Legacy Review: North America Eternal Weekend

Greetings, Legacy community! It's that time of the year when we all sit down for the Eternal Weekends, 3 giant events centered around Legacy and Vintage. One is held in the U.S.A., another in Europe, and the last one in Japan. From October 10th to October 12th, the North American Eternal Weekend welcomed 944 Legacy players and 420 Vintage players!

Let's leave Vintage aside for now and focus on Legacy. The best thing about this giant tournament is that, besides welcoming a few of the best Legacy players in the world, it also gives us a ton of data. At the end of the day, we were left with an excellent picture of what the meta right now actually looks like.

In the last year, WotC banned a few cards from Legacy. Psychic Frog, Vexing Bauble, Sowing Mycospawn, and Troll of Khazad-dûm all disintegrated into dust, but this wasn't enough to change the meta entirely. Dimir Reanimator was still thousands of light-years ahead of any other deck in the format and frequently performed 3 or 4 times better than whichever deck ranked below it in every graph.

We all expected WotC to do something in the June banlist update announcement, but they didn't. Then, as the following sets didn't actually impact Legacy much, the meta stagnated.

The Eternal Weekends directly reflect how the format is doing, so let's see the archetypes all 944 players brought:

• Dimir Reanimator – 14.62%

• Forge Combo – 9.22%

• Dimir Tempo – 6.67%

• Cephalid Breakfast – 6.57%

• Izzet Tempo – 5.40%

• Red Stompy – 4.87%

• Nadu Midrange – 3.92%

• Lands – 3.39%

• Painter – 2.97%

• Eldrazi Aggro – 2.65%

• Sneak and Show – 2.33%

• Stiflenought – 2.22%

• Beanstalk Control – 1.91%

• Blue Post – 1.59%

• Jeskai Control – 1.59%

• Doomsday – 1.48%

• Other archetypes – 28.60%

To see how Legacy changed in this past year, I looked back at my Eternal Weekend review from last year. Back then, 16 decks represented at least 1.5% of the tournament, while now only 12 decks have hit that mark. However, "other archetypes" (besides the other 16) also represented around 24% of the format.

Another interesting detail is that 13 of the 16 most popular decks a year ago are also among the 16 most popular decks this year. Izzet Tempo, Beanstalk Control, and Blue Post (the only truly new deck since then) all made the roster this year. This only reinforces the feeling the meta has stagnated, and this rings even more true considering 200 fewer players took part in the tournament this year. Compared to last year, however, Vintage has become more popular.

Let's see another ranking: what the top 64 players brought. This data shows how much the decks above were effective, that is, the big winners and losers.

• Dimir Reanimator – 21.87%

• Forge Combo – 17.19%

• Cephalid Breakfast – 7.81%

• Nadu Midrange – 7.81%

• Izzet Tempo – 7.81%

• Red Stompy – 7.81%

• Painter – 3.12%

• Sneak and Show – 3.12%

• Maverick – 3.12%

• Death & Taxes – 3.12%

• Blue Post – 3.12%

• Lands – 1.56%

• Doomsday – 1.56%

• Hatchery Pox – 1.56%

• Esper Tempo – 1.56%

• Esper Vial – 1.56%

• Grixis Control – 1.56%

• Unlisted decks – 4.69%

What we can see in these numbers is that Reanimator's, Forge's, and Nadu Midrange's presence grew a lot since the beginning of the tournament. Cephalid Breakfast, Red Stompy, and Izzet Tempo also grew, but Dimir Tempo and Eldrazi Aggro have faded into the background.

It's also nice to see that some decks that couldn't earn a spot among the top 16 most popular lists actually made it into this ranking, like Maverick, Death & Taxes, and the list that caught everyone off guard, Hatchery Pox.

I usually say that, for anyone who likes stats, a tournament like this is a true gift. It brings us win rates, which are usually the one piece of data we can't access easily. Win rates are a great starting point to understand which deck is pulling ahead and which is drowning.

