by B Kunes
Fast forward a week and we are all in the car driving 90 mins North to the Ohio capital and parking in the spot literally next to where I parked last year. I am a creature of habit.
Origins offers a Saturday Day Pass for $10/person or $15/family which is hard to beat. I had my list I had been pruning for Gen Con Indy handy as we entered the Vendor Hall.
My first purchase was Macao, an older Stefan Feld game I had hoped to acquire. I also looked for Notre Dame, but no such luck. From there I started noting possible purchases which I was mentally storing away until I got through everything so I could choose which games to get this time around. One vendor had four games of possibility, but I wanted my wife to weigh in on what she'd be interested in playing most so we needed to see a few more options.
In general, the atmosphere of the show was much more positive than last year. I don't know that there were more vendors, but it seemed there were more attendees.
In the Vendor's Hall, my wife and kids were a bit edgy with my frantic pace hurrying from booth to booth; but I sensed they were more interested in playing games rather than looking at them. Their unwillingness to abandon me had a lot to do with feeling bad that my recent birthday was not very fun for me, as I didn't get to do anything I wanted to do due to a number of uncontrollable factors and a couple of poor choices on their part.
I was extremely encouraged at their selflessness to endure my rare shopping spree. I was able to pick up a few things on my list: Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box, Village, and The Resistance: Avalon. I also let the kids pick out a game if they saw one that we all would be willing to play so we picked up Dixit Quest and Oz Fluxx.
Part of the deal I made with my wife for coming to Origins was to go to the North Market for lunch. It seems every convention has its "Go to Food" place which is an easy choice and just a walk across the street from the convention center.
My wife got her favorite, Indian. I tried a Gyro sandwich. My youngest, who we recently learned has a number of food intolerances, opted for chicken on a stick with rice and salad, which I got to finish off. My oldest, also a creature of habit, opted for the pepperoni pizza from the same vendor her and I ate at last year. Of course, they couldn't resist spending more (game) money on (unnecessary, in my mind) desserts. They were happy, so I was happy.
Now it was time to play some games. We started out with a 5p game of King of Tokyo with pretty good odds to win a Space Penguin promo monster. My daughters took care of eliminating the non-family player and then turned on me. With the two former leaders KO'd with 14 VP each, it was just the girls left to relish their girl power. My wife proceeded to eliminate our daughters with 10 and 13 VP for the win by knock out and bragging rights for winning the promo monster.
Unfortunately, IELLO was out of promo monsters so they are going to mail it to us. We did got some additional promo cards to add to our deck. This excited my girls and sparked a renewed interest in wanting to play the game more when we go home. I also reminded everyone that we have the Power Up! expansion we got for Christmas and we have yet to play.
We walked around the Hall were we just finished our game to see what else other companies might be offering to play when we walked into Mr. Dice Tower himself, Tom Vasel.
Next we went to Rio Grande Games' room to see what they had available to play. I was hoping to play a game of Tzolk'in and see if my wife and I would like it enough to buy. Unfortunately there were two copies of the game and both games just started.
Given that, my youngest asked if we could play Monster Factory. Simple enough. We sat down I glanced through the rules and got us started. This is a tile laying game where players attempt to build a monster and subsequent minions for points. We fumbled through our first game building elaborate, silly monsters and minions unaware of how scoring worked at the end. So we decided it was quick enough, lets play another game now that we had a better feel for what to expect and how things were scored.
My wife won the first game, I won the second. As we were leaving I asked folks playing the new Dominion Guilds expansion what they thought. They simply said, "yeah, we like it." Okay, so much for that. I don't have any further insight to offer the BGG community on that at this time...
We decided to go to the back of the Vendor's Hall to try our hand at painting minis. My wife and oldest painted a horse with a mounted jouster, my youngest a dwarf, and I tried my hand at a wizard. My youngest and I finished first so we walked the Hall until the other two were done and ready to find one last game to play.
I had a picture to share, but it wasn't the most flattering picture fo my wife, and well since she is my primary gaming partner I felt it best not to post it here and consequently sentence myself to the proverbial dog house with no one to play games with for a while.
:D
Right next to the Paint and Take area was the Origins Awards Free Play area where we tried our hand at Kingdom Builder. In the absense of having a player able to teach us the game and explain the rules that responsibility fell to me . I could sense the girls were getting tired, so I tried to speed read through the rules and explain what to do.
For the most part we got it right. A few things didn't make sense which we figured out and moved on. In the end, none of us were all that impressed with the game play. For the first time ever my wife and girls all said they felt a game was too simple and not as interesting as other games we have in our collection. They were ready to move on half way through the game.
We did finish the game and my youngest of all people won. She has a knack for winning new games the first time she plays (and then struggles to win again). I'm sure this game would be better in a second play and would offer more depth than we discovered in our initial play through, however, there just wasn't enough there for us to investment any additional consideration of this game.
It was a wonderful way to celebrate Father's Day (early) with my wife and kids at Origins having fun playing games. Albeit they were not necessarily the types of games I would have chosen. Having my kids enthusiastically at the table playing games as a family felt awfully good. Everyone had a great time.
My wife drove home so I could open my new purchases and start reading the rule books. Ahh...
:meeple: Keep playing...