The Indie Mega Booth was actually my first stop at PAX. Crammed with tiny tables, there were a ton of cool looking games either for sale or about to head to Kickstarter. I even saw my old friends at Zephyr Workshop showing off A.E.G.I.S again. I was hoping to get back to the booth to demo a bunch of the games, but I ended up seeing a LOT more than I would have thought, and couldn’t get back there in time.

Titans Tactics by Imbalanced Games

Titans Tactics is a 30 minute skirmish game were teams of 3 champions face off against each other. The game uses cards, so there’s very little randomness and a lot of tactics and planning involved. You can snag the game on Amazon for $25.

Mahou Shojo by Deerfox

“Fight like a girl”, Mahou Shojo is a 2 player game about battling magical schoolgirls that’s currently up on Kickstarter. Targeted at girls, the game features cute artwork that doesn’t fall into many of the Anime stereotypes these types of games are usually known for. There’s actually 2 open play test decks available for download if you’re interested in giving the game a shot: The Bakery Deck and The Garden Deck.

Skiptrace

Skiptrace is a cheeky game of moonlighting agents trying to complete missions. With stunning, minimalistic cards, players get targets, objectives, resources, locations, and itemss and have to complete their mission. The game has some pretty awesome cards, and a wonderful look and feel.

Pleasant Dreams

Pleasant Dreams has you trying to take control of your dreams to have a pleasant night’s sleep. Players go back and forth in a game of tug-of-war trying to create good dreams for themselves while slipping terrifying visions on their opponent’s dreams. The game is currently available for $20.

Mech Deck

This game is right up my alley. Mech Deck is a game of giant robot combat where pieces of your mech can be blasted off and rendered useless. Lighter and more approachable than some larger mech games, I can see this one becoming a real hit. A modular board system and customizable mechs mean replayability should be high with this one.

The Shadow Over Westminster by Counter Clockwork Games

The end of the world approaches and The Agency must put a stop to it. The Shadows of Westminster is a deckbuilder mixed with a cooperative board game. Players must do research to find out what’s going on in order to stop whatever evil is threatening to destroy the world. Sometimes, one of the agents is actually the evil and then proceeds to try and kill everyone.

Divorce

Divorce is a game about just that. Players take the role of a married couple trying to get the most our of their divorce as possible. If you can’t get something, you can always make sure the other person doesn’t getting by burning it down or somehow destroying it. You even need to take into account the kids in the whole messy affair. Sounds like your cup of tea? You can preorder it here for $20.

Bad Detectives by Forced Output

Unfortunately my picture of Bad Detectives didn’t come out that great. It’s a shame, because it’s a game you really need to see (so you can just hit that link to the left). In the game you play a bad detective trying to look good by solving cases. You do this by linking up all the information you have with thumbtacks and string. Solid connections are good! Broken connections, no so much. You’re basically trying to tie as much information together as you can while trying to trip up your fellow bad detectives. It’s actually really hilarious.

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Greater than Games was showing off a video game version of Sentinels of the Multiverse at PAX East. The game faithfully reproduces its tabletop counterpart and even has most of the expansions available as in-game purchases.

It looks great, and is a lot of fun. It’s a great way to take the game with you on a tablet or phone and play solo. The game is also out on Steam. Having had a change to play I’m mostly satisfied with it. The interface is a little clunky until you get used to it, and the pacing could be a bit faster. Hopefully these are things that will be fixed as time goes on. It won’t stop me from playing the game, though, and I’m sure I’ll be enjoying this one for some time to come.

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I stopped by Breaking Games to visit the new friends I made at Toy Fair this year. While I was there I noticed a game I didn’t see previously, Pack the Pack. The game is all about fitting the most loot in the limited space of your pack and getting back to town with the most valuable items. Each tile has an item, color, and gems. There’s actually a few variations of play that take into account each of the 3 tile attributes, each fast-paced.

The rulebook is available online if you’d like to get a handle on the game before heading over to the website and preordering a copy.

The only thing I could think about while checking this out what how crazy I go while trying to organize and prioritize loot in games like Diablo and Torchlight. It always felt like a game-within-a-game, and now that task is.

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Aviary Games was showing off two games at PAX East this year, Alchemy and Interregnum. Interregnum will be coming to Kickstarter soon so I really just focused on the former.

Alchemy is a game where players are young alchemist apprentices trying to master the craft. Everyone is competing against the others to craft potions while fudging other players’ crafting. The trick here is that each potion can only be crafted once. You need to see what everyone around you is doing so as not to get too far in only to have another player complete a specific potion before you.

Alchemy handles 2-5 players, and you can check out the rules here to find out more about how it plays. Having been successfully funded on Kickstarter, backers should be getting their copies shortly. You can also preorder the game here.

