Episode 397 – PAX East Recap
Welcome to The Family Gamers podcast! Last week, we attended PAX East 2025, a huge convention that’s practically in our backyard. What are the coolest things we saw there?
0:00:00 Fact for 397
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What We’ve Been Playing
Flip 7 (review coming soon)
Smug Owls (our review)
Caution Signs (review coming soon)
Disney Lorcana Gateway (review coming soon)
Another Man’s Treasure (review linked below)
Combo (our review)
Patchwork
The Gang
Jungo – coming later this year from Happy Camper
Cantankerous Cats (review coming eventually)
Ultimatch (our review) – still fun even when we lose.
0:14:25 SNAP Review – Another Man’s Treasure
Everyone’s had family members try to foist off their “treasures” on them. In this game, collect the junk and make it into specific rummy-like groups to get it OUT of your hand.
Watch the video or read the transcript of our review.
0:20:45 PAX East 2025 Recap
Anitra went for two days, Andrew and Asher went for one day. Although it’s very videogame-heavy, there’s plenty of boardgame/tabletop stuff as well.
Anitra recommends Ultimate Sheep Racoon (coming soon) if your kids like wacky video games.
Andrew is excited by Ludocene – “Tinder for videogames”, which is on Kickstarter now. It’s possible that they’ll make a boardgame version as well!
The coolest thing we both saw was Pencil! (aka Pencil XR)
The other coolest thing Anitra saw was mass-produced dice with Braille for the numbers.
Anitra highly recommends trying the boardgame tournaments, which are surprisingly low-impact and low-stress. She got her start with “Thursday Night Throwdown” and “Friday Night Frenzy!” – tournaments where no one knows what the games will be until the tournament starts.
At a tournament this year, she learned: Schrodingers Cats, Lumberjacks with Rocket Launchers, Frozen Shinies, Mountain Goats.
This year, she got the courage to play in a Patchwork tournament and a 7 Blunders tournament. (The newer version of 7 Wonders is much easier to play with!)
Asher ended up doing Trio demos for an hour for Happy Camper. We’re so proud of him.
Andrew describes Caution Signs.
And Anitra was excited to finally see Bioshop Infinite (a barbershop quartet) perform on stage.
PAX East Interviews
0:38:00 Choose Co
Choose Your Own Adventure books are BACK! The first book (The Cave of Time) is finally back after 25 years out of print, and the company has dozens of other books – some classics, some new.
Find out more at cyoa.com.
0:39:55 Sage Stones
TNT Laser Works makes beautiful wooden boards that are both an art piece and a functional board game, based on a game Ted played in his childhood. There’s also a more portable version that is a leather scroll.
(Check out our Youtube channel for a quick how-to-play video.)
See all the available boards at TNTLaserWorks.com and look for them at Origins, National Gaming Expo, GenCon, PAX Unplugged, and NOVA Open.
0:44:00 DOTS RPG Project
Braille dice – mass produced or print-your-own with a 3D printer! See them at dotsRPG.org
0:45:20 Modern Meeple
We love the Gamey Susan, Player One board, dice vaults, and the rest of the modular Modern Meeple products.
See more and sign up for their email list at ModernMeeple.com.
0:47:15 Pencil!
An augmented reality VR app that gives drawing lessons, starting with tracing but moving on to 3D models, shading, and more. Both lessons and non-lesson tools to help you draw better with a real pencil and paper.
Available on the Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest 3S. May be available on more VR headsets in the future.
Find out more at Pencil-XR.com.
0:55:00 Family Gamers Community
Welcome new members – we’re glad you’re here!
Backtalk
Our community shares their biggest board game surprises – on Facebook and Discord.
Most of the surprises were good ones, but we also learn a lesson about calling games “simple” that have a large decision space (e.g. Splendor).
If you go to conventions, what’s your favorite convention memory? Or what is your favorite convention? If you don’t go to conventions, why not? Is there something a convention could offer you that would make you interested in going to one?
Find Us Online:
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or join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord! thefamilygamers.com/discord
Or, for the most direct method, email us! andrew@thefamilygamers.com and anitra@thefamilygamers.com.
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