I was excited to go to PAX East for many reasons, and getting back into some tabletop gaming was one of the things I was looking to do. Being able to play some classic game systems and checking out the arcade was pretty fun, but I must admit I spent a good amount of my time lurking around the tabletop rooms and checking out the vendors.

At one of the vendors, I was able to play a new game that would be coming out from SJ Games called Cthulu Dice. It’s a fun, quick game for 2-6 players where you get an amount of “sanity” marbles and have the goal of remaining sane while you try to make your opponents go insane. You roll the large Cthulu die that has various runes on it in hopes of stealing the sanity of other players or trying to remain sane yourself. If you loose your sanity before the others, you still get to play but you’ll be rolling for Cthulu. It was a fun and fast paced game to play, which is great if you just want to do a quick game.

Thanks to the power of Twitter, I was able to meet up with one of my followers (Thanks Winyder!) and was brought into the wonderful world of Munchkin. I had a blast learning the game with Winyder and Cherith, and we even had another new Munchkin player join us. It became a pretty intense game once we got the hang of the rules. For those interested, we played the pirate version, and I went without having a class for most of the game. We went for a little bit where we were counting our levels on our respective phones (yes I did see that there is a pretty awesome iPhone level counter app after PAX). But to save us and our phone batteries, we were handed a special Munchkin 10-sided die to count levels! Sadly I did not win, but neither did the person who was doing his best to not let any of us win. Not that it mattered much as I still had a blast and will probably be getting one of the editions to play with some friends back home.

I also had a chance meeting with some WoW players (who also helped me to snag a snazzy PAX East scarf) who invited myself and Cherith to join them on Saturday to play a WoW TCG raid. I had been meaning to build up a deck to play the TCG as it sounds interesting and the fact that they developed a way to play raids seemed pretty cool. So after a great time at the SFX-360 party, Cherith and I headed back to the convention to relax with the guys and do an Onyxia raid. There were six of us total: One person played as Onyxia with the raid deck and the rest of us picked up classes to fight against her. I wound up being the Warlock and had fun learning about the different traits and spells I could use. The warlock pets are handled nicely, as are spells like Rain of Fire.

I also really enjoyed learning how the raid mechanic worked for the game. Onyxia has three phases just like in WoW and they’re timed, meaning you only have a certain amount of turns to bring her down. Otherwise her card flips over and she kills everyone. Onyxia can also cast tailswipe, summon whelps and Deep Breath on her turn among her many attacks. Many cracks were made referencing the Onyxia Wipe Animation and we just had a great time. I picked up on what to do fairly quickly and near the end of the raid was able to pick out what moves I’d want to play on my next turn. In the end we downed the dragon. and I’ll probably have to build up a deck for the TCG and hopefully find a group of people to play with locally.

Another great card game I had the chance to demo was Summoner Wars. Created by Plaid Hat Games, Summoner Wars takes place in the world of Itharia where you can battle it out as a Goblin, Dwarf, Elf or Orc. I wound up battling it out as a Goblin, and once I got the hang of it avoided being massacred by my opponent by what I’m convinced was sheer luck. There are two different starter sets that you can buy which come with two of the factions, game board and all the other materials you will need to play the game, and at $24.95 per starter set is a pretty good deal.

To wind down on Sunday, I met up with some twitter people again to play Race for the Galaxy and Betrayal at House on the Hill. Race for the Galaxy was pretty fun, but admittedly I had more fun playing Betrayal at House on the Hill. I’ve always had an affinity for board games and this hit the spot for me. It was a fun mystery game where you get to build your own haunted house and try to avoid the person who winds up betraying you. The game is out of print, however it is said that an updated reprint of the game will hit shelves this fall, and I will probably pick it up.

All in all PAX East, as my first PAX, was a pretty awesome experience. I got to see some cool stuff, meet awesome people and play games. It was cool to have the chance to meet Carlos Ferro, the voice of Dom from Gears of War, who said he likes Gaming Angel. And meeting Wil Wheaton, who is actually one of my influences to write, was really great. It also clinched my need for wanting to go to PAX Prime. I’m glad that the first PAX East did so well since that means there’s a great chance of it being even bigger next year. So I will see you next year Boston!