Well,
Origins has come and gone. It is Monday morning the day after and to say the least, Origins was somewhat of a big disappointment overall.
For those that have been there before, Origins, next to GEN GON, was a big, CON event that many came to from all over the country. Not so this year. Attendance had to be down regardless of what they say…that would be GAMA. And one of the main reasons had to be that there were no big companies present. WotC/AH, Wizkids, Upperdeck, FantasyFlight(well they had a small booth with no one in it.)literally!, and more were NOT present. Nothing but a bunch of small vendors selling magic and can you say POKEMON! Yes, I would have to say that 50% of all people there were probably connected in one way or another with the big flying Picachue…? I guess gas prices really are affecting travel plans this year, and rightly so…
Ok, now onto the AA stuff. This was even disappointing. Over al,l our numbers were done extremely, as well. Even so much so as to only have two tourneys this year. Our annual Mega Tournament and Guadalcanal.
We had a very small mix of people show to play a few other variants but not enough to have a tournament for those games. I think we had 2 Europe games played, one Bulge, one D-Day but they ended up playing Revised and no Pacific games. This even goes for the minis. We had a total of 4 show up for that over the three days and unfourtunelty, none of them at the same time…sigh…so, we only had one game in all played…
Not a good showing…but as for the Guadalcanal tourney, typical first year event, we had eight for this event and it went very well. Games seem to last not as long as we expected (around 2 hours per game) and a congratulations goes out to Mike Davis of Cincinnati who won this tourney. Great job Mike. Tournament rules included rolling dice for sides, first one to 15 VP wins but if a tie ensued, tie-breakers were: most islands controlled, undamaged airfields remaining and capital ships remaining. This came in handy in one game were once the game was over, both sides had 15 VP but once you ad the others, Jake beat Brian 25 to 24…VP…
As for Revised, for all the smack talk that goes on between AA players, you would think that there would be a bigger effort to come and play but this year we only had 9 teams, 18 showed up to play for this qualifing tourney. Not bad but considering the past 5 or so years, it sold out! So, with that being said, having 9 teams and not wanting to give anyone a bye, I myself and Squirecam stepped in to fill the void. After winning the first two games, we both thought, no need to just throw in the towel at this point. So, we held on to win the whole thing. We managed to go 5-0 to the title beating a GREAT team of Hurley/Furegson in the final.
They made one big error by vacating three areas of the board to KGF and it back fired. Japan took India, control of the Pacific and the Suez Canal and pretty much the control of the world to a victory. All Gemany had to do was hold on to enough countries, even as much as to lose Western Europe and the vicotry was in hand. Germany even went as far as buying a third round carrier to help fight off the onslaught on British transports in the end. It helped so much as to reduce the number of incoming Transports from 12 to 8 and hence securing victory. I do not have the exact final IPC count, Furgeson might have that on his lap top but I believe it was around 200-151.
The team of Squirecam/Smo63 plowed their way thru the Swiss rounds with a 3-0 record counting up victories or 196-155, 197-154, 195-156. And then in the Semi-finals fight a tough battle vs. the team of Yope/Eirc. Yope has the final score on that one and the final, as mentioned above…
We had teams from all over the country playing, we even had a team from CA. Charles McHaffie and company…so, thanks to all that ventured out. I hope you had a good time and see you at GEN CON…
Anyhow, that is my story and I am sticking to it…have a great day!
Peace,
GS :-D
