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 Kickstarter1running 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”.
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!
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.↩︎
pls pls pls pls let this proclamation age well. ↩︎
So, I got the chance to compete with the Omegathon last year, but before I talk about that, I’d like to tell a quick story.
A long time ago at this point, I had a friend who loved the musical Hadestown. I’ve never seen the whole musical, but there’s a line from it stuck with me far after we’ve fallen out of contact, and I can no longer quite remember them as well as I’d like1.
And it’s this.
But that’s just how the story goes.
Much like the story of Hadestown, I already know how this story ends even before writing this.
I still think about it and that friend a lot. Perhaps more then I’d like to admit.
Prologue
Now that we’ve gotten that somewhat grimmer then expected opening out the way, lets talk about the Omegathon! It’s an event that takes place at PAX where a set of random attendees are selected to compete across all the days of the show in a set of single elimination games. The winner gets $3000, and the runner-up gets to compete in the Omegathon the next year.
PAX East is also a little special in that it’s all teams of two, which means that one of the first things I want to do here is introduce my kickass teammate, @shiraffetopus.
As such, something really important I want to note going forward is that while I’ll be purely speaking about my experience, and my thoughts, there was ZERO chance that this run got as far as it did without her as a teammate. I’ll also be introducing a few other key folks in the journey as we reach them.
Act 1 – F-Zero X – Thursday
The first game was F-Zero X, a game that technically was released when I was alive, but not much else. As such, I’d never played it or another F-Zero game at all before.
I would like to tell you that with this information, I practiced F-Zero X hard for the month prior to the event, mastered the game, cleared all the expert difficulty stages, and came in ready to compete.
Unfortunately that would be lie. I spent the last month playing Blue Prince, Skin Deep, FragPunk, and a bunch of other games all of which were not F-Zero X. I did download the game off the Nintendo Online, and play a bit, but I mostly sucked.
Fortunately, as noted above, this is a team tournament, and so I had a teammate in Shiraffetopus. And unlike me, she had been practicing.
Of course the spirit of the Omegathon is to always spice things up just a little bit, and as a result, this wasn’t going to be any old F-Zero X race.
No, this was on the F-Zero X Japanese exclusive expansion pack, with a custom course made just for the Omegathon. And in addition to that, we had a choice of driving either in tandem, each player having a hand on the controller, or switching off between laps.
After some quick discussion and evaluation of our options, we decided that it would make more sense to have Shiraffetopus drive the first and third lap, as she was the much stronger player of the two of us, and to have me… just mostly try not to crash during lap two.
I did my job, I did not crash, and we made it to round 2!
Act 2 – Push Me Pull You – Friday
After reviewing my non-contribution of Day 1, I was determined to not let that happen again. As such, the next day I pulled out my chunky gaming laptop, a pre-COVID purchase from when I still traveled for work, downloaded Push Me Pull You, plugged in a controller, and realized that I needed at least one other person to play with. After a few postings across the various PAX discords, I was able to find another Omeganaut who was also looking to practice, and we ground out a few rounds.
We also managed to get a few rounds in as a team, so I was feeling fairly confident, and that confidence was mostly well placed! We managed to shred our opponents, and so I sat down feeling very satisfied with myself.
Then the next match of Push Me Pull You happened.
As a side note, I’m finishing up some of this several months later, so I apologize for any mistakes here, but I believe the next match was Guys Being Dudes vs Party in the USA.
And just… holy shit.
Had these two teams been matched into literally anyone else, myself and Shiraffetopus included, it would have been a bloodbath. They were far and away the strongest of anyone else who played that day. I did not think of Push Me Pull You as a solved game, but it turns out if you have the right coordination and tactics, you can absolutely just play in such a manner that once you set up, your opponent can do nothing to stop you.
It was mildly horrifying.
Did I mention that whichever of these teams won would end up being our opponents for the next round?
Act 3 – Wavelength – Saturday
Saturday’s game was Wavelength, a fairly well known party game that I had never actually played before. I’ll go over briefly how it works, before I go over the strategy me and Shiraffetopus used to squeak past this round.
Wavelength’s main component is a dial with a set of scoring zones. The dial is spun randomly, and then hidden. A card is drawn with two polarities and one player has to single to their teammate with a single word clue where to place the dial.
Image blatantly stolen from the Dicebreaker review of Wavelength by Charlie Theel, before the site was thrown into a blender by IGN.
Enter Stage Right – ?????
