Reminiscences of a Grognard

I used to kid ol’ Rich that he reviewed games just by shaking the box. With his typical good humor he just laughed it off. What a swell guy! I wish I had a photo of Dunnigan’s contemptuous sneer when decades back I sat with him at SPI and was naive enough to ask if he played much (not at all).

--Name withheld

Short Origins Report

Since this was GAMA’s first shot at running Origins, I was curious to see how it would go. Upon getting my preregistration pack, I noticed the hand-written name at the top. Never a good sign, I said to myself. Sure enough, no event ribbons. But not to worry, a quick (and I mean nanoseconds) stop at customer service:

“Yes sir, can I help you sir? No event Ribbons? I can fix that sir, here you are sir, will there be anything else sir?” And all was well. Proving once again that having good customer service is an absolute must.

The War College was expanded this year and was well attended. As I tend to haunt the auction I did not have a chance to attend more than a few sessions, but they were very interesting.

The dealers’ room was very well laid out and well attended. Interestingly enough the map of the dealers room was expanded to two pages, and in addition to the booth number, the name of the company was printed on the map ... a real time saver that I hope is repeated at all subsequent cons.

Two sad omissions were GR/D (Over There) and L2 Design Group (who are releasing Streets of Stalingrad 3rd Edition any day now). I understand Over There is out; it was not, however, over there at Origins.

I have to take my hat off to a few vendors: GMT, Avalanche Press, Critical Hit and Eagle Games. These guys are reinvigorating the hobby! Interesting topics, quality goods and multiple releases! Way to go! Another company that is really making its mark is WizKids.

Yes I must confess, when the Marvel Hero Clix stuff came out I was hooked, and wait until you see the Mechwarrior figures ... very nice! But these systems will be incompatible with each other !

The auction was run, with impeccable care, by Ken Fonarow’s Weekend Warrior group of ne’er-do-wells that included Dan Barnett, Bill Wilkerson and Frank Mentzer. It is people like these that truly become the heart and soul of the auction. Yes, you can buy things from eBay, but you don’t learn anything (well maybe you learn about your transaction but that’s not what I’m getting at) about the history of games or the culture of gaming from buying over the Internet.

Dan, Bill, Frank and the cast of the auction really know there stuff! I always come away with new knowledge and a renewed sense of respect (and a little awe) for these guys. Auctions are a social event. Not a cotillion, but a social even just the same. Face to face contact with people who enjoy what you enjoy, that is why I go.

Lotwise they ran 3000 - 3200 lots.

As has been established, the various items are grouped into common themes and scheduled so the participants can select when they want to attend. This was the second down year in a row, if memory serves me. SPI (flats and boxes) were there but not as abundant as in previous years. There was only one Test Series game (Flying Fortress 1, not 2) .

A few years ago, the Collector’s section was moved from Saturday to Friday night. But Saturday, Collector Quality items still show up, requiring a second special session. It might be easier to move the Collectors section back to Saturday, guys.

The big item of the auction was a set of Polyhedral dice created from a piece of the Pamba-B meteor that landed in Chile. Went for $750.00 This set was crafted by Crystal Caste and was truly one-of-a-kind. No, I did not come home with them.

P.S. Knights of Camelot by TSR has two editions. They are differentiable by the fact that the second edition has a 34 page manual, the first has 36 pages. And I always thought the main face on French Foreign Legion was Terrance Hill from the Trinity films.

--Rick Wagoner

Long Origins Report

The Columbus Convention Center is a huge building completely devoted to the Origins Event. We only looked at the two large halls devoted to Historical Miniatures/Board Gaming and the Sales Booth Hall, along with a large room on the second floor being used by a local game club that is sponsoring many of the traditional board wargaming events.

There is another huge hall for collectible card games, and of course lots of space devoted to role playing games. These folks may as well be aliens from another planet as far as we’re concerned. The games played full size, with people actually moving themselves on a taped grid on the floor, often in costume and using props or large game pieces.

A quick aside on the board war games we saw being played at Origins. The aging of us gamers was recognized with several old titles having their maps blown up so one inch square counters could be used. When one plays a game such as SPI’s Leningrad with these counters, the need for special lighting to read combat factors is certainly moot.

We saw a number of monster games being played, including GDW’s Scorched Earth and SPI’s Wellington’s Victory. The miniature gaming area had Phil Vivierto’s Classical Hack scenario using a beautiful model of Ancient Tyre for Alexander the Great’s Siege … quite reminiscent of his Caesar in Alexandria game we saw at a prior Historicon, complete with the little boats loaded with troops, flitting about the water outside the city walls.

There was also an impressive set for a Roaring Twenties Gangster Game, block after block of miniature buildings and period cars. We did a double take walking by a table of 15mm American Civil War miniatures where a Confederate force was battling the Union, who were being aided by Wellsian Martian Tripods and other strange devices. We’ve seen those Leonardo DaVinci fantasy games at Historicon, and that theme has finally made it to the ACW, with weird airships and a Confederate steam land tank armed with huge double buzzsaws. The system is called Gaslight. Disconcerting.

