The Super Long Origins Recap Post

Vacation is over. And unlike most people, I would take a chilly buzzing convention hall over a warm sandy beach any day of the week. Origins 2011, the much-anticipated gaming festival down in Columbus, OH, was held this past week and I have a full recap of exciting things we saw--which sadly does not include the Secret Service scanning and probing LARPers when Joe Biden was attending a political dinner at the convention center. Here are some of the things I actually did get to see and do, in a random and sort of manic picture-ific recap:

Jameson, Shawn, and Dave in the Board Room

We arrived on Tuesday afternoon, well before the con began, mainly because we just really needed the vacation. One easy night of A Game of Thrones card game and some Max & Erma's burgers, and we were ready for some real gaming starting Wednesday.  The Board Room--the giant-ass room where you can check out games from the con's extensive library--opened up on Wednesday and we started things off with a game of Wok Star. Snaps to GAMA for instituting new orange traffic cones to help signal when a game needs more players. We had our orange cone out for Wok Star, and ended up snagging the next two guys to walk by, roping them into the game. Turns out, these two guys--Shawn Storie and Jameson Orndorff--ended up being some of the greatest gaming buddies in the world.

Quintessential: The Fifth Element

Once we lost badly...really, really badly at Wok Star, we moved on to a game that Shawn had actually designed himself called Quintessential--an alchemy game that involves placing and bidding with dice to make new formulas. It actually ended up being my favorite new game of the whole trip. 

So naturally I had to snag Shawn's last prototype copy for myself.  Ohhh Yeaaahh. Expect to hear more about this game down the road. 

Over in the Mayfair Games room, TGHITW and I got to play some GIANT Toledo (pictured above), GIANT Atlantis, and GIANT Alchemy. Each of the games was decent, but I think Atlantis definitely had the most promise...especially when it isn't on a giant board that requires me to pace. Shout out to Jen for a spectacular win at Atlantis.

The peeps in the Mayfair room were helpful as always (okay, except for the annoying new use of wristbands for snacks in the evening). My apologies go out to Vex (pictured above, left) for making her lose her voice while teaching us Alchemy. Poor woman was hoarse for the rest of the con, and blamed us the whole time. Whoops.

And just for anyone who's never seen giant Settlers of Catan, here are some pics of GIANTER Settlers of Catan--an upgrade from last year's boring somewhat over-sized version.

This was a clever crossover, using the Shear Panic sheep figures for the sheep tiles in Catan.

Over at the dealer hall, there were tons of products to check out, including this. If you really, really squint you can see that I'm holding some wooden train meeples for Ticket to Ride. Mayday Games makes these wooden sets of train engines, cars, cabooses, etc. to replace the cheap plastic pieces in TTR. The whole set was only $40. Already on my wishlist.

Speaking of Mayday Games, here is a game called Woodman that they were demoing in the dealer hall. The plastic tree above has bark that might fall off when you tap the tree with the plastic ax, but don't knock off the core of a trunk, or you lose points. This was a lot of tense fun that could work for kids or adults.

Back in the Board Room, I came across a few guys playing Dominion with a killer storage filing box for their cards. Take a look below.

In this box is each one of the Dominion cards from every expansion, sleeved, and filed. It may not be a deluxe wooden case, but this system was incredibly impressive and gives me some ideas.

In the Board Room we also got to demo a new game from designer CW Karstens called Dragon Valley.

The dragons, and some other nasties, are invading from a valley and you have to defend your turf and then go after your opponents with some stronghold building. This prototype copy was getting a lot of buzz around the con.

Here is one of my big purchases at the con: The big bullet edition of Bang!, a spaghetti western-themed card game in which you have a shoot-out with all of your opponents and try to be the last woman standing.

Needless to say, I got shot a lot.

Another great purchase was this lotus dice bag. It looks like a drawstring pouch, but opens into a cloth dice box. More pics and info to come on this one, as I think the designer of these handmade bags is going to be getting a lot more buzz. Brilliant.

Did I mention our little gaming group were raffle GODS? Yes, oh yes, we were. MwahahahaHA! Dave won two games in different raffles: Star Trek: Expeditions and Galactic Empire (promotional copy). Other gamers in our group, Stu and Daveo won big, too. Stu snagged Trollhalla in a raffle, and Daveo won...I dunno...another game (I missed the drawing, so you're guess is as good as mine), and Jameson won a Resident Evil CCG with mat. Even Shawn had his name pulled for some kind of free game, but since he was on his way home driving to Texas...blah, blah, excuses, blah, blah...he missed the raffle. Oh, the raffle power!

And here we are on the final night of gaming, at about 12:30 in the morning. A little Arkham Horror going on, alongside some Street Illegal. 

I want to send a special shout-out to Kearn, whom I finally got to meet...very briefly...in person. We bumped into each other once, but didn't get to game or grab a pic since there was so much gaming going on all over the place. I hope everyone had a fantastic Origins this year.

Dave (TGHITW), Katie, Shawn, and Jameson

Total Number of New Games Played: 19

• Wok Star
• Quintessential
• Dragon Valley
• Mimic
• Alchemist
• 7 Wonders
• The Resistance
• Toledo
• Atlantis
• Hansa Teutonica
• London
• Woodman
• Vikings
• To Court the King
• Megamaniology
• Bang!
• Race for the Galaxy
• Chateau Roquefort
• Street Illegal

Total Number of New Games in the Board Game Closet of Light and Doom: 13
...plus a new dice bag, several new dice, a new fantasy fiction novel, and a spiffy new pair of goggles.