PAX, Day 1! =)

Hi everyone! Yesterday was the first day of PAX, which was an exciting half-day!

There were also more community-driven events taking place!

Morning in Seattle

My first night of sleep at the hotel was good, though a bit short. Three hours after I posted the blog for the last day of Pre-PAX action, I was on my feet again to go to the Pre-PAX Breakfast!

Pike Place Market is a short walk from the WSCTC (where PAX takes place), and is home to a Bar & Grill that serves all-you-can-eat waffles. You could likely imagine my excitement! =) This is a popular morning destination for PAX-goers, though there's enough places to eat in the Pike Place Market area to satisfy any breakfast hunger.

As for me, however, my hunger would only be satisfied by the consumption of waffles. =) I met up with a group of fifteen or so PAX goers, and we took a couple of tables. The waffles are good... though I recommend getting strawberries as your topping if anyone happens to end up eating there in the future. =) I have some brief footage of the breakfast, if I can get it all uploaded and working! ;)

Click here for a quick Breakfast video!

From there, I went back to the hotel to grab my box for the Cookie Brigade.


The Cookie Brigade

The Cookie Brigade is a PAX tradition with a great cause that it's working for. At a previous PAX, members of the community got together and decided to cook and give away cookies to anyone who happened to be in need of something sugary. Donations for said cookies are optional, but welcome, and 100% of the donations went directly to Child's Play (Child's Play being the foundation set up by Penny Arcade to provide games and entertainment to kids in Children's Hospitals around the world).

The Cookie Brigade has returned this year, and the dorky box you'll see in the following video clip is my solution to both holding the BioWare camera and selling cookies for Child's Play!

Click here!

EDIT: In the following clip, I run into several cookie brigade fans... but I haven't yet received any cookies! =( Fortunately, I run into most of them later: though there's 50,000 plus people at PAX this year, it's still a small world. I run into one of the people in this clip again on Day 2, and we have time for her to elaborate on why she personally loves Child's Play!

Additional video! Talking to people on the way to the line!


PAX!

After a short wait in line to get my pass from Will Call, a few people met up with me to stand in line for PAX.

On Friday, the Expo itself doesn't open until 2:00pm, but as you'll see from the upcoming clip, the line is... well... enormous! In retrospect, I took a bit too much video footage during the line... though I did get to talk to a lot of fellow gamers on camera, and I got footage of some awesome costumes! Again, here's a few clips of the line, along with us spying on those who were spying on us! Mwa ha ha ha ha!

Standing in line, talking to some people... and a few bloopers. =) Apparently putting someone on the spot with a camera can unintentionally derail trains of thought. =(

EDIT: Houn, at one point in line, took some footage of the initial difficulty I had getting both box and bag to be accessible. By the end of the day I'd figured it out, and by day 2 I had forsaken the box lid entirely which made the process much easier. =)

Click here for the chaos of bag and box management!

Once the line opened up, we were free to enter and roam about as desired! I stopped in front of the BYOC ("Bring your own Computer") LAN area and met a bunch of people for more button exchanging. After a bit of waiting at the pickup spot for cookies, I loaded up my box with them and dashed over to the Expo hall to appease some hungry gamers! =) Sadly, my batteries ran out before I got into the expo hall, so I'll be heading back in there today... hopefully with fully-charged camera in hand! =)

Admittedly, I didn't get much of a chance to jump into the booths and try stuff out: the cookie brigade selling became an event unto itself, and so I spent most of my time in the Expo hall refilling, emptying, and refilling again with cookies. The generosity of our community really shone through as well, with many people giving generously to Child's Play as they grabbed cookies: and with some donating without even asking for cookies!

Omegathon Update: NOOOOOOOOOOO!

I was rooting for Erica (BrokenAngel) to win the Omegathon. PAX forumer "Queen Brewer", who was the cameraman for most of the Pre-PAX Dinner footage (and an all-around awesome guy!) ran over and found me while I was distributing cookies in the expo hall... and he brought with him bad news.

