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Vintage 101: North America Eternal Weekend 2025 Vintage Championship

by Joe Dyer // Oct 17, 2025

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 diving into everything from North America Eternal Weekend 2025's Vintage Champs event! In addition we're looking at the Challenges from last week.

Without further ado, let's dive right in!

North America Eternal Weekend 2025 Vintage Championships

This past weekend in Pittsburgh, PA was Eternal Weekend. This weekend long event hosted the 2025 North American Vintage Championships event on Friday with Top 8 being played out on Saturday. In past years, the Top 8 has always been played out on Sunday, but some of the major challenges to the Legacy Championships event necessitated a change to when Top 8 was played out for Vintage. This event had a solid 420 players in it, which is a great turnout overall. Yes this is down from last year's event a bit, but it's still really good. This event also had full coverage, and those VODs are available on Card Titan's Twitch Channel.

It is worth noting that this event is a non-Proxy event. This is real Power, real sanctioned Vintage. It's always super cool to this gameplay and see real cards like Black Lotus and Moxen. Card Titan also manages a "budget" prize for this event, which basically rewards decks that aren't playing any Power 9, Mishra's Workshop, Bazaar of Baghdad, and Library of Alexandria. It adds a bit of a cool factor to the event, one which was actually super relevant to the Top 8 of the event as we will see.

You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.

The most played deck of the event was Esper Lurrus, and it had a pretty strong win rate overall. Much of the format here was simply just above or just below the cut of 50%, and frankly... Vintage looked really healthy from a metagame perspective. There's a bunch of different decks, and a lot of them were well represented and things looked just very good overall.

While I am personally not a huge fan of Lurrus, and I don't think that Tezzeret did the job of unseating the cat like many initially thought, Vintage looked so good on many, many levels. People really got to see that health on full display through the coverage. I am pleased to see how this format looked this weekend, because Vintage truly is such a fun format and so very exciting.

There's a BnR announcement coming on November 10th that got moved to this date. This is a few weeks before EU Eternal Weekend, and I just don't expect there to be any changes to Vintage at this time. Not just because how close this is to those events, but also just because the format doesn't really need it.

NA Eternal Weekend also has a really sweet thing that occurs every year, as we mentioned before in the form of the "budget" prize. This prizing is always pretty cool to see. Thanks to Justin Gennari we have a good look at the raw data of just how many decks at this event were unpowered/budget. You can find that data sheet here.

A strong majority of the unpowered decks in this event were Initiative, which is something I expected. Initiative is a deck I don't personally believe does super well unpowered, mainly because of the deck's construction means that it really desires all the extra mana sources like Power and whatnot. The match win percentage of it was rough. The other big interesting unpowered deck was Scam. In fact, the winner of the budget prize this year not only placed pretty high, but it also made it into the Top 8.

This deck looked super hot on camera all weekend, and making it into the Top 8 in general on an unpowered list is super solid. Barrowgoyf and friends were very powerful and the deck looked very strong. Big congrats to mbatista on making it into the Top 8 with this deck and doing well on such a sweet list.

Let's now take a look at the Top 8.

Deck Name	Placing	Player Name
Initiative	1st	Jeremy Henry
Dimir Lurrus	2nd	Dave Kaplan
Dredge	3rd	Chad Uzzell
Lurrus DRS	4th	Max Gilmore
Unpowered Mono Black Scam	5th	mbatista
Esper Lurrus	6th	Greg Mitchell
Raker Shops	7th	andrewslafreniere
Sphere Shops	8th	Stefan Vastek

I'm going to call this 7.5 different decks in the Top 8, mainly because Dimir Lurrus and Esper Lurrus are pretty close to the same game plan overall. They're both the same kind of fair deck. But heck, even 7.5 different decks in the Top 8 here is some solid diversity. It's really cool to see how healthy Vintage looked.

At the end of the event it was Jeremy Henry on Mono White Initiative that won in a 2-0 finals match.

Jeremy's list is incredibly interesting. I got a chance to sit down with him this week to talk about the event and everything that happened leading up to his win, as well as to get his thoughts on Vintage and Mono White Initiative's current status within the format.

In Second Place we had Dave Kaplan on Dimir Lurrus.

This is a solid-looking list. I do like the main deck Momentum Breaker here. That card has definitely proven how good it is in the Lurrus shell overall. Being able to rebuy it every turn is very powerful, and what's great about it is that it always does something even if your opponent doesn't have a creature. Forcing them to discard a card in the absence of an on-board creature is pretty exceptional.

I do want to also call out in the Top 4 the reigning Vintage Champ from 2024 Max Gilmore (aka maxtortion) on a super sick BUG Lurrus DRS build.

This deck is super sweet. One of the big things that I love about it is the card Kishla Skimmer. Being able to reap the benefit of your Deathrite Shaman tapping for mana and also drawing you a card is great, and while it's only once per turn, drawing once per turn per Skimmer is incredible value and super interesting to see. The fact that it also works with Delve too is pretty cool.

Vintage Challenge 32 10/9/2025

The first Challenge event of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 43 players in it thanks to the Vintage MTGO Discord.

You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.

