Welcome to our 6th annual year-end Invitational!

We approached this year’s Invitational a little differently and more indulgently than in previous years. As some of our core players have moved away from Austin and we’ve built a wider community through our webcam leagues, we wanted to make the Invitational an all-weekend event worth traveling for. To make that happen, we rented a large Airbnb to party and sleep at. That was a great double-sided sword: Friday night was an awesome hang, but about a third of our field was hungover for the event itself! Oh well – we’re all consenting adults here.

On that note, this was our most travel-heavy Invitational yet. Ty Thomason and Galen Lemei flew in, while Chase Hoppe, Ben Kendrick, Rob Wilson, and Dan Ersch all drove from greater Texas. Likewise, longtime players Bryan Hockey and Mike O’Malley flew out just to hang! We can’t express our gratitude enough for you guys making the trip.

As always, the Invitational was a group effort. Brian Tweedy hosted us at his namesake bar, while Rob Connolly gave hours of time to set up our world-class stream. Kai Schafroth donated a print to the prize pool (“Vintage events are supposed to have art”), and many players came by to hang out, hop in the booth, and help clean up. All of this put together made it a really special event.

Roster

Stu Ziarnik - Season 5 / 2023 Champion - Vintage - MS

Liz Garcia - Top4 at Festival of Friendship Vintage - Vintage - MS

Galen Lamei - 2nd place in the Dance Party 2024 - Vintage - MS

Ben Kendrick - 1st place at RTS32 - Vintage - MS

Paul Garrett - 1st place at RTS33 - Vintage - MS

Brian Tweedy - 1st place in the School’s Out 2024 - Vintage - MS

Dan Ersch - 1st place at Hurricane Vintage - Vintage - MS

Chase Hoppe - 1st place at RTS34 - Vintage - MS

Rob Wilson - 1st place at RTS35 - Vintage - MS

Ian Files - 2nd place at RTS35 - Vintage - MS

Ty Thomason - 1st place in the Fall Semester 2024 - Vintage - MS

Rob Connolly - Lottery jackpot - Vintage - MS

Per previous years, the tournament was open-decklist: players submitted lists the Wednesday beforehand, and then had 48 hours to study their competition. We played 3 rounds of Vintage, followed by 3 rounds of Middle School, with a cut to Top 4 Vintage. This made for a long, dramatic, and challenging day for our 12 Invitees.

As noted above, the entire event was streamed on Twitch! This is a good time to reiterate our gratitude to Rob Connolly: Rob puts a huge amount of work into our stream, and in addition to making our scene accessible to people outside Austin, this also serves as perfect documentation for our tournaments. So if text ain’t doing it for you, go check out the replay of the stream and see some great games.

When the swiss ended, we cut to our Top 4: Galen, Ty, Rob Wilson, and Chase. On one side of the bracket, Ty’s Atraxas quickly dispatched Rob’s Bowmasters. On the other side, the Doomsday vs Combo Dredge match was bombastic, and ultimately Chase dredged his way to the finals.

This year’s finals was as dramatic as we could hope for. Ty is a veteran ringer of both the pro scene and Old School communities, while this year Chase has notched up 2nd place finishes at The Land Run and Vintage Champs! Normally Oath tends to run Dredge over, but Chase’s combo build lets him ignore Atraxa and win the game via Thassa’s Oracle. We got an incredible, tense 3 games, culminating in Dredge mulling to 2 . . . and winning! Great games, guys, and congrats to our 2024 Season Champion: Chase Hoppe!

This event comes pretty damn close to hitting on the perfect formula for the Invitational, and is likely going to serve as the template for next year’s. It was a great capstone to an awesome season, and we’re excited to see y’all back in 2025.