PAX East 2014 wrap up and future plans

Thursday, April 17th, 2014

This past weekend was quite the weekend. It’s been several days and I am finally settling back to some kind of normalcy. It’s funny. I waited so long for PAX East to come around and when it finally came I was so tired after the first day. Now that it’s past, I can’t wait for it again. I really enjoyed being busy, and I am especially happy I left Sunday as open as I could have so I could spend time in the tabletop room.

I have to say, and I am probably sound very biased, but Battleground Games & Hobbies really had a tight crew this year. You should all feel really proud of yourselves and the job you did. I’m sure you left quite the impression among all the PAX East attendees who came by the booth. You even had some StarCraft 2 celebrities stop by! Although, I had to remind Chase of who they were. It’s okay though, I let him take the credit.

Now that the weekend is over it’s time to get back to my writing. If you’re into video games at all, I encourage you to check out my coverage of PAX East. I got to meet with some great people on the industry side of things. I even got to sit down with Mark Purvis, the Brand Director for Magic, and Liz Lamb-Ferro, the Brand Manager for Magic, and talked about the latest edition to the Duels of the Planeswalker series. I couldn’t get any specific Magic 2015 spoilers, but meeting them was still a lot of fun.

The one thing I didn’t get to do that I wanted to accomplish was all the “networking” for Extra-Life. I realized, during a lot of my interviews, that we were all on a strict schedule. However, I was able to get a lot of e-mails through PR companies. So we’ll see if I can get anything done through them.

Now that PAX East is over…

While I didn’t get to play any new board games at PAX East, I did get to play some games I had only played once or twice before. It was good because it reminded me that I really need to purchase copies of these games. The games I played were “Smash Up,” “7 Wonders,” and “Formula D.” If you haven’t played them yet, I highly recommend you do soon.

I did manage to get my hands on at least one game. That game was “Quarriors.” I’m a little late to the game when it comes to “Quarriors,” but it’s better late than never. I am trying to get myself ready for when Marvel Dice Masters eventually comes out. I was also very interested in getting the Lord of the Rings edition as well. However, I need to learn the basics. For all I know, I might hate the game, but I doubt it. I also wanted to get a copy of “Dungeon Roll,” but I was too slow in pulling the trigger when it came to buying it. I just hope Battleground Games & Hobbies will have more copies on hand in the future.

Boston Festival of Indie Games

With PAX East in the bag, I am now looking forward to the Boston Festival of Indie games. For those of you that have no idea what I am talking about, the BostonFIG, is a game festival hosted at MIT. This year will be the third year of the event, and if you haven’t been there before I think you should give it a shot. There is a video game section as well as a board game section.

I was able to check out a little of the video game section and there were many award winning indie developers (many of whom were based in Boston) that were in attendance. Most of my time was spent in the tabletop section that was located on the second floor of the student center. By the end of the day, it was very packed and moving around was a little difficult. For some games, there were lines of people waiting to demo them. Hopefully this year they will find more room for the games. The video game section was held in the athletic center. So they had plenty of room to work with.

This year’s festival dates have not yet been announced, but it should be some time in the fall. Last year it was in September. I’m thinking it should be around then. I’ll update this post when the dates are announced.

*UPDATE: While posting this blog post, I realized they did post the date for the BostonFIG. It will be held on September 13, 2014.

Journey Into Nyx prerelease coming soon

As you can tell by the header, the Journey Into Nyx prerelease is coming soon. Over the past few prereleases, I’ve gotten a little tired of them. I’m not going to lie, I miss having the last booster pack. Don’t get me wrong, the pack that comes with your chosen “path” is a neat idea, but it’s lost its flavor, and now it tastes rather stale. That might just be me though. I would much rather have the randomness of the last pack. I mean, what if, out of the other five packs, you don’t get any help for your chosen path? Now you’re left with a pack for that path and no help. Cue the sad music.

There is still a couple of weeks left before the event. I guess I still have time to decide if I want to go or not.

Will any of you be going to the prerelease? What are you looking forward to from Journey Into Nyx?

About the author

Simeon is an avid gamer who loves to play board games and video games. He graduated college with a degree in Political Science, and now serves the public by writing about games. You can check that out here. Don’t forget to “like” him on Facebook as well. It’ll update you on all of his newest content. Best of all, you can follow Simeon on Twitter (@SimeonCortezano) for some real time hilarity. Thanks for reading!

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Tags: Boston Festival of Indie Games, BostonFIG, Journey into Nyx, Magic the Gathering, MTG, PAX East 2014, Prerelease, Simeon Cortezano, Tabeltop, Wizards of the Coast
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