I had only two items for the auction: a mint Age of Renaissance and a first edition Siege of Jerusalem, 70 A.D. game which I signed. We’ll learn after the Convention what these sold for. It looked to be a most impressive selection of gaming stuff. A lot of junk, as usual, with a few gems buried there.

We noticed other games being played: Paths of Glory, Squad Leader, Afrika Korps, Circus Maximus, and a prototype WWII block game. We also saw a blown up map with those one inch counters of GMT’s new Napoleonic Wars game, which I saw being playtested during the GMT East Convention. GMT was recruiting for an afternoon session of this intriguing looking, card-driven game with a point-to-point POG-like map of all Europe. Don Greenwood was developer. GMT’s crew quite literally assembled the 85 copies of this game they brought to Columbus the night before and I believe every one of them will be sold.

To give the Origins convention organizers credit, when eight gamers showed up for the History of the World event without a copy of the game among them, they provided two mint copies for our use. Classy. We divided into two games of four players each. I ended in the lead due to a 64 point Epoch VII score.

This gave me another of those little win the Epoch victory point tokens. I now had three of them, which were revealed to provide another 15 victory points and a substantial win. That ended our first Origins Convention Day.

Day Two started with the 10am event I was pre-registered for. My first event was SPI’s old, but venerable, Battle for Germany. There were four of us playing. I was the Soviets versus Joe Miranda as the East Germans. After a few moments of reminiscing over the Ancients games we had worked on (Joe didn’t like my use of generic units for the Romans in Siege of Jerusalem; he prefers using as historic as possible OOBs) we got into play.

Incidentally, another of the old gaming industry hands I ran into was Jack Rady, who hasn’t changed a whit from when we first met at Origins years ago when his exhibit booth with Korsun Pocket was next to Steve Weiss and my Siege of Jerusalem, 70 A.D. table. Jack’s as left wing as ever, which really frosted conservative Steve, and was wearing one of those T-34 shirts and that old blue workers cap with the little red star over its brim.

Anyway, Joe proved a skilled opponent with a tough defense. However after five turns the Germans collapsed in the north. The Western Allies never got across the Rhine and failed to break the Italian front. Post War Europe turned more Red than it did historically. Jack Rady would have been pleased.

A return to the CAB room found GMT explaining Napoleonic Wars to over 30 enthusiastic gamers about to give it a try. Word of mouth had apparently gone out about this new game. GMT seems to have a hit!

I then stopped by the Auction Room. Nothing exciting being offered within the upcoming lots, so it was off to the main Exhibit Hall. Being Origins, the bulk of the exhibits are from role playing and card-based games, although there is a respectable showing from the board game companies whose products we play.

I then returned to the main gaming hall for Age of Renaissance. This was a five-player game (no Hamburg). When we ended the game at 11pm, I had, to my surprise, won with a victory margin of over 500 points. So day 2 concluded.

On Day 3, my game took place as scheduled. This was a Tactica game system event, the same system as used for 2001 Historicon’s Siege of Bedford Castle. I was selected as best player.

Then I joined the second Origins re-fighting of Ewell’s Attack. The game’s result: a Confederate Tactical Victory and a Federal Strategic Victory. It was a well-designed and fun scenario. We look forward to Scott’s Historicon Johnny Reb III event.

No gaming for us on Day 4. The last day of a convention is always somewhat anti-climactic. We cruised the hall one last time to see what was being played. The stalwarts were still playing Europa in the West, and This Hallowed Ground was still underway. We also saw Streets of Stalingrad and GMT’s Army Group South being played.

We returned to the auction area. I did not sell the mint Age of Renaissance game (it seemed my starting price was too high for a game so recently out of print). But my autographed copy of a first edition Siege of Jerusalem, 70 A.D. did quite well, fetching $150. There was nothing else being offered at the auction which interested us. The Exhibit Hall was another matter. I purchased a third world company (out of North Carolina) Settlers of Canaan game. It’s under license from Klaus Tauber and, as the title implies, involves each of four players representing a tribe of Israel’s attempt to build up the Holy land.

A twist is whenever a seven is rolled, the robber (called plague here) is placed and a counter is placed towards the building of the first Temple, whose completion can end the game before a player accumulates the usual 12 victory points. There are some other interesting features which shall hopefully amuse us. I also stopped by the regular Settlers of Cataan booth and saw numerous scenario packages. One which impressed me was for Troy and China (printed back-to-back on a single mounted map).

On the way out, we saw a family leaving the convention: Dad was dressed as a Klingon, Mom as a Priestess, one son as a Klingon Junior, the other a Druid, and their dog with some type of appropriate decoration about its neck. We completely ignored that aspect of Origins, along with the card games and D&D. Just too weird.

--Fred Schachter