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What Are The Decks to Beat at Eternal Weekend 2024?
North America Eternal Weekend is just around the corner and over 1000 players will be competing in the Legacy Championship. I’ll be briefly breaking down my top picks for the decks you should consider if you are playing Eternal Weekend.
Let me first address the elephant sized frog in the room. Psychic Frog has been dominating Legacy as of recent. Psychic Frog has blood on its hands, its 30% meta share has been influential in shaping what removal spells are playable in Legacy right now. Red removal like Lightning Bolt and Unholy Heat have fallen by the wayside leaving Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast the main reason to rely on red for removal. Even Dismember is a bit dubious to rely on as a way to remove Frogs. Psychic Frog is a central threat in the UB Tempo deck and being a versatile tool for the UB Reanimator decks. Let’s discuss these decks and the variants of them you may see.
UB Reanimator
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/legacy-dimir-reanimator#paper
My top pick for Eternal Weekend’s Legacy Championship is UB Reanimator. I believe it is currently the best deck in Legacy. Gone are the days of Grief Rescaminator but losing Grief and thus the most powerful hands that were capable of producing an Archon of Cruelty or Atraxa, Grand Unifier on turn 2 while clearing the way with Grief hasn’t proven to be as much as a hindrance as it may have been intended. UB Reanimator is a hybrid combo-fair tempo deck nowadays and Psychic Frog ties the room together here, being both a powerful fair card capable of running away with the game and being a way to dump your monsters, Atraxa, and Archon into your graveyard enabling the unfair angle of the deck of cheating powerful creatures into play. Troll of Khazad-Dum slots very nicely into the deck and is probably the most important card in enabling the deck to play a fair game (as fair as Reanimating Troll on turn 2 can be). Metamorphosis Fanatic is a recent addition to the Reanimator deck that adds a powerful tool to the fair arsenal of the deck and importantly another way to subvert graveyard hate. It, like Frog, has dual functionality in the deck being able to serve as a reanimation spell and as a strong creature with solid stats, and also makes Frog as a discard outlet even more spooky. It demanding an answer on the stack, Daze or Force of Will, makes it a fantastic target for redundant reanimation effects clogging your hand.
Reanimator is a tough deck to play against because the onus is often on you as the opponent to be flexible and ready to handle whichever game plan they decide to pursue. A good Reanimator hand is usually very overwhelming, demanding answers in the form of Force of Will or graveyard hate as early as turn 2. Sometimes Reanimator hands can be backed by Thoughtseize, Daze, or Force of Will, almost ensuring a turn 2 monster will hit the board. The fair plan of Frogs and slowly setting up Metamorphosis Fanatic with Brainstorm or Ponder, as well as the more compact Troll + Reanimate combination is good at punishing reactive and permission based hands that would be more suited to handling the Reanimator hands.
Some Reanimator lists choose to include Lotus Petal and go a lot harder on the Reanimator plan choosing to mostly forego the fair plan. These lists look much closer to classic UB Reanimator from a decade or more ago. Of course, Frog is in this deck providing something of a fair angle, but Frog looks to just be a better version of Careful Study in this deck.
UB Tempo is the deck I’ve been playing the most recently. How unsurprising that the resident Delver player continues to play the best tempo deck! That said UB Tempo is one of my top picks for Eternal Weekend. You can only go so wrong when you build your deck with Daze, Force of Will, Brainstorm, Ponder, Wasteland, and the best creatures from the past 3 years. This iteration of the Legacy Tempo shell leans quite a bit more controlling focusing on controlling games using Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student, and Psychic Frog to slowly take over games with card advantage as opposed to exerting pressure the life totals of its opponents. Black removal has been behind Lightning Bolt, Unholy Heat, Leyline Binding, Swords to Plowshares and Prismatic Ending in the last few years, however Psychic Frog’s presence along with a couple other cards has shifted the tides in the format so now Fatal Push lines up rather well. Supplemental removal in the form of Go For the Throat and Shoot the Sherrif help to shore up the blind spots of Push. Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen fewer and fewer Nethergoyfs as this deck as the deck moves more and more in a controlling direction. I myself prefer to play without Nethergoyfs and build the deck with a more coherent control plan in mind, instead maxing out on Tamiyo.
