Vintage North America Eternal Weekend Review

Greetings... Vintage community! Last week, we covered the North America Legacy Eternal Weekend, where 944 players put their strategies to the test. But we can't ignore the 420 Vintage players who also brought their best strategies - and competed without any proxies!

The tabletop version of the format might be more limited, market-wise, because of all the money involved, but it is still quite popular in Magic Online. As with any format, watching the best players in the world face each other on such a huge stage definitely brought us closer to understanding Vintage as a format!

Of course, we need to stress how different tabletop Vintage is from the online version, as finding all the cards available in this format in real life is a challenge. So, in real life, the Vintage meta includes more graveyard decks based around Bazaar of Baghdad, as they don't play many absurdly expensive cards (only its key card). It is the closest thing to a "budget" list in a format in which some cards cost as much as a car or a house.

Some players interested in this format but who can't get or even borrow the more expensive cards play "Powerless" decks instead, that is, decks without the Power 9 (Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Timetwister, and all 5 Moxes) or other cornerstone cards, like Bazaar of Baghdad or Mishra's Workshop.

These are sometimes less powerful versions of traditional Vintage decks and sometimes innovative lists trying to make up for not playing the explosive Power 9, often attacking through an angle most strategies aren't ready to face. For anyone outside the Vintage community, this idea might seem impossible, that is, can we really expect a Powerless deck to win against the most powerful cards ever released? But, the truth is a Powerless deck made it to the top 8 (and one made it to the top 16) this year, and another made the top 8 in the 2024 European Eternal Weekend... So, these decks are relatively viable.

As for the format itself, the Vintage meta is extremely diverse in terms of Aggro, Control, and Combo lists and also welcomes a few decks outside these three spectrums, like Graveyard, Midrange, and Prison.

Some people who aren't familiar with this format think most Vintage matches end with a turn-1 combo, but this couldn't be further from the truth. As we'll see soon, the 2025 North America Vintage Eternal Weekend had a lot more to offer.

This data was taken by Card Titan, the organization behind the tournament, and proves what we said above: the Vintage meta is varied, certainly a lot broader than the Legacy meta.

Paradoxical Outcome (Combo) – 12.4%

Esper Lurrus (Control) – 11.2%

Monowhite Initiative (Aggro) – 10.5%

Dredge (Graveyard) – 8.6%

Sultai Lurrus (Midrange) – 8.3%

Dimir Lurrus (Control) – 6.4%

Oath of Druids (Control) – 5.9%

Monoblack Scam (Aggro) – 4.3%

Jeweled Shops (Combo) – 4.0%

Monored Prison (Prison) – 3.8%

Sphere Shops (Prison) – 3.3%

I confess I consider these numbers fantastic, as they include many strategies and even 2 Powerless archetypes (Black Scam and Red Prison). Not to mention, a good number of these Initiative decks were also Powerless.

As we did with Legacy, let's also go over the top 64 archetypes to see which of them made the cut:

Paradoxical Outcome (Combo) – 17.2%

Esper Lurrus (Control) – 14.1%

Dimir Lurrus (Control) – 14.1%

Monowhite Initiative (Aggro) – 10.9%

Dredge (Graveyard) – 7.8%

Jeweled Shops (Combo) – 7.8%

Oath of Druids (Control) – 6.2%

Monoblack Scam (Aggro) – 3.1%

Sphere Shops (Prison) – 3.1%

Sultai Lurrus (Midrange) – 3.1%

Grixis Lurrus (Control) – 3.1%

Goblins (Aggro) – 1.6%

Azorius Lurrus (Midrange) – 1.6%

Esper Tinker (Combo) – 1.6%

Doomsday (Combo) – 1.6%

The big winners were clearly Dimir Lurrus (+7.7%), Paradoxical Outcome (+4.8%), and Jeweled Shops (+3.8%), though Esper also performed a lot better (+2.9%). As for Sultai Lurrus, it sunk by 5.2%, which is impressive. The other archetypes didn't change much.

Like I mentioned last week, an event of this size always gives us a lot of data, including some that are quite difficult to get, like win rates. The overall win rates of the 11 most popular decks were the following:

Dimir Lurrus (Control) – 54.74%

Esper Lurrus (Control) – 51.91%

Paradoxical Outcome (Combo) – 51.54%

Jeweled Shops (Combo) – 51.23%

Sultai Lurrus (Midrange) – 50.45%

Oath of Druids (Control) – 50.05%

Monowhite Initiative (Aggro) – 50.01%

Sphere Shops (Prison) – 49.67%

Dredge (Graveyard) – 48.55%

Monored Prison (Prison) – 43.65%

Monoblack Scam (Aggro) – 42.38%

What most stood out to me was that, except for 3 archetypes, the main decks were all one or two points away from one another. Particularly as most players often consider any deck with a win rate between 48% and 52% viable because we can usually make up for those 4 or so percentage points with our own abilities and knowledge. We can also consider this meta balanced in that sense.