The overall win rates of the 16 most popular decks were the following (excluding mirror matches):

• Nadu Midrange: 57.37%

• Blue Post: 55.37%

• Cephalid Breakfast: 54.12%

• Forge Combo: 53.47%

• Dimir Reanimator: 53.40%

• Doomsday: 51.38%

• Eldrazi Aggro: 50.57%

• Izzet Tempo: 49.40%

• Painter: 48.87%

• Sneak and Show: 48.80%

• Red Stompy: 48.36%

• Stiflenought: 47.79%

• Dimir Tempo: 46.77%

• Lands: 46.22%

• Jeskai Control: 42.16%

• Beanstalk Control: 40.17%

The first thing we can highlight about these numbers is how both main Nadu, Winged Wisdom archetypes performed incredibly well. I'm convinced that playing this Bird of the Infinite Triggered Abilities on Magic Online is so difficult that it actually discourages us from playing it, and that's why it isn't as popular online. It is a pity, since this is the first place we look when we are trying to get a grasp of the meta. But the main stage of such a giant in-person tournament as this one is the perfect place for it to show its true face. Blue Post, an archetype we recently explored in another article, also performed really well.

The second thing we can highlight is that, even with a giant target on their foreheads, Reanimator and Forge still performed well. This is another sign Legacy is struggling to balance itself out, and we'll see more signs of this further on.

Finally, I'd like to highlight how weak Control lists and Dimir Tempo proved to be, though the last one was the third most popular archetype in the entire event. We already knew Control lists were struggling in the current meta, but Dimir Tempo's terrible performance caught a few players by surprise.

This top 8 was the perfect picture of a format split between two main archetypes: Reanimator and Forge occupied, combined, 6 of the 8 spots and made it to the top 2. The other two decks were a Cephalid Breakfast version, so there were actually 7 combo decks in this Top 8, and the list that caught everyone off guard, a Hatchery Smallpox list, which we also covered in another article recently.

The Winner

Tom Basketball ended up taking the trophy home with a very standard Forge list. One variation we usually see in these lists is that they don't play, at least not in the main deck, Ugin, Eye of the Storms. This Planeswalker might be a beast against the most "fair" decks in the format, but he is a bit slow against other combos, particularly in the mirror. And, as we've seen in the top 8, this tournament was centered around combos.

Runner-Up

The great representative of the biggest Legacy archetype was Hans Jacob Goddik, who also brought a very standard Dimir Reanimator list. As the meta settles, most lists get a "standard" version, and that's precisely what we can see in this data.

Top 4

Curiously, two unusual archetypes got to the top 4 before they were defeated. On one side, we had the champion of the 2024 European Eternal Weekend and perhaps the biggest expert in the world at his deck: Johan Larsson, who was once again playing Cephalid Breakfast. Just like the two lists above, his version is pretty standard, but we should note that he uses Ghost Vacuum to fight graveyards.

The other player in the top 4 was Jacob Murray, who brought his unusual Hatchery Smallpox. The main difference from his list to the one we covered recently is that he plays 2 Barrowgoyf in the extra deck, which makes it a lot more threatening, particularly for Tempo decks. It also interacts well with cards like Life from the Loam.

Most players weren't expecting or ready for this list, and Jacob Murray did spectacularly with it. This archetype was already appealing to many players, but now this excellent performance at the Eternal Weekend has made it even more popular, most notably in Magic Online.

Top 8

The rest of the Top 8, as we saw above, included 2 Forge lists and 2 Reanimator lists, both very similar to the standard, particularly their main decks. One of these Forge lists was closer to the winning list, with Leyline of the Void, while the other played Faerie Macabre. But neither of them was anything new.

The real novelty came from one of the Reanimator lists. Tommy Wray's list was quite similar to the runner-up list, but he swapped the Force of Negations and 1 Murktide Regent for 2 Orcish Bowmasters and 1 Valgavoth, Terror Eater. On the other side, though, Eric Ratkowski truly brought a very unusual sideboard.

Instead of following the standard script, he used 11 slots in the sideboard (and 1 Consider, 3 Lotus Petal, and 4 Dark Ritual in the main deck) to play a very different game plan after game 1: from Reanimator to Doomsday! This strategy is definitely a tad risky, but it certainly worked out for him. Any unaware player would certainly come back to game 2 with many graveyard hates but end up ambushed by this powerful black sorcery.

The next Eternal Weekend will be in Europe in November, so right after the next banlist announcement on November 10th. It could very likely feature a different format if Wizards of the Coast decides to interfere. Certainly, a tournament with nearly a thousand players that 2 decks the community already considers problematic dominated entirely (particularly Dimir Reanimator) would be reason enough for them to do so.

In any case, keeping up with a tournament of this size is wonderful for anyone who enjoys playing Legacy.

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!