We need to talk about Eternal Weekend Europe.

What should've been the highlight of the year for the European eternal Magic community turned out to be a disappointing experience for many. The following is a compilation of the many issues that occurred at Eternal Weekend Prague 2024, based on my own experiences as well as conversations I had with dozens of players and staff members during and after the event. 

Hopes and Expectations

Going into Eternal Weekend Europe, it looked like this was going to be the biggest and greatest one ever. The event was announced well in advance, a real blessing compared to previous editions. Prague is a beloved destination that offers great sightseeing and nightlife opportunities. Despite growing concerns over the health of the format, over 800 players registered for the Legacy Main Event, and Vintage also saw a record number of gamers join. This year's venue had a solid track record, as multiple Grand Prix had been held there before. 

On the other hand, European Eternal Weekends have historically been somewhat of a mixed bag. The current tournament organizer, JK Entertainment, took over the contract in 2023. From their headquarters in Frankfurt, they've been running events for ages, both in their own name, and as a contractor (e.g. Cardmarket Series). They have a decent reputation when it comes to logistics, but have historically been criticized for cutting corners on prizes and other fronts, at their events.

Last year's EW EU was, all things considered, an OK event, with the most common complaints being the somewhat limited play space, the high cost of entry, and the venue not accepting payment by card. 

So, I would say the tournament organizer had a fairly low bar to clear, if they wanted to exceed player expectations this year. Sadly, I feel like they somehow missed the mark on nearly all fronts.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

In my 20+ years of playing Magic events, I don't think I've ever attended a tournament where players were so universally negative about their experience, at least as far as the actual organization goes. As the weekend progressed, the list of issues I encountered myself, and the amount of feel-bad stories I heard from my friends, just kept piling up. Many of these were minor gripes that, in isolation, wouldn't have been worth mentioning afterwards. Added up together, however, this eventually became a “Death by A Thousand Cuts” sort of situation, leaving our tournament experience to bleed out in the end. 

Under normal circumstances, though, that wouldn't have been enough to get me to write an article like this. Maybe I would make an angry tweet, or send an email to Customer Support, if I felt the need to release my inner Karen. However, as we left the venue on Sunday evening, a friend shared with me an incident that happened at the tail end of the Legacy event, that I found so appalling, that I decided that this one was going to need a proper postmortem.

Before I dive into the specifics, I'd like to make a few things clear:

• My only real goal in writing this, is to make future Eternal Weekends better for us players in Europe. Nothing more, nothing less.

• Because of the complexity and risk involved in organizing Eternal Weekend, there are only a handful of parties in Europe that could realistically be considered to take on a job like this. So despite all the criticisms listed here, I am still grateful that JK ran this for us. At the end of the day, everyone more or less got what they expected, and two new champions have been crowned. 

• One piece of positive feedback that I really want to highlight before we go into all the negatives, is that the judges did a great job at this event. The interactions I had with them myself all went over very smoothly, and everyone I talked to had similar experiences.

Issues and Incidents

With that in mind, let's get into all of the issues I witnessed at EW EU 2024. I have grouped them into 7 broad categories:

1. Legacy main event structure

2. Poor communication

3. Side events & Prizing

4. The playmat situation

5. Venue & Catering

6. Late coverage planning

7. Specific incidents

1. Legacy Main Event Structure

Let's start with the topic that probably impacted the most people. The Legacy Main Event on Saturday, which had around 835 players, featured 11 rounds of Swiss, to be played on one single day. Let that sink in for a second. We all ended up spending 13,5 hours in the event - 9AM to 10:30PM, playing the hardest card game in the world. 

Despite being out of contention for anything by round 5, I ended up playing it out because I genuinely enjoyed my deck and wanted to support my more successful teammates. Let me tell you, those last few rounds looked like a scene from Zombieland. Tournaments are supposed to be a test of wit and endurance, but there has to be a limit somewhere, and this was well past that limit. This was malpractice by the TO.