As for the 3 archetypes outside this curve, let's first discuss the two with the lowest win rates. Because they're Powerless decks, we should expect them to have much lower win rates, so these numbers are nothing to hold against them. This is just the reality of bringing knives to a gunfight: you can win, but you'll have a disadvantage from the get-go. If you're having a good day, you can perform well, but overall they'll most likely win less than "Power" decks.

As for Dimir Lurrus, which was a lot more popular in the top 64 than in the overall meta, it proved to be the best version of Lurrus Control. Its stable mana base was simply better than the benefits a third color brings.

Once again, while the Legacy top 8 was dominated by 2 archetypes, the Vintage top 8 included 8 different decks. Esper and Dimir Lurrus are relatively similar, it's true, but this top 8 also includes a Powerless deck. We'll explore it more soon.

Winner

Monowhite Initiative is the main aggro deck in Vintage and has become a lot more competitive since Clarion Conqueror came along. Null Rod was already part of the meta, and this version attacks, protects itself with Cavern of Souls, and stops Psychic Frog and Tezzeret, Cruel Captain. It was all we wanted for this list.

The champion, Jeremy Henry, played a very standard list. He just swapped 1 Seasoned Dungeoneer and 1 Void Mirror for 2 March of Otherworldly Light.

Runner-Up

As for the runner-up, Dave Kaplan, he piloted what, as we could note above, was the most successful archetype in the format: Dimir Lurrus.

I believe the most interesting card in his version was the powerful but slightly risky Demonic Consultation. If you have never needed to play Consultation to find a single copy of a card in your deck, you haven't really lived!

Top 4

The top 4 included Chad Uzzell with a threat straight from the grave: Dredge. Vintage's Dredge is entirely different from regular MTG. The goal is to find Bazaar of Baghdad at all costs and start milling your deck. His list was quite standard, though.

The other player in the top 4, Max Gilmore, played Sultai Lurrus and was the main Midrange player in the tournament. This deck can both play aggro and control and also has Collector Ouphe, a Prison element. An interesting card that started seeing play in it is Kishla Skimmer, which performs really well with both Deathrite Shaman and Psychic Frog.

Top 8

This Vintage top 8 includes the biggest surprise in the entire event: Mbatista's Monoblack Scam, which doesn't play any Power 9 cards but plays Dark Ritual and the lethal combination of Grief and Reanimate.

This deck plays a huge amount of disruption and cards that are very difficult to answer with the most common options in this format: have you seen what a Fatal Push does against a Troll of Khazad-dûm?

Next, Greg Mitchell represented Esper Lurrus in the top 8. Besides the usual suspects, the cards that most stand out to me in his list are the clever Stony Silence, Dress Down, Lavinia, Azorius Renegade, Snapcaster Mage, and Mystical Dispute (one of each).

Speaking of Tezzeret, Cruel Captain and the card that names the deck, Glaring Fleshraker, andrewslafreniere's Raker Shop is the spiritual successor to all Aggro lists that play Mishra's Workshop. That long list of decks has always been a critical part of Vintage, in fact.

Besides trampling down the opponent with aggression, this list can also play Glaring Fleshraker with 2 Sensei's Divining Top to kill the opponent all at once. All you have to do is draw with 1 Top and put it on the top of your deck, play the second with Raker in play, create 1 Eldrazi Spawn, and drain 1 health. Then, sacrifice the token, create 1 mana, draw the first Top with the second, repeat this as much as you want, and end the game.

Finally, just like the Workshop aggro above, our last player in the top 8, Stefan Vasek, played the 2025 version of good old Stax. Sphere Shops is Prison in its purest state, a tourniquet that prevents the opponent from playing the game through several artifacts that disrupt everything and anything that progresses the game.

Eventually, one of its artifact creatures will pierce through enemy defenses and carry the game.

I have only begun playing Vintage on Magic Online recently, but I have kept up with the format since the mid-2000s, when it became competitive. Being able to keep up with it at its most competitive is a wonderful opportunity.

Add that to a dynamic meta that welcomes several strategies, and it's a recipe for victory. If you're interested in it, don't forget to keep up with the European Eternal Weekend in November or the Japanese Eternal Weekend in December.

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

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!