ACG At Origins 2006 Final Report
We also had the opportunity to meet with Michael Stackpole. Readers might recognize Mr. Stackpole as the author of several Star Wars and Battletech books. With his own booth at one end of the exhibitors’ hall, Mr. Stackpole was in charge of the official Origins podcast and gave us some valuable insight on how we might organize such a thing ourselves in the future.
Finally, one other "game" worth mentioning is a quick playing card game called Top Trumps. Apparently this is common in the UK, and Andrew brought several decks with him on his trip. The Americans were delighted to play this game against the Brit, and soon victories were scored against the veteran. Basically you have a deck of cards featuring a theme (warships was our favorite) and you pick a category such as speed, length, displacement, etc. and try to have a higher value than your opponents. Sounds simple right? Well, it is in fact, but also requires some strategy and is loads of fun. Armchair General did a quick write up on Top Trumps here.
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| A last look at the Dealer room before the convention ended. | In gaming, is nothing sacred? Cthulhu (the Elder god described by H.P. Lovecraft) is demoted to a stuffed animal! |
There was so much else going on, it is really impossible to summarize it into a short piece like this. However, we have a massive photo gallery of our adventure, including some shots of downtown Columbus, OH where the convention was held. Andrew, being from the UK and on his first visit to the USA, was quite fascinated by our architecture and culture – and was snapping pictures of everything from street signs to White Castles. You can see them all here.
Finally, as the Armchair General team was roving the halls of the convention center on the last night, we wondered about the aggregated casualty figures throughout four days of gaming. If you add up the many tables of wargames, miniatures, RPG’s, card games, etc., scattered around the huge convention centre – one wonders how many star systems were captured? How many rebellions were crushed? How many empires rose and fell? How many battles were fought between Berlin and Moscow? How many cowboys were shot dead in front of the saloon? Casualties could have run into the billions, or possibly trillions. It is the excitement and uncertainty of these conflicts which keeps the games interesting, and keeps us coming back to best our opponents in open battle…
Chris, Trooper Larry Johnson, Brian, James, and Andrew
We’ll see you at Origins again in 2007! You can discuss Origins with us on the Armchair General forums here.
