Vintage Variety Hour
The Showcase events on Magic Online, especially at the end of a season, display a strange tension. On the one hand they have higher stakes and stiffer competition than almost any other open (or QP-gated) event on the platform; on the other, they are essentially free if your QPs are about to expire and your mind buys into whatever that fallacy is called. Thus I found myself playing a Vintage Showcase that I absolutely would not have ponied up 30 Tix or 300 Play Points for if it was a regular Challenge, with a deck I built on the fly after looking at recent lists for inspiration, to qualify for another event that threatened a scheduling conflict that would have stopped me from playing the Showcase at all if I had been aware of it. Naturally I found myself in the Top 8, kicking off a bizarre month that saw me Top 8 Vintage events on four consecutive weekends - the Showcase, a weekend Challenge, the Showcase Playoff, and the ManaTraders Monthly Series - and make my peace with the format.