BrokenAngel lost in the first round, dispite a herculean effort. Dispite the defeat, she's still in an upbeat mood, and she's looking forward to seeing various PAX events that she might not have been able to otherwise!

After Hours

When the Expo Hall finally closed and the adrenalin started to lose potency, I went with a few people to a great Japanese restaurant on Spring Street. Had some Sushi, drank some Sake... it was great!

I can't recall the name of the place off-hand. I'll edit this post and put it in once I remember it... but it's definitely a place worth checking out if you're into that sort of thing!

From dinner it was off to the Concerts... Houn (a PAX forum member and a good friend of mine) wanted to check out the One Ups, and I rolled along!

Admittedly, I've always been fairly ignorant of the whole "video game remix" music genre. (I know, -5 geek street cred! =*( ) I've dug what I've heard, such as the Minibosses, but I'd never taken the time to check it out intentionally.

The One Ups rocked: they had a funky jazz sound that electrified the crowd and left us begging for one more song at the end! There were two gigantic screens on either side of the stage as the performance went on, displaying footage of the game being remixed: and the crowd boo'd and cheered at the action going on while the songs were playing. I was particularly fond of their Ducktales remix, having been a big fan of the game back in the NES days.

When the crowd chanted for more, the One Ups came onstage and did a stirring Diablo-inspired tune. I'm going to have to pick up some of their music today when I get the chance!

I was starting to really get worn out by this point... three days of nonstop running about without much sleep was taking its toll. We went over to Freeplay to get in a couple rounds of Team Fortress 2. It was fun, but I should note that I was outmatched by my more seasoned opponents... I'm more of an RPG and RTS fan, and though I like FPS's I'm a fish out of water when I play them. My apologies to my fellow members of the Blue team. =)

Bedtime

Shortly after this, I realized I probably should actually get some sleep. I got to the hotel, and sat down to post this blog entry... and almost immediately fell asleep at the keyboard. =) So I decided it could wait until tomorrow, and went to bed.

Today we're starting it up again! Hopefully I should have much better footage today. =) I'm planning on hitting the Annex for some tabletop action (I gave my copy of the Order of the Stick Board game to a friend of mine on the forums, and I want to get in a little bit of action there... though hopefully just a short game. OOtS is an entertaining game, but if you play by the official rules, it's... extremely long =) ), I'm going to go to the Expo Hall to hopefully actually participate a bit, and I'm looking forward to playing a few rounds of Magic: The Gathering with my utterly useless - yet entertaining - Ink-Treader Nephilim deck.

My Janky Magic Deck

Those who don't play MTG, feel free to skip this part. =) I'm probably one of the few people out there who actually liked the Nephilim cycle in the Ravnica block... it presented an inescapably tasty opportunity for wild combos. =)

This particular one I crafted myself, and is mostly White and Green with a splash of Blue, Red, and Black (Yep, all five colors =) ). It was an idea I had back in the Ravnica days, but it wasn't practical until the recent Shadowmoor expansions and their one-mana casting cost "do something to target creature and draw a card" instants came out. (Wisps they're called)

Basically, the idea is: get Ink-Treader Nephilim on the table with creatures in play (yours, theirs, whatever). Play a wisp on the Nephilim, to make it copy to everyone. Draw that many cards... which in a multiplayer game, could be a LOT of cards. Play Summer Blooms to get all of the lands you just drew into play, and use those lands to play more wisps and draw more cards. Once a land of all five types and a creature of each color is in your control due to this (I have a second Nephilim that uses black just for this purpose), look in the gigantic pile of cards you likely now have in your hand. One of them will likely be Coalition Victory. Win!

In practice, this is utterly inefficient and easily defeated... but it's extremely entertaining to play, especially when it works. In one game I played just before leaving for PAX, I tossed out about 12 lands in one turn, drew about half of my deck, and had the mana to both drop the second Nephilim and play Coalition victory on the next turn, with mana to spare. =)

So yeah... janky, but amusing. =)

Okay, so that's it for now, talk to you all tomorrow!