Premodern's Biggest Weekend
PLUS: 2025's Premodern calendar takes shape and the Big Apple Highlander format launch
This issue is a doozy with brief takeaways on Premodern’s biggest weekend yet, the announcements of multiple 2025 events, the launch of the Big Apple Highlander format, and lots of amazing deck gameplay. As always, appreciate your readership and please pass on the newsletter to any friends interested in Premodern.
Premodern’s Biggest Weekend of 2024
The weekend of September 20-22 saw an astounding four major Premodern tournaments take place across three continents with:
North American Championship, 238 players in Boston, USA [Deck Lists] [Video]
European Championship, 203 players in Prague, Czech Republic [Deck Lists] [Videos]
Lobstercon Side Event, 83 players in Boston, USA [Deck Lists] [Video]
Gold Border Open, 60 players in Buenos Aires, Argentina [Deck Lists]
A huge congratulations to the top finishers, tournament organizers, and broadcasting crews that made this weekend so special. It’s impossible to capture all the magic that took place so I’m just going to jot down a few takeaways:
Secret Tech is Alive and Well
These large events still contain surprises that innovative deckbuilders work on in quiet before unveiling on the big stage. This year’s breakout deck was clearly Mono U Stiflenought, which took down both the North America Champs and Lobstercon Side Event, piloted by Brian Selden (who defended his 2023 crown) and Lanny Huang, respectively. Designed by David Raczka, who won the 2023 Fall Brawl with an earlier iteration of the deck, contained a number of key modifications on established Stiflenought lists: 1) Parallax Tide in the sideboard, 2) three Flash of Insights across the 75, and 3) two Mishra’s Factories in the main. Taken individually, these changes weren’t necessarily unprecedented but the combination plus the insightful gameplay and sideboard strategy provided something special. If you’re curious to learn more, I highly recommend listening to Spike Colony’s interview with David Raczka and with Brian Selden. David has also decided to share his sideboard guide that he spent hours creating in exchange for a donation to CBP Non-Profit (more details in the Premodern Discord).
Other innovations abounded too, usually discovered only through word of mouth or discreet chat groups. A handful of experienced Burn players opted to splash green for Call of the Herd, Naturalize, and Tranquility in an effort to shore up the mirror match and enchantment decks like Replenish and Enchantress. Elves players utilized a variety of unique builds (white splash for Armageddon and Absolute Law or including Wasteland and Call of the Herd) to propel three out of the four Elves players at the North America Champs into Top 32.
How cool is it that we can still experience the joy, thrill, and mystery of a breakout deck or secret tech?
The Meta Shifted Towards “Tier 1” Decks
Prior to this weekend, I had collected the meta share of seven large in-person events this year. When comparing the North America Champs and Euro Champs to the historical meta, you can see an Estimated Meta that was underweight on generally agreed upon “Tier 1” decks such as Burn, Ponza Oath, and Replenish. Stiflenought and Black-White are a bit interesting here as North American players gravitated towards Stiflenought while shunning Black-White, with European players doing the opposite.
Tide Control, Elves, and Terrageddon Converted Well
Looking at the North American and European Champs, we get a high-level picture of which strategies outperformed their meta share. The usual disclaimers are appropriate here as this is still a small sample size but perhaps still informative directionally.
As a note, I had reached out to the European Champ organizers across several channels about getting a more accurate meta breakdown other than the pie chart provided but haven’t gotten a response, so there may be some rounding issues.
Besides the aforementioned outperformers, the top most represented decks of Burn, Stiflenought, and Ponza Oath still did well relative to their meta share. Replenish, which had been showing large outperformance leading up to the weekend converted well but not at the same level (only one out of 16 Replenish decks converted to Top 16 at Euro Champs).
The Swamp… Drained
Across the four Top 16s, only six of 64 decks contained a basic Swamp (half of which only had one copy): UB Stiflenought (#2 at NA Champs), Iggy Pop (#8 at Euro Champs), Survival Rock (#10 at Euro Champs), Pit Rack (#11 at Lobstercon Side), Pit Rack (#13 at Gold Border), and Aluren (#15 at Gold Border). Honorable mention to Angry Hermit (#13 at Euro Champs), which obviously cannot play basic Swamp.
The Lobstercon Side Event Still Had Rogue Decks
The Lobstercon Side Event has historically leaned more casual as many players opt towards rogue decks after “spiking” the main event the day prior. Although the Top 8 of the event wouldn’t look out of place from a typical event, the meta as a whole was still more rogue with nearly half (48%) of players opting for a deck outside the most popular 17 decks. In comparison, the other three events of the weekend saw less than a third of players playing a deck outside these 17. I also have to give major props to Steve B. for my favorite deck name of this event: Whenever Squee's not in the graveyard, all the other characters should be asking "Where's Squee". Also kudos to Todd S. for bringing Turbo Upheaval!
More than Content with the Content
The amount of content generated from the weekend surpassed historical precedent, major kudos to all the creators and players who shared their thoughts and experiences! Apologies if I’m missing anyone, feel free to send to me and I’ll update this list.
North American Championship and the Lobstercon Side Event
📜 Dave Firth Bard released his organizer’s report for the massive Old School and Premodern event, check it out for great photos of the weekend and beautiful Old School decks
🎙️ Dave Firth Bard joined the All Tings Considered podcast to discuss the organization of Lobstercon and news about future events
🎙️ The Duress Crew, who hosted the Lobstercon Side Event, launched a new podcast called Hardcast! Give them a follow and a listen.
