Pax East report:

General GTG Events
1

Had a great time at Pax, and a great time working the >G booth.  Demoing Sintinels was much less work and a whole lot more fun than I anticipated.

So many new people playing the game and falling in love with it was a lot of fun to be a part of.  On Saturday I got a bunch of players who had friends tell them to check it out after a demo on Friday.

Got to try out GSF and really liked it, and seeing positive reactions to the Tactics demos was great as well.

 

Other highlights:

The promo card auction for Childs play:  lots of money raised, and I got to see all the cards I never have seen before, esp. Bomber Blade and Cosmitron in small cards, which was weird.

The cosplay of Legacy, Iron Legacy, Wraith and Unity were awesome.  I didn't see any others.

Meeting some forumites (probably more than I realized) and getting to put faces and personalities with names.

Getting to meet Adam and Paul, and see Christopher relentlessly demoing Tactics before running an auction, really cool.

Having an Exhibitor Badge.  This was my third time at Pax East, and it was incredibly cool to get to use the short security line and skip the que room.

Hopefully I'll get to volunteer next year (off year for going with my friends) and hang out more with the sentinels booth crew, and maybe get to demo Tactics for people.

2

Glad you enjoyed it! Looking forward to hearing other folks' perceptions.

One of these days, I'd love to work PAX East. So far, though, that's one I haven't been able to make it to. :confused:

 

3

Thanks for sharing! I'd love to hear more.

4

Others will hopefully add some stuff, but I can tell you about some of the demos I ran.

 

My first Demo Baron Blade went off, dropping hero health, playing 2 hasten doom, consider the price and 2 disruptions before we flipped him.  He even had a turret and MDP out together.

In the end we pulled it out, two heroes died and poor Wraith did almost nothing all game, but it was a victory, and all the players really liked it.

We had a lot of players who owned some of the game but not all the expansions, and letting them play heroes they hadn't before was cool.  Had a few purchases of Vengeance on the spot after playing The Naturalist, Parse or KNYFE.

A first time player sat down where Parse was, and wanted to keep her, and since we had a few hold-overs that wanted to see a second villain I put them against Ambuscade, since that's a quick game and very different than Baron.

The first time player used Parse's control to stop Ambuscade from ever getting going, never let him flip, kept finding and discarding the cloak and any Vanishes.  It was wicked.

Imprimis5 and I had a good laugh at everyone fawning over how ridiculously powerful Parse is.

 

I had a good number of times on Saturday where we had no spots open and someone would stop and talk to me about the game.  Two actually bought the game after 5 minutes of watching others play it and talking to me about it.  The tabletop area consistently had all the SotM boxes checked out as well, a lot of people were playing a lot of SotM this weekend.

5

Still in a bit of a daze from PAX. What an experience. I finally have my voice back!

I have to take the time and thank all the volunteers who worked at the booth through the weekend. Every single one of them was an imense pleasure to meet and talk to, and they really made my time there incredibly special. A very special shout out to Craig (imprimis5) and Matt who are some of the greatest humans I have ever met. Without Craig forcing me to take breaks, I surely would have run myself straight into the ground on day 1. He was a life saver in every sense of the word and I owe him big time.

I spend the vast majority of the actual convention time teaching GSF. The demo we created seemed to be an imense success. From Friday to Saturday I made the largest tweak to the demo setup, and thats the day we ended up selling more copies of GSF than Enhanced Edition (GO TEAM!). I gotta say, the whole thing was an incredibly rewarding experience. There were so many faces that came back time and time again to run the demo with me. One group in particular even sought me out on the last day to thank me for making their PAX a rememberable one (which really knocked me off my feet, like it totally wasn't the other way around). The people who sat down at my demo table were all so into it and it was too easy to tap into their energy and just return it 10 fold. Our 3 GSF tables were consistently full. I never sat down once to play in a game I was teaching because there were always 5-6 warm bodies just waiting to get in and save the galaxy. The worst part of the job was turning people away because of how full we were at times.

The >G crew really outdid themselves with the booth and booth placement. It was a really attractive space to come check out and it was in a primo location. The demo tables all were up against the lane that people were entering the convention space from, so foot traffic was very high. 

Other highlights:

Finding out that the actor who played John Snow on Game of Thrones was hiding in a full minecraft costume playing Sentinels at the booth! He is a big fan evidently and was letting his cast/crew know it. 