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Secured in a glass case, almost forgotten by those around it, Orcs Must Die the board game sat. Shadowed by its video game counterpart, I was still able to snag someone to get more info about it. It’ll actually be two board games, Orcs Must Die: Order and Orcs Must Die: Unchained. Each can be played on it’s own as a cooperative tower defense game, or the two can be combined as a Player vs Player game.

Order will have the players playing as the heroes, while Unchained will be the Orcs. Each version of the game will support 1-4 players, and will handle a full 8 when combined. The game is currently still in development, and just like everything else, will be hitting Kickstarter soon.

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New from Tectonic this year is an amazing look dice tower. The tower, which comes flat packed and needing assembly like all their other products, comes in a $25 plain version and $45 detailed version. Dan described both as taking a few nights during the week to construct. The towers look great, and have a great sounds to them when dice pass through.

I should mention that both the $25 and $45 towers are exactly the same size. The only difference is the amount of detail in the design. Along with the towers, Tectonic’s line is a bit more robust than it was last year. Dan’s kept himself buy making new products, and traveling around the country to show them off.

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I stopped by the CritSuccess booth to see what was new. I’m a huge fan of my r20, and I was hoping to catch a glimpse of something special.

Indeed I did. I present to you, the Chainmail Dice Bag.

The picture doesn’t do it justice. This thing is a beauty. It’s 100% stainless steel, and it’s tough as nails. They let me tug on it, stomp on it, and try my best to break it. The bag held up to it all. Not only that, but it’s actually a really good size. I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for dice bags, particularly leather ones. This bag has me rethinking my loyalty.

CritSuccess ran a Kickstarter with a goal of raising $500 to get the bag made. They raised almost $50,000.

While these bags are amazing, they won’t be cheap when they’re available to the public. It looks like you’ll need to shell out $50 for one, but it’s worth it in my mind.

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Lay Waste Games was showing off Dragoon, a game that’s currently in the Kickstarter process. The game is already funded, but there’s still stretch goals to unlock.

The game is beautifully minimalistic, and it’s an art direction that the team originally wasn’t going to go with. It’s a good thing they did, because it really is something to see. The pieces are pretty amazing, too. While the dragons look to be wooden or resin, they’re actually pewter. Solid, heavy, and totally amazing feeling.

The goal of Dragoon is to amass 50 gold in your cave before the other dragons do. You get gold by destroying villages, forcing villagers to pay tribute, or by stealing it from other dragons. The whole game is supposed to last 30-60 minutes, and should be easy to learn. I was really impressed with what I saw, and am eager to try my hand at the game.

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I always love it when I stumble across a booth when just walked randomly around a convention. Tucked away along one of the walls at PAX East was the Momentum Volsk booth. Here I got a change to see and play Castle Assault, a game that’s currently up on Kickstarter. The game plays very similar to a MOBA, with 3 lanes that players fight through to attack the other player’s castle. Chip the castle’s health down to zero to win. It’s not as simple as it sounds. You’re constantly playing a game of tug of war in each lane, trying to get the upper hand to make it across the board.

Castle Assault has several different factions that all play differently. There’s also hero cards that let you, the player, act as a character in the game. The cool part about heroes is that they can be permanently upgraded between games. Another cool thing about them is that if you summon them in game and they die, you instantly lose. There’s also a Momentum meter on the board that bounces back and forth at the start of each player’s turn. When it’s in the upper ranges for a player it provides certain bonuses, and certain cards are more powerful if your momentum is maxed out.

I played Castle Assault with TJ, the designer of the game, and lost horribly. That’s OK though, because I had a great time. TJ sent me home with a few factions decks, a hero, and a board so I could play the game a bit more with my kids. My 9-year-old son is a big fan, with a healthy love of the Orcs.

The game is definitely worth a look, and if you’re into fantasy games, tactical games, etc… then I’d pledge to see it get out there.

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I made sure to see what SFR was up to this year, as I was excited to find out last year that Dragon Dice was still in production. This year they had 2 new products to show. The first was a new Daemon type for Daemon Dice, Fester. The dice are yellow with red ink, and allow you to mix things up a bit more in the game. I actually have some bagged, early-release Fester dice from last year, but now they’re boxed and ready to hit shelves. There’s 13 dice per Fester Booster, and they retail for $12.95.

On the Dragon Dice side, there’s now a new Amazons Kicker pack. This set contains the never-before-see Nightmare die, and each Kicker pack contains: 7 6-sided dice: 4 16mm commons, 2 18mm uncommons, and 1 20mm rare. They also include 1 random 22mm 10-sided monster die and a rules sheet. Retails is $9.95.

While I was at the booth I was also able to snag a Firewalker/Treefolk starter to get back into the game and start posting some reviews.

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