Vintage 101: Eternal Weekend Asia 2025 Vintage Champs
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're taking a look at Eternal Weekend Asia's 2025 Vintage Championships event. In addition to that we've got some Challenges from last week to dive into.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Eternal Weekend Asia 2025 Vintage Championships
This past weekend was the final Eternal Weekend event of 2025! Eternal Weekend Asia was hosted in PACIFICO Yokohama by the TO Hareruya. This weekend hosted the final 2025 Vintage Champs event for the year, with a solid 300 players registered for the main Vintage event.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Initiative and Dimir Lurrus were the most played decks of the event (with Initiative clinching it by one deck) and both decks had a pretty solid win rate overall. Of the decks listed here, the clear standouts were Lurrus Breach, Lurrus Doomsday, and PO. Sphere Shops had an abysmal 39% win rate, and non-Lurrus Doomsday had it even worse at 34.4%.
Overall though, this looked like a pretty healthy metagame. Vintage does continue to look quite good, and while we didn't have this kind of data for EU EW, having it at least for both NA and Asia showcases the versatility and variety of the format at large. Yes, Lurrus is popular, but there's a lot of archetypes within Lurrus (as much as I dislike the cat) and when the best deck is a fair deck I think the format is reasonably well positioned.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Lurrus | 1st | KaBi |
| Lurrus Doomsday | 2nd | kandai sekimoto |
| Dredge | 3rd | moxsapphire |
| Dimir Reanimator | 4th | akinori |
| Dimir Lurrus | 5th | Shimpei |
| PO | 6th | Yassy |
| Esper Lurrus | 7th | kohei takatori |
| Jewel Shops | 8th | Yusuke Takakuwa |
There's a fair bit of Lurrus in this Top 8, and at least one Dredge and Shops, with one lone non-Lurrus PO hanging out. At the end of the event it was Dimir Lurrus vs Lurrus Doomsday, and I gotta give these two competitors credit on their photo game here.
Imagine showing up to a tournament with Airbender tattoos! Pretty amazing stuff. At the end of the event it was KaBi with Dimir Lurrus that won!
Still on point photo game.
This is mostly stock, but... first major event of at least 100+ players and the winning decklist contains a copy of new card Wan Shi Tong, Librarian! This card is rather sweet, and I like the spot of it being a 1-of, because its really only great from your hand (since you can never cast it for X > 0 with Lurrus' ability ever) but it's a really powerful evasive threat that can get bigger and keep drawing you cards. Really awesome to see for sure.
In Second Place it was Lurrus Doomsday.
Having the Tempo-ish/fair deck angle for this version makes a lot of sense with Lurrus. Being able to play Psychic Frog in general seems very good, and having a copy of Tamiyo is nice as a backup plan. The fact that you can go up to four copies of Unable to Scream is pretty groovy. It's a very versatile spell that shuts off a lot of things and reduces them to 0/2 Toys. How appropriate for the holiday season!
Vintage Challenge 32 12/11/2025
The first Challenge event of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 46 players in it thanks to the MTGO Vintage Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Raker Shops and Initiative were both heavily played here, but Initiative had a bit of a better win rate. Despite having a Top 8, Raker did not have a great overall win rate.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Esper Lurrus | 1st | CrazyDiamond513 |
| Initiative | 2nd | sokos13 |
| Lurrus Doomsday | 3rd | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Raker Shops | 4th | Capitano_CL |
| Esper Lurrus | 5th | mei0024 |
| Scam | 6th | kanister |
| Initiative | 7th | BillyBruto |
| Esper Lurrus | 8th | lordoflifegain |
Good amount of Lurrus builds, mainly fair versions, and Initiative. At the end of the event, it was Esper Lurrus who won.
Gifts Ungiven in just the fair build of this deck is sweet. Also, a Yawgmoth's Will is pretty solid. One thing I will point out here is that Overencumbered in the sideboard is actually primarily for Dredge (thanks to desolutionist for reaching out on this one), as Dredge often can't get rid of the card fast enough. It pretty much shuts down their entire deck as they can't pay the mana for it (and can't sac any of the tokens really to reduce the cost).
In Second Place, we had Initiative.
This is a very straightforward list. I still am of the mind though that this deck should be playing some number of March of Otherworldly Light because of how extremely versatile it is.
Vintage Challenge 32 12/12/2025
The second Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 35 players in it thanks to the MTGO Vintage Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Initiative was the most played deck by a lot, and its win rate was very good. Oath also did very well here. Dimir Lurrus did not do well at all with a 37.5% win rate.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Esper Lurrus | 1st | La_Ele |
| Sphere Shops | 2nd | _Chamytinho_ |
| Initiative | 3rd | LasVegasChaos |
| Oath | 4th | Ecoscuro |
| Initiative | 5th | ecobaronen |
| Esper Lurrus | 6th | albertoSD |
| Initiative | 7th | The_Lion91 |
| Lurrus Breach | 8th | CLTLegacyLeague |
This is a fairly initiative-heavy Top 8, but the winner at the end was actually Esper Lurrus.
This is a bit fairer and stock based on what we've come to expect out of the Esper variants. I do really like Lavinia though at the moment. The card is quite powerful.
In Second Place, we had Sphere Shops.
This is also what we've come to expect out of the Shops decks at the moment. Patchwork Automaton is really the card putting in most of the work. The card gets really big really fast, and it's very difficult to deal with if you are stuck under Sphere of Resistance.
Vintage Challenge 32 12/13/2025
The third Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 51 players in it thanks to the MTGO Vintage Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Esper Lurrus was the most played deck here, and its win rate was actually pretty good. Doomsday also did very well, but with only two pilots. Lurrus Breach did not do well at all here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Raker Shops | 1st | HoldTheElle |
| Initiative | 2nd | LasVegasChaos |
| Doomsday | 3rd | Enrichetta |
| Oath | 4th | Ecoscuro |
| Oath | 5th | maouthunder |
| Raker Shops | 6th | Terminus0 |
| Esper Lurrus | 7th | cicciogire |
| Esper Lurrus | 8th | ziofrancone |
Only two Lurrus builds, and a spread of Oath, Doomsday and Raker. At the end of the event it was Raker Shops that won.
Tezzeret has really proven himself in this shell. The card does everything as a bit of a swiss army knife planeswalker for this deck. It untaps things, it tutors, and most of all it's so sticky and hard to actually get off the board so they can keep doing it.
In Second Place, we had Initiative.
This list has the opposite split of Swords to Plowshares than the other list that did well before it. (That one had one main, three side). The other super clever card here is Light of Day.
Vintage Challenge 32 12/14/2025
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 32 players in it thanks to the MTGO Vintage Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Initiative was the most played deck here, but its overall win rate was pretty bad at 40%. Dredge looked superb here on one pilot making it into Top 8.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Raker Shops | 1st | MultiformatSuperstar |
| Lurrus Breach | 2nd | desolutionist |
| Esper Lurrus | 3rd | Malowless |
| Sphere Shops | 4th | crK |
| Dredge | 5th | Munchlax446 |
| Sphere Shops | 6th | Scooby_Snacks |
| Esper Lurrus | 7th | MyPotatoes |
| Merfolk | 8th | SingPanMan |
This is a fair spread of decks here. At the end of the event it was Raker Shops that won.
Not much else is going on here in this deck that we haven't seen before. This is pretty stock. Love the MTGO username though.
In Second Place, we had Lurrrus Breach.
The Gifts/Drain build of this deck is honestly so sweet. I absolutely dig that this is a thing in 2025.
The Spice Corner
Scam featuring Molten Collapse!
Izzet Painter!
TIFA INFECT.
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!
