As this was my first Origins and first Europafest, I wasn't surprised when Rick drafted me to describe the festivities. I can't do much in the way of comparisons with previous years, but I for one had a great time. The fear of my friends in my local game club was that this year's Origins would be a card game convention, but that didn't really seem true to me. There was an enormous room devoted to the "Magic" phenomenon, but I thought the rest of the area was a nice blend of various types of gaming.

If you are at all interested in Europa, which you are, then attending Origins as a spin-off of Europafest is the best way to visit the convention. You immediately have a roomful of friends for meals, browsing the vendor halls, and other exploring, not to mention playing Europa. If I had just showed up by myself without the Europa gang, I'm sure I would not have enjoyed myself nearly as much as I did.

The Europafest Room

Although the rest of the convention was nice, the Europafest room was, of course, the center of activity for me. It was roomy and comfortable.

There were glimpses of what will someday be. Eric Pierce had his World War I system to show and play, with West Front, East Prussian, and Gallipoli scenarios. After speaking at length with Eric, I'm convinced it will be a winner. Eric will talk for hours on WW1 if he thinks anyone might be listening. If the game conveys only a small fraction of Eric's knowledge on the Great War, it will certainly be educational.

There was a Philippines `41 demo of the Glory system that included real (not TF) naval units splashing about. The sprawling island chain moved more than one attendee to question, "Are the Philippines really this big at Europa scale?"

Japanese and Chinese armies marched over Mark Royer's China maps from Manchuria to Indochina. The Chinese army makes the Italians look awesome. "An army of ants," was one remark. However, as the Chinese commander learned, quantity does count for something. Everybody I spoke to that played in the game gave positive reports.

Back in the world of Europa present, there were three games of FitE/SE in progress, including "Sudden Storm." Peering at the Soviet main line of defense on one of the fullfledged FitE game's maps, my wife commented, "Wow, I think I finally understand that stuff people write about noodles." All three games had their own personality, and the Sudden Stormers were puzzled to no end that one of the full games was keeping up with their "Sudden" pace in game turns.

There was a game of For Whom the Bell Tolls going badly for the Republicans, as attested by their commander's comment, "My Madrid garrison kept waiting for the relief force to show up, but what showed up was the Army of Africa." FWTBT designer John Gee consoled the Republicans, "Yes, but you had all the best songs and poems written about your side."

One group gallantly attempted the Second Front "Crusade in Europe" scenario. They only got started on Friday though, so with the convention closure approaching, the Allies had to boldly attempt a cross-channel `43 invasion, with sanguinary results.

My favorite eavesdropped line of the weekend came from Gary Stagliano, designer of A Winter War, while he played the Finns in his very own game (against Chris Hamilton's Soviets). Gary lamented, "I set up my ski battalion right at the border because it could try to retreat before combat. I forgot about overruns." So don't feel bad when you make a regrettable move.

In between turns and games there were plenty of conversations about that one rule change (or two or three) that would make Europa perfect, with most of these exchanges, I eventually noticed, carefully occurring just out of John Astell's hearing range.

Seminars

John Astell, Charles Sharp, Arthur Goodwin, Shelby Stanton, and Rick Gayler all gave interesting talks in their respective areas of expertise. Since most of them rashly promised to send in their main themes to us as magazine articles over the course of the next year, I won't try to repeat them in detail here.

John Astell did tell about plans for the upcoming War in the Desert, stating that there would be no naval system but that the supply arrangements would meld with the standard supply system, probably by using resource points to replace the old desert supply steps.

Arthur passed around new Russian and Malaya maps, and discussed wide-ranging geographic topics such as "rice-paddy intensive" hexes and weather areas where it is always mud. Always. He also briefly described a naval system including "halfgroup" sized air units.

Unless you have met Charles Sharp and Shelby Stanton, or listened to their Europafest seminars, you probably can't begin to imagine the care and feeding that Europa Orders of Battle receive.

Outside the regular Europa seminar schedule, there were also a number of historical seminars in the "War College" series that many found interesting.

The Party

After a long day at the convention, the action at the Europafest party (in the Presidential Suite, no less) was predictable, with Europafeasters overrunning the Beef Wellington at 12:1, then rolling quick `DE' on the rest of the food before relaxing with beverages. Everybody in my corner thought the green mushy stuff was really good, whatever it was.

Winston's monologue would have done both David Letterman and Vince Lombardi proud. He made introductions, including Heather Dunwoody, the paid GRD staff and possibly the one person who clearly makes money off of Europa, and Bob Johnson, owner of GRD's new counter/map supplier SVH, who may be the one other. A visitor without knowledge of the history of Europa components might have been puzzled at the earthshaking applause that greeted Bob.

The whole thing must have been a success; as we walked back from the party, my wife was scheming on how to get a baby-sitter next year, and I didn't even start the conversation. Winston says to plan for next year's Origins in Columbus, Ohio.