So, what should have been done? It seems that JK originally expected there to be “only” 10 rounds of Legacy, based on how they originally announced prizes for the event (more on that later). But, given that registrations were closed a few days before the event, with only a limited number of spots being available on the day, I'd argue that JK should've seen this coming, and needed to adjust the tournament schedule accordingly. Moving the last few rounds of Legacy to Sunday may have messed with some players' ability to partake in the Vintage event, but at least it wouldn't have left every single competitor feeling terrible at the end of their day. 

Going forward, I think we have no choice but to split the Legacy Main Event over two days, like they do in North America. These 10+ round days just aren't fun for anyone, so let's get rid of them.

2. Poor Communication

The communication from the organizer was severely lacking, which caused much confusion and many frustrations, in particular when it came to registration and prizes. 

Before the event, the tournament organizer released the tickets on their website in batches, creating ambiguity on how many were available. The Tuesday before the event, ticket sales were halted completely, with on-site reservation being offered instead, at a small extra cost. Although this was announced on their Facebook and Instagram, this still caught some players by surprise, creating uncertainty on whether they would be able to join events at all. For the players that did get their tickets in time, it wasn't always roses and sunshine either, since many experienced difficulty getting into Melee. Many of the players in my AirBNB ended up going to the venue on Friday just to make sure they were registered correctly, even though they had bought tickets months in advance and had diligently followed all the instructions they got via email.

What was even more annoying, were the plethora of mistakes in the announced prizes. Initially, the site mentioned that promos would only be given to the top 24 of the Legacy Main Event, instead of the top 32. While that mistake was eventually corrected, the site also failed to mention the foil Tinker promos for the quarter finalists of the Vintage Main Event. The TO did end up giving out all the promos as they were supposed to at the event.

An even greater blunder happened with regards to the non-promo prizes (tix for the prize wall). The tournament announcement mentioned specific point-thresholds: 19 points would be enough for min-cash, and we'd go up from there. With 11 rounds ahead, that meant 6-4-1 would be enough to get something for your troubles, at least. Until round 7, when new prizes were posted near the pairing boards, which set the threshold for min cash at 21 points (7-4) instead. This triggered discussions on whether this was even legal, and wild guesses on how much we were being “stolen” from.

To be fair, I don't exactly agree with those accusations. It seems reasonable to assume that the TO had always intended to pay out players with a X-3-1 record, but failed to account for the potential of there being 11 rounds instead of 10. However, players bought their tickets based on the terms specified on the website, and it is ultimately the TO's responsibility to make sure those terms are correct, and honored in the end.

The main reason this is all so bad, however, is because of the aforementioned reputation of the tournament organizer. Many other TOs would be forgiven when a mistake like this happens—but with JK specifically, people automatically assumed we were being shorted promos and prize tix. This lack of trust is very telling about the relationship between players and the TO at this point, and clearly shows that something needs to happen to mend the pieces.

Here are some more instances where some/better communications would have been in order:

• Because of obvious player outrage, after the update to the prizes for the Legacy Championship were posted, some players that had earned 19 points were offered a compensation of 200 prize tix, to make up for the botched initial announcement. But, this was never publicly communicated, so the majority of players will have missed this entirely.

• For some of the lower profile main events (Modern, Premodern, ...), prizes were likewise adapted and announced while the events were already going, adding to the confusion and uncertainty.

• Side event entry was raised from €25 to €30 at some point during the day, without a proper announcement. In some cases, players in the same event paid a different entry fee. 

• Some events awarded RCQ invites, but this was only announced at the time the event started. 

• Two of the artists ended up being absent, due to outside circumstances—one got sick, one didn't manage to get his visa in time. Unfortunate, for sure. However, the website was not updated to reflect this, nor did I see any announcements on social media. I can only hope not too many people showed up with the primary goal of getting their cards signed or getting some swag, only to end up disappointed.

• Leading up to the event, barely anyone knew that there would be coverage. Instead of a coordinated social media push starting 2 weeks before the event, like we've seen for EW NA, all we got were a few stray tweets from the casters on Friday.

Here's the thing with customer experience: it's a direct function of the expectations you set with your audience. Clear, correct and timely communication is essential in shaping those expectations, and goes a long way towards creating trust. I hope that whoever organizes EW EU next year takes that advice to heart, and puts in the effort to ensure that players know what they are in for when they register.