I’m gonna call this person ?????, because I have no idea if they want to actually be named. If they do, I’ll have to rewrite this section, but I suspect they don’t.
I asked them at one point if they would have done the Omegathon with me, and they responded by saying that “Being up on stage in front of people playing a game is my version of hell”. Anyway. ????? is very good at games, is a friend of mine, and had played Wavelength before, and they had a theory about the game.
In their mind, the primary problem with Wavelength is one of alignment of scale. Lets say you pull a card that reads “Hot/Cold”, and the dial is set to the far left, so very cold. I might say Antarctica, because that’s the coldest place on earth, but you might think that I mean only somewhat cold, because of the vacumn of space is much colder.
This is the alignment problem.
What ????? had Shiraffetopus and I do before we played was agree on a “scale” to use if we got clues or questions that we didn’t have a good reference for. And that scale was Pokemon, as it was something we both had a shared interest in.
And this meant that when we found ourselves with what might be the single worst card ever made, “Push Me/Pull You”, I gave the clue of Ivysaur, keeping us in contention with a perfect guess from Shiraffetopus. This was followed by Shiraffetopus also nailing a guess on our opponents “10 Minute Game/10 Hour Game” to win us the round, and push us into the finals.
Act 4 – Killer Queen – Sunday
The final game of the Omegathon is a secret, up until the last moment. And when it was announced as Killer Queen, I was ecstatic.
See, I’ve actually played a fair amount of Killer Queen Black, the not-quite-sequel to Killer Queen. Not a huge amount. But as the only person on the team who had played before, I thought I had a pretty good shot at winning the game, as I’d be familiar with the strategies and tactics.
A few big wrenches would immediate be thrown into the plan though. First up, both teams were granted a backup player in the form of a someone far, far more familar with Killer Queen then I was:
Jyro, one of the developers on Killer Queen, and Daphane, a professional Killer Queen player3.
Secondly, it turned out that despite my initial confidence, there were large number of differences between Killer Queen, and Killer Queen Black. This included mechanics, tech, and movement of units, and how killing units worked. Not super important if you’re playing a game casually…
Somewhat more important if you’re playing for $3000.
After some discussion, my plan with Shiraffetopus was pretty simple. I would play the Queen, we would call up team members from the audience, and we’d go for a more aggressive military victory. Our plan was to try to crush our opponent before they had time to get more familiar with the controls.
It almost worked.
We managed to take game one and two with some fairly aggressive positioning. I was feeling pretty good about things.
And then we lost game three.
And game four.
Game 5
After game 4, I called a quick huddle, and asked for everyone go for a pure military victory. Given that we’d previously had pretty good luck with pulling that off, I figured that if we put everyone onto warriors, and aggressively chased the queen, we might have a chance before they outplayed us.
Unfortunately for us, they took a strong economic lead, and I didn’t do an effective enough job of controlling the gates. With two berries left and both of us on our last life, we boxed in their Queen, and I went in for a clash.
One of the core mechanics that Jyro explained to us beforehand was how combat works. In Killer Queen, the higher unit will always kill the other unit if the attack connects.
In some sense then, in this exact moment, I lost the Omegathon to a height difference of about six pixels.
But y’know, not quite.
The reality of though is this: I didn’t have to go for this Clash.
I could have been more aggressive earlier in the game, or tried to do zone control purely for our side of the map.
I could have done something other then call for the military rush I asked for, and that my teammates delivered on.
Dragula Slammers won because they forced us into a position where I took risky play to try to avoid certain defeat, and still failed.
And that’s how I got second place in the 2025 PAX East Omegathon.
Epilogue
I don’t like losing. I don’t think anyone who plays games really does.
That said, losing in front of a crowd of hundreds of people on a massive stage is still a bit of a new one. In order to finish out this writeup, I’ve had to watch myself fail over and over on Twitch.
It is a deeply novel experience.
That said, second place gets to compete again. So, next year, I’ll be back. This was still an incredibly fun experience, even if I got so close only to miss out on being a champion.
I also want to offer some small quick thoughts on strategy, what worked well, what worked less well, and what I’d do again.
Play every game beforehand! It doesn’t matter if it’s for five minutes. It doesn’t matter if it’s with the wrong controller. Do whatever you can to play the game beforehand. Any experience will go further then no experience.
Strategize with your teammate! A bad plan well executed is better then no plan at all. The Omegathon at East is a team game, and you can’t win without your teammate.
