Vintage 101: Asia Eternal Weekend 2023
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 diving into yet another large event with our second Eternal Weekend event from Aichi, Japan! In addition to that we've got two Challenges to talk about.
Without further ado, let's dive right in.
Asia Eternal Weekend 2023 Vintage Championship
This past weekend in Aichi, Japan was the second of our big Eternal Weekend events. The Vintage Championships at Asia Eternal Weekend were hosted by TO BIG MAGIC, and the event overall had 201 players in it. That's a bit more than the Prague event had and honestly looks like a solid turnout for a sanctioned paper Vintage event in 2023.
You can find all of decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Oath was the most played deck of the event by quite a bit and it's win rate sat at just a bit over 50% (50.9%) to be exact. Lurrus Saga was also quite popular and had a solid win rate. After that it was the gamut of the majority decks that we typically see in MTGO challenges, etc.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| Oath of Druids | 1st | Daisuke Hirasawa |
| Combo Shops | 2nd | Masanori Yamamoto |
| Initiative | 3rd | Yuki Ota |
| Lurrus Saga | 4th | Yusuke Hayasaki |
| Initiative Tinker | 5th | Masaya Takei |
| Beseech Storm | 6th | Gen Shinohara |
| Aggro Shops | 7th | Kyohei Hosomi |
| Initiative | 8th | Tsubasa Marumo |
Quite a solid Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Daisuke Hirasawa taking it all down on Oath of Druids.
I like the builds here with the main deck Gaea's Blessing but also as we will see later in this article having some more cards like Serra's Emissary out of the sideboard is nice too. I definitely love Portal to Phyrexia though. Any Tinker deck should be playing it for sure.
In Second Place we had Combo Shops.
This deck continues to showcase how powerful it really is all the time. Wurmcoil Engine is a sick include in the sideboard as an aggressive threat.
Also in this Top 8 we had Lurrus Saga.
Very much a stock Dimir Lurrus deck here. Still, can't go wrong with what works. This deck has a lot of chops and can grind games very well.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Aggro Shops.
Solidly aggressive and powerful, this deck has some strong gameplay to it. Being able to leverage its aggressive threats alongside prison pieces and The One Ring is quite nice for sure.
Vintage Challenge 11/25
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the mid afternoon Saturday event. This event had 65 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Lurrus Saga was the most popular deck of the event and it's win rate was quite good. Combo Shops had reasonable representation and a less than 50% win rate despite a Top 8 finish, while stuff like Doomsday, Breach, etc all did rather poorly. Dredge did very well with a low sample size as one of its two pilots made the Top 8.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Oath of Druids | 1st | JUJUBEAN__2004 |
| Beseech Storm | 2nd | thepowernine |
| Lurrus Saga | 3rd | abr_ |
| Initiative | 4th | LasVegasChaos |
| Dredge | 5th | satu2112 |
| Combo Shops | 6th | Sharkymoz |
| Esper Tinker | 7th | IamActuallyLvl1 |
| Initiative Tinker | 8th | burrarun |
Fairly interesting Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Oath of Druids that won.
This is a nice list. I like the cut in of Thoughtseize here and also Serra's Emissary as an additional target for Oath and SNT is nice.
In Second Place we had Beseech Storm.
I like this list a lot. It's nice seeing a Dark Ritual Tendrils deck in the format again for sure.
Further down the Top 8 we had Lurrus Saga.
The shift from Dimir to Azorius in these decks is incredibly interesting honestly. Lavinia is really just a solid Magic card though and I'm not surprised to see that be a thing that is good against a good amount of the format. Plus having Swords to Plowshares is quite helpful.
Down near the bottom half of the Top 8 we had Esper Tinker.
This is the same list that ended up winning Prague's Eternal Weekend, piloted by our good friend Justin Gennari. Deck looks quite powerful and well built for sure. The fact that it's putting up this kind of result says a lot.
Vintage Challenge 11/26
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Sunday event. This event had 41 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Lurrus Saga again was the most popular deck, and it's win rate was a little over 50%. Of the decks here, Dredge and CounterVine did the absolute worst while Combo Shops, Oath, and Initiative were very clear winners.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Initiative | 1st | LasVegasChaos |
| Oath of Druids | 2nd | StormQrow |
| Combo Shops | 3rd | notmi |
| Lurrus Saga | 4th | abr_ |
| Combo Shops | 5th | yPrincipe |
| Lurrus Saga | 6th | kasa |
| Grixis Tinker | 7th | bweezy |
| Lurrus Saga | 8th | PRINCEOFPERASIA |
Lot of Combo Shops and Lurrus Saga in this Top 8 for sure. At the end of the event though it was Initiative that won!
Dauntless Dismantler is one heck of a card and I'm not super surprised to see it show up in this deck. Being able to just cut your opponent off their artifact mana like Moxen and then Meltdown for W is insanely powerful. Seems like a great card here for sure.
In Second Place we had Oath of Druids.
Again we see some of the things like Serra's Emissary here as another Oath/SNT target. Seems quite strong with all the stuff like Initiative about and even Dredge/CounterVine. Naming Creature is absurdly powerful.
Also in the Top 8 we had some Combo Shops so let's look at the highest placing one.
I do genuinely think this is one of the format's most "Vintage"-y decks for sure. It's generally a very powerful deck and it does a lot of on power level things that can feel very broken.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Grixis Tinker.
Fairly stock looking list here overall. No frills or weird stuff, just good clean Tinker Magic right here.
Around the Web
- Justin Gennari has a few videos for us!
- Brian Coval goes over his time in Prague! Check it out here.
- Charlotte Legacy League has Beseech Storm vs Bant Beans. Check it out here.
- Revenantkioku has an article on the best performing Doomsday list at Asia Eternal Weekend. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 lists here.
Wildly interesting 4C DRS variant here.
STIFLENOUGHT.
From Asia Eternal Weekend, it's a literal Tibalt's Trickery deck! Wild.
Also from Aichi, Oswald Fiddlebender Shops!
Finally also from Aichi, Mono Black Scam!
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!
