Diesel DM

For the uninitiated PAX is the Penny Arcade eXpo.  Last year they spread out from their original PAX Prime in Seattle to have a PAX East in Boston.  It was a massive success.  So massive that they brought it back to Boston again this year, only in a much larger building.  At 69,500 people, it became the largest gaming convention open to the public in America.  It should be noted that this post is not heavy with PAX pictures as I did not bring a camera (beyond my iPhone).  I’m not sure I would have taken the time for pictures even if I had.  I feel like I was on the go my entire time and to fit anything else in would have been impossible.

The picture (above) of my swag and purchases really tell much of my PAX East story.  The red badge at the bottom was my three-day pass to gaming nirvana.  I got it signed by both Mike and Jerry, making the badge that much more memorable.  Underneath it is the PAX East 2011 book that came in the swag bag full of useful information about the expo.  The picture doesn’t tell the tale of how thick the book is, but it is surprisingly thick as would any volume need to be to try to encompass even part of what was included in PAX.  The blue lanyard to the right was also included, but I already had my WWDC lanyard hooked up.

Moving northeast my pile of Magic: The Gathering swag.  A shirt I received for playing the as yet unreleased next version of the Planeswalker game, available on console and PC.  As it happens this was the only game demo I played, while others spent all three days waiting in 4+ hour lines just to play games I had never heard of.  I saw a sign in one line that said “4 hour wait from here. If it’s after 2pm when you reach this point you will not get to play.”  I was so busy running around having an awesome time I can’t imagine dedicating that much time to queue for a few minutes of gameplay that soon you’ll be able to purchase and play at home.  On top of the shirt are three half-decks, two blue and one green.  One of these came in the swag bag, the other two I got for playing the new Archenemy Magic game where 3->6 players fight as one against a single enemy who is aided by double life and Scheme cards that give them a number of big advantages, from damaging all players to generating a 5/5 flying dragon.  I won both games I played in.  The black band is a wristband/USB key that is supposed to hold something Magic related, I have yet to plug it in.  Lastly was a 2011 Core Set I bought to play some games with.

Above the Magic pile is Wrath of Ashardalon, the most fun part of my PAX experience.  I played with 4 complete strangers and it was awesome.  When you get in any kind of game that everyone is passionate about, and better still happy just to be playing, it will always turn out to be a great time.  We won our scenario, though it was no sure thing.  There will be a separate post on Wrath Ashardalon in the future, as it is well deserving of more than a paragraph in a PAX recap.

Moving counterclockwise is more D&D swag.  Across the top are three lanyards replete with character cards and Monster Slayer buttons.  These came from what I called Life-Size-D&D.  There was a gridded floor that six people entered, each with wearing 1 of 10 character cards that contained two spells, AC, HP and Initiative.  Only a d20 was required, they had two available, each the size of a basketball made of a dense foam material and fairly heavy.  There were two possible monsters: a dragon (Ashardalon, tying in with the board game, and the vampire from Castle Ravenloft, tying in with the first D&D board game).  My first time through I was Rhogar, a Dragonborn Paladin and we killed the dragon.  The second time through I was Belgos, Drow Ranger and we killed the vampire.  My third trip through I was Uldane, Halfling Rogue and we killed the dragon again.  The second time through we also received the black D&D bag in the pic above.

Beyond indulging myself with three trips through life-size-D&D, I also played in a normal Dungeon Delve.  The delves contained two encounters and were limited to an hour and our DM had set himself the task of exterminating us before that time had elapsed.  It was a very rushed game that targeted Power Gamers and Slayers, leaving any other player type feeling simultaneously rushed and bored.  For completing the first encounter and making it to the start of the second without losing anyone before time was up we received three D&D tokens.  The tokens can be redeemed for other D&D swag, but three is not actually enough to get a prize.  Fortunately it was the last day, so the guy let me convince him that he should give me something anyway.  (A real life diplomacy check, if you will.)  I walked away with a set of condition cards that would have cost 5 tokens the previous two days.  After convincing the WotC employee to give us upgraded gear, a woman from ThinkGeek had been standing nearby also gave me an Annoyatron for free.  (Diplomacy check succeeded.)