The UB Tempo deck simply plays some of the best interaction in the format, combined with the best creatures in the format. The deck has access to strong tools to handle anything in the format, and just like classic Delver, its threats are varied, evasive, and demand different answers.
Grixis Tempo
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/legacy-grixis-tempo#paper
Grixis Delver or Grixis Tempo is on the other end of the control-aggro spectrum from the UB Tempo deck. Grixis makes great use of Dragon’s Rage Channeler, Delver of Secrets or Nethergoyf, and Murktide Regent to put a ton of pressure on the opponent’s life total and seeks to end games much faster than its UB counterpart. Gaining access to Molten Collapse, Dragon’s Rage Channeler, Pyroblast and Meltdown are compelling draws to splash Red, however the mana is notably strained to support the cards the deck wants to play. It is because the deck’s manabase and the draws to Red not being compelling enough to outweigh the manabase’s drawback that I am generally lower on Grixis than the straight UB decks.
Esper Tempo
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/legacy-esper-tempo#paper
Some choose to keep going down the control direction with the UB Tempo shell and go to Esper to incorporate the absolute top of the line removal in the format, Swords to Plowshares and Prismatic Ending. I mentioned earlier Black removal hasn’t always been able to keep up in Legacy. Either the blind spots of Fatal Push amount to too much and the fact that Black removal really only answers creatures can sometimes be an issue. Splashing white allows the Tempo decks to address any creature, be it Atraxa, Murktide, or Frog, but Ending also allows the deck to answer other problematic permanents like Vexing Bauble. The Esper Tempo decks notably have better mana than Grixis, yet the mana is still shaky with this deck. I also mentioned that Black removal finds itself in a much better spot in the format now than it has in a long time, so even though White removal is a compelling draw, I again don’t think it’s enough to justify the notably worse mana.
Let’s talk about Ancient Tomb, the most broken land in Legacy. Ancient Tomb is a powerful accelerator in Legacy that enables the stompy style decks in the format. Every year that goes by we get more and more 3 mana cards for Ancient Tomb to break. Combined with classic lock pieces like Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, Blood Moon, and now Vexing Bauble, Ancient Tomb powers out powerful spells ahead of curve that would otherwise be too expensive to see play in Legacy.
Red Stompy
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/legacy-red-stompy#paper
Red Prison or Red Stompy is my top Ancient Tomb pick for Eternal Weekend. The Red Stompy deck nowadays relies less on lock pieces like Chalice of the Void and Trinisphere now just sticking to Blood Moon and although Vexing Bauble can be a lock piece in some matchups, it is mostly used as an offensive tool that stops your opponent from interacting with your powerful spells for free with Force of Will and Daze. Vexing Bauble notably is extremely obnoxious for the tempo decks since their only counterspells are free. This deck now leans into an aggressive battlecruiser role, trying to overwhelm opponents by jamming powerful spells until they resolve. The deck also interacts a lot now. Fury, Broadside Bombardiers, Pyrogoyf, and Shatterskull Smashing can all interact with opposing creatures or produce explosive damage turns putting your opponent’s life total under serious duress.
Red Stompy has a powerful proactive plan that forces your opponent into the reactive role. Vexing Bauble is an exceptionally powerful tool in making sure your gameplan goes undisrupted, simply drawing and casting Vexing Bauble is a huge thorn in the side of the reactive decks in the format. Being a good Vexing Bauble deck is a compelling selling point for the deck.
