Saturday, July 01, 2006
2006 Origins Report
Conventions
I took a trip down to Columbus on Friday to wander through Origins and see what’s going on in gaming today. You can see the photos I took in the gallery at:
http://www.miniaturewargaming.com/index.php/gallery/category/C17/
For those of you who don’t know, Origins is held in the very large and modern Columbus Convention Center. The convention is four days long and attracts many thousands of gamers, from role playing gamers, to board gamers, collectable card gamers and, of course, miniatures gamers. Thanks to a games in education initiative by GAM, I got in free with my teacher’s ID. Many booths also were offering teacher freebies and discounts.
Woo Hoo!!
Miniatures games were prominently featured almost from the moment you arrived. Just to the left of the registration booths, legendary miniature wargamer Duke Siegfried had five very large (5 x 20?) table set up to showcase four of his games: Gordon in the Sudan, A Viking Raid, David and Goliath bibicals, Hannibal against Rome and a Lord of the Rings fantasy game. As is usual with his presentations, they were spectacular, representing the best of the visual aspect of miniature wargaming.
In the Dealer’s Room, there were a large number of manufacturers and retailers with miniatures and miniatures related products: WizKids, Mongoose Publishing, Privateer Press, Red Shirt Games, Battle Field Accessories, Grinfritter’s Gnomish Workshop, Paizo, Mega Miniatures, War Torn Worlds, Hot Wire Foam Factory, Old Rivertown Miniatures, IronWind, Rackham, Magnificent Egos, Lance and Laser, Dwarven forge, Miniature Building Authority, AEG, Dragonfire Laser Crafts, Jolly Roger Games, Twilight Creations, Flames of War, Gale Force 9, Flying Buffalo, Kenzer & Company, Last Square, GMT, Decision Games, Columbia Games, Clash of Arms and Testors. Others, such as Titan Games, Troll and Toad and Crazy Egor’s carried used miniature game products, including miniatures. Chessex, Crystal Caste and Koplow carried peripheral products, such as dice and counters.
In all, I counted at least forty five of the 120 or so booths as having miniature related stuff.
Also there were Armchair General magazine, Matrix Computer games, which makes hard core hex style computer wargames, and Belle and Blade, which has the greatest collection of war and adventure videos and dvds known to man. Avalanche Press had their collection of fine hex boardgames.
Flames of War clearly was the hottest miniatures property there. In addition to a very busy booth, they were running a tournament that occupied at least 16 tables in the tabletop gaming area (both board and miniatures games are included as “tabletop”).
I think that in Flames of War, Battlefront Miniatures has the breakthrough product that historical miniatures has been waiting for. For fantasy miniatures gamers and role players, WWII is different without being obscure. The 15mm figures paint very easily—certainly several factors easier than Warhammer 28mms.And Battlefront makes it very easy for players with their platoon boxes, which have the forces pre sorted. “Intelligence Handbooks” give you all the information you need to play a particular type of unit.
It’s the Games Workshop plan for historical, and it works very well.
One of the biggest hurdles of historicals, I think, is that beginners are faced with the daunting task of figuring out just how many of this and that they need for a force. Figures come in large bags, they don’t necessarily need all the figures in a bag, and every rules set has a different basing method. Flames of War addresses all of that.
WizKids is adding to its plastic clicky line of figures with HorrorClick. The figures are about the same quality as all of their previous offerings. Some that I saw were pretty good, others not so. Still, with the interest in zombies and such among miniatures gamers, they could have something here.
The WizKids pirates line, on the other hand seems to be de-emphasized. They didn’t seem to be running any demos (although they were running HeroClick, MechWarrior and HorrorClick). That doesn’t bode well for the future of what I think is a pretty cool thing.
Testors is releasing a miniatures game based on George RR Martin’s popular Song of Ice and Fire. The 28mm unpainted metal figures will come in unit packs and blisters will be available for you to augment your armies. I watched a demo game, and it played very well, making distinctions between slashing, bashing and puncture weapons. Given that, it’s likely that the final product will be for small skirmish games. They seemed too fiddly for larger operations. The Westeros game will be available this fall.
Testors, I think, has a real chance with this one. The books are enormously popular and Testors has access to hobby stores and department stores that other game manufacturers don’t I can get Testors paints and models in my local WalMart and Meijers, and I’ll bet that you’ll be able to get these figures there, too.
They only had half-a-dozen figures available, but the ones I saw looked nicely done, with good human proportions and fine detail. They reminded me of the best of the Lord of the Rings sculpts or stuff by Tom Meier in their correct proportions. The rep didn’t know who sculpted them.
There didn’t seem to be any breaking news from either Mongoose or Privateer Press.
Alea Tools (http://www.aleatools.com) had some colorful one inch in diameter magnets that you are supposed to use as status markers for miniatures. You stack them under a figure’s metal base. They also had some sheets of magnetic vinyl and a 1 inch die cutter for sale for those figures whose bases are plastic. (You could very easily stick a washer under those GW round bases.)
