The Best of Origins 2014 - Subdivision

This is the third (p)review in my Best of Origins 2014 series.

This is another one coming from Bezier Games Inc. They were also behind my favourite game of Origins, Castles of Mad King Ludwig. They even had deal at Origins where you could pre-order both and get a discount. 

Subdivision is a follow up to Suburbia, it's still a city based tile laying game but it's zoomed in from Suburbia. Here you are looking at one small subdivision of the city. To me it felt like Suburbia meets 7 Wonders and that was a very good thing.

It's interesting to note that Subdivision isn't from Ted Alspach, the designer of Suburbia but rather from Lucas Hedgren. As far as I can tell this is Lucas' first game. The art though, if it isn't obvious is from the same team.

The Best of Origins 2014 - Star Realms

This is the second review in my Best of Origins 2014 series.

I probably rolled a little too low on my initiative roll for this review. I'm guessing most people who read this blog have already heard of Star Realms and have been trying to find a copy for the last month since White Wizard Games can't keep up with demand.

Well this review is for the rest of you, so that you can also become one of the many gamers trying to get your hands on a copy of Star Realms, because it is that good.

Star Realms was my first purchase of Origins. My wife and I did one demo game and I had bought a copy of this excellent deck builder before we finished our first game. I had no idea at the time that I was buying one of a very limited second printing that had just been released that day.

If I had known it was going to be so hard to find I would have brought multiple copies back with me. 

The best of Origins 2014 - Castles of Mad King Ludwig

I'm not sure how many of these blog posts I will actually do, but I wanted to do up at least a couple posts based on the awesome games I got to try while I was at Origins 2014 a couple weeks back. 

While there was an amazing amount of great gaming and I think I played more games in that one weekend than I did most of last year, these articles will be about the best of what I got to try.

I'm starting with the best of the best. Castles of Mad King Ludwig was the best new game I got to play at Origins. It's from Ted Alspach and released by Bezier Games, Inc. 

My favourite game from Ted is Suburbia and Castles of Mad King Ludwig is very similar to it. Actually I could see some people even saying that it's a re-theme of Suburbia.

Some thoughts on my first big con: Origins 2014

Two weekends ago I attended my first big gaming convention: Origins Game Fair in Columbus Ohio.

My wife and I have been talking about attending a con for years now. Many years. We've always put it off for one reason or another. Our excuse used to be that we didn't have Passports so couldn't cross the border anymore (pre-911 you could get across with a birth certificate). 

This past year we got our passports and no longer had an excuse. My wife gave me the option of going to either Origins or GenCon. Now I know a bunch of you are probably moaning and yelling at your monitors right now telling me I made the wrong choice. I don't think that I did.

In preparation for the trip I asked the awesome Google Plus gaming community what they thought of each con and received a ton of feedback. The consensus was that Origins was much more laid back, relaxed, spaced out and better for just chilling with other gamers and gaming. That was exactly what I wanted. I've heard stories about how awesome GenCon is. How it's The Big Deal. I also heard how busy it was and how much it cost to attend. So we I decided on Origins and I'm glad I did.