Eldrazi Stompy
Eldrazi Stompy was very popular for a while after MH3’s release but has fallen in favour as of late. Eldrazi was a great beneficiary of all the pushed Eldrazi from MH3 with cast triggers. Eldrazi is capable of extremely explosive starts that can overwhelm opponents with over-statted creatures that exacerbate the power of the interactive spells in the deck. Sowing Mycospawn, Glaring Fleshraker, Thought-Knot Seer and even Devourer of Destiny are all strong creatures, but are completely absurd when you get to cast them for effectively 2 mana when your deck contains so many sol lands. Of course, the deck gets to benefit massively from Cavern of Souls as well making it difficult for Blue opponents to regain footing or stop your strong starts.
Eldrazi, just like Red Prison has an extremely powerful proactive plan that can be difficult to contain from the opponent’s side. It doesn’t seek to lock out the opponent, but it does generate a dominating board presence so quickly if left uncontested. Very few decks can handle the big creatures the deck can produce so quickly, the pressure the deck can exert is immense. Even if your opponent is able to cut through the initial spaghetti monster onslaught, cards like Glaring Fleshraker and Devourer of Destiny can provide inevitability in combination with Eye of Ugin.
Most Eldrazi lists choose to stick to just mono green, for Once Upon a Time and Sowing Mycospawn, however a couple lists choose to include Red for Eldrazi Linebreaker. Linebreaker is a truly absurd aggressive card.
Painter
Painter is one of my personal favourite decks… and a personal favourite of everyone in Toronto as well. For good reason though, the deck is incredibly fun with all the branching decision trees and cool tricks you can do. Painter is unlike the other two Ancient Tomb decks I’ve discussed so far in that it is a combo deck and leans a lot less into being a stompy aggro deck. TLDR Painter makes every card everywhere a chosen colour and Grindstone can mill entire decks in one shot with Painter in play. Painter incorporates some elements of being a stompy deck getting to play strong cards like Fable of the Mirror Breaker, The One Ring sometimes and Vexing Bauble but leans a lot more into the synergies the deck has access to. Now the combo in the deck is obviously very easy to interact with, all you have to do is remove the Painter and you’re safe for the time being. If it were only that simple. Between Goblin Welder and Goblin Engineer the Painter deck can play a strong grindy value game while these cards double as ways to protect the combo by putting Painter back into play if it would die while a Grindstone activation is on the stack.
I mentioned before that red interaction in Legacy had a huge fall from grace and that Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast were some of the best tools available to Red nowadays. Well Painter gets to play 4-6 Blasts in their main deck as they have functionality in every matchup when Painter can turn paint the world Blue. Blasts are pretty well positioned in Legacy anyway, but there aren’t many great homes for them. Painter is one of the few great homes for Blasts right now. Blasts as interaction coupled with a strong proactive combo and value plan and the ability to flex between them is definitely a draw to Painter.
Forge Combo
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/legacy-mystic-forge-combo#paper
No longer on the page of fair decks in the Ancient Tomb category of decks. Forge Combo is a full on combo deck. This is the Ancient Tomb deck that abuses Vexing Bauble the most, as slipping through either a Mystic Forge, Karn, the Great Creator, or The One Ring can be enough by their own to just chain several spells in a single turn generating tons of mana allowing you to end the game with Glaring Fleshraker or Karn + Mycosynth Lattice or whatever other way. Using Voltaic Key and Manifold Key the deck can draw several cards with The Ring, or generate tons of mana with Grim Monolith and Basalt Monolith.
Like I said before, this is probably the best abuser of Vexing Bauble in this category, once you resolve one of your big bombs games very quickly spiral out of control as you snowball extremely fast. The deck is capable of winning on turn 1, but realistically is capable of having games be effectively over by turn 2 or 3, so the pressure on your opponent to interact with your game plan is pretty urgent.