Miniature Building Authority has a couple of new lines of terrain. The Civil War line of buildings is very nice. They also had previews of the science fiction bunkers designed for Starship Troopers and a moderns set. Jumping on the Flames of War bandwagon, MBA has in the pipelines a line of 15mm WWII buildings.
All of the Miniature Building Authority stuff is very nice. If I had a with for them, though, it is that they would produce a line of early 20th century US city buildings for use in Gangster and Pulp games.
Another company producing 15mm WWII stuff is Battlefield Accessories. They had a nice line of resins terrain pieces.
Old River Town Miniatures (http://www.oldefivertownminis.com) is now importing the ManorHouse stuff from Italy, and also has an Australian line of paints called Derivan. They’re slightly more expensive than Vallejo, but come in much bigger drop bottles.
Mega Miniatures had a big booth with what had to be their entire line of figures. Coming up for them are penguin packs and a giant pack of thieves.
One interesting trend was in the number of companies using poker chips for games. One group had chips with pictures of D&D monsters imprinted on them. Another had devised a game that involves tossing poker chips.
Another use that I saw. One group was using a 1 inch die cutter—such as those the ladies use for their scrapbooking projects—to cut out the pictures from collectable cards. They attached these to poker ships, and used them as 2-d armies. Not a bad use for all of those fantasy cards that you’re never going to use again. I may do it with all of the Waterloo collectable cards that I have.
Collectable card games don’t yet seem to have work out their welcome, though. There were a number of new (?) licensed card properties, including Conan, Warcraft, some Japanese thing from Bandai, and The History Channel’s Anachronism.
More interesting to me were the plethora of new family style board games—euro games, if you will. Most are games with abstract mechanisms to which a theme has been tacked. But the combinations are often very good.
One game, called Spy Alley, had a mechanism that it seems to me would work well as a miniatures game. In that one, each player is a spy—but the other players don’t know who is working for who.During the game, each player visits various locations to pick up times. The other players see what items you have picked up, and try to deduce from that which country you are spying for. You win by picking up all the items for your spy without being identified. But you can throw down a misleading trail. So, for example, if you are the German spy, you need to visit the German embassy, the German restaurant to pick up a note, etc. But you would also visit the British Embassy to throw the other players off your trail.
Picture this as a miniatures game where each player has a couple of spy figures and a list of enemy spies to be assassinated.If only you can identify them correctly ...
Another game that I liked was called Dragon Riders. It has a board that you can randomize for a race track and miniature dragons. You set their speed for the turn, accelerating or decelerating a set amount. Then, you put down a measuring stick for distance. The sticks have notches of various sizes on one end. The longer the stick, the smaller the notch. When you put the stick down, you line the notch up on the forward point of the Dragon’s hex base. You then can swivel the stick within the limits of that notch. Thus, if you are moving at the slowest speed, you can swing the notch nearly 90 degrees to either side of the base. If you are at higher speeds, you can swing the stick just a few degrees left or right. Once you have your trajectory, you move the dragon straight forward.
The Dragons can obviously also interfere with each other’s flights.
This would also work very well as a miniatures game. Just get a couple of dragon miniatures and set up a tabletop with your terrain.
There were some 600 miniatures events at Origins, mostly science fiction and fantasy, but including the Flames of War Tournament, and a heroic effort by HMGS Great Lakes in their Historicals offerings.
I was only there for one day, but the historical miniatures events that I saw were very impressive, especially the Boxer Rebellion game. Other than the Flames of War, I also saw historical games for WWII using Arc of Fire, a micro scale pacific war game, a couple of Wild West skirmishes, and the remnants of a Civil War and colonials in Africa game.
The program also lists a La Haye Sainte game, Pete Panzeri’s Alamo, Vietnam games, a Volley and Bayonet Jena-Auerstadt, Israel v The Philistines, WWI Naval, Guts N Glory modern skirmish, Featherstone skirmish WWII, Sudan Colonials, Mustangs and Messerschmitts, Command Decision, Sword and The Flame, Viking skirmish, Aerodrome,
Blue Max, Tomahawk Wars AWI, A Clinton on the Hudson 1780 scenario, Carnage and Glory ACW, 54mm Hurtgen Forest, Fire and Fury, Warhammer Historicals, Midway and a DBA Tournament—and that was just the Thursday and Friday listings.
The rest of the events were a collection of Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40K, Battletech, Star Fleet Battles, Babylon 5, Warmachine, Silent Death, Confrontation, and others.
You can see more pictures and commentary in the gallery at:
http://www.miniaturewargaming.com/index.php/gallery/category/C17/
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Testor’s Westero game figures are sculpted by non other than Tom Meier. You can find out more (inclusing some pictures) in his Thunderboldmountain.com web site.
Posted by msoong on 07/02 at 11:22 AM | #