PAX Unplugged 2024
PAX Unplugged took place in Philadelphia this past weekend. It was another great event for the global gaming community. Game designers, vendors, players and fans took over the convention center space and invaded Reading Terminal Market for multiple meals.
Fantasy Flight Games of course was there including a crew from the Star Wars Unlimited team. Had a chance to catch up with Alicia and Xander. Discussed with both of them the current state of the game. As to be expected, they were both tight lipped on anything upcoming in the future.
Alicia seemed very eager to get to future dates when more can be revealed. She said that the upcoming information about organized play should excite people. We also talked speculation of the player base for future sets. I noted that I had come pretty close on a prediction for how pilots might function. She asked if I had started thinking about the next set, Legends of the Force, which I did give some thoughts solely based on the title but could not derive any accuracy to my guesses based on her reaction.
Xander relayed that if people think the 2024 convention exclusive is cool just wait till we see the one from next year. When pressed by somebody that it would likely be heroic units in a similar style to the current exclusive box, he did respond with “that would be a logical guess wouldn’t it?” Not a confirmation by a long shot, so definitely looking forward to see what they are cooking up. Hopefully they will get printed in larger numbers so that more people have a chance at getting them at each convention. He did also mention that we should be getting additional information about the recently announced Carbonite Edition packs via stream in the next month or so.
There was a huge line each day for the Designer Duels. Xander was running a pretty nice deck with Han Solo, Audacious Smuggler as the leader along with an Aggression aspect base. MJ at least for part of the time had a deck thrown together with draft and sealed cast off common and uncommon cards that had been left around the event space. Ryan rounded out the designer table with a pretty solid Asajj Tarkintown deck that was just throttling people with Ruthless Raiders.
Win or lose, the games against the FFG staff gained players a Star Wars Unlimited themed convention badge lanyard and a choice of aspect pins. The badge holder is specifically nice to finally rep the game we like vs. having whatever kind of random Neopets or Ravensburger lanyards are available at a convention. The pins are also very nice. They match the aspects perfectly and have a nice heft to them. Would be awesome to see FFG get tokens created similar to these; basically the fronts without the pin part that could be used as initiative tokens, epic action being used reminders, etc.
The game space available was filled with sit and go pods for Premier, sealed, and draft. Those were firing off pretty consistently throughout each day. People were also just playing one on one games where space allowed, and there were more than a few getting some Twin Suns action in too.
Many have asked or questioned in Discord chats why there were no large events during PAX Unplugged. After being on-site it’s not clear if the space would have allowed for it. The entire Philadelphia convention center could likely fit inside just the open play area from GenCon earlier this year. While the space that FFG had allocated to them this year could have probably seated a decent sized event it also would have probably pushed out all of the eight person pods. Hoping that the game keeps growing and SWU will have additional space next year to help facilitate something larger.
Probably the best SWU related thing to see at PAX Unplugged was simply the line of people waiting to learn to play the game. There were multiple tables dedicated to helping expand the player base and getting people setup with their first games. Ended up playing in a sealed pod on one of the days with two people that had just learned how to play. During the deck construction time, one of the new players commented on how hard sealed was to get to a reasonable 50 card deck. Of course we made sure to let them know that limited events were only 30 card decks to which they were a bit relieved.
Overall a nice convention even in the city of brotherly love. It’s great to see the state of where this game is at the end of the first calendar year of being on the market. No large scale tournament and limited supply of convention exclusives aside, it was a chill atmosphere and a relaxing way to close out the 2024 convention circuit.