by Armchair Dragoons Public Affairs Office, 3 October 2021
Once Origins opened up for business, it… still wasn’t as big as you wanted it to be. But it was Origins, and it was better than 2020, or any online convention. Honestly, it was better than most of the complaining about it that you’ll see online pretty much anywhere else.
What was going on with the Armchair Dragoons?
Our normal booth crew is 16-20 people.
Our normal event load is around 45-50 events (2019 was 36 events, and that was a ‘small’ gig for us; 2018 was 56).
This year, we had 4 GMs and 13 total events. It wasn’t just the pandemic that got us, but the time of year, as that took a bite out of about half of our team. Still, we filled up most of our games, with full tables for Commands & Colors, Tank on Tank, and A Distant Plain, and almost-full tables for Age of Dogfights, and Second World War at Sea. Officially, Fleet Marine Force wasn’t a scheduled event, but we eventually had 4 people pushing blocks around the table (while the photographer was in the exhibit hall, naturally).
click images to enlarge
Yes, the exhibit hall was smaller this year – by at least half, and far more when you consider the loss of retail space that’s normally in the gaming hall, too. But the retailers that were there were working hard, making connections, and enthusiastically moving games. We didn’t talk to everyone, but the ones that we did talk to were happy about their show.
There wasn’t a huge wargame presence there, but you could also find wargames and wargame-adjacent fun at other vendors, too.
New kid on the block? Catastrophe Games were at their first Origins, and had Blue Panther in tow, repping games from Hollandspiele, White Dog, and CSL.
And Jason Matthews, designer of Imperial Struggle, among others, was high on their new game, too.
Enjoyed my demo of Zurmat. Clever, fast fun. @CatastropheGam2 pic.twitter.com/4ZkXLajlED
— Jason Matthews (@JasonDCMatthews) October 2, 2021
There were some pretty interesting finds throughout the exhibit hall, too.
We also found a handful of games that were new to us
Two weeks ago, we noted in Tuesday Newsday that Red Burnoose was hitting Kickstarter. Well, the designer stopped by and gave us a bit about the background of the game and it’s design, and then came back for us to snap a few photos of the demo copy. Note that the artwork is pretty much final, but the layouts may be changing a bit. The campaign is well past it’s goal, and has a few days left.
Heck, even Starbucks got into the spirit of things
And overall, we had a grand time, considering it was about 30% of a normal Origins, but at least it was Origins.
We’ll have photos of our loot coming up this week, along with some other coverage.
Thank you for visiting The Armchair Dragoons and spending some time with the Regiment of Strategy Gaming.
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