3. Side Events & Prizing

I personally did not engage with any of the side-events and got nowhere near to earning any prizes (there's my tournament report for you), so the following is based on the accounts of players who did.

When players arrived on Friday around noon, they noted the event hall looked barren and there seemed to barely be anything to do. Eventually, some events did fire, but no one I spoke to seemed to like them—they were 3-round events with poor prizing, making them not appealing enough compared to just getting in more games with friends. 

These complaints only got louder throughout the weekend. Here's what the side event structure and prizes looked like, after they raised the entry fee:

• €30 entry, for 3 rounds.

• Winning a round gets you 40 tix, while the loser gets 20 tix.

• Going 3-0 gets you an additional 40 tix.

• In other words:

  • 3-0 = 160 tix

  • 2-1 = 100 tix

  • 1-2 = 80 tix

  • 0-3 = 60 tix

For reference, 20 tix got you a regular play booster from the prize wall. 

So, I ask you: is 8 boosters an appropriate prize for winning your €30 Legacy side-event, at Eternal Weekend? Personally, I think it barely qualifies for an average FNM. But Tom, you say, weren't there other prizes at the prize wall, more suited for an Eternal audience? The answer is, unfortunately, barely. From what I saw, any remotely desirable products and singles disappeared from the prize wall early in the weekend, and those who ended up making a deep run on Sunday, were left scrambling to find anything of value to convert their winnings into. Most players I met at that point, had resorted to getting sealed products, in hopes of flipping them into cash later. What a glorious way to honor your performance at the Vintage Championships. Maybe they could've taken the ridiculously overpriced Jeweled Lotus instead—at least it would make for a good proxy in a format they actually played.

Some players did manage to strike a deal with the vendors from the JK booth, to convert tix into credit at a 6-to-1 ratio. However, as you probably could've guessed, this offer was never made public. 

We are all used to the prize wall system by now, and have come to expect very little from it. But the offering at this year's Eternal Weekend EU was strikingly lacking even by those standards, to the point where I found it insulting towards those battling all weekend, only to be left with their pick from a beggar's banquet. With no trophies or paintings available to the winners either, it truly felt like JK was only willing to reward players with the promos they were given by WotC, or with undesirable products and singles that they themselves paid pennies on the dollar for. It felt like a garage sale, rather than an EW prize wall.

So how to improve things? Here are some suggestions:

• Make sure that winning feels rewarding. Going undefeated in your event should make it worth your time, at the very least doubling your entry. Even if raising the prize pool for side-events is not a viable option, at least make them a bit more top-heavy. Those pity-boosters for players going 1-2 or worse are not making anyone happy.

• Better yet, offer players meaningful side events to play, rather than 3-round tournaments. Many players would love to play some team trios on Friday, for example.

• Consider your audience when building the prize wall. Eternal players want older cards and tournament staples, not the latest standard product or random Secret Lairs. 

• Don't give out all of your best prizes at the start. Replenish the wall with good stuff throughout the day, so that all players can have a shot at getting something they actually want.

As a final anecdote related to prizing, someone shared with me that the Modern Main Event top 8 players had decided to split the tix prizes. With a total of 11000 tix to be chopped, the TO graciously offered to “round things up” so that everyone got 1350 tix. Which is actually 25 tix less than what they each should've gotten.

Did I mention that this TO had a bad rep when it comes to cutting corners?

4. The Playmat Situation

Days before the event, we were all informed that the playmats would not be available on-site, and they would have to be shipped to us after the event. Obviously this isn't great, especially considering that the Legacy playmat features Psychic Frog—a card that may not be legal by the time this article gets published. From what I was told, they expect the playmats to be shipped to us starting in February.

This seems like an obvious screw up with regards to planning, especially given that Eternal Weekend NA featured the same playmats, and they were able to have them done in time for the event. So how could JK somehow make this unfortunate situation even worse?

As an alternative to getting our mats shipped, we could have our pick from a variety of different playmats, from past Grand Prix, Star City Opens, or other random events we never attended. Suffice to say, no one I talked to seemed remotely excited about this offer. 

