Origins 2011 - AAR
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 2:37 am
Well, another Origins has come and gone. It was a great event, but it came with a bittersweet ending [More on that later].
we [Battlegroup Murfreesboro] arrived 5 strong on Tuesday afternoon - about 16:00 hours. The con doesn't officially open until Wednesday mornign, but we usually get in early and start setting up for Federation and Empire.
By the end of the evening (roughly midnight or so...), we had 22 people in the same room discussing and/or playing 5 differnet games of F&E. Steve arrived in Columbus near 23:00 hours and stopped in to visit and chat.
Wednesday morning, the con kicked off in full force. All 5 F&E games were rocking
[and yes, the rumors were true. I did indeed command the Hydran forces in the Winds of fire scenario - but these were a special sub-species. They were good guy, methane breathers
]
and people were having a blast. At roughly 10:00, SPP called for ground support and Operation: Rolling Lightning began.
[In it's infinite wisdom, GAMA has decreed that all vendor may pull to the loading dock for 30 minutes, unload what they can and then retreat to the back of the que to await an additional opportunity to unload.]
When Rolling Lightning commenced, 20+ F&E players and 3 rolling carts performed a blockade run, entered the dealers loading dock province, and beamed all the ADB merchandise off the transport in less than 10 minutes. The goods were then staged at the secret location of hte ADB sales booth for eventual dissemination.
Wednesday afternoon, all the F&E players broke for lunch and advanced to the North Market wher each member species obtained their preferred viands. Nearly one entire wing of the upper dining area was garrisoned by an large occupying force and many, many tales of past and future glories were spun. And some actual discussion of future F&E projects also occurred.
SFU members continued to arrive throughout the day. The Sing-Along commenced at 20:00. Pre-order goodies were distributed and good times were had by all. The entire Sing-along can be downloaded as a podcast from Paul Franz' Talkshoe archives. After the Sing-along, we all retreated to the F&E warroom and continued our gaming until early Thursday morning.
Thursday morning saw the opening of the dealer room where many hundreds of starships were salvaged just before going into the fiery furnace. [Your's truely adopted 100 additional ships during the week.]
After the breif interuption, F&E resumed and continued until 01:00 Friday morning.
Friday was more of the same... F&E, dealer room for the latest demotivational postcard, lunch with the guys, and then more F&E, until the minis seminar. Rob Glass, the Mongoose employee who designs the 3D computer models that eventually becoime the Starline 2500 range stopped by and showed us the images of the Federation CA and the Klingon D7 models. The level of detail intended in these is amazing. [I can see a very real ebay sale in my future with the proceeds of my ST2400 line being usedto buy ST2500 minis.] Several details abouthte forthcoming line were mentioned...
i did forget to ask a few things though. Such as; why the change in scale and will the new minis be based on the round bases currently used by mongoose? Since ACTA is a hexless system and Mongoose already uses the round bases, i cna't see them doing otherwise. But rest assured, SVC will continue to supply the standsard hex bases as spare parts and I foresee a need for me to purchased them in bulk quantities.
The minis seminar was also recorded by Paul Franz and can be found on Talkshoe.
Saturday was a bit different. We played F&E until 19:00 then began recording positions of all the units in our game so that we may continue it next year or online. The F&E seminar began at 20:00 and lasted until 24:00. Once again, it's available on Talkshoe.
Sunday saw everyone packing up tubs of cardboard, boxes of miniatures, and reams of paper... both loose-leaf and laminated. The SFU seminar began at 10:00 (alos available on Talkshoe) and people departed at various times throughout the day. Hopefully, we'll all get together again next year, but with GAMA's decison to move Origins to the end of May - it may not happen next year. Many vendors have expressed disatisfaction with this desciosn and since school will still be in session - many of the SFU regulars will not be able to attend [Including Scoutdad, most likely].
we [Battlegroup Murfreesboro] arrived 5 strong on Tuesday afternoon - about 16:00 hours. The con doesn't officially open until Wednesday mornign, but we usually get in early and start setting up for Federation and Empire.