Expect the unexpected. If you can try to figure out what the twist will be for a specific game, or at least be prepared for the twist, it’ll help when it comes up.
Play it out, even if you think you’re losing, or don’t think you can win. The reality of it is this: You don’t need to be better then everyone else. You just need to be better then your opponent for just a few moments. Comebacks can happen, and you might not ever get another chance to compete in the Omegathon.
So just give it your all and see what happens.
That said, if you happen to get picked next year, I am going to do my best to crush you.
If this post at any points seems a little melodramatic, it’s because I wrote the majority of it last year immediately after losing, then spent several months just sorta sitting on it. Today might be the last day it’s relevant, so I figured I’d just put it out there, and call it a day.↩︎
If it’s not obvious, I don’t like losing. I don’t like it one bit. The best way I can put it is this: I can (and do!) lose gracefully, but inside it tears me up a bit, and based on discussions with friends, more then most folks.↩︎
So, I don’t know that Daphane plays Killer Queen exclusively as a job or anything, but she was introduced to us as a pro, and calling her a “semi-pro/high level player” seems to somewhat understate the achievements of the person who is going to straight up butcher me in the next 30 minutes. Spoilers, I know.↩︎
Woo. It’s been a week of holiday, and unpacking things, and just general work. As such, this is going to be less of a play by play account, and more of a semi-lucid sequence of things that occurred at Unplugged.
So let’s get to it!
Indie Games Night Market
This was the second year of the Indie Games Night Market at PAX Unplugged. Last year, I snuck in and chatted with a bunch of folks about the process, and the games they had at the market. This year, though, I was behind the counter with Max Seidman helping him demo and sell the game Skyline. As a result, I didn’t have any time to actually buy or play games from the night market, so this is going to be a bit of an abbreviated section.
Things were much smoother this year, as the whole area been turned from last year’s queue space into a series of microbooths.
2025 IGNM Booth Layout
This solved some of the big problems from last year, but introduced a few of its own. Folks could queue up for some for the games they were most interested in, and anyone who showed up later still had a chance to browse.
The downside was that unless you were choosing to browse, I think it was harder for folks to see as much of the market as last year. Also, the non-sidescrolling structure meant that whenever a queue did form, I occasionally had to shout over folks’ heads to ask if anyone just there to buy Skyline instead of demoing it.
Additionally, the #IGNM hashtag on BlueSky has a bunch of folks sharing their pictures of the event, if you want a sense of the vibes. I’ll be honest, after setup and pitching the game for an hour and half, I didn’t have the presence of mind to take pictures.
First Look
I spent a lot more time this year than I usually do at First Look, up on the third floor. First Look is where PAX will bring in either newly released, or yet to be released games (usually form Essen), and have them available for play.
The first game we played was Magical Athlete. I liked this one. It’s a very simple roll and move, with a drafting component. Is it a high skill game? No. For me, the joy of the game is in watching everyone else lose it when Lady Luck turns against them. In what’s becoming a running theme of this writeup, I suggest Dan Thurot’s review if you want some more in depth info.
This was followed up by Take Time. It’s a co-operative card placing game, probably most similar to The Crew, and is all about inferences and hidden information. I’m not great at these sorts of games, but my friends who were seemed to be a little underwhelmed by it. Whether that’s mediocre gameplay, or the game’s complete lack of anything resembling a narrative, who can say.
Stem and Branch also goes kinda light on the narrative. It’s about raising the animals of the Eastern Zodiac, but really it’s about playing cards on a board to gain victory points. I didn’t parse the game’s actual strategy until pretty late into it, and spent most of it just making whatever move I could on my turn. It’s not bad, but it’s not incredible. The art for all of the Zodiac animals, however, is absolutely incredible. Loved that bit.
Slime Artist is Pictionary with play-dough, or perhaps silly putty. There is more to it than that, and perhaps a slightly different set of scoring incentives in that you want only one person at the table to recognize your creation. But if you don’t like sculpting or molding, you will not like this game. Fortunately my mother is an art teacher, and I have played with a lot of clay so I do like it.
Finally, there was Subliminal. I should note that I don’t really see words as being constructed from letters, so word games aren’t really my thing. Still, Subliminal isn’t really about spelling. It let me down anyway. I did not like Subliminal. The weird abstract art is the best thing about it, and everything else is pretty mid.
PAX Rising
I spent less time at PAX Rising then I would have liked to, but I do want to give a few quick shoutouts to some things I saw there.
