The Festival of Friendship debuted all the way back in 2019 as one of our first-ever Old School events. The Festival returned digitally two years later, and has been dormant since then. After the success of the Hurricane last year, we started talking to the Falling Stars about hosting another Old School/Vintage double header to kick off the 2024 season. And with that, the Festival of Friendship was back!

On Saturday we met at Tweedy’s for Old School. We decided to try the permissive Boreal ruleset, so players could run their full set of Recalls, Mazes of Ith, etc. All entry fees went to the Central Texas Food Bank, but players were swagged out with signed participation cards, Top 8 prizes, and custom Orc Army tokens and CoP Black coasters. On top of that, our friend from San Antonio Billy Palmer donated a set of graded Alpha and Beta cards, and local Ian Files donated a pile of FBB cards:

Rob Connolly generously gave up playing to live stream both days. All told, that was over thirteen hours in the booth!

We had 26 players for Old School, which was good for 5 rounds of Swiss. The man of misprints Simon Christie took it down in an undefeated run on Workshops! Check out the lists below:

1st: Simon Christie – Atog Shops

2nd: Brian Espinoza – Mono Black

3rd: Patrick Vincent – The Deck

4th: Justin Droba – White Weenie

5th: Robin Mannas – TetraSage

6th: Brian Tweedy – The Deck

7th: Joe Wozny – Deadguy Ale

8th: Tanner Hogan – Esper Flyers

9th: Nick Patniyot – Underworld Dreams

10th: Nicolas Allard – White Weenie

11th: Paul Garrett – UR Control

12th: Dan Ersch – Twiddle Vault

13th: Winston Wood – TaxEdge Aggro

14th: Eric Miller – Pink Weedy

15th: Ian Files – 4C Geddon

16th: Ruby Morales – ErnhamGeddon

17th: Stuart Ziarnik – Mono White Banding

18th: Liz Garcia – Pink Weenie

19th: Vince Ortega – CounterBurn

20th: Billy Palmer – Grixis Flyers

21st: Curt Christian – Timmy’s Spellbook

22nd: John Thomas – Merfolk

23rd: Theodore Allard – Stasis

24th: Kyle Larson – GW Aggro

25th: Ron Urkusky – Loaner Geddon

26th: Seth Nowlin – Patriot

On Sunday we returned to Tweedy’s for Vintage! Less charity, more cash, plus the winner was set to take home an incredible lo-fi Mox Emerald and a spot at the 2024 Invitational.

We had 19 players for Vintage, good for 5 rounds followed by a cut to Top 8. Rob was joined in the stream by Ruby. Paul Garrett put up a good fight with UB Lurrus, but new member of the scene Justin Bruce won it all with his awesome Tezzerator Jewel Shops list!

The whole weekend was a triumphant return for the Festival of Friendship name. Can’t wait to do it again in 2027!