Okay, so it has been a little while. . .maybe a long while. Natalie and I just got back from Origins 2009 in Columbus, OH last weekend and in short we had a great time! For those who are unfamiliar with Origins, it is a gaming fair every year that offers you the opportunity to match wits and strategies with your friends.
Origins is not a super-LAN party, but a everything-except-computers gaming fair. This was our chance to hook up with the east-coast friends who will not be able to see at Dragon*Con this year (thank you economy). We played a whole assortment of games including “Arkham Horror“, “Pandemic“, “Spirit of the Century“, and “The 3 Commandments”.
On Friday, my goal was simple: depart customer’s site in St. Louis travel to Columbus. Of course, American Airlines went out of their way to make that as difficult as possible. Departed STL for ORD with no problems or delays, however once I got in ORD I was under a false-sense of comfort with my flight was on-time. Once on the plane already to go, the captain announced that we were going to be held to allow 20 folks arriving on a late international flight make the connection. That’s cool if you are like 10 minutes or so late, but not on the order of 90 minutes! The sad part was that there were 20+ people up on the standby list for that flight and more waiting for the next flight, AA could have easily filled the sits. And much to my misfortune the 20 people we were waiting for were middle-schoolers returning from a European trip.Wish airlines extended me the same courtesies when I was running late.
Anyway, finally arrived in Columbus and headed over to the Crowne Plaza to meet up with everyone. Most of our friends were quite drained from lengthy drives to get to Columbus. We all agreed that beer was a cure for this night.
Early Saturday morning, Natalie and I set out on our first quest: locate Starbucks! After some much needed caffeine was acquired, we headed back to the convention center and joined up with everyone else. The first game was “Spirit of the Century“, which I was not able to join since we had too many people already. No matter, I am really not into games that do not have a board or screen, but let me tell you it was damn entertaining to watch. After a short lunch at the North Market, we headed back to play “Arkham Horror” for the first time. Well second, sort of. We tried previously, but after spending 2 hours to setup the game and even longer to try to understand how to play, we kinda gave up. Needless to say, playing with experienced players was extremely fun! Later that evening with headed over to a friend of Mur Lafferty for a BBQ and game of “Pandemic“. “Pandemic” is one of those games that does not take a lot of instruction, but a fair amount of strategy and team cooperation. After the BBQ we headed back to the convention center to swing by the boardroom with John and Laura to get our free game. We ended up with “The 3 Commandments” which at first looked to rank fairly high on the suck-meter. But after playing a few rounds it ended up being one of those very entertaining games that would do well at a party (better if drinks are served).
Not-so-early on Sunday morning, we met up with everyone at Max & Erma’s restaurant for a breakfast. Some of the group had to depart so afterwards, others had the opportunity to hang around for a bit. Finally around noon most everyone had to leave after visiting the Dealer’s room one last time. Natalie and I headed back up to the boardroom to play a round of “The Red Dragon Inn“, which in my opinion was not quite worth the hype (although Gog is awesome). After playing enough games to last a few months, we headed over to Comfest which happened to running that weekend and it was only a few blocks away. Both of us were quite hungry but this point so we treated ourselves to some great BBQ, visited some of the art booths, and could not avoid the people-watching (google Comfest you will understand). After Comfest, we drove over to the Columbus Zoo for the afternoon. Now the Columbus Zoo is like half-zoo and half-amusement park. We definitely regretted not bring our swimsuits, but had a great time nonetheless. The night was topped off with a visit to Schmidt’s German restaurant for dinner which included: 1L of Warsteiner, Sauerbraten, German potato salad, chocolate cream puff, and fudge. Oh yeah!
Finally, Monday morning we left the hotel and headed for home. Of course, that was not a easy as that sounded either. Thanks to the idiocy of Expedia, I couldn’t just adjust one segment of my flight for business, I had to cancel it out and then start over. Of course though we you start over you can’t get the same flight because it is full (yes even with my cancellation, the Expedia rep thought this was ridiculous as well). Needless to say, Natalie and I could not travel together the whole way back. But all was well, we had an event-less return to Portland.