First up, the Brightcast folks had a booth there, and were selling Brightcast! I love Brightcast, and while I missed the Brightcast tourney that was held at the event, I hold in my heart of hearts that I would have won if I’d played. Or at least not gotten knocked out in the first round. Also, they found my missing card box containing pretty much every promo I’d picked up that weekend when I left it near their booth, and got it back to me so that was hugely appreciated.
Next up was Krampusnacht, a game about playing as various dark versions of Santa Claus to capture children to sacrifice to the devil. This was one I played more for the vibes than the gameplay, as it’s a bit too “take that” for me. Still, the public domain art selection is incredible, I loved getting to see it.
Collectible Card Games
It wouldn’t be PAX without a new crop of CCGs, and this year was no exception. I’ll likely have more to say about Riftbound in a few weeks, so for now I’ll leave it out of my description. But as much as I hate to say it, I think it’s probably pretty good, if not hugely innovative. Instead, I’ll quickly cover the other two.
Cookie Run Braverse Trading Card Game is interesting, and yes, that is its full name. I don’t hate or love it, and found myself mostly bemused by the few rounds I played. To give credit where it’s due, it’s the first TCG in a while that I’ve seen that uses no external components to the deck, instead having what feels like a very interesting win condition in its break system. Thematically, I do not care about Cookie Run. I just don’t. Its weird combo of Pokemon and Magic’s resource systems was a bit hard for me to parse at first. After playing with its starter decks, I didn’t feel like the game offered much of note.
OverPower on the other hand is much more interesting. It falls much closer to Flesh and Blood, or Universus—games I have noted in the past I just don’t have a good time with. However, something about OverPower clicked for me. There’s no creatures or spells. Instead there’s a series of actions and reactions, of bluffs and responses. It’s fairly clever, and I found the demo game I played to be engrossing.
Button Shy Booth
I like Button Shy. They publish a bunch of wallet games, pretty much all consisting of 18 cards, a wallet, and rulebook. I’ve written about Skulls of Seldec from their catalogue before, and this year, I spent some time playing Phantasmic and Revolver Noir over at their booth.
First, Phantasmic. It’s a magical buffing/dueling game. It’s simple, quick, and fun despite the fact that I didn’t quite get how the up/down bid worked while I was playing it. Still, I’d like to play more.
Revolver Noir is a much slower thing. It’s a two player duel set in a mansion. It’s fun, but can feel like it drags a little bit, especially if neither you or your opponent are landing any shots, or connecting any traps. While I was at the booth, I heard from one of the folks running the booth that they’d met a group of folks who would play the game without the cards, and just memorized the rules.
AllPlay Booth
Finally, the AllPlay booth. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t have strong thoughts about AllPlay in general, but I did win both of the games I played, so it gets recounted.
First, Twinkle Twinkle. It’s a straightforward drafting/set collection game with the twist that the value of sets is determined by how your stars, planets, and other cosmic debris are placed on your board. The art is cute, the drafting is straight forward, and I have no real strong feelings about it on the whole. But I won!
Then, we played Kabuto Sumo. Kabuto Sumo has been a bit of a running joke between me and a friend for the last few years, as he apparently played a game of Kabuto Sumo that went on for two full hours without a winner, and since then has been convinced it was bad game. As a joke, I bought him a copy of the game for christmas last year. We have never once played it.
It took me less than 15 minutes to defeat him in the sequel, suggesting at least somewhat it’s a skill issue on his part. Or perhaps luck. But I prefer to think of it as skill.
Wrap-Up
This was a bit of a weird PAX for me. I spent a lot less time in the expo hall exploring, and lot less money, both in Reading Terminal and the show.
The whole thing was a little bit more of a blur than usual, and I couldn’t quite tell you why. Days went by quickly. I played a lot of Magic, chatted with folks, and generally tried to have a good time.
I think it was a good show. It’s possible my heart just wasn’t 100% in it.
It’s day three, and I’ve somehow managed to make it to the finals of the Omegathon. That fact is starting to become mildly overwhelming, but for now I’m gonna focus on other things before it becomes all consuming.
Anyway, day three.
I took today pretty slow. After showing up and looking around for a bit, I met up with another friend. I spent some time showing him around the show, and a bunch of the stuff I already liked, meaning I spent less time looking at new things today than I would have otherwise.
