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, I played some sealed Riftbound, and I helped run the Pokecrawl!
Woo. Very busy day. Let’s 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, and 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 here, 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’s crafting meets a card game. It is fascinating, it is ambitious, and I am so deeply hopeful that it works out. I recognize that I’m asking you to put your trust in me and join a Discord for a game that doesn’t exist yet. 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 a 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 by 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 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 incredibly, 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 more challenging than many of the card games I’ve gotten into recently, as there are a lot more play lines than I’m used to considering, even compared to Magic.
Anyway, I had to drop from that early to get over to help run the Pokecrawl! I’ve done this about 3 times now, 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 than it does a full writeup, but 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 may not match yours. Okay, back to normal writing.↩︎
pls pls pls pls let this proclamation age well. ↩︎
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.
Ed Note: I promise I’m going to add photos to this at some point this week, even if it’s not right now. Ed Note 2:Approximately 2 years later, it would appear that ed note 1 was a lie.
First, a few quick notes: Unlike my other posts, I’m not actually writing this on day 3. Unlike Friday and Saturday night, on Sunday I never got a chance to sit collect my thoughts.
So instead, I’m piecing it together after the show from the business cards I grabbed, screenshots on my phone, and other small notes.
Everything described here is something that happened, but there are also things that did happen that I forgot, because I am completely fried. Mostly in a good way! But still fried.
Morning
Despite being the shortest day of the show, Sunday is probably the day that I played the most games.
First I played Scallywagers, a pumped up version of Liar’s Dice. It’s interesting, but having picked up a copy, and gotten a chance to play some more, it’s tough to recommend. The game is trying to solve the question “How do you improve Liars Dice?” but its solution is a bit lacking. More on that in a future writeup hopefully.
The second game of the day, War of Beasts, was also an attempt to revise a classic game. In this case, the card game War. And again, their design prompt is more interesting than the final product. It might have been intended for kids. I played a few times, and it felt like luck was the primary deciding factor each time.
I also got a chance to see the current state of Super Battle Mon, which was exciting! I do want to note that I’m a Kickstarter backer for this game, so I’m not a neutral voice here, and I want this game to succeed.
That said, with 12pm approaching, it was time for food.
Afternoon
After finally getting a chance to grab lunch at reading terminal for the first time this weekend, I continued across the showfloor, and found myself in front of Dragon Dice, a collectible dice wargame.
I sat down at the Dragon Dice booth mostly because they had chairs. Starting up a demo, my opponent proceeded to have the single worst run of luck I have ever witnessed in a war game. Before I had even taken my first turn, my automatic counter attacks had wiped out a sizable portion of their army. The result is that I’m not really sure what to think of the game.
The next booth with chairs was a pick-and-pass drafting game called Pride of Ninja. I quite liked Pride of Ninja. The game has a couple twists on the standard pick-and-pass game. One is that you draft cards into slots either face up, or face down, and their are a limited number of slots of each type. Cards also care about if they’re face up or not during scoring, so there’s some interesting signaling there as well.
The last show floor game of the day for me was String Railway. I’ll be honest, I’m little bummed I didn’t get a copy of this one. It’s a game about trains, but the train lines you place are actual pieces of string. I wouldn’t quite call it a physical dexterity game. But when so many game are regimented by grids and sheets, there was something freeing about just trying to carefully place rope.
The last game of the day was Abracabattle. It was one of my favorite designs from UnPub in 2023, and the designer Josh Finkel was kind enough to show me the current version. There are a whole bunch of changes and improvements, but the big thing I really want to call out is how much better all the synergies and elements feel. Previously, snakes were the only card type that had synergies, and felt like they provided both a strategy. But now Cheese and Air card types are also incredibly fun.
Last year Abracabattle was a game with strong core elements, that didn’t quite have the right cards for its gameplay. Now, it feels like a full game, with a few reworked systems, new items, and a MUCH stronger set of cards. I’m really excited to see where it goes.
Breakdown
No, not that type, though I was feeling a bit like that by the end of the day. I mean the sort where you pack everything up, and go home. I helped some friends take down their booth, and it’s always fascinating to see everything come down, and get stored for the next event, and to watch a hall full of wonders turn into an empty expanse of concrete.
I also found random cookies in a cookie bucket. Are those the reason for my current state? Possibly, but I doubt it.
Missed Connections/Final Thoughts
There were a fair few things I wanted to try out, but didn’t get a chance to see. I’ve been very curious about Ironwood since I saw it last year. I love asymmetry, and it just generally appealed to me, but the wait time was always a bit too long.
Similar feelings about Gnome Hollow. There were only two tables, and while I’ve heard good stuff, it’s hard to tell if it’s marketing hype, or actual enthusiasm.
I never got a chance to really do any Lorcana either, even if I did pick up some singles.
Finally, I wish I’d gotten a chance to try more things at the night market. It was great to be able to get in, and even get the few items I did, but I would have loved to play more weird stuff.
Overall, this was a good if very, very busy PAX.
Save travels, and as always, more writeups to come in the future. If you want to know about those as they come out, please consider following me on Bluesky.
