This Week in Legacy: Asia Eternal Weekend 2023
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of This Week in Legacy! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're diving into the second of our big events with Asia Eternal Weekend's Legacy Championship for 2023. In addition to that we've got two Challenges from this past weekend with one of those being the Showcase Challenge.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Asia Eternal Weekend 2023
This past weekend was the second of our big Eternal Weekend events, with this weekend's event being held in Aichi, Japan by the TO BIG MAGIC. This event was nearly as massive as the one in Prague with a staggering 658 players overall thanks to the data we collected within the Legacy Data Collection Project. What a stunning turnout for two big Eternal Weekend events so far!
While this event was not streamed at all, the TO did record a bunch of feature matches that can be found on their YouTube Channel.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
RUG Delver was the most played deck of the event but not by much. It's win rate was a little over 50% overall. As is pretty usual in the metagames for Japanese players, Sneak and Show is exceedingly one of the big popular decks there and thus it was second by only a few decks overall, also with a little over 50% win rate. The decks that really performed here were 4C Uro Control and Boros Stompy. Everything else kind of rides the line of a little over 50% while Reanimator was popular enough but tanked it a bit in the win rate department.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| 4C Uro Control | 1st | Leo Isogaya |
| Boros Stompy | 2nd | Takahiro Ikeda |
| 4C Uro Control | 3rd-4th | Alex Kwok |
| 4C Uro Control | 3rd-4th | Hanlin Xue |
| Oops! All Spells | 5th-8th | Yuki Kubo |
| Boros Stompy | 5th-8th | Renzhibo |
| Doomsday | 5th-8th | Clan |
| 4C Tempo | 5th-8th | Manuel Traboco |
Quite a bit of 4C Uro Control in this Top 8, but also some Boros Stompy and even Oops! The winner of the event was Leo Isogaya on 4C Uro Control!
The 4C Uro decks have certainly congealed to a point where they are finding a stock list. This seems to be the most common configuration of this deck I've seen for sure. I am digging some of these sideboard options like Lavinia, Azorius Renegade though. Seems like a strong card right now.
In Second Place we had Boros Stompy.
This deck is so very good and so very flexible. It did very well at all of the events this weekend it seems and it has some strong things it can do to win games. This particular list has some flex spots with stuff like Bonecrusher Giant and Touch the Spirit Realm, even stuff like Unlicensed Hearse which we haven't seen in a hot minute in the format.
Also in this Top 8 we had Oops! All Spells!
This player did really well at this event, going full on undefeated in the Swiss rounds (so 10-0 in Swiss), and their list looks quite good. I love love love the Leyline of Anticipation in the main deck here because of how easily it enables a flash kill. Really cool list.
Further down the Top 8 we had 4C Tempo.
The Bowmasters/Questing Druid variant of these tempo shells is very interesting. Having both of these options is quite powerful, even though it's stressing the manabase just a bit. Still, this deck is really strong.
Legacy Challenge 11/25
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Saturday event. This event had 47 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
RUG Delver was the most popular deck of the event, and while it had at least one Top 8 appearance here its overall win rate was very poor. Still, I think this deck is quite good in the current format. Grixis Delver had a strong win rate as did GW Depths, Boros Stompy, and Reanimator.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Black Phoenix | 1st | Pietrone10 |
| RUG Cascade | 2nd | Killah_SUV |
| Reanimator | 3rd | mephidro |
| Jeskai Control | 4th | Oceansoul92 |
| Thought Lash Combo | 5th | DragonDayDragon |
| 4C Uro Control | 6th | trunks132 |
| Boros Stompy | 7th | LSC1998 |
| RUG Delver | 8th | schlumpfimsumpf |
Pretty interesting Top 8 all around here actually. At the end of the event though it was Phoenix that won!
Haven't seen this deck in a true hot minute for sure. Cards like Demilich are super sweet, and I love the addition of The One Ring to the sideboard. Such a sweet deck.
In Second Place we had RUG Cascade (aka Rhinos).
One of the best upgrades for this deck absolutely had to be Lorien Revealed giving the deck a way to shuffle without cards like Brainstorm while also enabling your blue count for Force of Will. Really solid.
