LOBSTERCON 2024: Organizer’s Report

LOBSTERCON 2024, a community-driven Old School and Premodern Magic: The Gathering event in Greater Boston, was held on September 20-21, 2024. Now in its seventh year, LOBSTERCON has grown into a full-on multi-day festival for 1990s-era Magic enthusiasts, with four different “official” tournaments and countless other organized activities including cube drafts, ante rodeos, a Sorcery: Contested Realm event, and a whole raft of off-site meet-ups. More than 350 players traveled from all over the United States and Canada, plus Austria, Chile, Finland, Germany, Guatemala, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom in order to participate.

The main tournaments for Old School and Premodern were both the largest in-person Gatherings held to date by their respective communities: 243 players for the LOBSTERCON Old School classic, and 238 players for the North American Premodern Championship. And, crucially, a new high watermark total of 250 lobster rolls were purchased and consumed across two days, and 115 large pizzas were served at the Friday night free-for-all:

These numbers are exciting, but perhaps the sweetest number of all was our grand total of $25,116 raised for Room to Grow, LOBSTERCON’s charity partner in Boston since 2018. This incredible figure included $9,329 worth of goods donated in-kind through our annual baby/toddler supply drive: LOBSTERCON participants provided 47 toys, 105 Spanish-language books, 76 clothing items, and 23 pieces of expensive equipment (car seats, strollers, high chairs) directly to families participating in Room to Grow’s Boston program. Old School Magic artists Susan Van Camp and Anson Maddocks also came up big for the charity by raffling off an original painting and custom alters during the event itself.

PHOTO REPORT

Click through for a crowdsourced album of 300+ photos from the event on Google Photos:

REFLECTIONS and GRATITUDE

LOBSTERCON is the product of countless hours and passion invested by so many members of the Old School and Premodern communities: NEOS’ veteran tournament organizer Jared Doucette; our dedicated “staff” and volunteers Brooks Firth Bard, Meredith, and Ryan Lauria; Judges Josh, Deen, and Sean; side event TOs Tim Atwood, Lucas Glavin, Tim Moran, Nick Mayo, Billy Mills-Curran and the Duress Crew; venue set-up all-stars Pez, Lorenzo, Will Parshall, Mibe, Ross Olson, and Jason Schwartz; Mike Belfanti, James Lebak, Rich Bourque, Echo Gregg, Eric Cripps, and everyone else, far too numerous to keep track of, who spontaneously dove in to pick up the slack on some task or another throughout the weekend. Our deep gratitude goes out to Jay and Amanda Palmer, Matt Mucci, Dan Yarrington, Chris Mason, Greg Titcomb, Carson Morell, Bryan Lonergan, Chris Mason, Peter Smits, everyone who bought baby and toddler supplies, and all of our raffle and auction prize donors: Susan Van Camp, Anson Maddocks, Ken Meyer Jr, Bryon Wackwitz, Akos Czibere, Dan Yarrington, Mitch (MG Alters), Michael Maier, Jonathan Geras, Darin Wiesner, Ian Roncoroni, Kyle Sunter, Alex Cavaliere, Brandon Econ, Isaac Rosenthal, Lorenzo Novaro, Michael Arnold, Rebel Rugz, Duress Crew, Shawn Sullivan, TOAMagic, Hans Feng, Redline Treefolk, Mari Steinhage, Geoff Walker, David Montag, Slanfan, and anyone else I might have accidentally omitted here — you made this event a success by giving so freely of your time, energy, money, sweat, and everything else. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.