But before I wrap things up, let's go back to late Friday night. After posting the big Friday update, I teleported down to hang with Mike, Chris and Alex. While Mike and Alex played some Backgammon variant (seriously!), Chris and I dived into the Pirates Board Game.

I like Pirates. Chris likes Pirates. This board game version completely sucks. It sucks so hard that I'm going to do a full post later in the week. Stay tuned.

But the real issue had nothing to do with that... we went head-to-head with Morton's List. Long version follows.

There's this obnoxious gaming group called Morton's List... the game is that people divide into teams for a scavenger hunt, with lists that include both physical objects and ridiculous stunts. One of these teams accosted Mike, Chris and Alex (I wasn't there at the time), and asked if they could borrow a rulebook to any game. I guess that was part of their scavenger hunt list. So Mike, trying to be nice and help out, gives them the rules from Chris's brand new copy of Fish Eat Fish. The Morton's Listers swear they'll return it within an hour.

Three, four hours go by. When the guys tell me this story, it makes me furious. I've never liked the Morton's List group anyway, because they're always being terrible. Like loudly marching through the convention with a big fake banner advertising a Ninjas/Pirates Peace Rally. Come the fuck on. Welcome to Internet Joke World 2003. So finding out that these asshats took off with something and have no intention of returning it just amped my blood pressure.

So around 1am, we stormed into the Morton's List headquarters and read them the riot act. Chris explained what happened, the event organizers were apologetic without really apologizing and tried to vow that their teams are released with set rules about the stuff they steal, etc etc. Apparently these guys are new to gamers. "Have you checked the Lost and Found," they asked.

OK, the rulebook to Fish Eat Fish is not a huge deal. I'm sure you can find a PDF of the rules somewhere. It's more the principle of the thing that these little shits are encouraged to hassle other convention-goers and steal things. I'll be crafting an incendiary email to the Origins organizers suggesting that they not allow these guys to play in future years, because judging by the size of the Morton's List Lost and Found, I'll wager we're not the only complainers.

But enough about that. Here's our O08 haul.

In addition to the mountain of swag you see there, I also picked up a Marvel Vs. "Coming of Galactus" set, which comes with a special Galactus deck for one player to wield against an Alliance of decks from the other players. There's also special rules to simulate Galactus eating planets (with a giant-sized Galactus card) and swatting down heroes like flies. This sounds like a cool way to play Vs... I want to do a Green Lanterns vs. Galactus game.

By the way, Clark totally owned the Naruto booth two days in a row. The first day he won a free booster, and the second day he walked off with another free booster, a free Naruto trading figure, and a free pack of Naruto card sleeves. That's in addition to the handful of Naruto promo cards that everybody got anyway, and the free starters you got for demoing. Our stack of free Naruto cards is literally three inches high.

Clark was fascinated by the fighting display, where guys sparred with foam swords and shields. If we walked by the battleground, Clark would come to a dead stop and stare. On Saturday morning the guys running the booth let him step inside and take some swings with one of the small swords.

I had to snap a shot of that Blasphemy game I mentioned...

Maybe it's great, but at $99, who's going to know. After all, I could spend $99 on...

...a box of Doomtown?!? Wow, when did Doomtown get so pricy. My basement must be rich. Five years ago, Mike and I were getting boxes of whatever expansion we wanted for $10 to $30. This vendor has a range from $25 to $99. Crazy. That was one of the most expensive games in this display, short of the Magic stuff which always goes for high prices. Just for reference, this was the same stand where I bought a box of Zatch Bell boosters for the low, low price of $5.

And a final tale from Origins 2008, clipped from Thursday morning:

Clark was not even one minute into the vendor hall when he asked "What's that smell?" I did not actually smell anything at that moment, so I don't know what he noticed... but I can't help but figure that my olfactory senses are burned out and his young, fresh nose had a first taste of pure gamer.

I shot a couple quick movies, just to show off what a gaming con looks like for those of you who have never attended... and basic statistics suggests thats all of you. I'll have those into YouTube by the end of the week.