Also in this Top 8 we had Jeskai Control.
Very clean and solid list here. Digging some of these main deck inclusions like main deck Blood Moon (which seems insane against these 4C Uro piles) and Dress Down. Supreme Verdict also seems quite good right now too.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Boros Stompy.
This is a deck that as of this past weekend's Eternal Weekend events has had a very strong showing and I don't expect that momentum to slow any time soon. This deck does some really powerful things and really it's Forth Eorlingas! as we've called out in the past that really makes this deck tick.
Legacy Showcase Challenge 11/26
This past weekend was also a Legacy Showcase Challenge weekend! These events are Qualification Point (QPs) entry only at 40 QPs and the Top 8 of the event gets an invitation to the Showcase Qualifier at the end of the season. This event despite not having complete data had a nice player count of 362 players thanks to the data that was collected by the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the incomplete data sheet here. Due to a lot of technical complications and the size of the event, we did not have full data for this so let's look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Thought Lash Combo | 1st | hateatos |
| Black Midrange | 2nd | blademagician |
| 4C Uro Control | 3rd | LeoFa |
| RUG Delver | 4th | joker10289 |
| RUG Delver | 5th | Diem4x |
| Boros Stompy | 6th | Gabanaci |
| 8Cast | 7th | Laplasjan |
| RUG Delver | 8th | PekkaChu |
Lot of RUG Delver in this Top 8. At the end of the event though it was actually a really sweet deck in Thought Lash Combo that won.
Wow this deck is super cool. The power of using cards like Paradigm Shift and Thought Lash has been the brain child of several already, and there's even a full on Discord devoted to this archetype known as the "Thassa's Oracle Paradigm Lash Combo" server. The major idea here is to resolve either of the above cards and resolve Thassa's Oracle to win the game. The One Ring is incredibly sweet here as it provides some needed protection at the right time.
In Second Place we had a fun Black Midrange pile.
Lot of spicy stuff in these events it seems this weekend. This sort of mixes together elements of Scam and Pox alongside a Reanimator package, but you also get cards like Currency Converter and [[Urza's Saga] as backup plans. It's quite spicy but really cool looking.
Also in this Top 8 we had 4C Uro Control.
As mentioned earlier, these decks are slowly congealing around a center point of being able to leverage Up the Beanstalk as much as possible. I've seen some variety in these lists from decks playing Uro and not playing Uro to decks also playing Murktide Regent and even Ethereal Forager. The major staple of these decks certainly has been Leyline Binding. Wizards definitely knew long term what that card would be capable of it seems!
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had 8Cast.
Patchwork Automaton was a huge technical thing for this deck as it found a niche that didn't involve going fully deep on drawing so many cards and getting hurt by Orcish Bowmasters. It's a solid way for this deck to have approached its game plan for sure.
Around the Web
- Bazaar of Boxes is testing the winning RUG Delver list from EU Eternal Weekend. Check it out here.
- StrassDaddy is asking about whether Maverick is the right shell for Legolas's Quick Reflexes! Check it out here.
- I can't resist making a joke about Bryant Cook having Crabs. Check out some sweet sweet Mono Blue Mill action here.
- The Legacy Gambit is prepping for Eternal Weekend with Boros Stompy. Check it out here.
- Douges has a cool series on prepping for Eternal Weekend. Check out these videos!
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here.
Alli Lands lists are always sweet.
This take on the Rhinos Cascade list is super sweet.
Mono Black Scam featuring Lord Skitter, Sewer King!
I am reasonably certain that Koike is one of the most persistent Nic Fit players on MTGO at this point, and this list is SWEET. Indoraptor, the Perfect Hybrid?! Sign me up!
Delving into the Eternal Weekend Asia decks, we've got some really spicy stuff starting with a really cool Mono Black Aggro list.
This deck from Aichi is... something.
Finally also from Aichi... Collected Company!
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for continuing to support the column and join us next week as we continue our journey into Legacy!
As always you can reach me at all my associated links via my Link Tree! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the MTGLegacy Discord Server.
Until next time!
