Japan Championship 2022: Top 16 Standard Decklists and Metagame Breakdown

Tabletop Magic: The Gathering is on its way to returning to full capacity with the new Premier Play structure starting this new competitive season. Soon, tournament organizers will be holding events for real life play, and what better way to kick it all off with the annual Japan Championship?

Will their innovation of spicy brews take down the tournament without the confinement of the digital client, or the usual Esper Midrange, Runes, or Mono White Aggro that we’ve grown accustomed to over the past few months? In this article, we are reporting the metagame breakdown, as well as the top 16 decklists. You can find the complete coverage on the MTG Japan website.

Metagame Breakdown

The tournament had 237 qualified players from all over Japan, with 7 Swiss rounds on Day 1, with the top 64 players advancing to Day 2. A further 6 rounds are played before a single elimination top 8 bracket.

Deck Name	# of Players	% of Field
Esper Midrange	66	27.9%
Grixis Vampires	26	11.0%
Jund Midrange	23	9.7%
Temur Control	22	9.3%
Naya Runes	12	5.1%
Jeskai Hinata	11	4.6%
Jeskai Storm	8	3.4%
Izzet Dragons	7	3.0%
Mono-White Aggro	6	2.5%
Naya Midrange	6	2.5%
Mono-Green Aggro	5	2.1%
Boros Aggro	5	2.1%
Orzhov Midrange	4	1.7%
Others	36	15.2%

Fireshoes provided a helpful breakdown on the day 2 metagame breakdown with conversion rates:

conversion rates if I didn't screw up anything 😸 pic.twitter.com/GUJCFKGQMS

— Robert Taylor (@fireshoes) May 29, 2022

Top 16 Decklists

The tournament was won by Sho Kamezaki, with Orzhov Midrange featuring Silverquill Silencer and Elspeth Resplendent!

Decklists in this Article