Arena Championship 1 Alchemy Decklists and Metagame
32 players will be competing for a $200,000 USD prize pool in MTG Arena's inaugural Arena Championship 1 tournament. Find out what the players brought to one of the highest stakes event in the new Premier Play season!
The first Arena Championship tournament will be held from September 24 to September 25, 2022! 32 players who qualified through MTG Arena’s Qualifier Weekends over the past four months will be competing for a total prize pool of $200,000 USD, as well as the winner taking a spot in the Magic World Championship taking place in 2023.
For this inaugural edition, the format is Alchemy. The format is virtually unexplored since rotation happened with Dominaria United, so the tournament will look to reward players for their deckbuilding and preparation. Having said that, on October 6, 2022 we can expect a further shakeup with the release of Alchemy Dominaria United (according to the upcoming event schedule) and potential card rebalances.
Bonus Qualifier Play-In Event
The tournament is also tied to a Bonus Qualifier Play-In event on the weekend of September 24, 2022, where players can take one of the ten selected decks from the tournaments and give it a spin in a Best of One queue for a final spot in the October 2022 Qualifier Weekend. More information, including our recommendations and review of the ten decks, can be found in a separate guide:
For a more detailed breakdown of the decks, check out Frank Karsten’s article in the source link provided above.
Despite a small sample size, and a good amount of different deck archetypes, the card to beat in this tournament is Diviner of Fates – with 12 out of 32 players (37.5% of the meta) playing a variation of Esper. Each unique build is quite diverse in itself as the players looked to tune their decks for the small tournament meta.
Other than that, it will be interesting to see whether this event can spark a bit more interest into format as some players may look to retreat from the current Standard environment until the next expansion, The Brothers’ War. With a bigger card pool that includes the bigger Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate set, it may make for a more interesting meta! It may also highlight some problem cards which Wizards of the Coast may look to fix in the next Alchemy update.
Decklists
All 32 Alchemy decklists are currently made public without Sideboards, which will be revealed when the tournament starts on September 24, 2022 at 9 AM PT.
