Convention Report: Origins 2006: Wrap-Up

By Rick Thornquist
July 4, 2006

Origins 2006 is now over.  Now that I’m back home, I thought I’d take a few minutes to write up my final thoughts on the convention.

The convention itself was very good.  From my perspective, everything went very smoothly.  Last year I heard complaints from a number of people about various things - that didn’t happen this year.  Kudos to the Origins people for putting on a very good event.

The idea to have the Board Room was brilliant and I think it went very well.  Certainly those who were running it were happy - by 2:00pm on the first day they had already sold out of Board Room Ribbons and the room was pretty much in constant use.  It was great for boardgamers to have a home - I knew that any time I wanted a game I could head to the Board Room and find willing opponents (in previous years there just wasn’t a central place for those who wanted open boardgaming).  Kudos to Origins and the Columbus Area Boardgaming Society for putting it together.

I thought the Exhibit Hall was good and from my talks with the dealers, they were fairly happy with the traffic.  I was told that the attendance was somewhat down this year (likely due to Wizards of the Coast not attending along with high gas prices) but the dealers that I talked to didn’t notice much difference in sales. 

There were some noticeable absences - Avalon Hill, Eagle Games, Face2Face Games and Uberplay were no-shows.  Fantasy Flight Games had a much smaller booth than last year.  The rest of the publishers were strongly represented, though, and there were a couple of new ones such as Immortal Eye Games and Funagain.

So how were the games?  I played quite a few new games at the convention and there was one big standout - that was Age of Empires III from Eagle Games.  I think it’s a very good gamer game - bordering on excellent - and I’m very much looking forward to its release.  Kudos to Glenn Drover for designing such a good game.

Some other good games included Tempus from Cafe Games, which finally arrived - a very good civilization game that was stripped down to the basics.  I also very much liked the ‘New Settlers Game’ that is coming from Kosmos and Mayfair - I hope to be able to give you more information on this soon.  Leonardo daVinci from daVinci and Mayfair I also though was quite good.  Unfortunately, all of these games, including Age of Empires III, aren’t out yet, but they are on their way.

In the good category, I liked Pecking Order from Immortal Eyes Games as a nice, light two player game (and that is one that is now released).  Their upcoming third game Terra Nova, also from Immortal Eyes, while not striking a chord with me right away, was lauded by many of the players that played it.  I liked Hatu Matu from Stratamax Games (another one that is now released).  I’m also looking forward to the new version of Ave Caesar from Cafe Games.

Fortunately, there weren’t any real duds.  The rest of the games I played ranged anywhere from average to pretty good.

As usual, it was the people who made the convention what it is.  Having the Boardroom as a central meeting place helped us boardgamers find each other more easily and I got to meet lots of great new people as well as seeing some old friends.

I had a great time at Origins 2006 and am already looking forward to next year!

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	Pictures from around Origins - Tom Vasel wins the Board Room Chairman of the Board Award from Columbus Area Boardgaming Society (CABS) members Nate Hoam and Bud Sauer (the Board Room was run by CABS)

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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