However, early in the weekend, the TO also allowed us to trade our playmat voucher for 150 prize wall tix if we so desired. But, over the course of the day, this offer was apparently changed to 100 tix, before being withdrawn entirely. Punishing everyone who had chosen to be patient instead of adding to the queues in the morning. Obviously, these trade-in offers were never properly announced—surprising, I know.

5. Venue and Catering

As mentioned at the beginning, the venue for this year's EW looked actually quite promising. Sure, it lacked the character of last year's Hotel Chodov (best hotel in all of communism!), but the venue was easier to access via public transport, and at least we would be able to pay by card when we wanted food or drinks. How foolish of us to assume that such luxuries would be on offer…

EW offered us exactly three options when it came to catering:

• A Costa Café at the entrance, which had a limited number of pastries, sodas and hot drinks on offer. On Saturday, they closed at 7 PM—5,5 hours before the Legacy event would finish. On Sunday, they ran out of coffee by 9:30 AM. I swear I am not making this up.

• A small stand outside, that served hotdogs and fries. They did not offer any vegetarian or halal options. By the time I went to check on Saturday evening, around 7, they had run out of hot dogs.

• 3 vending machines with sodas and some candy bars.

There was apparently another food stall a little bit further from the tournament hall, which did offer vegetarian options. I only learned about this after the fact though, and by all accounts, most players never knew about this during the event.

Those were all the options available to the approximately 1000-1500 people in the venue. And they couldn't even serve us beer. Obviously, queues formed as a result of this limited offering, and some players didn't manage to get anything at all before their next round started. Although the TO later told me that they had no control over the catering at the venue, this pathetic offering surely didn't help at elevating our experience at the event.

There were a grand total of two restrooms, for all of us. They were pretty clean when I attended them, and I expertly managed to lose my rounds early enough to avoid the queues, but this was still a pretty small amount of toilets, given the size of the crowd.

As far as the actual play environment goes, the event hall was very spacious, up to the point where we wondered why we were all still rubbing elbows at the tables—surely they could've spread things out a bit more, making us all a little bit more comfortable during the 11-round slugfest. What's even more annoying, was the technical setup. Announcements were hard to hear for anyone who wasn't near the judge station, and round clocks were only shown on 2 small screens—barely visible for the majority of players. 

Finally, let's talk about security. Or rather, the lack thereof. This topic is specifically important for Eternal Weekend, where due to the non-proxy nature of the event, literally millions of euros worth of cards are brought to the tables. Yet, not a single security guard was anywhere in sight, the hall featured multiple un-monitored exits, and players were free to roam between the tables during the Vintage Main Event. 

Simple things like restricting access to the Vintage play area to only the competitors (using wristbands to check) or implementing the tagged backpack system, would already go a long way towards making competitors feel safer at the event, at minimal cost to the organizer. But given the crazy prices our cards fetch these days, I don't think it is unreasonable to expect some actual security personnel to be present, when hosting events of this nature. I hope that any future organizer can take these suggestions to heart, if they want us to keep bringing our old expensive wizard squares to their events.

6. Late Coverage Planning

I learned during EW NA that coverage for Eternal Weekend Europe would be done by the crew from Impact Returns—the jewel of the Spanish Legacy scene. This would be their first time doing an event of this size, but knowing the people behind the curtains, I had no doubts about the quality of the work they would deliver. I have yet to watch the stream myself, but from what I've heard, they knocked it out of the park, together with the awesome casters.

Talking to the guys, however, one thing became clear to me: the whole coverage operation was scheduled criminally late. The reason we hadn't heard anything about coverage earlier, was because the Impact crew was only hired two weeks prior to the event. Their flights were booked a mere three days before take-off. Keep in mind that these are passionate Magic players with families and jobs, doing coverage as a hobby.

Getting coverage up for such an event, on such short notice, is a Herculean task. I hope the team were paid handsomely for their work, and that the community gives them all the credit they deserve. But can we please plan this thing a bit more in advance next year? 

