The Wargamer

Good News

First, the good news.  Origins 2009 felt bigger.  It might not have been bigger, but it felt like a bigger gig than last year.  My wargaming buddy Peter said he thought most of the name badges he saw had hometowns within easy drive of Columbus.  While that may be, there was an energy, an excitement, a buzz this year that you didn’t have the last few years.  And that excitement was noticed and felt by most people I talked to.  The dealers I spoke with were all having a great show and noted that their sales were up over the last year or two.  The GMs I spoke with had more players in their events.  The War Room and Board Room increased their registrants.  Overall, I couldn’t find people who weren’t having a good time.

Wednesday might have been the most exciting day of the entire weekend, too.  The US Men’s National Soccer Team knocked off World #1 Spain in the semi-finals of the Confederations Cup, guaranteeing the US their best finish ever in a FIFA international tournament.  What?  Gaming?  Oh yeah, Origins got kicked off on Wednesday, too.  The War College had a full slate of lectures starting that afternoon, and the RPG events lasted well into the night.  Origins has been creeping further and further into Wednesday over the past few years.  This year, everything but the dealer hall was ramped up and rolling early.  It won’t be long before the show kicks off another day early, at the rate things are going.

My own experience with Origins this year took me well out of the dealer hall (not an exhibitor this year) and solidly into the slinging-dice-and-taking-initials category (I didn’t have time to take names).  I was on the hook for about 20 hours of working at the War College, as well as several games I’d lined up ahead of time with some wargaming buddies.  In between, I crammed in some visits with old friends, a few trips around the dealer hall, and some mandatory ogling at costumes.

The Columbus Area Boardgaming Society runs both the War Room and the Board Room every year, and this year, the action started Wednesday and continued through the end of the show.  CABS brings over their game lockers (somewhere around 1000 titles or so) for War Room and Board Room participants to check out at the show.  They also give out a metric gazongaload of games over the course of the weekend.  You get a random game just for buying a ribbon.  You get handed raffle tickets once every hour as the CABS staff walks around while you’re playing (for the nightly drawing).  They occasionally hand out games just ‘cuz.  Oh, and if you’re a grognard, you can leave a monster game set up for the weekend and be confident that you won’t come back one morning to find the whole thing piled in a corner when some Formula 1 racing game decided to take over the table at 3am.  And trust me, if you’re playing a division-level game of Panzer Leader, on a map that’s 5 boards wide by 3 boards deep and has a counter density of about 500/side, you really don’t want to set that up more than once.

The War Room remains one of the best bargains at Origins for a wargamer who’s there to push counters and play games and learn some new tricks.

Clearly We're Not Shooting Enough

Dr James Sterrett’s Training with Games seminars are always illuminating for those who have never planned and executed a military operation.  The Wargamer paid them a visit last year, and this year’s sessions were in even higher demand than last year.  I spent several hours helping Dr Sterrett and his crew get these ‘games’ up and running, while trying to fit in all my other commitments to the show around them.  One of the great verbal exchanges from this year’s Origins was overheard in a Sterrett Session, to  “Looks like we’ve still got plenty of artillery ammo.”  “Yeah?  Clearly we’re not shooting enough!”

It didn’t take a very long walk through the convention to notice one of the real showpieces of this year’s event.  Catalyst Game Labs  brought their BattleTech rig with them.  Not a table full of minis, mind you.  They brought along a 16-player, full-immersion-cockpit-simulator, head-to-head, real-time gladiatorial arena.  Yes, you read that right, sixteen player, head-to-head, BattleTech.  The big monitors outside the pods allowed you to watch the battle progress from a company-sized free-for-all into two stragglers chasing each other around for the last 30 seconds, trying desperately to reload before the other guy.  If there were any ‘slow’ times at the BattleTech sim-net, I never saw them.  A steady stream of people were dropping $6 per player per game to pilot a ‘Mech around the battlefield and torch their buddies.

My first trip through the dealer hall was an abbreviated one, as I had 6-year-old Bayonet Jr in tow with me, and we were looking for some cool things he could play with, too.  First though, we found Ferkin Doyle, who has split with Columbia Games, and founded Ferkin Games.  He still sells plenty of Columbia merchandise, and retains the retail rights to Columbia Games on the East Coast convention circuit, but he’s also developing several new titles of his own, as well as importing and translating a few European wargames as well.  He had Texas Glory, a game of the war between the Texans and Mexico in the 1820s, on the table.  Building on the tried-and-true system from Hammer of the Scots this game will be instantly accessible to anyone who has played Crusader Rex, or Athens and Sparta as well.

That's it for Part One.  Tune in tomorrow for Part Two, where I take a look at some of the cool stuff I found in the dealer hall!

Recommended Gaming

Recommended Reading