Nadu
Nadu is the most insane design mistake Wizards has let slip through the cracks in a while that’s for sure, but I’m not here to argue which design mistakes broke Modern harder. I am here to remind you of Nadu Summer in Modern and how dominant Nadu Combo in Modern was. But we just haven’t seen that be the case in Legacy, not even remotely close. Nadu, Winged Wisdom gets to combine with Nomads En-Kor in Legacy, making it impossible to stop an avalanche of card draw if the two cards are both in play at the same time. We’ve mostly seen Nadu in a dedicated fair Nadu Zenith deck, as well as Nadu as a supplemental piece in Cephalid Breakfast. Neither of these decks have come anywhere close to dominating Legacy though. There is something missing from these decks, I’m keeping an eye out for sure to see if there is anyone who breaks Nadu at EW.
Zenith Nadu
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/legacy-nadu-combo#paper
Zenith Nadu is a fair version of a Nadu combo deck. It is a fair blue Green Sun’s Zenith deck that also incorporates Nadu and Nomads as a way to bury the opponent in cards. You don’t utilize anything like Springheart Nantuko or Thassa’s Oracle to win games once the Nadu value train has left the station. You’re not going to the moon and flipping over your deck. Just loading up your hand with interaction by drawing with Nomads and Nadu on both your turn and your opponent’s turn, you should be able to secure games. So playing cards that aren’t great outside of winning the game is unnecessary.
What’s wrong with this shell? Why doesn’t it dominate Legacy now? I think this deck is somewhat awkwardly built. Simply drawing a bunch of cards with Nadu and Nomads has its fail rate despite the interaction being so powerful. Nadu wants your deck to be filled with mana dorks because they will draw you 4 cards each with Nadu and Nomads in play, however the “wincon” for this deck is drawing enough interaction to keep your opponent out of the game. The interactive game plan sort of clashes with playing cards like Delighted Halfling as the more of a midrange deck you are, the less you want weak cards like Delighted Halfling. Additionally, Halfling doesn’t play well with Brainstorm and Ponder because it doesn’t make the mana to cast them. What the current Zenith Nadu deck’s flaw is in my opinion is disjointed deckbuilding. The deck is pulled towards the powerful consistency engine of the cantrip cartel as well as Force of Will, White gives you Swords to Plowshares, and you want to win by smothering your opponent in interaction, but the deck also wants to play out mana dorks and other creatures that don’t always mesh well with the interactive element in the deck.
Cephalid Breakfast
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/legacy-cephalid-breakfast#paper
Cephalid Breakfast is a combo deck that wins by milling its entire deck and flashing back Dread Return to put Thassa’s Oracle into play and win with an empty library. Nadu is more of an inclusion in the Cephalid deck rather than the Cephalid deck having Nadu as a centre piece. That said though, Nadu is an extremely valuable, and greatly appreciated tool for the deck as now the deck has more outlets for Nomads and Shuko.
So Cephalid Breakfast is a more coherent deck than Zenith Nadu, why doesn’t this more streamlined deck dominate Legacy? The Cephalid Breakfast deck is relatively easy to interact with. Even though it is capable of forcing the issue very quickly, and forcing the opponent to interact multiple times, it doesn’t have much in the way of resilience in the same respect Painter does. Nadu is a big help here as interacting with it after it resolves is going to put the Breakfast player up a card. The deck can get picked apart and cards like Narcomoeba, Thassa’s Oracle, Memory’s Journey, and Dread Return are a hinderance to ever draw, and this issue is exacerbated greatly when your opponent interacts with your game plan.
Doomsday
The last deck I want to Discuss is Doomsday. Doomsday is a very flexible combo deck because of how compact Dark Ritual into Doomsday into Thassa’s Oracle is. It is capable of stacking its deck and winning on turn 2 with some consistency all while being able to interact and some Doomsday decks choose to incorporate a fair plan of Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student and Psychic Frog into their main deck.
