PAX East 2014 Pictures

Here are a bunch of pictures from PAX East 2014.  Some I took myself, some I tracked down online.

Board Games! by Jason Mckim.  Yeah, that's the back of my head.  :-)

The Booth!

Demo on Day 1.

Demo on Day 1.

Waiting for Alpha Bandit on Day 2.

PAX East 2014 First Day Pictures by Flavio Mortarino.
PAX East 2014 Second Day Pictures by Flavio Mortarino.
PAX East 2014 Last Day pictures by Flavio Mortarino.

Demo on Day 3.

Demo on Day 3

And  now some pictures from my phone.

Demo on Day 1

Setting up for Alpha Bandit.

Free Colonies ships.

Solar Union ships.

Solar Union and Free Colonies fleets.

Ijad Ship.

Alpha Bandit set-up.

MFZ demo Day 2.

Alpha Bandit battle!

Joshua demonstrating, Day 3,

"This is a ruler."

Joshua, Flakmaniak, Vlad, and Ryan.

Day 2 picture from Flickr.
Another Day 2 picture from Flickr.
An entirely different game of MFZ that I knew nothing about.

PAX East Observations 2014

1.) I'm definitely going to bring business cards next year.
2.) Maybe we should have t-shirts for the MFZ demo crew?
3.) I'm going to take time next year to actually look at stuff, not just wander around aimlessly.
4.) I'm going to play some games next year too.
5.) I need to keep track of the condition of my voice next year.  Considering how wrecked my voice got this year, I may have to impose periods of no talking on myself next year.
6.) Have a full game of MFZ set up, in addition to the demo games, so we can show what one looks like.
7.) MFZ: Alpha Bandit aces are powerful, scary, and game-changing.
8.) I need to play more games of MFZ:AB so I can explore the tactical space it creates.
9.) One drawback to attending PAX East is that I want to talk more about PAX East and MFZ on Monday and I have to go back to work.
10.) If I attend for three days again next year, I'm taking Monday off to recover.
11.) I barely cracked my Demo bag open the entire con.  We used Joshua's stuff for the regular MFZ demo and the ships I built for the Alpha Bandit demo along with a couple of other items.
12.) I want to set more definite dinner plans with people next year so we can actually spend time together outside of the con for a little while.
13.) I'm going to get my panel entry in right after submissions open next year.
14.) As far as I can tell, anyone who chose the team with the Artillery mech for their demo of MFZ did not win.
15.) I'm going to get together a crew of my geeky friends to attend next year.
16.) I'm going to make better attempts at showing up on time next year.  11am or later does not really cut it.

PAX East 2014 Report

I'm back from PAX East.  Once again I had a wonderful time, and -- again -- I added a day of attendance.  I'm trying to type this up on Monday morning and it's all a blur of experiences and events.  I'm not going to give a recap by the day as I've done before as it would take too long for me to type out.  I guess I'll just give out impressions.

• There were bag check lines this year.  Thank you, Tsarnaev brothers.
• I moderated a panel for Indie gaming on Friday which was a new experience and a fair amount of fun.
• Joshua didn't get the chance to show me Alpha Bandit until Friday evening but it is really neat and an interesting twist on the base rule set.
• Soren's ship designs are going to blow your mind.
• I managed to wander the con on Friday afternoon after doing the panel and running some demos.  I saw a lot of interesting things but not a lot of stuff I wanted to buy.
• Saturday is just a mental blur of demos and talking to people about MFZ.  :-)  I did get to run my friend Tom through a demo of Alpha Bandit that morning though.
• Sunday is mostly the same.  I did get to meet Vlad and Ryan again, whom I met the first time I did PAX East back in 2012.  It was great seeing both of them again.
• Flakmaniak from the Hangar stopped by and showed off a number of his creations at the same time Joshua and I were talking to Vlad and Ryan.  We all had a great time ogling his mecha.
• I came real close to losing my voice on Sunday.  I haven't done any talking yet today so we'll see how it is later.
• I think the two main things people brought up about the game were, "How do you get the Lego to assemble the models?" and "The game is great but I have no one to play with."
• If I'm forgetting anyone, I'm sorry.  I met and talked to a lot of people over three days.

See you next year!

PAX East 2014

Once again I'll be helping Vincent, Joshua, and the others demo Mobile Frame Zero.  I'm definitely going to be there Friday (4/11), and Saturday (4/12).  I should be there Sunday (4/13) too, unless something comes up.  I'll have my gear for all three days, and I will have a fleet for Alpha Bandit so we can give that a try.  Here's a discussion thread over on the Hangar if you're interested on meeting up.