It’s December, the days are getting shorter, the weather cooler, and Romancing the Stones’s fifth season has come to its close. Per tradition, we capped our year with the Invitational: part intense competitive event, part party, all a celebration of Magic as we like to experience it.

The Invitational is truly a community effort. RTS co-founder Brian Tweedy not only provided his venue and breakfast tacos for the players, he also hosted our stream all day! He was joined in the booth by Initiative-enthusiast Brian Espinoza, along with a rotating cast of friends supporting. Shoutout to both Brians for donating their time and energy to hosting – talking about Magic intelligently and engagingly for 8 hours is no small feat! And on the subject of the stream: Rob Connolly not only played in the Invitational, he also set up the hardware for the entire streaming process, tweaking stuff and working through IT issues until the very minute we kicked off. The videos should be up on our channel, so do yourself a favor and spend an afternoon watching the event. Twitch.tv/romancingthestones

One other man’s fingerprints were all over the Invitational. Bobby Scheidemann designs all our proxy trophy cards, including this year’s incredible baseball field Tolarian Academy, which ties together this season’s baseball trophies:

Not only that, but Bobby also spent all day hanging out and taking professional-grade photography of the event! So if you enjoy the visual component of this writeup and our whole scene, you have Bobby to thank.

On the competitive side of things, our 10 invitees this year were:

Bryan Hockey - Season 4 Champion + Winner of RTS28 - Vintage - MS

Andrew Webb: Season 3 Champion + Winner of the Dance Party League - Vintage - MS

Robin Mannas: Winner of RTS27 - Vintage - MS

Patrick Vincent: 2nd place at RTS28 Vintage - MS

Paul Garrett: Winner of RTS29 - Vintage - MS

Rob Connolly: Winner of School’s Out 2023 - Vintage - MS

Bo Zhang: Winner of Houston Hurricane - Vintage - MS

Mike O’Malley: Winner of RTS30 - Vintage - MS

Sean Soderman: Winner of RTS31 - Vintage - MS

Stuart Ziarnik: 2nd place at RTS31 - Vintage - MS

The tournament was 6 rounds of Swiss (3 Vintage, followed by 3 Middle School) followed by a cut to Top 4 (Vintage). Decklists can be seen by following the links next to each player’s name.

All the invitees played on some great games, but after the Swiss, we cut to a Top 4 of Paul (Beseech Combo), Bo (Atraxa Oath), Stu (5C Engineer), and Hockey (Esper Pile).

There was a lot on the line with this one. Bryan Hockey has won 3 of our 4 Invitationals, and if he took this down too, we’d have to seriously consider putting Romancing The Stones out of its misery and just starting a Hockey Patreon. When he defeated Paul in the semis, it was looking like that might be a reality. Stu took infinite turns effectively against Bo, and we had our finalists:

The games were something – please check out the videos for a good sense of what Engineer can do. Stu took it down in 2, saving the community from total humiliation and earning himself the title of 2023 Romancing The Stones Champion!

As always, the Invitational was a perfect end to a great season. Now we’re off to Pittsburgh to for North American Vintage Champs!