🎙️ David Raczka joins Spike Colony to discuss his innovative Mono U Stiflenought list that took down Lobstercon weekend
🎙️ Brian Selden, fresh from defending his crown at the North American Champs, talks with Spike Colony about how the tournament went down
📜 Mike Flores writes about his experience at Lobstercon, an event that he often credits as the best tournament he’s been to in his Magic history
🎥 Eternal Durdles discusses their highlights of the event, deck strategies, and lessons learned
🎙️ Rich Shay, who took down the Old School event at Lobstercon, joins Spike Colony to discuss Replenish, his approach to the game, and more
🎙️ Michael Coyle, the runner-up at the main event with UB Stiflenought, digs into the deck and his performance with I’ve Got ?????’s
📜 Michael Arnold, who Top 16ed with Elves and organizes many of the community’s webcam events, wrote a heartfelt tournament report
🎙️ Cameron Heise, who Top 8ed the main event for a second year, discusses the Parallax Replenish deck with I’ve Got ?????’s
🎙️ Nathan Shue chats with I’ve Got ?????’s about his Top 4 run with Burn
📜 Javier Lugo, who placed 8th in the main event with 5C Terrageddon, provides an excellent tournament report on The Well of Knowledge filled with great stories and pictures of the weekend
📜 Antti Turtiainen details his journey from Finland to Lobstercon with photos and fun stories
🎙️ Ian Hendry, who Top 8ed the main event for a second year, sits down with I’ve Got ?????’s to chat about GR Ponza Oath
🎙️ Shane Echevarria, who made Top 16 with Stasis, sits down with I’ve Got ?????’s to discuss the deck and matchups
📜 Gary Roth wrote up an excellent tournament report about his Top 32 finish with White Weenie
📜 A text-based play-by-play recap of how the finals of the Lobstercon Side Event went down between Lanny Huang on Mono U Stiflenought vs. John Darling on RG Goblins
European Championship
🎙️ Martin Berlin, the founder of Premodern, sits down with Monster of the Week to discuss the European Championship
🎙️ Philipp Altmann discusses his Top 8 performance with Iggy Pop on 2 Cabal Therapists
2025 is Going to be Huge for Premodern
In fast and furious fashion, the last week has seen numerous large Premodern events announce their dates.
Legendary brewer and tournament organizer Flippi Böhm has announced that he’s launching a Premodern Grand Prix on April 26 and 27 near Frankfurt, Germany next year. This event will feature Premodern the first day with a cut to the Top 32 for the second day, which will have IPA/OLS booster drafts and a final cut to Top 8 with Premodern. For players who don’t qualify for Day 2, the event will feature free side events all day. This is quite possibly the coolest and most ambitious Premodern event our community has seen yet, be sure to follow Flippi for more updates. Registration opening is planned for later this week.
It’s been announced that Lobstercon next year will be split into two weekends (historically Premodern’s main event was on a Friday and Old School’s main event on Saturday). Registration is expected to open in December. The splitting of the two events is hopefully temporary as the tournament organizers hope to find a larger event space for 2026 (if any readers of this newsletter happen to be a real estate mogul in the Boston area, now is a good time to let me know).
Finally, the European Championship is moving to Finland in 2025 and will take place on September 6th.
The Launch of Big Apple Highlander
The New York crew has been discussing a casual, strictly-for-fun singleton format using the Premodern card pool but with all non-ante cards unbanned. We’re calling it Big Apple Highlander and to celebrate its creation we’re organizing a Premodern Discord webcam league with signups open until the end of next week and also an in-person event in NYC on Sunday, November 17. More details to come on both, but the in-person event we’re hoping to make our annual year-end celebration focused on charity and community. In the meantime, feel free to browse decks for inspiration and check out the rules here. Also be sure to hop into the #highlander channel in the Premodern Discord to discuss the format!
Content
🪿💨 Lanny Huang is back to take us through an MTGO league with an innovative take on the classic Miracle Grow deck (featuring Nimble Mongoose and a sideboard with three Worship).
🌈⛵️ Monster of the Week interviewed Magnus Holmström about his 5C Domain deck featuring Legacy Weapon that made the playoffs of the September Facebook monthly.
🧠☄️ Francisco Pawluszek attempts to revitalize UW Control with Accumulated Knowledge and Parallax Tide in an MTGO league. He also showcased a sweet ponza brew with Magnivore!
🤖🦷 Romario Vidal plays what some contend is the most beautiful deck in Premodern through an MTGO league… MUD! He also took a “Scam” Psychatog list by Francis Cowper that has been turning heads through a league.
🌊⚔️ Gary Roth walks through the mechanics of the Opalescence-Parallax Wave combo and how the mirror plays out if both players attempt to exile each other’s Wave.
😶🌫️👺 Heavy Play and the Portland crew showcased a pair of nice decks in the first round of their September tournament: Hidden Madness (with Hidden Herd and Psychic Venom) vs. Rb Goblins (with Oath of Ghouls). The second round match also features a Lhurgoyf mirror with Cognivore vs. Terravore.
🤝🕺 The Impulse Crew also has a sweet matchup with commentary to watch: Tradewind Survival vs. Dance Academy!
😈🖤 Moxforge attempts to break one of the rules of Premodern… and takes Mono Black Hatred through an MTGO league.
🪣💧 The Well of Knowledge features a rundown of Stiflenought variants by Brian Durkin… and his preferred variant may surprise you! No mention of HecaNought though, big oversight!