Teaching GSF to a woman who, as it turns out, runs the podcast StarTalk Radio with the one and only Neil DeGrasse Tyson. She was totally in love with the demo I ran, so I sent her off to talk to someone who actually matters. We might be seeing some GSF love on their blog in the next day or so!

Meeting many various forumites and KS backers and putting faces to names was awesome. 

The Sentinel Promo card auction for charity was nuts. Young Legacy going for well over $500 and someone stealing a Redeemer Fanatic for $100 were just some of the crazyness that ensued. There was so much amazing happening, people were even throwing in their own money to help other people win auctions. Class acts were in no short supply at the booth that day!

Finally, but not least, meeting and talking with Paul, Christopher, and Adam. Really, you couldn't find greater group of guys at this convention than them. They allowed me to come to their booth, don their logo, and represent their company and game which was something I did not take lightly. They treated us to an amazing dinner at the Whiskey Priest and made everyone there feel like one giant family. They really went above and beyond, going out of their way to make the experience as awesome for everyone as possible, and they succeeded in a big way. I can't say enough good things about those guys.

That was my first PAX and my first gaming convention in general, and it was one for the record books. Maybe I'll see you all again at Gen Con? I sure hope so.

6

Great stuff phantaskippy and Foote! Very excited for GenCon now!

7

That's wonderful, Foote. Any word on whether people were playing GSF elsewhere, after buying it? Free play area?

How long did the demo games last, roughly? How much time was spent teaching the game before playing started?

 

 

8

I can say with certainty that it was being played in the tabletop area after hours, as I fielded a few questions from attendees that had done just that.

9

I didn't spend much time in the free play area honestly, so I can not speak to any games played there. Through Saturday and Sunday I had quite the number of people come up to me and asked me what in the world they did wrong when they opened the box at their hotel room and got roflstomped by one of the opposition forces. An equal amount came up and told me about the games they played that night that wound up clutching a win from certain defeat jsut as it looked like it was better to box it back up than continue playing. The demo we had going was super easy difficulty wise, and it was woven into my script to make a point to tell folks that wins do not come easy for our Strike Force (something that ended up being a fantastic selling point from what I saw). Of all the games I'm sure these folks bought in addtion to GSF while there, it seemed that many made it a point to rip into the game as soon as they could. Too cool.

The demo averaged around 30-40 min, and the longest demo I personaly ran to about the hour and fifteen minute mark due to 2 mega teleporters during the first Aftermath phase. 80% of the games would not see the flagship hit the board, mostly because the 6 player tables would instinctivly spread out across the 3 sectors evenly. There were tables that abanoned a sector from the very first Travel phase, and I wouldn't say a word about it and get super excited when the sector would flip three cards, overrun, AND have the Mive-Master crash down. That added an average of 1.5 rounds to the demo to take it down. It was awesome to see people come back for multiple demos, and even with the same setup, they got to see new things every time they played.

There is a lot to know about playing GSF, and the last thing I wanted to do was front load all the information before we started playing, so we didn't do that. I had it set up where we could explain the game and introduce mechanics in a fluid manner while getting right into the game as they sat down. It really cut down on repeat questions and folks were able to retain information much easier as it was given to them in bits as needed. It allowed me to fill in the spaces between mechanic explainations with thematic and narrative driven talking points. Like, instead of explaining how the mechanics of Deadly Focus/Hit and Run combine with Ramming Speed (Khadgars Claw) work, I got to paint the thematic picture of him speeding across the sectors at light speed and ramming broadside into big space spider. And thats what people really responded to, and the mechanic stuck with them in a more natural way.

In a sense, the demo was much more like a scripted narrative they played through, but after the first TRIBA round was over, everyone had all the tools they needed to go home and rip right into the game.

10

If Jon Snow was using a full-body Minecraft suit to avoid detection, how did you find out it was him?

11

We were informed by someone "in the know" later.

12

So, Sunday about 2 hours before the convention hall opened to the public, a guy walks over to our booth and starts striking up conversation with us. Turns out he is one of the armorsmiths for the show (and a Sentinels fan himself it sounded like). He makes chainmail and all that kinda awesome metal stuff. He was the one that tipped us off. Evidently he was talking about the game to the other cast and crew. 

I mean, he could have just been straight up lying to us. But I didn't see any reason to not take him at his word.

13

You mean he tastes of mint? :wink: