Vintage 101: The Prep for Eternal Weekend
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 a bit about Eternal Weekend and prepping for these events. In addition, we've got a light load of Challenges this week.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
The Road to Eternal Weekend Begins
We are on track for Eternal Weekend events from October through into December, starting with the Shizuoka, Japan event hosted by BIG MAGIC on October 12-13th. In fact very recently, Card Titan put up all their registration information for NA Eternal Weekend on November 21-24. You can find all of that information here and a sick article by Frank Karsten on the status of formats here. These events all look like a lot of fun, and I unfortunately can't make it for any of them! It's unfortunate, but I just don't have enough vacation for any of them this year.
So now that players are fully on track to three different Eternal Weekends coming up, how do you need to prepare? Well, for Vintage especially, a big part of that preparation will begin by understanding where things are currently at in the metagame. In addition to that, another BIG BIG BIG thing is to simply make sure you've registered for the correct events and also whether or not you need a badge to get into those events. Definitely do not want to show up thinking you have everything prepped and then find out you also need a badge to get into the hall.
As far as the metagame is concerned, prepping for the big hitters of current Vintage is a smart move, but there is much more to Eternal Weekend than that. So here's a list of a few things that can help with prepping for EW.
1 - Not Everyone at EW Plays on MTGO
This one is really kind of important to realize about attendees to Eternal Weekends. Not everyone at an Eternal Weekend event is regularly playing Vintage on a platform like MTGO. There are a lot of players who tangentially keep up with the format in small ways and maybe only own one deck and play that deck consistently (whether that deck is good or not) and come to EW as their one big event a year. In terms of prep, it can be helpful to understand that you might run into decks that don't actively see a ton of play on MTGO in the current metagame (especially in the early rounds) or that you might have to explain some things. It is wholly possible to run into a player who may not know what Initiative is or what it does. Part of this preparation involves knowing your deck and knowing how to explain your plays to your opponent.
Or... if you fall into that bucket of only tangentially paying attention to the format at large, it might be a good idea to check out some of big decks of the past few years (especially something like Initiative) and familiarize yourself with these things so you're not blind-sided by decks at the event.
2 - Certain Decks Tend to Be Over Represented at EW
There are often a lot of decks at Eternal Weekend that tend to skew the numbers a little. One of those decks is anything that can play Bazaar of Baghdad, typically meaning Dredge but can also mean other Bazaar decks as well. The main reason for this is that often many players are borrowing decks to also play Vintage, and Bazaar is a common deck that can be lent out to players newer to the format.
Just as well, Oath of Druids often tends to be very over represented in paper events, regardless of how well the deck is doing in the metagame. A lot of this is because Oath is a very popular deck to own and the play patterns make up for some strong fast wins in paper, making games much quicker. When there are a lot of rounds, Oath can be a solid choice to play.
3 - Be Prepared for Power-Less Decks, Especially at NA EW
North America EW does a special "Budget" prize for decks that are considered "power-less". These are decks that don't contain any of the Power 9, but also don't contain cards like Mishra's Workshop, Bazaar of Baghdad, and Library of Alexandria.
This is something to consider, and it's worth looking into what power-less options are available. We'll be doing another article devoted solely to that, but primarily the biggest contenders here at this point in time seem to be Red Prison strategies (leveraging cards like Broadside Bombardiers), Eldrazi (with new Modern Horizons 3 options), and Initiative (with a lot of changes to try to boost it as much as possible).
Power-less and how far one can go with that is a long time tradition at Eternal Weekend for sure, especially at NA EW, so definitely be prepped to see some of those decks in the room, and be ready to play against some of those potentially.
Challenge Prizing on MTGO - UPDATE
We have an update on the changes made to Challenge prizing that we reported on a while back. Daybreak has considered a lot of community feedback on this and implemented some further changes to help address that feedback. You can find the full list of changes on their weekly blog post here.
Vintage Challenge 32 9/26
The first Challenge event last week was the Thursday event. This event had 37 players thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Dimir Lurrus was very popular here and it's win rate was also very good. Doomsday also looked great, as did Oath.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Doomsday | 1st | Diem4x |
| Dimir Lurrus | 2nd | O_danielakos |
| Dredge | 3rd | Dogeminer02 |
| Initiative | 4th | kasa |
| Jewel Shops | 5th | Jumba |
| 4C DRS | 6th | Kenzaburo |
| Dimir Lurrus | 7th | Mogged |
| Initiative | 8th | ScreenwriterNY |
Pretty interesting Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Doomsday that won.
Solid looking list here. I very much like the two Daze main because that seems quite good for a deck like this to have in its back pocket.
In Second Place we had Dimir Lurrus.
Frog and Bowmasters have consistently proven to be very good in Vintage at the moment, and it's no surprise to see that continuing on. Much like Doomsday, I like the Daze and Spell Pierce here because of how good those cards feel at the moment.
Also in this Top 8 we had Jewel Shops.
Fairly stock looking list here, but I think this deck is at a point where there's not a huge amount of innovation that can happen to the deck. The shell in general is very powerful overall.
Further down the Top 8 we had 4C DRS.
This is pretty sweet. I enjoy seeing Dack Fayden again in Vintage for sure. I love Wrenn and Six too.
Vintage Challenge 32 9/28
The only other Challenge of the weekend that fired was the Saturday event. This event had 43 players in it thanks to the data provided by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
Both Dredge and Initiative were popular, while Dredge had a lower win rate than 50%, Initiative had a solid win rate. Esper Lurrus also seemed great.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Esper Lurrus | 1st | oskiyaa |
| Initiative | 2nd | kasa |
| Oath | 3rd | Ayyypeks |
| Esper Lurrus | 4th | JakeTMS |
| Jewel Shops | 5th | Dalminho |
| Oath | 6th | etoustar |
| Initiative | 7th | Manny- |
| BUG | 8th | MathiasHardStyle |
Very interesting Top 8. At the end of the event it was Esper Lurrus that won.
Solid looking list here. Snapcaster Mage is a sweet include.
In Second Place we had Initiative.
I like this list a lot. The singleton Thalia is pretty sweet.
Also in this Top 8 we had Oath.
Pretty stellar looking list here. Into the Flood Maw continues to be just a really solid looking card in this list.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had BUG.
Psychic Frog continues to look very good across multiple archetypes in Vintage, and it looks really strong in BUG. Also, Nethergoyf here seems quite interesting as well.
Around the Web
- FiretruckModo has a video on DREDGE. Check it out here.
- Charlotte Legacy League has a video on Jewel Shops. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
SCAM SCAM SCAM.
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!