Dredge was the most played deck of the event and while it had two copies in the Top 8, it had a less than 50% win rate. Sphere Shops looked strong here, as did Dimir Lurrus/Esper Lurrus. Jewel Shops and Oath both lookedvery poor here in addition to Lurrus PO.

Let's take a look at the Top 8.

Deck Name	Placing	MTGO Username
Lurrus Breach	1st	wiky
Sphere Shops	2nd	_Shatun_
Dimir Lurrus	3rd	AFX
Initiative	4th	valentinaaaa
Lurrus DRS	5th	littledarwin
Dredge	6th	manadra1n
Dredge	7th	blackdecks99
Lurrus Breach	8th	bless_von

Fair bit of Lurrus here in varying fashions. At the end of the event, it was Lurrus Breach that won.

The Gifts/Drain version of this deck has quickly become the gold standard of the Lurrus Breach deck. It's a super powerful build of the deck, and Gifts especially is super powerful here. Stock Up, in general, I think is really responsible for the evolution of this build.

In Second Place, we had Sphere Shops.

Very straightforward build here. Shops has evolved so much over time, and I think this is one of the coolest versions of the deck to exist, with some of the strongest threats. Patchwork Automaton, in general, is very difficult to deal with.

Vintage Challenge 32 10/10/2025

The second Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 32 players in it thanks to the Vintage MTGO Discord.

You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.

Both Dredge and Dimir Lurrus were the most popular decks. Dredge did not do very well at all, while Dimir had a solid-looking win rate. Lurrus Breach, Esper Lurrus, and Raker Shops all did very well. Doomsday and PO/Oath did poorly.

Let's take a look at the Top 8.

Deck Name	Placing	MTGO Username
Lurrus Breach	1st	wiky
Esper Lurrus	2nd	WingedHussar
Initiative	3rd	VitorCarvalho01
Initiative	4th	LasVegasChaos
Raker Shops	5th	LucasG1ggs
Doomsday	6th	revenantkioku
Dimir Lurrus	7th	DrPP
Dimir Lurrus	8th	O_danielakos

Fair split of Lurrus and Initiative here. At the end of the event, it was the same pilot from the previous Challenge who won on Lurrus Breach.

I don't think there's a lot to cover here, the list is exactly the same. I will say, I love the main deck Ancient Grudge.

In Second Place we had Esper Lurrus.

Very straightforward stock list here. It is interesting to not see any Lavinias, but she tends to float in and out of these lists as needed. Serenity and Stony Silence are sweet sideboard options.

Vintage Challenge 32 10/11/2025

The third Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 41 players in it thanks to the Vintage MTGO Discord.

You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.

Initiative was the most played deck of the event, and it had a pretty good win rate. Oath did very well here, as did Dimir Lurrus and Raker Shops. Dredge did very poorly as did Sphere Shops.

Let's take a look at the Top 8.

Deck Name	Placing	MTGO Username
Oath	1st	medvedev
Oath	2nd	etoustar
Lurrus Breach	3rd	wiky
Lurrus PO	4th	mortr3d
Initiative	5th	klien7
Dimir Lurrus	6th	luvadepedreiro
Esper Lurrus	7th	WingedHussar
Initiative	8th	lampalot

Still a good split between Initiative and Lurrus, but the end of the event was an OATH mirror?!

Both of these lists are certainly very similar in many ways. I like the inclusions of Thoughtseize and Veil of Summer in the Second Place list. The Oath mirror is kind of just one of those really atrocious mirror matches honestly (as someone who has played Oath quite a bit). It's not super fun to actually play in my opinion. One thing that is interesting is no restricted copy of Brainstorm in the winner's list.

Vintage Challenge 32 10/12/2025

The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 39 players in it thanks to the Vintage MTGO Discord.

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 had a reasonable win rate. Oath did too, as did Lurrus decks of differing varieties. Dredge did not do well at all here.

Let's take a look at the Top 8.

Deck Name	Placing	MTGO Username
Lurrus DRS	1st	_Joseba_
Lurrus Breach	2nd	discoverN
Dimir Lurrus	3rd	bless_von
Jewel Shops	4th	Ignotus97
Initiative	5th	boytriton
Lurrus PO	6th	shir kahn
Raker Shops	7th	musasabi
Lurrus Breach	8th	John1111

Again, fair bit of Lurrus. The finals was won by Lurrus DRS.

I really like Kishla Skimmer personally. The card is really interesting, pitches to both Forces, and also helps draw extra cards. What's not to love?!

In Second Place we had Lurrus Breach.

This is the same list (but not the same pilot) that did well earlier in this week's events. There isn't much to really say about this, but I will say it is certainly a deck to keep an eye on.

Around the Web

FiretruckModo has a video on Dredge. Check it out here.
Ohdee has their very first video on Esper PO. Check it out here.
Kindamtg had a Trophy league with Gwenom Oracle Combo. Check it out here.

The Spice Corner

We're diving into the Eternal Weekend decks for this week's spice!

Azorius CATS.

Red Prison is super cool, even unpowered.

Straight up Mono Black Midrange without Scams.

GOBLINS.

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!