Vintage 101: Asia Eternal Weekend 2022
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're going to be talking all about the Vintage Championships event at Asia Eternal Weekend 2022! In addition to that we've got two Challenges from this past weekend to discuss.
Just a reminder that both North America Eternal Weekend and MTGO Eternal Weekend are the weekend of Dec 10th-11th!
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Asia Eternal Weekend 2022
This past weekend in Aichi, Japan, was the first big Eternal Weekend event in paper since before the pandemic. Hosted and organized by BIG MAGIC, this event had the Asia Vintage Championships for 2022. This event had 103 players overall in it, which is a pretty solid number given that the amount of notice for the event was roughly three to four weeks lead time.
The winner of this event received a custom painted Bazaar of Baghdad trophy!
In addition, all of the Top 8 competitors for this event received a special promo Gush. There are only 24 of these in existence for each of the Eternal Weekend events (Asia, North America, MTGO)!
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here. Big thanks to Justin Gennari of the Vintage Streamer's Discord team in getting this data put into a data sheet from MTGMelee data.
Breach was quite popular, as was Grixis Tinker decks. Breach had a solid win rate overall at around 59.7%, while Grixis had a less than 50% win rate. In addition Combo Shops had a solid outing and so did Other Tinker variants. All in all though, this looked like a really solid event and definitely just a ton of fun looking to play in. The overall metagame looks very healthy here and there really isn't one single strategy that seems really insane. Breach is pretty close, but I think even it has some predators that attack it.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| Combo Shops | 1st | Yusuke Takakuwa |
| White Stompy | 2nd | Chris Schiber |
| UB Sheoldred | 3rd | Hiroki Nakatani |
| Breach | 4th | Shota Yamaguchi |
| Breach | 5th | Youhei Tsumori |
| Breach | 6th | Ryo Jumonji |
| Cradlevine | 7th | Kandai Sekimoto |
| Grixis Tinker | 8th | Gen Shinohara |
Honestly, this is a super great Top 8. Despite the fact that we have a good amount of Breach in it, we've got some variety in blue/Bazaar and even Shops. At the end of the event though it was Yusuke Takakuwa that won the event on Combo Shops.
This list is super sweet. The Mightstone and Weakstone seems really strong here, and so does cards like The Antiquities War and Displacer Kitten being a huge value card. I am digging this list for sure.
In Second Place is a super sweet deck, piloted by a friend of mine in Japan. It's White Stompy!
This list is pretty sweet. I know for certain that it's underpowered because my friend was unable to borrow a full set of Moxen and a Lotus, just the three Moxen seen. Supplementing with Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond works quite well though. The Initiative creatures are incredibly powerful and so is Archon of Emeria. Solid run!
Also in this Top 8 we had some Sheoldred Wheels!
Utilizing Day's Undoing and Timetwister with Sheoldred is absolutely bonkers for sure.
Further down the Top 8, we had a showing by Cradlevine.
Hexdrinker really is what makes this deck tick. By being able to quickly level one of these up with a Cradle you can have a serious threat on board. Very cool deck for sure.
Vintage Challenge 11/26
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the mid-afternoon Saturday event. This event had 57 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamers Discord.
You can find all of the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
Jeskai and Breach were both quite popular, and some of the Jeskai decks could be Lurrus Breach as well. Definitely a good spread of decks down the line though in many different subarchetypes.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| UB Tinker | 1st | TrueHero |
| Prison Shops | 2nd | Firetruck |
| Dredge | 3rd | Lord_Beerus |
| Jeskai Lurrus | 4th | Dan9IN |
| Paradoxical Outcome | 5th | haveaboavida |
| Jeskai Lurrus | 6th | unluckymonkey |
| Painter | 7th | adm29 |
| Goblins | 8th | 42crookedsporks |
Very interesting Top 8 here. Some strong variety and strategies. At the end of the event it was UB Tinker that took it all down.
This is definitely abusing Sheoldred and Hullbreacher for sure, and just in general being a super strong Tinker build. Definitely a strong deck.
In Second Place we've got Prison Shops.
This is a pretty solid list without any new cards at all really. Just good old fashioned Golos Shops! Looks great.
Further down the Top 8 we have a Painter/Shops hybrid list.
This is a sick list. Painter being a combo kill is pretty cool but the usage of Urza's Saga to fetch your Grindstone is very solid as well. In addition you can simply just play out Golos and work that way as well. Super sick.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we've got some Goblins action.
Very interesting list here with a very powerful combo (Snoop/Kiki-Jiki). It's interesting enough to see Goblin Lackey in the sideboard here to where it can come in matchups where putting a Recruiter into play for free could be good. No Muxus is incredibly interesting for sure.
Vintage Challenge 11/27
The second event of the weekend was the early morning Sunday event. This event had 42 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamers Discord.
You can find all of the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
Tinker variants were very popular here but also didn't do so well. Jeskai did very well overall in the event as did Doomsday.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Jeskai Lurrus | 1st | unluckymonkey |
| Jeskai Lurrus | 2nd | KingHairy |
| Lurrus DRS | 3rd | CodeProvider |
| Paradoxical Outcome | 4th | scalo94 |
| Prison Shops | 5th | 416FrowningTable |
| Cradlevine | 6th | Kagami_Mashiro_ |
| GW Aggro | 7th | Wesal |
| Doomsday | 8th | Tsubasa_Cat |
Good amount of variety here. Some Bazaar, Shops, and some DRS. At the end of the event it was the Jeskai Lurrus deck that won the event.
This is a powerful-looking list. It's interesting to see Third Path Iconoclast and I have a feeling that card is quite good in a go-wide strategy that can easily swarm the opponent with all the noncreature spells a deck like this casts.
In Second Place we have a slightly different Jeskai list.
This is more of a Breach build than a control variant, utilizing Ledger Shredder as a way to pitch cards for Breach usage. Definitely a strong list.
Also in this Top 8 we had a Lurrus DRS variant.
Green Sun's Zenith is a big part of this deck as all the creatures it's nabbing are green creatures in the deck. Being able to nab Ouphe or Outland Liberator is powerful for sure.
Near the bottom of the Top 8 we have GW Aggro.
Stoneforge Mystic being a reasonably powerful card in Vintage is super duper sweet. Also we get to see new card Loran of the Third Path here as well. Super cool.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari has one good video for us this week and it's one on Smelting Vat as a combo piece! Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 lists here.
KCI is on the menu this week with two slightly different variants.
We've also got some Humans!
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for your continued support of the column and join me next week as we continue our journey into Vintage!
As always you can reach me at my Link Tree! In addition, you can always reach me on the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the Vintage Streamers Discord.
Until next time!