The two dice cubes are matching dice sets straight from the Chessex booth.  This was one of my few goals of PAX that I achieved.  I got one standard D&D set of dice and once set of d6’s as used in WARMACHINE.  The color (light blue swirl with white numbers) I chose was one of the new for 2010 colors.  It’s worth noting that the Chessex booth was the most consistently busy vendor that I saw.  Every time I went by there was a line just waiting to get close enough to see the dice.  Apparently the “Obtain dice from PAX” was a popular goal among attendees.

Jumping all the way to the left is a tube of Zombie Dice.  This must have been the most ubiquitous game at PAX.  Everyone was either playing it, purchased it or going to purchase it.  I demoed it at the Steve Jackson Games booth.  The demo started with the Steve Jackson employee instantly beating the game, a rough start to a sales pitch.  Restarting the game proceeded more smoothly and all involved had fun, with me winning.  I purchased a tube of my own that day.  Just below that are three Munchkin coins that I received for playing Revolution and Munchkin Zombie.  Munchkin Zombie lived up to all the other Munchkin games.  I played with one friend and 4 people I had never met.  It was a great game, with all of us making level 9 before the game being won by two separate folks due to a loophole in the rules.  Revolution did not engage me, it wasn’t awful, but I had no urge to purchase it.

Another goal I had at PAX was to play my first game of WARMACHINE.  I had stayed up several late nights getting two of my models painted and I really wanted a chance to use them in combat.  Pictured to the left, I got my chance. The two painted models are mine, an Ironclad backed by Stryker.  I played a 15 point demo game against a really nice kid that was there helping folks paint minis and giving WARMACHINE demos.  And in a recurring theme in this post, I won.  Sadly this was the only game of WARMACHINE I got to participate in.  There was a tournament later that day and unbeknownst to me quite a lot of free play the next day.  Looking at the other models at PAX it turns out mine are painted really well.  For the amount of time I spent on them I suppose this shouldn’t be too shocking, but I was really surprised.

Overall I was extremely disappointed with the lack of WARMACHINE love at PAX, especially given that Penny Arcade has drawn so many folks into the Iron Kingdoms and WARMACHINE/Hordes.  Privateer Press begged off with the excuse that need at least a year to prepare for a convention and they weren’t popular with the PA crowd a year ago.  A year for one convention?  That’s a weak excuse in my book.  As a result of this lack of company support there was only one vendor there selling WARMACHINE product and they were taking advantage by charging full retail prices.  So my goal of purchasing a WARMACHINE model at PAX went unfulfilled.

I just now realize I didn’t mention any panels in my post.  While I had a schedule full of them, I only ended up attending two. What happened?  PAX happened, I was just having too much fun on the floor to make it to the rest. One of my panels focused on first-timers and what to expect and do at PAX while maximizing your time.  Another was a D&D:Edition Wars.  Both were valuable, though obviously I won’t need the first again.  The D&D: Edition Wars featured four folks who worked at some point for Wizards on different editions.  It may sound like this was just a bunch of nerds arguing over which edition is best but it never even approached that.  Instead it was a fantastic viewpoint into the different editions and design decisions from the people who were there making them.  This was the most interesting thing I did at PAX, and I feel that, at least for a moment it really opened up my mind to the possibilities in D&D, in all editions and those yet to come.

PAX was open 10am-2am Friday and Saturday and 10am-7pm Sunday.  We arrive a little late Friday and left a little early Sunday, but even so I was on the go the entire time, too much occurred, too much fun was had, too many great games played to recall it all in a single blog.  This was already lengthier than I imagined, but worth every word as I condensed it a great deal.  I would love to return to PAX next year, but the lack of WARMACHINE was pretty glaring, so I may try to attend Privateer Press’s own Lock&Load convention next year instead.  Or both?  Maybe PP will step up and have a presence at PAX East 2012. Time will tell.