7. Specific Incidents

Every issue I listed so far can, in the end, be attributed to either poor planning or budget constraints—whether imposed by scarcity, or driven by greed, is hard to tell. The final few incidents I want to share have nothing to do with any of those, but rather with some extremely unpleasant interactions that occurred between players and the TO.

The first story was reported to me by two separate people after the event, and the player in question has later shared their account with me directly. Learning this broke me, and it is the reason I decided to write this article.

After 10 grueling rounds, a player sits down to play their final round of the Legacy Main Event. At 8-2, the stakes are high, as they still have an outside shot at making top 8, although an intentional draw to secure the promo and top 16 prizes, might also be worth considering. Unfortunately, standings are unavailable on the Melee App, so players at the top tables are struggling to figure out what they are actually playing for. At some point, printed versions of the standings are brought, and chaos ensues. Then, in the midst of all this, the start of the round is called, and the player is asked to come on the feature match. They decline, as they are exhausted from the long day, and annoyed that they were not able to do the proper tiebreaker math beforehand, as they would at any other event with paper standings or a functional tournament app.

For reference, here's what the MTR (section 219) has to say about feature matches:

Some Competitive and Professional Rules Enforcement Level tournaments use video for live streaming or replay broadcast of matches. Players may decline to appear on camera; however, players in the playoff matches of Professional Rules Enforcement Level tournaments may not decline to appear on camera.

After refusing the feature match, shockingly, our player is met with the following ultimatum by Jens Arndt, head of JK Entertainment: either go to the feature match and play, or be dropped from the event—citing the terms and conditions that, according to him, the players agreed upon when registering for the event. After some discussion, pressured by Jens who at some point literally started yelling at players, they eventually decide to go to the feature match area and play their match. There, they then learn that despite being told differently in the previous round, their decklist would now be revealed on the stream—something they deliberately requested not to do before. This final disregard for their wishes ends up being the straw that broke the camel's back, as the player feels so overwhelmed, that they decide to surrender the game, seeing it as the only way out of this terrible situation. They end up missing top 32 on breakers. 

After the incident, the head judge and one of the other JK staff members talked with the player privately to apologize for what happened, and they eventually offered them an amount of prize tix that matched a top 32 performance, as compensation. Jens never apologized himself.

This entire situation is obviously messed up, and although it is by far the most extreme example, it is just one of multiple cases where Jens Arndt in particular was called out for having some extremely unpleasant interactions with players. Others include:

• Multiple players complained about the way they were confronted after presenting large amounts of tix at the prize wall. Some tix had apparently been stolen earlier in the day, causing the TO to vet every large tix exchange. One of the players who reported this harassment had just retrieved their prizes for making top 8 in one of the main events—they were only allowed to spend them after this top 8 got confirmed.

• Jens complained and acted rude towards players who requested to have their oversized card shipped to their homes, and tried to pressure some of the winners into reselling their card on-site.  

While the TO has every right to look out for potential thieves and to refuse requests to ship out prizes, they should be able to have these kinds of interactions in a respectful manner.

We Deserve Better

Despite this long list of issues, somehow, most of us still ended up having a great time at Eternal Weekend Prague. Turns out that what makes these events worth traveling for is not the prizes, the playmats, the catering, or the professionalism, kindness and respect of the tournament organizer. None of those were up to standard at EW EU 2024, but as always, the community was. I played 18 rounds of Magic, and faced 18 lovely opponents along the way. While I was unable to get a proper meal or a beer at the venue, I was able to find many of those after the tournaments, and found myself surrounded by friends from all across the world while enjoying said delicacies. It's all about the Gathering in the end.

A community this great deserves better than the Eternal Weekend we got this year. The entire show felt as if it was run on a shoe-string budget, and with little regard towards the overall player experience. We were charged premium prices to compete, but we did not get a premium event in return. 

Something needs to change, either by way of JK Entertainment stepping up their game, or by having another organizer rise up to the task. Given everything that went wrong this year, things can only get better from here. They have to.

Thank you all for reading.

Legacy is dead 🤡.

Long live Legacy 👑.  

Tom De Decker

@BLC_Tom