This year's Origins was held on the July 4th weekend in Columbus Ohio. The Columbus Convention Center and Hyatt Hotel were the hosts again. This arrangement will continue until at least 2002 it the world doesn't end before then.

Usually, I return home from Origins with glowing reports and eager anticipation to return next year. This year though I'm uncertain of my return in the future. Origins sucked big time as far as the wargame events this year. There are plenty of wargame tourneys scheduled but participation is really poor. I think a big reason for this was a big drop in attendance this year. Most people I talked to agreed that attendance was down across the board (wargames, magic, rpg, minis,etc.). It could be that a lot gamers had other plans this year for the fourth. One big news item is that Avalon Hill did not attend as a dealer this year. Their products were available from The Armory at this years con.

This year's auction was the sorriest I've ever seen in terms of both quality (very few rare games) and quantity (the auctioneers had plenty of time to goof off during the auction). I wonder if the ever expanding internet trade in used games is having an effect here or if this was just another indication of a reduced convention attendance.

Since most of my tournaments were cancelled either to Andons screwups or lack of players, I had plenty of time to participate in GMT's demo-playtest of the upcoming Army Group Center game. This 500 series game will link to Barbarossa and the future AGN. I did have a lot of fun doing the East Front at 5 miles per hex! The playtest was more enjoyable and satisfying because of having the designer ( Vance Von Borries ) there to get rules clarifications etc. Vance is really cool and has a neat sense of humor. Vance was also demonstrating GMC's new Sicily game. Actually the best time to be had by traditional hex gamers was in the GMT demo room as several companies ran demos of new games and future designs. There was a cool looking Austerlitz monster, a gigantic trireme game, and several other interesting looking designs about.

The railroad games continued to do well and so did Diplomacy, and the Europafest. I heard the Europafest drew 50 diehards. Probably the biggest multiplayer draw was Settlers of Catan.

Feedback from the dealers room was good. It seemed that the people who did show up brought plenty of money to spend this year. I didn't see anything worthy of my dollar though and for the first time ever I didn't spend a penny in the dealers room. It was good to see Crazy Egor back this year. Of the new games I'd have to say the most neat looking game was Avalanche Press' Great War at Sea II, but at 68 bucks the game is just too expensive for my tastes, (even though as a dealer I could buy my copy at wholesale). I'm not trying to stir up trouble here but the way the hobby has changed recently almost all game prices are skyrocketing. Clash of Arms Lutzen has not been released yet but it will carry a $70 price tag compared to Ligny's $48 and will only have about half the components. I don't want this to be misunderstood by Ed or Brian and Mike because I know they are doing what it takes to get the games out. The ongoing collapse of the distributors market and subsequent domination by a few distributors will not bode well for gamers. My suggestion is to let your local game store know what you want to see on their shelves and make it worth their time\space to stock wargames. If you don't have a local store then by all means buy through the mail. From me of course!