After a frigid Festival of Friendship, we were excited to host Romancing The Stones 36 on Kinda Tropical’s sunny patio! In the week leading up to RTS36 Austin was cold and wet, though, so we had a last-minute panic and switched venues to Austin Beerworks. Fortunately, we love ABW and it worked out great: we had plenty of space for our players, with lots of good beer options for everyone.

We had a stellar 32-player turnout! After years of hovering at 16-24 players, it really feels like we’re picking up momentum in 2025. Thanks to everyone both for evangelizing our events, and for coming out to play.

Speaking of evangelizing, for the RTS36 trophy we had a beautiful playset of Evangelion-themed Doomsdays! Bobby has really been crushing the trophies this season, with a diversity of really creative ideas.

Aetherdrift saw a handful of really impactful printings slide into Vintage. Stock Up looks like a strong new blue card advantage and selection tool a la Dig Through Time, while Momentum Breaker is really strong in PO shells. We saw both these cards in several of our Top 8 lists, as well as new Shops tools like Glaring Fleshraker and Scrawling Crawler.

Our Top 8 was nicely diverse, with nary a Lurrus Control, Dredge, or Oath list in site. Paul Garrett took it down with his trusty Underworld Breach, now fully Stocked Up. Enjoy the Doomsdays, Paul, and welcome to the 2025 Invitational!

  1. Paul Garrett – 4C Breach
  2. Keith Sweeney – Raker Shops
  3. Kai Schafroth – Lurrus PO
  4. Jeff DeMario – Doomday
  5. Caleb Ray – HollowVine
  6. Satish Subramanian – Mycospawn Raker
  7. Nick Patniyot – Dimir Monte
  8. Stuart Ziarnik – Oswald PO

The Dance Party League is well underway and will be keeping us entertained for a few more weeks. After that we’ll take a short break for spring break and SXSW, and should be back with more Vintage in late March or early April.