ENGN Episode 118 - PAX Unplugged 2018 Recap Pt. 1: Reviews and Previews

Every Night is Game Night

Last year, we went to PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia, where we had a lot of fun, played a lot of games, and gathered clips from various attendees who spoke about the show. This year, we have two episodes for you! More games, more clips, and more coverage of the only convention that Jason gets to go to all year (hooray for newborns...). We start things off with two first impressions of some good games - with some more plays, we might get back to these for some proper reviews. First, Anthony and Chris from Board Gamers Anonymous join Jason for his first play of Teotihuacan: City of Gods (3:42), a Euro worker placement game where you get to construct your own pyramid out of tiles and... yes... score points. After that, Jason ran for cover from all the Euro goodness and found himself demoing The Reckoners (16:25), a cooperative dice rolling superhero game based on a series of novels by Brandon Sanderson. Designer Brett Sobol was good enough to give us his thoughts on his design goals for player experience here. For our sole proper review this episode, we take a look at Star Realms: Frontiers (25:50), the second full expansion for Star Realms. We take a particular look at the solo-coop space battle modules that this expansion includes, as well as the special, player-specific Legendary Commander packs which are sold separately. Finally, Jason spoke with one of the designers, Rob Dougherty, about the mechanical differences between Star Realms and Hero Realms. Finally, we get to some hot previews! We hear from the designers and publishers of 1001 Odysseys (39:18), The Everrain (49:55), and Comanauts (57:04). All three of these promise storytelling and adventure in their gameplay, so you know Jason will be all over these when they release!