For years now, we’ve been making an annual pilgrimage to Houston. It started in 2019, when we ran RTS12 Vintage at PJ’s and the Austin guys rented a party house. The pandemic put travel on ice, but when things opened up again we teamed up with the Falling Stars and expanded our Houston ambitions to a weekend-long, multi-format extravaganza, and the Hurricane was born. The Hurricane’s return in 2023 cemented it as an institution for both RTS and the Falling Stars, and plans for the 2024 started almost as soon as last year’s ended.

Saturday: Old School

After a casual Friday hang, 45 players convened at Rudyard’s Pub for Old School. We played Boreal, one of the most permissive Old School rulesets, after it played well at the Festival of Friendship. We also allowed proxies so that players wouldn’t be forced to play Mono-Black.

Per tradition, the Hurricane is a charity event with all entry fees, raffle ticket proceeds, etc going to the Houston Food Bank. To show our appreciation for everyone generously contributing their cash, we lined up a great selection of prizes and giveaways. Bobby designed a killer Chaos Orb trophy for first place, while everyone got a Hurricane Timetwister and a Year-of-the-Dragon REB, plus signed playables! We also printed and sold playmats of the Hurricane poster.

We can’t stress enough the tireless effort the Houston guys put in – between coordinating venues, marketing, and running the actual event it’s really more their event than ours. Thank you Simon, Joe, and the Stars for all the work you do.

There are a million deck photos floating somewhere around the internet, but for the life of me I can’t find them – we collected them in Tolaria, and that app makes no sense to me. That said, Patrick Vincent brought honor to Austin by taking the whole thing down through an undefeated run on The Deck!

Sunday: Vintage

Sunday Vintage came on the heels of the recent big restrictions of Urza’s Saga and Vexing Bauble. We got 27 players willing to brave this new format. Vintage was also for charity, pushing us up into the several-thousand-dollar mark!

In what’s also turning into a tradition, I had to miss Sunday, so I didn’t get to be a hardass about decklists. As a result we’re missing over half the lists, so I won’t publish them all here. I got 7/8 of the Top 8, though, and encourage you to check them out on mtgtop8.com. There’s plenty of spice in this Saga-less world.

In addition to a beautiful Sol Ring trophy, Vintage awarded an Invitational spot to the winner. Our friend from San Antonio Dan Ersch won it all on Golos Shops. See you at the Invitational, Dan!

Four years into this Houston experiment, these events have become some of our favorites of the year. We’ll be back in 2025, with plans to make the Hurricane bigger and better than ever.