Origins 2016: The Gaming

My trip down to Origins this year was a short one, just two of the convention's five days, but that was plenty of time to get in some games!

I only had one gaming event planned ahead of time (an Epic limited event on Saturday). I've learned over the years that it's wise to keep your schedule flexible. Once you're on the ground, it's easy to find lots of interesting things to do. Unless the event is something that's likely to sell out (either something super-popular or with very limited space), it's easy enough to show up with generic tokens rather than locking yourself into a particular schedule. Also, don't schedule back-to-back events if at all possible, since the early one might run late, or you might be tired enough that you won't enjoy the later event much anyway.

Everything I played this year was a card game of some kind. Origins actually has a lot more role-playing games than anything else, but I tend to gravitate toward the card games unless I'm going with a group. Partly that's for the sake of time...a single RPG event can take many hours...but mostly I just prefer to know at least one or two other people in an RPG event, and I didn't have anything like that organized this year. There are plenty of board games as well, some of which I tried out as demos, but I didn't play them as organized events.

Wasn't hard to find the Star Realms event area, with this banner to navigate by.

The White Wizard Games folks were present in force, doing Star Realms and Epic events. Got to play events for both those games, and had a good time with both. On Friday, I played a bit of Star Realms, then on Saturday did events for both games.

The Epic limited event was different than anything I'd played before. Since Epic doesn't have randomized packaging (i.e. Magic boosters), they can't just give you some random packs to use. Instead, everyone brought their own set of cards, then the organizers handed each person a list with 60 random card names that you were allowed to use to build your 30-card deck. If you didn't like your list, you could replace it with another random list, but only once. First time I'd played a format like that, and I thought it worked pretty well. I lost all my games, which isn't too surprising since I'd never actually played an organized event for the game before. I usually play group games with friends, but it's a very different game playing one-on-one! All my opponents were nice enough, though, and everyone got some promo cards to take home.

Epic promos - alternative art cards.

The Friday Star Realms event was just a few people, eight if I remember correctly. But the event on Saturday was a big one, with 48 people playing (here's a picture from the game's FB page). Each round was one game with either the original Star Realms set, or the new Colony Wars set, determined randomly. I'd never played Colony Wars before, but it doesn't have any new rules so it wasn't difficult to get up to speed quickly. Lots of cards I'd never seen before, though! I only won one game out of three on Friday, but I was fortunate on Saturday to go 4-1-1 across six games and make it into the top 8 playoff. The playoff rounds all used the original Star Realms set, and we played best of three games. In the first round, my opponent and I split the first two games, and I just barely pulled out the third game for the win. But then my luck ran out, because neither game was close in the second round. Got beat twice, in large part since my opponent got Brain World in both games. Actually that silly base showed up in my opponent's deck in all four of my last games, and I count myself lucky to have won the one that I did! So in the end I finished fourth, and took home a play mat prize as well as several promo cards.

Event loot! Playmat and promo cards.

I also played in a Magic event that was a bit of an oddball, a draft using random packs from Modern format sets. Usually in a draft, everyone's packs are from the same sets. But in this event, they threw a whole bunch of packs into a couple of bags, and each player pulled out three packs at random. That was a lot of fun, using strange card combinations that you almost never see together. Won two out of three matches in that one and got a few Origins packs as a prize.

The atmosphere was good in all those events, friendly without being overly competitive. Everyone I met and played against was having a good time. Every convention has big events where the competition level is high, but I generally avoid those in favor of the smaller, more casual formats. I find my stress level stays lower that way, and I have a better time overall. It certainly worked out that way with these events!

Origins 2016: The Logistics

Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio is a gaming convention that happens each summer. I first attended back in the late 1990s, but haven't been back for many years.

Walking up to the Convention Center entrance.

This year I went down for just a couple of days, driving down on Friday and back on Saturday. The original plan was to meet up with several friends and spend one more night, but some things came up so that only half the originally planned crew was able to go. That worked out fine for me, as I find that a couple of days worth of gaming convention is about right for me these days. A little longer can be fine with a bunch of friends, but with a smaller group, the shorter time works well.

The lines were long on Saturday morning.

The trip from Grand Rapids to Columbus was fairly uneventful, taking about six hours. It's summer, so there was a lot of construction traffic to deal with, especially along I-75 south of Toledo. No major delays, though. On the way back, I took a different route to avoid all that construction, west into Indiana and north from Fort Wayne. A bit longer, but less stressful.

White Wizard games in the exhibit hall.

I ended up staying near the airport, about a 20 minute drive from the convention center downtown. The ideal convention lodging is someplace you can walk to, but this worked fine for just the one night. Traffic between the hotel and downtown was a minor issue, but my Google Maps app did a good job directing me around the backups and I never got stuck for very long.

They had some Ascension for sale, but sadly no organized events were run.

Origins is held in the Greater Columbus Convention Center (and some nearby hotels). The facility has been around a while, but it's well maintained and easy to navigate. Origins isn't as big as some other conventions (i.e. GenCon), so there's plenty of room. Parking was easy to find and fairly cheap, which is a nice feature of being in a fairly small city.

Salmon sandwich and sweet potato fries at Tip Top.

There's quite a few restaurants and bars near the convention center, so there's plenty of options when it's time for a break from the gaming. I had dinner Friday night at Tip Top with some friends. It's a small restaurant/bar a few blocks from the convention center. Good food...the sweet potato fries in particular are amazing. Worth stopping by if you're in downtown Columbus.

Some of the guest of honor signing areas in the exhibit hall.

On Friday, the convention wasn't too crowded, but a lot of people showed up for Saturday. The line for event registration was huge. Even picking up your pre-registration badge had a long line on Saturday, so I was glad to have gotten my stuff on Friday. The exhibit hall was very crowded on Saturday as well. I spent most of Saturday playing in events, though, so it didn't bother me.

More exhibit hall. Lots of t-shirts available.

I spent 2-3 hours in the exhibit hall across both days. There was plenty to see, from artists displaying their work to authors doing book signings to every kind of game for sale. Most of the booths have games available to try out, so I did a few demos of things I hadn't tried before. Picked up a couple of new quick-play games to take to game nights.

New games! These are fairly quick, 15-30 minutes for 4-5 people. Good for game nights.

I particularly like browsing the artist booths. There's usually a selection of different styles, from cartoon-ish to almost photographic quality. Buying the originals is way out of my price range, but most of the pieces are available as prints, so I often take home one or two of my favorites. Got one this year, a piece by Charles Urbach.

Highland Flame by Charles Urbach

There's tons of gaming accessories for sale, too. One booth was selling nothing but wooden hand-crafted dice boxes, for instance. Dice were everywhere, of course. And there were lots of game mats for sale at various places - I found two of those that I liked enough to take home.

Game mat purchases.

Tomorrow, some words about the gaming events!