This Week in Legacy: North America Eternal Weekend 2023
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 taking a look at the North America Eternal Weekend Legacy Championships event! This event was easily the biggest Legacy event of the year and it was insane! In addition to that, we've got an aggregate view of all of the Eternal Weekend events this year. There's also two Challenges from this past weekend which we unfortunately did not have data for either.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
North America Eternal Weekend Legacy Championships 2023
This past weekend was the final event in the Eternal Weekend series of events for 2023 (Europe, Asia, North America) and this one was the largest event of all three. After capping the event last week, Card Titan pulled some strings and found some more space, raising the cap of the event to 1045 players. In finality, 996 players showed up to do battle on the field of Legacy in Pittsburgh, PA for this event. What an absolutely insane turnout for this event!
There is something truly special about NA Eternal Weekend. It often draws players from all around the world to compete and connect with other like-minded Eternal Magic players. In truth, the really important part of Eternal Weekend is truly the Gathering itself. I couldn't make it this year, but by all accounts, it sounded like an incredibly special event.
This event did have streaming coverage with commentary provided by the likes of Julian Knab, Kai Sawatari, Noah Walker, and Riley Knight. You can find this information over on Card Titan's Twitch channel, and a massive shoutout and thank you to the tireless work of Anuraag Das, who handled all of the coverage for the weekend. Absolutely killer person Anuraag is, putting in so much work so that we can enjoy these formats.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
While overall Tempo decks were a huge portion of the metagame, those numbers actually break down to a bunch of different Tempo decks that exist in the format at the moment, and it was Beanstalk Control that held the highest metagame share for a single deck subarchetype. Even under this umbrella, there's a lot of variety in these Beanstalk decks with some being 4C, some 5C, and some even being just BUG or Bant colors. Some play Uro, some do not, etc. etc. Overall, Beanstalk's win rate was very reasonable, considering its sheer metagame presence and well, the fact that it won the event.
Beyond it, RUG and Grixis Delver both have a solid piece of the pie with respectable win rates. The nice thing about Legacy right now is the fact that there are numerous ways to build Tempo that have different functions to them and that in of itself makes for some interesting things in the metagame.
Both Boros Stompy and Lands were very popular in this event, as were Painter and Reanimator. Of these, Reanimator did the worst with a sub-50 % win rate. The rest of this format looks amazing. There's tons of variety of decks and mostly everything above the cutoff is hovering at just around a 50% or slightly higher win rate.
To be honest, Legacy looks AWESOME.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| Beanstalk Control | 1st | TK Strachan |
| Grixis Delver | 2nd | Jay Wojciechowski |
| Cradle Control | 3rd-4th | Cass Lynn |
| Red Painter | 3rd-4th | MrFringe89 |
| The EPIC Storm | 5th-8th | Bryant Cook |
| Cephalid Breakfast | 5th-8th | Wyatt Gibson |
| Red Painter | 5th-8th | Jack Kitchen |
| 4C Tempo | 5th-8th | Nick Eldering-Ferreiro |
Really, what an incredible looking Top 8 here. Lot of variety in macro archetypes here, from Combo to Tempo and Control, even fair GSZ decks. At the end of the event though, in an incredibly interesting finals match versus Grixis Delver it was the one and only TK Strachan that won the Lightning Bolt painting on Beanstalk Control.
TK's list is incredibly powerful. The biggest thing here to note is the three copies of Triumph of Saint Katherine in the main deck. While this card is not currently available on Magic Online (and there's certainly something to be said to Wizards directly about that), this card slots so well into the Beanstalk deck because of how strong it is to cast off a Miracle. In one game of the finals TK cast two of these in a row off a Miracle trigger, which was insane. In the second game, two of them came into play hard cast thanks to Carpet of Flowers. The card is extremely powerful at offsetting Delver's clock and does a great job of closing games out quickly while also having the lifelink to give the control player more time to continue accruing advantage.
It's an incredible achievement here, so congrats to TK on winning! Enjoy that painting!
The Second Place finalist was last year's reigning Eternal Weekend Champion, Jay Wojciechowski on Grixis Delver.
The big thing to note here is the two copies of Stifle in the main deck. Stifle looked incredibly powerful every time Jay was on camera (and being at the top tables, he was on camera a lot) with Jay being able to hit a wide array of things with the card. Molten Collapse also looked quite good. This is certainly a well-built list for Grixis Delver for sure.
Also in this Top 8 we had a showing by Cradle Control and Cass Lynn (@DevotedDruid on Twitter).
This deck has always looked very good to me. It's very powerful and has a lot of avenues in which it can take over games. The toolbox nature of Fiend Artisan while also being an aggressive threat at the same time is really strong. I also really like the addition of Invigorate here.
