Eternal Weekend Europe is now three weeks away and I am sure everyone is excited to play a large tournament on the continent, especially since we don’t have a Legacy GP this year. This article will go over the Top8’s of the tournaments last year after the release of Conspiracy: Take the Crown and hopefully give you a little bit of useful advice on what you will face at the event.

As usual I have got the decks that made Top8 in any EU tournament with more than 100 players. This is because tournaments of this size are more likely to have players traveling from other countries and are therefore most appropriate for our needs.

Our last Top 8 meta report ended with these results up until September 2016

Click the graphs to embiggen them.

MKM Milan 6/2 108 players

TOP Milan 13/2 110 players

BOM Madrid 29/2 136 players

VII Arcanis Deluxe 23/4 200+ players

Ovino Spring 24/4 187 players

BOM Annecy 7/5 302 players

MKM Frankfurt 15/5 409 players

Bologna 15/5 127 players

GP Prague 12/6 1480 players

BoM Strasbourg 2/7 167 players

MKM Madrid 10/7 151 players

Impact Returns 23/7 109 players

Bologna 4 Seasons 28/8 119 players

After Conspiracy: Borrow the Crown

Consiracy: Open the Leovold was released on the 26th of August 2016 and made a slightly delayed impact. The four standout cards from the set, Leovold, Emissary of Trest, Sanctum Prelate, Recruiter of the Guard and Palace Jailer took a few weeks to truly find their homes. After some worries about an 8 Chalice deck and some experiments with Shardless and Aluren the white creatures made their way into, surprise surprise, Death and Taxes, and the new elf made BUG midrange strong enough to become a deck on every ones radar, in no small part to Reid Duke at GP Lousiville.

This graph shows the decks that have scored an EU Top 8 since September 2016

The events for this data are as follows

Event Date No. of Players BOM Paris 10/09/2016 169 Tarmogeddon 11/09/2016 138 Ovino XI 24/09/2016 216 Eternal Weekend EU 22/10/2016 294 Arcanis Deluxe VIII 23/10/2016 173 Autumn 4 Seasons 06/11/2016 169 MKM Prague 27/11/2016 216 Nebraska 4.0 11/12/2016 250 JK Entertainment Jahresendevent 07/01/2017 132 Winter 4 Seasons 12/02/2017 183

Here we can see Before Conspiracy: The Paper Crown vs After Conspiracy: Frontier is a format designed to sell dead standard cards

This illustrates the changes very nicely

Here we can see that since September 2016 Miracles has been by far the most dominant deck whereas before the combined might of Delver put up the most Top8s. Miracles has adapted to both Eldrazi and Shardless in this time. Reanimator, both UB (2) and BR (5), has come out of nowhere and had 7 Top8s. It’s success is down to both being faster than the format was prepared for, and in the case of BR builds quite unexpected.

Death and Taxes has unsurprisingly put up good numbers, certainly helped both in popularity and power by the new cards recently released for it. Omnitell/Sneak and Show has also done well. I suspect this is a bounce partly due to how well the deck performed at GP Chiba. The deck also has a good matchup against Miracles and Eldrazi. Delver, as always, has maintained a powerful presence putting two players in many Top’8s. However no agreed list has yet risen to the top with its 13 Top8 appearances spread across Grixis (3), Bug (3), Rug (2), 4 Colour (4) and even one Esper list!

The decks that have lost out since the release of Conspiracy: Take the Biscuit seem to be Shardless, Storm and Eldrazi.

Eldrazi has a poor match-up against the lists using True-Name Nemesis and Leovold. Miracles also adapted to beat it using non basic land hate and Moat among other things. Lastly the combo decks it really preyed upon either got faster in the case of Reanimator or were pushed out of the meta like Storm. Eldrazi is the major reason for Storm’s poor performance over this time as well.

Shardless achieving fewer Top8’s is harder to explain. I think that its relatively poor performance is down to a combination of factors. Firstly the printing of Leovold made people try other BUG decks and so some of the Shardless pilots may have migrated to other midrange builds. Secondly I think Miracles has finally adapted to make the games against Shardless better. Monastery Mentor, even if it dies to Abrupt Decay, leaves a small but fast clock behind. The Hymn to Tourach hands that often decimated Miracles in the long war over card advantage were also not as potent after Miracles started to adopt Predict more widely. Now the Miracles deck, in combination with Snapcaster Mage actually has some true card advantage.

Predictions for Eternal Weekend

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. You will see Miracles and Delver in the Top 8. You will also play against these decks, probably on multiple occasions. If your deck or play-style struggles with either of these then you need to change your plan. The interesting question is what type of Delver will you play against? It isn’t much of a stretch to suggest that Grixis, BUG and 4Colour are the likely candidates. Neither the Grixis lists nor the 4C lists have changed much or taken up Fatal Push. In ostensibly aggro lists, with access to red mana, Lightning Bolt is often just better. The BUG versions will however likely be utilising Fatal Push and have gone down the shroud/push resistant route of Nimble Mongoose, True-Name Nemesis and/or Hooting Mandrills.

This brings us to the next likely deck. Even though Reid Duke’s Noble True-Name list has yet to replicate its success in the EU, I would suggest a large number of players will bring a deck along these lines. Turn two TNN or Leovold backed up with Daze and Fatal Push is a powerful plan. And BG midrange is always present in some form.

The other decks that we should be on the look out for are obvious from the data discussed above. BR Reanimator will be there in force as will a number of Show and Tell Players. Death and Taxes Will also be out in force and I would expect its counterpart Aggro Loam to be around as well. The deck has been doing well online recently and it certainly feels like time it spiked another event. Eldrazi has been on a long downswing in popularity and success so you should not see too many of those at the tables.

Fatal Push is the card which will dictate the metagame for Eternal Weekend, either directly or indirectly. With access to such a versatile and cheap removal spell, creature decks will have to either change up their threat base to the shroud/delve plan or go wide with cards like Young Pyromancer. This, however, has its own issues as the two main cards that are successful against TNN and pals are sacrifice effects like Diabolic Edict and mass removal, often Toxic Deluge. Planning to go wide may well mean you get hit by Deluges and Engineered Explosives designed to hit shroud creatures. The other side of the coin is that the combo decks that laugh at Fatal Push and expensive board wipes, such as Sneak and Show and Reanimator, are collateral damage for the other TNN and Gurmag Angler killer, Diabolic Edict.

Actual Numbers

This was the metagame at the last event: 294 Players

If you were to force me to guess, I would expect largely similar numbers to the previous event for April’s Eternal Weekend. There has not been that much time between the events. The Miracle share of the meta should however increase and the Eldrazi share will be much much lower.

I think that provided you feel confident playing against Delver and Miracles, the much lower number of Eldrazi players should make this a good event for good Storm players. The deck also has the advantage of ignoring all of the indirect fallout from people metagaming around Fatal Push. Delver decks that run more and more True-Name Nemesis to gain an advantage against Push are getting slower, which is good for Storm, and only the rarer Empty the Warrens kills are hated on by the back an forth between Fatal Push, Toxic Deluge and Diabolic Edict.

If however you are not one of the lucky few who is truly proficient with ANT or TES, then I would recommend playing either one of the top decks, Delver, Miracles, BR Reanimator (such innovative advice!). Or, specifically make sure your deck is not being gunned for by others or is drastically weak to the current answers to the format. Sigh…. just play Burn. And not Elves unless you are Julian Knab.

I hope you found something helpful in this article

See you at Eternal Weekend!

Tom Kellock

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