Retromancers

About a year ago, I was cleaning out my office when I came across a box of cards (well, several boxes) that I’d been hauling around since leaving my parents’ house for college.

It was my Magic: The Gathering collection.

The cards had seen occasional use over the years, but for the most part the only thing they’d been gathering over the last decade was dust. I figured it was finally time. I still played plenty of games, but I’d more or less moved on from Magic.

As I started digging through the boxes, I was immediately transported back to late nights theorycrafting with friends, traveling to tournaments, and all the memories tied to that era of my life.

My son had just turned three, and before I sold everything off I decided I wanted to build a few decks featuring my favorite cards. You know, something I could share with him someday if he ended up being interested.

I opened a note titled “Tony’s Magic Hall of Fame” and wrote:

• Onslaught-era GW Astral Slide
• Odyssey block Mono Black Control
• UG Madness
• Onslaught Goblins
• Mirrodin-era Affinity
• Darksteel-era Tooth and Nail

I started researching old decklists to see whether I had enough cards to cobble together something serviceable. My plan was to sleeve up a few nostalgic decks, consolidate the boxes, and sell whatever remained for some quick cash and much-needed closet space.

But while researching, I kept running into the term “Premodern.”

Eventually I stopped to figure out what it actually was. What I found was a fan-run format built around cards from Fourth Edition through Scourge. This card pool overlapped almost perfectly with the heyday of my own Magic experience. Even better, because it’s a closed format, I could completely ignore new releases, as I have no interest in the cash grab monstrosity it has become.

After building some decks and watching far too much YouTube content, I realized my plan needed revision.

I wasn’t going to sell my collection. Instead, I was going to sell everything after Scourge and use the money to complete my newfound Premodern collection.

Now all I needed was someone to play with. I turned to Reddit and Facebook to see whether there was any kind of local scene. To my surprise, I got a few responses. After some back and forth, we landed on a casual Premodern meetup at Forge Tavern.

So there I was, meeting up with a handful of random people from the internet to play twenty-year-old cards.

To hedge, I invited a few ringers I’d played with over the years. By the time word spread around, I think we ended up with eight people total. Having spent the last decade playing niche independent card games, I figured we’d be lucky to get four.

Everyone clicked immediately. It was obvious before the night was over that we’d be doing it again. The good vibes were contagious, all it needed was as a spark.

The next meetup had twelve people. Then eighteen.

A few months later there was enough demand to support both a monthly Tuesday Swiss event and a monthly Sunday meetup.

The fledgling Discord server became an actual community. A logo was commissioned. Club shirts and patches were made. Altered cards started showing up everywhere.

The group’s identity evolved into this incredible mashup of seasoned PTQ grinders and indie old-school players from the venerable Columbus Kobolds club.

Before long, these weren’t just random people from the internet anymore. They were real friends… and they kept bringing their friends.

Eventually I couldn’t even attend every event myself. At one point there were four different Premodern events each month, all pulling together different groups of players under the Retromancers banner.

Then we connected with organizers in other parts of Ohio. We found diplomats in Dayton, Akron, Cleveland, Cincinnati, amongst others. After some meetups under our belt, we decided it was time to bring everyone together for something bigger.

The Buckeye Brawl was born.

It would be a 64-player tournament to crown the best Premodern player in the state. We’d charge enough per ticket to build a meaningful prize pool and donate the proceeds to the Mid-Ohio Food Collective.

As we started promoting the event, we discovered similar scenes were popping up all over the Midwest: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky. We reached out to those groups and even connected with Premodern YouTube creators to help spread the word.

When tickets went live, the event sold out in under five hours. We thought we could get 64, but honestly expected a bit more of a grind. Then the waitlist hit thirty people.

Seeing the response, we scrambled to expand capacity and increase the prize pool. By the time everything was finalized, the event had grown from 64 players to 96.

What followed was something genuinely special.

The event raised over $3,000 for the food bank, the prize pool was insane, and but more importantly, we created a space full of analog joy. Nearly 100 people laughing, reconnecting, competing, creating, and sharing something tangible together.

The tournament itself was fantastic, but the atmosphere around it was what really made it memorable. There was a bake sale, a raffle, pre-event hangouts, and perhaps most unexpectedly successful of all, an art table where players could use a custom Buckeye Brawl stamp to alter their cards.

A surprising number of Top 16 prize cards ended up getting stamped. I lost count of how many people thanked us afterward and immediately asked when the next one would be.

Today, the monthly events continue to grow, regularly surpassing previous attendance records. The Retromancers name has become recognizable well beyond Columbus, and members of the group are now traveling to regional and national events. The Discord is approaching 200 members, and we’ve built friendships with communities all over the world.

It’s been a completely organic success story; the kind of thing you can’t really force into existence. I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve built.

The Brawl will return.