Further into the Top 8 we also had a showing by Cephalid Breakfast.
I am digging the makeup of this list. The Urza's Saga variants of this deck have proven to be incredibly strong thanks to the fact that Saga can nab Shuko uncounterably, and Shuko is quite frankly one of the most powerful things in the deck! Jokes aside, this list is great and I am thrilled to see Breakfast doing so well in this kind of event.
An Aggregate View of All Three Eternal Weekends
Now that we have all three Eternal Weekend events on the books, let's do the fun thing and analyze the impact of all three of them! To that end, I created an aggregate sheet within the Legacy Data Collection Project for all three events. You can find that over here.
Before we look at some graphs, I do want to point out that between all three events, there were 2,369 players overall. That number is stunning! So many players turned out to play Legacy this year in all three Eternal Weekend events! It's amazing to see how this panned out this year. Truly a wonderful thing to see.
Between all three Eternal Weekend events, the macro archetype of Tempo was the most played, but within that macro archetype as we've seen in individual events was the fact that there are multiple Tempo decks available in the format, making the macro archetype super diverse. Of the individual archetypes, it was Beanstalk Control as the most played, but overall the win rates of the decks above the cutoff are all in a rather solid place. Only a few decks here are dipping below 50%. Most of them are at 50% or greater, with Red Painter having one of the better win rates of the lot.
Overall the format looks like it is in a rather good place right now, and most of the folks I've seen talking about these events have had similar responses. Legacy looks quite fun and interesting at the moment, and while there is always the future of what might happen down the line, the format right now is great.
Legacy Challenge 12/9
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the Saturday event. Despite no data we know this event had 49 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. Because we had no data, let's look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Sneak and Show | 1st | JPA93 |
| Dimir Scam | 2nd | yPrincipe |
| 4C Tempo | 3rd | MarioBBrega |
| Beanstalk Control | 4th | Etriol |
| 4C Uro Control | 5th | Kihara_Works |
| 8Cast | 6th | ItsSwiftyTime |
| RUG Delver | 7th | kentaro_hokori |
| RUG Delver | 8th | ayukawa |
Definitely an interesting Top 8 here. At the end of the event though it was Sneak and Show that won in the hands of practiced SnS veteran JPA93.
Atraxa being the go-to threat here for Show and Tell and Sneak Attack is pretty groovy, even if it's taken a bit it feels like for people to figure out that four copies of the card are just really absurdly good.
In Second Place we had Dimir Scam.
Very clean and straightforward Scam list here. Sauron's Ransom continues to prove to be a really strong card overall.
Also in this Top 8 we had 4C Tempo.
This version of the Tempo shell with the splashes into green and black is rather interesting really. Their manabases are exceptionally greedy, but the decks look quite good usually in practice.
Legacy Challenge 12/10
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the Sunday event. Despite no data we know this event had 77 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. Because we had no data, let's look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| 4C Uro Control | 1st | dannyground |
| RUG Delver | 2nd | Kazuga |
| RUG Delver | 3rd | silviawataru |
| Red Painter | 4th | Delthar |
| Reanimator | 5th | _StN_ |
| RUG Delver | 6th | lordoflifegain |
| Rescaminator | 7th | Eldhrimr |
| RUG Delver | 8th | Ale_Mtg |
Lot of RUG Delver in this Top 8! At the end of the event however, it was a non-Beanstalk 4C Uro deck that won.
Leaning hard on Uro and Forth Eorlingas! is interesting. No Beanstalk is a very real deckbuilding thing here, but The One Ring is very good and I am not super surprised.
In Second Place we had RUG Delver.
Questing Druid has continued to prove itself in these shells as both a threat and card advantage. Portent is a wild inclusion here honestly.
Further down the Top 8 we had a deck we've now officially adopted into nomenclature as "Rescaminator".
This deck has multiple interesting angles of gameplay. It can be a Reanimator deck, a Scam deck, or an Urza's Saga aggressive deck if it has to. Really cool thing, honestly.
Around the Web
- Bazaar of Boxes is on an adventure! Check it out here.
- 90sMTG has Andrea Mengucci at one of their NYC Weekly events. Check it out here.
- Speaking of Mengucci, he's got an article on 8Cast! Check it out here.
- The Legacy Gambit is doing some Death's Shadow. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here. We'll also be pulling some spicy lists from NA Eternal Weekend!
KCI.
Transmute Artifact is super sweet.
From Eternal Weekend, it's CURSES.
Speaking of black decks, Saw in Half Scam is wild.
BUG Hogaak is sweet!
HIGH TIDE. HIGH TIDE. HIGH TIDE.
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!
