In this issue I will report on the Origins '94 in San Jose. I was there from Friday through Sunday. Quite a few of our members were there either running games or just participating. Between Steve Verdoliva and myself we ran 6 games (renaissance galleys, SYW, and Franco Prussian). The facilities at the San Jose Convention Center were rather nice. The miniature gaming was in the same room as the board gaming but there was plenty of room for all. Friday Friday seemed the day for W.W.1 air games! Their were at least 5 that I can remember (Red Baron, Blue Max, Aerodrome, as well as home rules). Steve and I ran a game of SYW rules Friday afternoon. Later Allen Hughes ran Circus Maximus with a full racing slate (24 chariots!) That night I participated in a 1/72 scale Rod Baron in which the rules author also played. For those of you waiting for the expansion list for RB, he said it will be coming out as a board game that will have all the information needed to run a campaign and will be directly transferable to the miniature set of rules. Hill and his group was in attendance and ran a number of TACTIC events, with their siege game held on Friday. Saturday Saturday morning Steve and I ran Euro - Fury for most of the day. Again one of the rules authors for Fire & Fury stopped by and even played in the last half of the game! (See my article on the battle in this issue). Saturday also saw a bit more historical gaming than Friday. There was a great game on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor with a magnificent terrain board of the harbor! After the Euro-Fury game (and dinner) I wandered around looking at the goings on in the board game areas and at some of the other miniature events. I finally came upon a WW2 air game. This game uses 1/283 or 1/300 scale micro armor planes. The rules have just been released and are called SQUADRONS by John Stanoch and Beacon Publications. It is a great introductory game for those who have not played miniatures before. It very much like a boardgame in play but with the great visual effect that miniatures can bring to a game. It is fast playing, two games with 9 people each were played in about 5 hours. Each person controls from 3-9 aircraft at a time. The rules were explained in under 30 minutes! Sunday On Sunday Steve and I ran another SYW game in the morning toured the dealers area afterwards (disappointment for sure!) until it was time to catch my flight back (the con closed down by 5pm). The gaming was good but the structure of the convention was a disappointment i.e. having to pay for something every time you turned around! They even charged you to enter the painting contest! Another problem was that the events were scattered over the downtown San Jose area (it took place in three complexes, some of them blocks away. Dave Babb of Stone Mountain did us a letter of to thank for participating in Origins. Back to Table of Contents The Messenger August 1994 Back to The Messenger List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1994 by HMGS/PSW. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com