Origin’s ‘77 Paul A. Hirst Or 'what's a nice game like you doing in a place like this?' Leaving rain-soaked Manchester behind I headed for sun-drenched Staten Island, where two thousand other game fanatics were converging. Once I had found where I was staying from a much harrassed Brad Hessel, I dumped my gear and aimed for the Student Union building, packed with games, gamers and ice cold beer. Some of the Blue and Gray tournament players were reliving past glories in 'Chickamauga' friendlies while 'A Mighty Fortress' was seeing the light of day. Soon I found myself enmeshed in GDW's 'Case White' with a gamer from Illinios, one Kevin McKenna. The game is a recreation of Poland '39 on the standard Europa format. Brown and green are on the maps and its a great simulation if you can find time to set it up. As this was winding to a close, we were roped in for a 'Diplomacy' game where as France I was able to take out England, primarily because Germany and Italy kept Russia and Turkey off my back. As night turned into morning we all started drifting off as the first day ended, 24 hours after it had begun . Saturday dawned bright and clear, another marvellous day for a convention. The tournaments started early with cries of 'There's a purple worm down that corridor' and 'You're a Succubus in this aren't you?' coming from the Dungeons and Dragons competition while German fighters ruled the sky over Essen in Airforce and Russian tanks were rendered into scrap metal in the Firefight tournament. In the S.U., taking the Russians in a game of Third Reich proved very unproductive as it was some hours before the Germans decided to try their hand eastwards. Meanwhile, five hopefuls were setting up a game of Wacht Am Rhein and people were still to be seen attempting A Mighty Fortress. The seminars were taking shape about this time and myself and Hank Halley, a gamer from Phoenix and latterly a refugee from A Mighty Fortress, which packed up just as everyone had grasped the rules, took seats at the sci-fi seminar, wittily conducted by Redmond Simonsen. No decision has yet been reached on fifteen foot SS killer penguins but orbital paratroops will feature in 'Objective Moscow'. Hank left for a Kingmaker tournament while I stayed to the bitter end (half an hour longer than it should have been). Hank's Kingmaker game bogged down when one player gained the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor and half the Lancastrian pack putting an effective block on the game. Avalon Hill incidentally, have bought this game and the old favourite 'Diplomacy' so they may be starting a line of this type of game. By now I was into 'Victory in the Pacific', Avalon Hill's new effort, with someone who had travelled as far as me for the convention, Hal Norman of Los Angeles, California. Leaving Hal figuring out the rules, I squeezed into the Designing Historical Simulations seminar, where the latest theories on how to turn meaning less numbers on O.B. charts into more meaningless numbers on unit counters were being propounded (just kidding all you budding game designers). Jin Dunnigan gave us his Frankenstein impersonation - something he does when a new game idea come into his head. Leaving this unfortunately before it had finished, I visited the booths, where all the brand new games were on show. AH were sporting 'Squad Leader' and the new 'Gettysburg' (which Kevin McKenna and I managed to rip up the demonstration copy in our eagerness to fully investigate ). SPI had run out of 'Mod. Quads IIs' in ten minutes and 'Kesselschlact' at SDC was conspicuous by its absence (but they still offered $2.50 discount on it). A marvellous booklet on the Yom Kippur War was on sale there and Fire & Movement 7 was out in time for the convention, while Battleline had 'Fury in the West' and 'Dauntless'. GDW as well as 'Case White' had 'Pearl Harbour' and a new improved version of 'Bar Lev' (look over the air rules sometime). Back in the Student Union block Hal was waiting with Victory in the Pacific - after four hours and three opponents he had cracked the sytem. Third Reich, after twelve hours, had just reached 1942. Wacht Am Rhein was up to turn three. For the rest of the evening Hal proceeded to grind my US forces into dust, between cartons of the famous US beer. The game is much better than the infamous 'Victory at Sea' partially I think because the Pacific is a more interesting theatre than Europe for the naval aspect. By this time one o' clock had rolled around again and time for another six hours kip. Sunday morning dawned bright and clear once again. Metamorphosis Alpha was the tournament for the day, as planets were being incinerated faster than even the umpire could keep pace. The quadrigame seminar proceeded apace with Fred Georgian expanding on his Moves articles as well as giving the rationale behind having games with the same basic rules. Meanwhile 'Diplomacy' had really taken off with five games in progress. Hank Halley had finally started a game of 'A Mighty Fortress’, in which, as the Jesuits, he had problems with the other Hank, of England. 'Indianapolis 5,000' is a car race simulation which is memorable since that was the game that the local TV station fixed on to take their allotted length of film (the game looks superior to Waddington's 'Formula One', a similar idea). The high spot of the convention was Sunday after noon and the auction. After half an hour of sheer apathy, Dick Berg managed to organise the fixing of the P.A. system but lost his voice in the process (someone shouted "we never had this problem in Baltimore"). A swift beefburger and a carton of beer and we were off on the bargain trail (or sour lemon run to all you cynics). I managed to outbid even Avalon Hill's retail prices by bidding eleven bucks for a ten dollar game of 'Panzer Leader' which I had been reliably informed cost twelve. Brad Hessel, feeling generous, charged me the list price. There were more games of AH's 'Guadalcanal' on auction than I thought had ever been sold. Dick reckons that the same dozen go from one Origins to the next being sold for more each time. A copy of Taurus's 'Raiders of the Sea' went for $25 complete with a one hundred page rule book, while the famous and elusive 'Trafalgar' made two appearances. The Charlie awards gave prizes to 'Russian Campaign’, 'Avalanche' and, of course, 'TSS' and not to be outdone I have decided to take a leaf out of 'Fire & Movement's' book and award my own Soggy Counter awards, after much soul-searching as follows: The 'If I can't forget, why should they?' Award to Tom Shaw for saying when receiving his Hall of Fame award - "Thank you all my loyal Kriegspiel fans". The "best-dressed gamer award' to Redmond Simonsen for being the only gamer in a suit (and a pretty good one at that). The 'privilege of rank' award to Jim Dunnigan for passing all the difficult questions in the seminars to Frank Davies. The 'sun never sets' award to Phil Kosnet for consistently calling the Pan Sentient League the Americans. 'It's better than buying time on ATV' award to A.H. for having more copies of Squad Leader being carried by gamers than any other simulation (very few were actually played though). The 'would you buy a used car from this man?' award to Dick Berg for holding up a copy of 'The Conquerors' saying "a brand new, never been used copy" and having one thousand two hundred cut out counters fall on the carpet. Leaving New York laden with parcels of games and magazines we all agreed that it was well worth it and if we can raise the cash we'll probably find ourselves meeting again at Origins '78 in Detroit, Michigan.