PAX East 2026 – Day 1

Like some monster in a horror movie who is defeated, only to return for the sequel, I am back! And I’m back in the Omegathon. Also, I saw this rad card game, and I played some sealed Riftbound, and I helped run the Pokecrawl!

Woo. Very busy day. Lets start at the top shall we?

My morning was dominated by two things: Getting the most I could out of media hour on the show floor, only to be followed by competing in round one of the Omegathon. For media hour, I mostly bumped around the show, chatted with a few folks, and I want to call out two things.

First up, Brother Ming is out demoing Re;MATCH! It’s got a Kickstarter1 running right now. Longest time readers will know that I have been waiting for this game since 2020, and that it has been a long and interesting road to get her, but I’m thrilled that it’s gonna be a real thing I can own.

The first big discovery of PAX East though, the first exciting new thing, is Eidol.

It is Path of Exile crafting meets a card game. It is fascinating, it is ambitious, and I am so deeply hopeful that it works out. I recognize that asking you to put your trust in me, and join a Discord for a game that doesn’t exist yet, and even the Discord server is a bit sparse, but trust me: this thing has stupid amounts of potential, and if I could have you play this demo, I would.

And as I final brief aside: Orna has a booth! I wrote about Orna almost 4 years, but since then the game has evolved immensely. I’ve been told the game now has a queuing feature where you can “collect” encounters, check ins, and events, and then play them all at once later, solving my primary issue with the game: Trying not get hit while a bus while playing classic RPG combat is actually kinda difficult, so I may have to give it another try.

Which brings up our next topic of interest: Round 1 of the Omegathon.

Okay. So.

It was Rocket League. I am quite bad at Rocket League, but in what is becoming a bit of a running bit, I was carried by my awesome teammate Dizzybelle. I would also like to note that unlike last year, I DID practice rocket league. I played like 10 hours! I’m just very bad at rocket league.

Witness the faces of the returning “were very close to being champions”.

I REMAIN ALIVEEEE.2

Anyway, after that I grabbed some lunch, and did a little meandering before sitting down for my second competition of the day: a sealed Riftbound event.

I haven’t played anywhere near enough Riftbound to have a good set of thoughts about it yet, but what I’ve played so far has been interesting, and I generally like it. I didn’t do incredible, winning round 1, before getting cleaned out in round 2 by a much more experienced player who was kind enough to help me fix my deck after.

I find Riftbound much challenging then many of the card games I’ve gotten into recently, as there are a lot more play lines then I’m used to considering, even compared to magic in some situations.

Anyway, I had to drop from that early to get over to help run the Pokecrawl! I’ve done this about 3 times now, and it’s always a fun event, and it’s even more fun to help run!

And now I am back home. And I am tired. This reads a bit more like a journal entry then it does a full writeup, but I think that, and unpacking a million cards is all I have energy for now, so I’ll end it here, and I’ll be heading back to the show tomorrow!

P.S: If you’d like to try out the newest Card City Critters puzzle, keep an eye out for me around the show! I’ll be wearing the same goofy green sweatshirt, and possibly a ditto bucket hat!

  1. Quick Disclosures and Whatnot: I’m a Kickstarter backer for the this. Do your own research before deciding to back Kickstarter projects, because my risk tolerance my not match yours. Okay, back to normal writing. ↩︎
  2. pls pls pls pls let this proclamation age well. ↩︎