Origins: Aftermath Roport
by Tony DuLac
A few weeks ago I traveled to the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio to run demos of the Mutant Chronicles CMG and meet our fans. What follows is a small day-by-day report of what transpired along with my accompanying reflections:
Day 1, Wednesday, June 25th:
Luke and I spent most of the day driving the company van, (hereafter to be known as Shadowfax), on our road quest to reach Columbus. Once there, we located our hotel and met up with FFG demoer extraordinaire, Billy Dale. After we hashed out sleeping arrangements, we picked up our badges and dropped off our stuff at the Convention Center then returned to the hotel to grab some shut-eye and grub (pizza for me, of course).
Day 2, Thursday, June 26th:
The day started out unhappily for me as I opened our hotel room's shower door onto my foot (it was some bizarre double-jointed door) and ripped off the toenail on the third toe of my right foot - YEEOUCH!! After some quick first-aid and several bandages later, I hobbled my way out to the Con finally. Due to an unexpected plane delay, Billy and I were left to fend for ourselves as the AT-43/Confrontation and Mutant Chronicles area was slightly undermanned while we waited for Erik's (Rackham Line Coordinator) delinquent plane to arrive.
We had loads of interest for our first scheduled demos of the Rackham and Mutant Chronicles games. Initial demoing went well and my Mutant Chronicles players all received copies of A03, our new map/poster combo. I'd been quite meticulous in setting up 16 different 4/4/4 armies for these demos and the work seemed to pay off as these armies matched up quite well with each other. Between small breaks we also briefly popped into the exhibit hall to check things out. Meanwhile, I was informed by FFG HQ that our big announcement about the format change would go into effect today or tomorrow (Friday) so I was on pins and needles while waiting for the news to break! Two of our great MC:CMG community members, Jeff Cope (owner of Alley Cat Games in Columbus, Ohio) and Alberto, helped me run some demos and we all had some cool MC and general gaming-related conversations. Thanks, guys!
Day 3, Friday, June 27th:
More demoing today but slightly less attendance - still a good time seemed to be had by all with lots of great comments and feedback coming in related to the quality of the miniatures' sculpts and larger size. The best feedback was related to the gameplay itself, which seemed to be widely enjoyed. By this time I had my demoing down to a science and I was also able to squeeze into a few more games due to uneven numbers of players. Algeroth, aka the Dark Legion, can be a really brutal faction when used with both Algeroth command cards "Bestial Speed" and "Invoke Frenzy". Bestial Speed really helps address the Dark Legion's primary weakness (slower movement) while Invoke Frenzy is a ridiculous powerful damage booster. It seemed like the vast majority of the demos came down to the wire leading to some tense finales!
Day 4, Saturday, June 28th:
This day started off as a near polar opposite to my first day's toe incident with the exciting news breaking that Diablo 3 had been announced by Blizzard that morning! Sweetness! I made my way to the Con, toe feeling mercifully better, and primed myself to hear feedback on our own exciting announcement from last night. Sure enough, as I walked into the miniatures hall and into our demo area, several of the demoing players from the day before were waiting to share their enthusiasm for our change from random to fixed-purchase format. Sweetness x2!!
We had some memorable demo sessions that day and players seemed really excited about the possibilities of Organized Play as well - I shared a few spoilers about my plans for this but nothing specific. Most of these spoilers were also well received so I knew that I was on the right track with this forthcoming program. Got a bit more time to check out some other cool games and products from the Exhibit Hall later in the day so that was also excellent. By day's end my voice was starting to crack a bit but fortunately it held out! Erik and I checked out the city sights that evening and things were pretty hectic.
Day 5, Sunday, June 29th, Final Day of Origins:
Things were a bit more sparse on this final day of the event though we had more onlookers than usual thanks to Origin's interesting "fair-play" attendance initiative (where folks could pay an inexpensive attendance fee in order to only observe). I had a great time demoing on this final day, even though my voice was borderline hoarse and it was great meeting Paul and his daughter Kaylynn (sp?) who both seemed to truly enjoy their demo. Kaylynn was remarkably precocious and exclaimed upon seeing the demon faction, "Oh! They're cute!" We had a good chuckle over that one. After our last demos, we were able to scoot on over to the Exhibit Hall and grab some gaming goodies for ourselves. Erik and I each picked up a variety of nifty games while making some great industry connections and I scored some sweet Warzone reference books as well as two boosters for the now out-of-print Doomtroopers CCG. Finally it was closing time at Origins and we packed up "Shadowfax", the great white van, and prepared to depart on Monday morning. All things considered we had a great time at this event and I truly enjoyed meeting everyone! Here's looking forward to meeting more of you great MC fans at GenCon in 6 weeks!