Still, before it was time for the Omegathon round of the day, I did get a chance to try out Don’t Wake The Beast and play a bit more Cappy and Tappy. I also played some Dining Deck, a two player co-op prototype deck builder. Dining Deck was interesting, but frankly pretty unpolished. I also played a bit more Re:Match!
And then it was time for the Omegathon. I’ll recount the events in greater detail later, but suffice to say, I’m now in the finals! So in less than 24 hours I’ll either be a champion, or swearing revenge for next year. Either way, it’s been an incredible PAX East, and I’ve had so much fun (and also stress) competing.
After that I got some food, and then finally got a chance to play some two-headed giant with a friend. We did reasonably well, finishing 2-1 overall.
Long time readers will know that I do daily writeups and wrapups of what I saw, and what I played during conventions. Unfortunately, I’m a bit busier this year than I normally am. So allow me to offer a brief and undetailed account, written in a mild fugue state, just around midnight of day 2.
First up, I’d like to explain the business: I’m competing in this year’s PAX East Omegathon.
Sorry, let me say that again.
I’M IN THE FUCKING OMEGATHON! AND I’VE MADE IT SEMIFINALS (after being carried in F-Zero by my awesome teammate)!
Anyway. More on that post show. But suffice to say: any extra energy has been redirected from writing to the Omegathon for the moment. I still want to document my thoughts, so let’s get started.
Day 1
Day 1 started off with the first round of the Omegathon. More on the full experience post show, but the game was F-Zero X. I practiced a little once I got the game list, but I was still quite bad. Fortunately, my partner practiced a ton. Between my mediocrity, and her excellence, we won our round and advanced.
This was followed by hitting the show floor, and just generally browsing. I’ll be honest, it feels a bit weaker this year. There are a lot of repeats, and also a lot of gaming-adjacent stuff. Chairs, dice (god, so many dice), and not as many games.
I want to make a special callout to Elden Ring Nightreign having this cool-ass inflatable geodesic dome thing that you can go inside and… not the play the game? It wins first prize for “Wow, I wish this was more interesting!” I don’t know why I would want to watch an hour of streamers playing a game that I can’t play, but whatever.
I did get a chance to finally learn and play Crokinole, so that was fun. I don’t know that I can squeeze and entire post out of Crokinole, but I might try since I’ve been playing a lot at the show.
Crokinole was followed by something I’ve been looking forward to for years at this point: A chance to play Re:Match, the new name for Brother Ming’s Sento Fighter. I’m hoping to do a larger writeup on the game post PAX, but for now all I’ll say is that I’m excited.
Finally, there was an opportunity to play in a Starter Deck Gem Blenders tournament. I’ve always had a hard time refining my thoughts on Gem Blenders, and playing a competitive event seemed like good way to grind some more matches. So I did that, got to finals, and split the pool.
Then I played out finals for fun and lost, but it’s okay since I already got half a booster box.
Finally, I went up to the Jonathan Coulton concert. I stayed for the opening set from Paul and Storm, but then decided to go back down the show floor and just relax.
Day 2
I spent most of the morning practicing Push Me Pull You, a game that truly has some of the sound design of all time. After that, and some intense rounds in the Omegathon, my team came out triumphant, leaving me with the rest of the day spend futzing about.
I started my futzing with Crokinole, before moving over to UnPub.
UnPub has been interesting this year. I played a bunch of stuff, but none of it so far was super memorable—except for one thing that was memorable for… less than great reasons. That said, it’s a work in progress. I have nothing to say about an unfinished game anymore then I’d comment publicly on an unfinished painting.
On the flip side, though, I got to play Tournament Arc again! I wrote a bit about this in one of my PAX Unplugged writeups last year. It’s still just as funny and enjoyable as it was then, except now it’s launching a Kickstarter shortly! So more on this one later, but for now just know that it’s good. If you’re at PAX East, you should check it out.
After that enjoyable experience, I tried to sign up for some 2-Headed Giant MTG. That… did not work out. It was an incredibly frustrating and frankly, incredibly stupid experience. I’ll get into this post-PAX most likely in a full rant post. It was that bad.
For now, I just want to note that it’s not the fault of individual staff of supervisors at the Pastimes booth as PAX East, but it was still incredibly dumb.
So instead, I just went and played in another Gem Blenders tourny, won another half of a box, played some Wavelength, before finally heading out.
Tomorrow is another day of Omegathon, so wish me luck and I’ll edit this post into something more coherent after the show. But for now, I just need to sleep.
