I am a Boston resident who is a huge gamer, so me talking about PAX on here is inevitable. This is the first time I've been to PAX since COVID-19 bounced Sony from the convention in 2020. I really enjoy talking to game developers about their games, especially games that grab my eye, and so I will share my thoughts about PAX across two articles.

Board Games

I need to start somewhere, so I might as well start where most things in gaming start: The tabletop. When I mention board games to my elders, they imagine Candyland, Monopoly, or if they're spicy Catan. Meanwhile I own Twilight Imperium and I can't begin to explain how complex games have become. I really love board games, and I was happy to see new and old companies on display.

This won't be an exhaustive list of what I saw, since that would be massive, but just some highlights to show off the neat things I find neat.

Runaway Parade Games

In 2020 I was enchanted by a game where you play as fire tower operators, watching the fire slowly spread towards your tower and all you can do is have others burn before you do. I bought it at the show and really have had a great time showing off the tiny gems to folks. I got the expansion, Fire Hawks, that are designed around the idea of Australian fire hawks, actual creatures in real life that spread forest fires. So of course the developers added them to the game, letting you set them up in your quadrant to act as a way to move fire around the map. They also had two cute new games in Smug owls and Punch Bowl, with the wonderful feelies that are now expected in these games. In my opinion, these are some of the most interesting board game devs Martha's Vineyard/Brooklyn has to offer.

Nekojima

My younger brother and I saw a booth that was demoing Dead Cells: The Board Game. We both enjoyed that video game for a few hours each, so we were interested in seeing how they made it into a coop game. Despite being drawn in by familiarity, Nekojima shared the booth with Dead Cells and is the game I actually left the show with. It is very simple: Every turn you draw blocks from a bag, and then place a phone pole pair with a string attaching them matching the block color between two quadrants on the board. If you draw a black block, you must place a cat on one of the strings. The first person to touch 2 cables together or knock down the towers loses. It's a wonderful little dexterity game that I was totally charmed by. Cute + slapstick chance = good In my opinion.

Token Terrors

Terrible Games is the name of the company that brings you this insane little wizard chess game. The game pieces reminded me of Crazy Bones of all things, both insane and evocative of the fantasy of mashing up an army. The game is a mix of ideas that are pretty easy to explain: Every unit type has 2 special actions that are listed on a little card. You take 2 unit groups that total to 10 pieces and mix them into your army. You then draw and place them onto the 7x7 board and then try to defeat the opponent's army. I really loved everything about this game, and the only reason I didn't walk away with it was that they are kickstarting a season 2 of it with new unit types. I'll likely try to get people to play this with me, but I find trying to play 2 player board games is a little hard when most of my board game days are ~4 players. Considering I have a similar "giant combining robot hex chess" game called A.E.G.I.S. that I've only played about 3 times in the 8 years I've owned it makes me cautious of stacking too many of these games up.

Binho

This is such a simple concept: Finger soccer! You put your two fingers on the board and "kick" the little ball, trying to get it into the net. This game reminded me of KLASK, a much more complicated game that uses magnets and is reminicent of air hockey. I don't have much more to say about this besides that I love it when a board game is a shrunk down version of a thing that exists.

That's Wizard!

That's Wizard! is just a fun name to say right off the bat. This is a new take on an old classic: an action card game that isn't collectable. How this works is the game gives you all the cards right off the bat. You organize them into a 2x2 card holder binder, and you pick 7 cards from the spellbook. Each spell is of a spell school, and has a rank from 1-4. You can only choose the lowest rank card in that spell school, so if you want the rank 4 death spell, you MUST pick ranks 1-3 of death as well. You then get 2 cards that are always present, focus and counterspell, and then leave 2 cards on the side of the match as your sideboard. Then you do a duel that is best of 3, with sideboard rounds inbetween. This game is going on kickstarter soon (Not to bring politics into this but I hope they don't get destroyed by the Tarrifs...) so I'll keep my eyes on this one.

TTRPGs

The following games are not all new, but they are new to me, which is good enough!

Dawn of the Orcs

This is the indie RPG that I left the show with, and I'll just open with the back of the book description:

Dawn of the Orcs is a GMless dark fantasy game for 1-8 players. Players take the role of a powerful Council of Sages creating the first Orcs to win a war of survival. It includes both collaborative worldbuilding and strategic decision making. Dawn of the Orcs is friendly to new players but will give even jaded veterans a new experience.

So basically if you ever wanted to be Saruman from The Lord of the Rings with your friends, this is the game for you. Apparently this is the year of the Orc, considering my younger brother left PAX with another orc TTRPG. I'm looking forward to doing fantasy war crimes with my buddies with this one!

Beacon

I have written many articles about LANCER, and this is a fantasy fork of that system. It takes the things I loved about LANCER, the license levels, the crunchy grid combat, and adds a layer of Final Fantasy to the whole thing. Their itch.io page has a free player PDF if you're interested in investigating it, and the only person who needs to buy the full game is the GM. Tools also exist in the forms of spreadsheets that help with item generation,world settings, and more.

The player control here is very neat. Every class has 3 ranks, and the first rank unlocks the job for you, which is your baseline stats for gameplay. This means that in expansions they have variant jobs that make the class into two, exclusive versions of it. So if you want to be a paladin that has more support spells, you can take 1 rank in Paladin, then get some Aegis ranks to get access to their spells on your Paladin job. Every class has a specialty (Artillery, Controller, Defender, Striker, Support), so you can choose to hyper-specialize your character or make them good at a few things depending on what your job has slots for. Additionally, there are Talents that are an extra layer of focus for your character that are just always available to the player. I'm hoping that I'll be able to report back on the gameplay soon, but I have my eye on this one.

Home: The Haunted House Map Building RPG

This is a game my friend sent me a photo of and I instantly knew that I needed to get it. This is a game where you have a big tarot deck full of cards, from characters to rooms, and you slowly draw the spooky house you're exploring on a dry erase map. It made me think of games and properties I loved, like Betrayal at House on the Hill, Ten Candles, and Scooby-Doo. I bought a copy, and will report back on it when I rally some friends to join me for spooky times.

Honorable Mentions

D&Tea

This was a company that charmed me thoroughly. They had tea blends that were themed after D&D places and ideas, like the Shadowfel and Long Rests. They also had great tea tumblers with infusers designed to fit them. I need to shout them out, because I honestly spent the most money at their booth this show, which was good timing for me since I'm running out of summer tea.

I'll be back soon to talk about the Video Games at PAX East this year, but I thought it would be better to split the two since otherwise I'd have one MASSIVE article on my hands. See you soon!