Creativity, mastery, and wonder don't just live in the cards of Sorcery: Contested Realm. They live in the stories we tell about them, and somewhere within these moments, The Ruby Core-ier found its place as Sorcery's premier (and only) fan-made print magazine.
An Old Signal, Picked Back Up
The idea didn't begin with a grand plan. It started, as many Sorcery stories do, with the community.
After a weekend at the Courtesan Cup in 2024, Jack/@ElektrickSorcerer came home energized. The event was the largest community gathering of its time, and something about it lit a fire in him. He wanted to contribute, to make something that celebrated the game and the people who played it. A blog felt too easy. A podcast was familiar territory, but not quite right. Whatever he built needed to feel old-school. It needed weight.
It had to be something in physical print.
What's in a Name
If the game was going to have a print fanzine, it deserved a name worth carrying. Jack wanted something with a newspaper quality to it, something that felt like it belonged on a masthead. He turned the options over in his head until one landed cleanly: the Core-ier, a pun built around the iconic Cores of Sorcery. "Courier... Core-ier... The Ruby Core-ier." It felt right immediately.
Jack brought in his friend SpinScott to help with writing, but the workload was still immense: writing, editing, layout, printing, shipping. He handled the layouts himself through issues zero to nineteen. Then, as he was preparing for issue twenty, a graphic designer found him at exactly the right moment. As a result of this fateful meeting, issue twenty is now the first professionally printed edition of The Ruby Core-ier, a milestone that has been years in the making.
Issue Zero
The Ruby Core-ier made its public debut at Gen Con 2024. Jack had quit his job three weeks earlier, and being there felt like part of the same decision, a bet on something he believed in.
He remembers the first person he saw actually reading it. A stranger, sitting with the magazine open. Jack didn't approach him. He just pulled out his Game Boy Camera and took a picture from afar.
That camera, incidentally, is still how he shoots much of the magazine's photography.
A New Chapter
With the transition to professional printing comes glossy pages, refined layouts, and artwork showcased in full color. Working directly with Sorcery artists, the magazine brings the game's art and history to the page, in a format you can hold.
For many players, it taps into something familiar. A lot of Sorcery's audience grew up on magazines like Duelist, and there's something about holding a card game magazine that speaks to them in a way a podcast or a YouTube channel simply doesn't. "It's not the pieces of paper stapled together like it used to be," Jack says. "It's the real deal now."
The digital version is available free at patreon.com/TheRubyCoreier, for anyone who wants to see what it's about before committing to print.
How an Issue Gets Crafted
The creation of each issue begins the same way: with a running document full of ideas. Match reports, card deep-dives, interviews, and observations from the table. From there, the issue takes shape through a mix of recurring and evolving features.
Some are evergreen. Realm and Reality, for instance, traces the real-world references woven into Sorcery's card names and lore. Others are more time-bound: tournament reports and deck breakdowns that double as snapshots of the game as it stands.
Jack is always looking for the next story and actively seeking contributors who want to share their passion for Sorcery and see their work in print. Anyone interested can reach him at therubycoreier@gmail.com.
The Realm in Your Hands
The Ruby Core-ier is, by every measure, a love letter. To the game, to the artists, to the conversations that keep happening long after the cards are put away. "I actually get a bit depressed when there are big events, and I'm not there," Jack says. "A lot of them really feel like my family."
Issue twenty marks a new chapter, but the spirit behind it hasn't changed since Jack first sat down to figure out what "old-school" actually meant to him.
Erik Olofsson, Creative Director and Founder of Sorcery: Contested Realm, put it simply: "The Core-ier captures the old-school spirit of creativity perfectly."
Some stories don't fit in a feed. Some of them belong on a page.
Find out more about The Ruby Core-ier, Sorcery's community magazine here.
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