By the end of the evening (roughly midnight or so...), we had 22 people in the same room discussing and/or playing 5 differnet games of F&E. Steve arrived in Columbus near 23:00 hours and stopped in to visit and chat.
Wednesday morning, the con kicked off in full force. All 5 F&E games were rocking
[and yes, the rumors were true. I did indeed command the Hydran forces in the Winds of fire scenario - but these were a special sub-species. They were good guy, methane breathers
]and people were having a blast. At roughly 10:00, SPP called for ground support and Operation: Rolling Lightning began.
[In it's infinite wisdom, GAMA has decreed that all vendor may pull to the loading dock for 30 minutes, unload what they can and then retreat to the back of the que to await an additional opportunity to unload.]
When Rolling Lightning commenced, 20+ F&E players and 3 rolling carts performed a blockade run, entered the dealers loading dock province, and beamed all the ADB merchandise off the transport in less than 10 minutes. The goods were then staged at the secret location of hte ADB sales booth for eventual dissemination.
Wednesday afternoon, all the F&E players broke for lunch and advanced to the North Market wher each member species obtained their preferred viands. Nearly one entire wing of the upper dining area was garrisoned by an large occupying force and many, many tales of past and future glories were spun. And some actual discussion of future F&E projects also occurred.
SFU members continued to arrive throughout the day. The Sing-Along commenced at 20:00. Pre-order goodies were distributed and good times were had by all. The entire Sing-along can be downloaded as a podcast from Paul Franz' Talkshoe archives. After the Sing-along, we all retreated to the F&E warroom and continued our gaming until early Thursday morning.
Thursday morning saw the opening of the dealer room where many hundreds of starships were salvaged just before going into the fiery furnace. [Your's truely adopted 100 additional ships during the week.]
After the breif interuption, F&E resumed and continued until 01:00 Friday morning.
Friday was more of the same... F&E, dealer room for the latest demotivational postcard, lunch with the guys, and then more F&E, until the minis seminar. Rob Glass, the Mongoose employee who designs the 3D computer models that eventually becoime the Starline 2500 range stopped by and showed us the images of the Federation CA and the Klingon D7 models. The level of detail intended in these is amazing. [I can see a very real ebay sale in my future with the proceeds of my ST2400 line being usedto buy ST2500 minis.] Several details abouthte forthcoming line were mentioned...
- Mongoose intends to cast the entire line in resin, although for various reasons; some models may be cast in white metal.
Mongoose will cast separate models for many of the variants. There will be two differnt models forhte D7/D6. The Federation CC model will be different than the CA model and so on.
Repeatable portions on the models will be saved as separate files to facilitate prodection of later models using these parts.
When the initial release date arrives, there will be models availabe for every empire.
Once the F-Ca and the K-D7 are completed, Rob intends to work on one of the non-canon empires next.
He intends to make subtle design tweaks to several of the empires ships to capitalize on the flexibility of 3D modeling and to bring the base designs out of the 1960s.
i did forget to ask a few things though. Such as; why the change in scale and will the new minis be based on the round bases currently used by mongoose? Since ACTA is a hexless system and Mongoose already uses the round bases, i cna't see them doing otherwise. But rest assured, SVC will continue to supply the standsard hex bases as spare parts and I foresee a need for me to purchased them in bulk quantities.
The minis seminar was also recorded by Paul Franz and can be found on Talkshoe.
Saturday was a bit different. We played F&E until 19:00 then began recording positions of all the units in our game so that we may continue it next year or online. The F&E seminar began at 20:00 and lasted until 24:00. Once again, it's available on Talkshoe.
Sunday saw everyone packing up tubs of cardboard, boxes of miniatures, and reams of paper... both loose-leaf and laminated. The SFU seminar began at 10:00 (alos available on Talkshoe) and people departed at various times throughout the day. Hopefully, we'll all get together again next year, but with GAMA's decison to move Origins to the end of May - it may not happen next year. Many vendors have expressed disatisfaction with this desciosn and since school will still be in session - many of the SFU regulars will not be able to attend [Including Scoutdad, most likely].