Doomsday being so fast and only needing to resolve Doomsday to create an almost unbeatable stack of 5 is the draw to the deck. Most decks have very little recourse to a resolved Doomsday as long as you make your piles well. The relative immense flexibility Doomsday offers in deckbuilding is another draw, as you can customize the deck to have hyper specific answers, have only a general Doomsday package and have a robust fair plan available. The ability to resolve Doomsday on turn 1 and create unlosable games after resolving Doomsday are the other draws. Slower decks tend to struggle to beat a patient Doomsday pile built to just cast Thassa’s Oracle wile treading just enough water, and most decks just can’t compete with you if you ever resolve Doomsday on the first turn.
Tier List
S TIER
Reanimator
- I believe Reanimator is just the best deck in the format. It has extremely robust fair and combo plans. Having the tools to handle both plans is one thing, but being prepared to handle the one your Reanimator opponent goes for is a whole different story. The deck also has the ability to pivot off the unfair Reanimator plan post board, making graveyard hate much more embarrassing. It is the speed of the strong unfair hands, the modality of the deck, and the robustness of both of its plans that puts this deck on top of the format.
- The only thing that holds Reanimator back is the hate. Especially when you don’t know exactly what your opponent has in store for you, hard graveyard hate can be pretty annoying to beat sometimes. Although your fair plan is robust, if you get caught by graveyard hate and cards get stranded in your hand, your fair plan is not going to matchup as well.
A TIER
UB Tempo
- UB Tempo has picked up more steam recently. It fully commits to a controlling tempo fair plan. Its interaction lines up well into the format and it plays the best creature threats in the format, it’s as simple as that.
- Just because Black removal lines up well into the current format doesn’t mean that its drawbacks don’t still exist. Black is still objectively the worst colour for the playable removal in the format. The deck is limited in its arsenal of tools because of this, Powder Keg doesn’t compare to Meltdown, Go for the Throat doesn’t compare to Prismatic Ending. Additionally, Vexing Bauble is a huge thorn in this deck’s side.
Red Stompy
- Red Prison has access to powerful disruptive tools such as Vexing Bauble, Blood Moon, Magus of the Moon as well as powerful threats in The One Ring, Broadside Bombardiers and Pyrogoyf. This deck typically has a favourable matchup into both UB Tempo and Reanimator, Vexing Bauble being a particularly strong card in those matchups.
- The lock pieces don’t always work as well as you may need them to these days. Against the UB decks if they are afforded the time to fetch for basics Blood Moon effects can lose a lot of their effectiveness. The creatures in the deck are strong, but don’t take over the game on their own most of the time. Efficient interaction can pick this deck apart and allow the opponent to survive the onslaught, and in post board games Hydroblast and Blue Elemental Blast are very strong against this deck.
Eldrazi
- Eldrazi is extremely powerful, capable of producing immense pressure very quickly and overwhelming the opponent. The deck is high on this list mostly because of its raw power level rather than anything else.
- Consign to Memory is one of the most popular sideboard cards in the format. Three of them in almost every Blue deck sideboard, and this efficient interactive spell that unconditionally targets almost every card in the deck gives every Blue deck a powerful disruptive tool against this deck. It’s almost like it was designed to do that. Just like Red Prison, it is an Ancient Tomb deck and trades off some consistency for raw power, this deck more so. You don’t have lands that turn into spells, so you are prone to flood. Expensive creatures like Murktide Regent that get very big can be a bit challenging to attack through as well.
Nadu
- I want to mention Nadu in the A Tier of decks in the format, because I believe a better built Nadu deck than the ones that currently exist can easily find a home in this tier of decks in the format. I’m convinced something on this power level or greater with Nadu and Nomads exists, but nobody has quite made it work yet, so I’m keeping an eye out for EW results to see if anyone cracks the Nadu code.
Well now I’ve briefly covered the 10 decks in Legacy I believe you should consider most if you are playing Eternal Weekend just around the corner. Thanks for reading! I hope you learned something. I’ll also be among the over 1,000 competitors in the Legacy Championship at Eternal Weekend, so I hope to see you there!
