From a Ragtag Group…

One of the most important things in any story is the origin. How the world got put together, the strings that become woven to create the threads of history. The is one of the biggest accomplishments in the Final Fantasy series. You get to see the story unfold, and understand the motivations of the characters you love, and those origins wrap you up and keep there. Now, there’s always many more involved than just your starting party, but I want to take a minute to walk everyone through the creation of the RVA Returners, and thank all those who helped us become who we are.

I started playing FFTCG about a month or so after Opus 1 came out. I remember seeing something online about it and talking to Adam D and Andrew about trying to get into it. Andrew was immediately in, we couldn't contain our FF love, Adam on the other hand was nonchalant. We happened to be extremely lucky that a local shop (which would become 1 of the 3 main stores in VA for the game) was going to carry the product. Now this was back in the dark days when you couldn't find product, when boxes were $150 an up. We ended up putting the money down on three boxes, and buying some of the starter decks at the time.

We jammed game after game after game. We thought freezing an opponent dulled and froze them; we didn’t know how to make rulings. We waited for the boxes to come, we jammed more games. Finally, the boxes arrived and Adam and Andrew cracked into there's. They pull a FOIL CLOUD! My heart raced, the card was like $80 bucks and just destroyed everything in the game at the point. I remember telling Adam that they got the lucky box and mine was going to be garbage (we had no clue as to how card rarities were distributed throughout).

I then opened by box, it had 14 L’s in it and I could only smile… I was hooked. I traveled back to my house after that weekend with a hunger unlike any other. I had to find a place that carried the game in Richmond to keep playing. It didn’t exist at the time. I bugged the guys over at Battlegrounds non-stop for what felt like months and finally they gave word they were going to be carrying it, probably because they wanted to shut me up.

This was the dark ages of FFTCG with all the problems of a single distributor, so the fact that a second store in Virginia was going to carry it blew my mind. I would bounce back and forth between Richmond and Newport News to play just about every weekend. I lost so many games to Zidane 1-071. I bought like 15 packs a week because I had a pack lust problem. We tried to figure out how to draft the set. It was like Christmas every day. We just couldn’t get enough of the game. Little did I know, another thread of this story was being spun right under my nose.

Adam L spent many a day crushing punks in fighting games. Funny side story, he once told me he hustled one guy in Street Fighter for a double double or nothing. Yea he beat the guy, doubled it, beat him again, and doubled it again. Lane is just a monster. Anyway, in the time that I was bouncing between the two stores Adam Lane was gaining interest. He and Matt Jordan were in the process of buying boxes themselves, and waiting forever for them to come in. Sadly, Matt’s never arrived. Luckily for us, Adam’s did.

I remember meeting Adam at Battlegrounds right after Opus II released. He was quiet, reserved, and far too calculated for the group of folks we had been playing with at the time. We were used to having four-man tournaments, with the fourth man usually being Will Buckley or another one of the guys who worked at the shop. We would just sling cards around, still not playing by all the right rules. Having to beat Golbez 1-135 in the Opus 1 meta without tech cards was the wild west.

Here comes Adam; confident and cool, too cool. He also had an Eagles hat on, so I immediately thought I don’t like this guy. Little did I know what would soon be happening. Adam started showing up quite a bit and winning some of the local events, with almost no effort. His mind was just Vanilla Sky-ing these weeklies and people were starting to take notice. Sadly, the second wave of no product came through and it forced Adam out. Adam and I didn’t do a ton a mingling then, because we were kind of on opposite sides of the events, as most of my time was spent down in Newport News and the Sundays I did get to get out there we had only a few show up. Right around Opus III, the only community at the time that was actually “flourishing” (I mean maybe 8 players) that I knew of was Poket, down in the Poquoson area. Being that Adam Lane had taken a break at this point, the only person I had keeping me going was Adam D. We jammed as often as we could, or as often as I could make the 90 minute drive down to see him to play. This kept going until the beginning of Opus IV when we got our first prerelease.   

At this point, the game was starting to catch on fairly well out on the West Coast and you began seeing some content creators start popping up. The Break Zone was commentating on events, and Meta Potion was beginning to be the big dog in Cali, yet Adam D and I noticed there wasn’t any content coming from the East Coast. We wanted to start putting something out there, be it deck techs or just silly articles, and we thought why not start a website dedicated to our love of the game. As if by fate, this is when Chris Adams steps in and those threads we had been weaving finally begin to take form. He had been playing MtG for a while and had known Adam L from their fighting game days. Adam L had heard about the Opus 4 prerelease and had mentioned it to Chris, and lucky or all of us Chris had enjoyed FFVI enough to give the game a shot. The rest, they say, is history from there.

Chris instantly dived into the game since he could play his beloved Cyan and Sabin; at the same time he and Adam L began growing the RVA scene. I was elated to have the hometown scene growing and now was when we could start bouncing ideas and players between areas. Adam L and Chris had been tossing around the idea of doing a podcast on the game and had mentioned this to Adam D and I, right when we were talking about doing the website. It seemed like such and easy thing to link the two communities and grow the game we loved. We started right away with ideas we wanted to do, coming up with a name for the group, figuring out what our goal was. It just so happened that FFVI was a common thread between all of us (except me, don’t worry I’ll finish it soon) so what better name for a rag tag group of guys from all different walks and experiences than the Returners. This is how the RVA Returners were born. Side note, that initial distaste of the eagles loving Adam L soon evaporated as we became super close over the podcast and growing the Returners family!

I’ll admit, I left out a lot of the struggle, the community building process, the long hours everyone put in playing events with low turnouts. But the struggle was and always will be, worth it. The group that we have and the community we have been able to build, along with all the friends and partners we have made throughout the process, make everything worth it. This is a game we love, not just because of the cardboard, but because of the memories it evokes. The nostalgia it instills in our minds take us back to a simpler time, and we just want to share that with everyone. Every podcast, every stream, every event or card spoiler, article or deck tech, is for you, the community. Sure we could play this game just the four of us and have a great time, but without being able to share those ranches we give and get with the world, it would all be for naught. So here is to the community that supports us, that lets us do what we love and talk about the game we play. Thanks to all of you, and here’s to all that is yet to come!