I cannot play at Eternal Weekend this year, but my brother is playing and I am trying to coach him. I call and text him regularly to ask him to do sample hands and decide mulligans. We go through side board scenarios and obviously we play when we can.

How are you training for Eternal Weekend? We know the field is somewhat wide open. We know this is the largest event for Vintage with the best players in world. We also know that playing 10 rounds of playing Magic is brutal.

I played 8 rounds of SCG Con day one and my head was aching in round 8. It was no excuse for my loss but playing a large number of rounds in a high variance format is hard.

What are some of the best strategies?

I'm training for the non-Magic portion. I drank most of a bottle of Crown during the Texas game last weekend.

@thecravenone Are you going to play Old School? You will have a blast with that group, I always do.

@thecravenone said in How are you training for Eternal Weekend?:

I'm training for the non-Magic portion. I drank most of a bottle of Crown during the Texas game last weekend.

I did that too, but during a league on MODO, I think I'm adequately prepared for the entire weekend

I’m a new dad and don’t play MTGO, which puts me at a big time/volume disadvantage. However, my plan is similar to SCGCon:

• At least once a week, jam some Gchat testing with my Houston playtesting partner Ben.
• My Austin buddy Patrick is also a new dad and playing in Champs, so we’re gonna try to jam games whenever we relieve our wives of mom-duty (this’ll be easier when our kids start bottle feeding).
• Extensively goldfish my deck both pre- and post-board to make sure everything runs smoothly.
• Live and breath Vintage content between now and then so I can keep my finger on the pulse. I.e. read all the active threads here, listen to podcasts, watch streams, and constantly check Mtgtop8 results. I’m gonna be playing a deck (and particularly a sideboard) that wants to be tuned to the meta, so I need to understand current trends.
• On that last point, my plan is to not think about Legacy Champs, so my limited time and brainpower can focus on doing Vintage Champs correctly.

@stuart Congrats on being a new dad. The timing on becoming a dad for me is too close to Champs for me to go. I like your training routine, and I hope you do well.

I would recommend that you pack a ton of snacks. I drank a lot of coffee at SCG Con and it hurt me in the late rounds but drinking a ton of beer somehow helped me at the Old School Players ball.

@moorebrother1 100% agreed - I stick to a strict snack and caffeine regimen at bigger events and have found that to make as big difference. Coffee hasn't been bad for me as long as I don't stop drinking it later in the day. Plus, it gives you the coffee-breath-tilt advantage.

Plan to get there a day early and jam one of the vintage trials to warm up. Not super competitive, just enjoy jamming powerful cards. I have to go x-5 before I consider dropping. I enjoy getting to play vintage in paper for the sale of playing!

walk around between matches. Gets the blood flowing.
Been using untap with @Prkchpsndwiches to run the "gauntlet" of decks we expect to see, and that is working well. Allows us ot build things/change fast, as well as talk through strategy and proper play without feeling pressure.

I'm firing up a Vintage league over the month of October locally, allowing proxies. About 7 solid so far up to maybe 12 depending on the next few days. We might do round robin, which sounds like a ton of matches, but this actually allows us to play at leisure over the month; each participant meets with each other whenever they can arrange that between the 2 of them, which isn't so hard given nearly every player is a regular attendee at one or more weekly events at our most popular local store.