The Ohio Department of Transportation would really have to work hard to make more of a mess of the highway system in and around Columbus, the site of Origins 2000. Hardly any road, including at one point in time, High Street (the road outside the convention center) was not under construction, including I-70, I-270, I-71, and Hwy 315--the four major highways encircling and cutting through Columbus. Egads, one night it took us close to an hour and a half to travel between the Convention Center and our hotel at the intersection of I-270 and Hwy 23, normally a 20-minute ride. Next year, we'll have to make hotel reservations much earlier, or maybe just miss Origins entirely.
However, once ensconced inside the convention center, the world of military history is dwarfed by the realm of magic and science fiction. MagWeb.com was in the small section for Military History, which seems to shrink every year. Indeed, right next to us was a company selling some Kobold game about eating babies. I guess you have to be a kobold to appreciate it. Oddly enough, Paper Wars magazine was placed way at the end of the hall in the middle of wrestling card games and such. Go figure.
For history-minded folks, you can divide Origins into three sections: "The War College," a series of lectures by historians such as Col. David Glantz, Charles Sharp, and Col. Matt Caffrey and game designers such as Frank Chadwick, John Prados, and Joe Miranda; Hot 2K, the historical miniatures gaming area; and Boardgaming Central, where the historical boardgames are set up.
Sadly, I did not attend any of the War College sessions, which is a pity, for they included talks on Soviet Anti-tank capabilities in WWII, Air power in Korea, a history of wargaming, and a variety of Soviet WWII operations. However, I had attended lectures by Glantz, Sharp, and Caffrey at previous shows, and can recommend them.
I poked my head in the miniatures area from time to time, and saw some wonderful games going on. As usual, Major Pete Panzeri ran the Alamo, I saw some Napoleon's Battles games, a beautiful Omaha Beach (D-Day invasion), Charlie Company (Vietnam), Fire As She Bears (Napoleonic Naval), Close Action (Napoleonic naval), Vexillum (ancient Rome), 1942 WWII Romainians vs. Soviets, and others. Of note was another Duke Siefried extravaganza: Jolly Roger pirate game, where the 25mm "islands" are at table height, and the ships are mounted on three-foot tall pedastals. I don't know how it plays, but it's all quite visually exciting.
In the boardgame area, I saw a wide variety from The Gamers, GMT, Decision, and GRD. I really like the large scale GMT format, with counters about an inch and a half or two inches on a side, with correspondingly huge hexes. GRD was running its EuropaFest in a separate room off the boardgaming area--lots of different WWII and WWI games from the series were in use.
I picked up a couple of games, reviews to follow. Out of the Box released Shipwrecked, the latest in their series of fun games that can be learned in 5 minutes but need quite a bit more time to master. A demo game took about 15 minutes with three players, and it's a wild bid and outbid game for resources on a deserted island. Illustrations by one of my favorite cartoonists, John "Dork Tower" Kovalic.
Time's Up, from R&R Games, the makers of Overthrone, is another fast-paced family game with historical and current celebrities as the draw. Basically, you must get your team to name a celebrity on a card under an ever-restrictive variety of conditions.
I also picked up a beta copy of a time-travel card game called Chrononauts that looks pretty interesting as you try to change history in your favor. Events from 1865 to current day are depicted.
Walking the dealer area, Magic and other card games dominate. I wandered into the Avalon Hill booth. It was showing a remake of sci-fi game called Cosmic Encounters plus an American Civil War game called BattleCry with plastic figures on a hex map (terrain is card board cut-outs plopped on the board). The General, by the way, is dead, its one shot at being ressurrected falling by the wayside. AH is concentrating on their web site, which will have Java-based versions of Risk and other family games that you can (at this time) play for free. I dropped by the site, but there's nothing there other than some general notices.
For all you Scooby Doo fans, there's a new card game out to allow you to solve mysteries. I have no idea how it works, but they have the van (The Mystery Machine) parked in the booth, along with a life-size Scooby Doo and the "witch in the window" fortune teller machine.
The Ohio National Guard set up an artillery support (forward observer) vehicle, a howitzer, and other vehicles in the back of the show. I wonder what they thought of the sci-fi and fantasy side of the show...
And, for the first time, I actually saw a gal clad in a "chainmail bikini" who could really wear a chainmail bikini, thus finally putting to rest the joke of the chainmail bikini. In fact, she was like a Pied Piper, leading slack-jawed gamers around the convention floor and back to the chainmail booth.
All in all, while military history continues to get clobbered at Origins, there is some hope that it will limp along as an adjunct to all the sci-fi and fantasy stuff. Over the next few years, Wizards of the Coast, which owns Origins and GenCon, will make Origins earlier (moving to early July next year and June the year after that) while pushing GenCon back to late August when it moves from Milwaukee to Indianapolis. It seems such a transparent way to try to get people to attend both shows instead of picking one or the other. As far as I'm concerned, any weekend other than a holiday weekend (like the 4th of July as it was in past years) is a good weekend.
I've been hearing good things about the BPA convention in Maryland for historical boardgames--seems it shrugged off its Avalon Hill-only focus to include other companies. It makes sense. AH pulled support from it. Little Wars is a great historical miniatures show near Chicago in late April, with Historicon in July. MagWeb.com is giving GenCon a miss this year, although we placed an advert in the program guide. No doubt Wizards would not shed a tear if all the historical-minded folks disappeared. It's too bad the Celebrate History convention didn't work out--now that was a historical convention! Maybe if they moved it to the east coast.
Ah well, I did enjoy meeting the regular crowd of historical folks at Origins and poking around the historical section...and yes, even seeing what the sci-fi and fantasy card game crowd was up to on occasion. There were no big-name guests as in past years--just a minor character from the Babylon 5 show as far as I could tell.
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© Copyright 2001 Hal Thinglum
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