but also blocks Psychic Frog and Lurrus of the Dream-Den all day long is really very interesting to me. The fact that it gets around so much of the commonly played cards of the format is really slick.
Vintage Challenge 32 12/8
The final Challenge of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 35 players in it according to the Vintage Streamer's Discord data.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Initiative was the most played deck of the event, and it did look quite good. Doomsday also looked very good here, while both Jewel Shops and Sphere Shops seemed to do very poorly.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dredge | 1st | Munchlax446 |
| Initiative | 2nd | morenoHARDCORE |
| Lurrus DRS | 3rd | kobayui |
| Doomsday | 4th | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Dimir Lurrus | 5th | bless_von |
| BUG | 6th | Wesal |
| Beseech Storm | 7th | medvedev |
| Initiative | 8th | bernardocssa |
Honestly this is a very reasonably spread out Top 8. At the end of the event though, it was Dredge that won.
Dredge attacks the format on so many different axes that interacting with it is such a very specific thing to need, and you also need more than one avenue of being able to interact with it. Leyline of the Void doesn't always cut it because of Force of Vigor, but having more than one different kinds of graveyard hate can seal the deal sometimes. Other times, Dredge players can seemingly pull wins out of thin air, which is both incredible and terrifying at the same time.
In Second Place we had Initiative.
One thing that is really nice about this deck is the utilization of March of Otherworldly Light as the primary means of removal. This card being able to get rid of an artifact, creature, or enchantment is really strong against a wide array of things in the format, but also the fact that you can pitch cards to pay for X is huge for mana efficiency. For example, you can pitch one card and only pay W to get rid of a Psychic Frog at X=2. Allowing this sort of raw flexibility is a good thing for decks like this that need to be able to properly utilize their mana well.
The Spice Corner
Let's take a look at any Spice stuff from EW!
Dragon Breath Emrakul OATH.
At 6-2 we have a Power-Less BUG Midrange deck!
Another Power-Less deck at 5-2-1. Mono Black Scam!
Yet another at 5-2-1. Mono Red Prison!
At 4-4, it's Glaring Fleshraker Top Combo!
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!
