Major Spoilerite KayCee had a chance to head out to PAX Prime in Seattle, WA over the weekend, and shared her experience with us, to share it with you.
League of Legends
First thing on Saturday morning I found myself sitting in one of the front rows just behind the announcers of the League of Legends Promotional Qualifier Semifinals. The place was charged with eager audience members standing in line to get a picture or autograph from David “Phreak” Turley , posing for cosplay pictures with other fans, and standing on chairs grabbing for the various League merchandise the staff would occasionally throw out.
The first match was between CompLexity and To Be Determined. There was a bit of introduction for each of the team’s members before the Riot logo appeared and the players began picking their characters. The match was taken over almost immediately by CompLexity who continued to dominate To Be Determined for the next 40 minutes.
Magic the Gathering: Blast From the Past Sealed
Next we hurried to the Magic the Gathering tournaments and signed up for the Blast from the Past Sealed event. For thirty dollars, a PAX badge, and a DCI number players received a random pre-constructed theme deck from any set in the last ten years plus four M14 booster packs from which to construct a 40 card deck.
Sealed has always been a favorite tournament type because you get X cards and you have to work with them. The theme deck I received was from Morningtide and was based around lots of low cost Kithkin soldiers with blue control spells. I decided to take out the blue and splice in green instead since the boosters gave me quite a few green pump, land searches, and versatile control (not to mention that most of my experience has been focused in green-white). The one deck to defeat me was a synergy rich Spirit deck from the Kamigawa block featuring Soulshift.
The event lasted four rounds with prize support for players who went 3-1 or better. I barely managed to scrape by in my last game to win the third match and receive 3 boosters (I gave one of my prize boosters to my final competitor, because he was a good sport and we had three really close matches).
Expo Hall
The main hall featured hundreds of booths for the different vendors. Nearly every place you walked by offered you a free pin to put on your PAX lanyard, a flyer, or a business card. There was the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, giant Bethesda bots, merchandise vendors, and lines of people eager to get their hands on a controller to demo the latest and greatest the industry has to offer.
We hurried up a few floors to get our hands on the eagerly anticipated Pokemon X & Y for the 3DS. The Pokemon booth had about twenty consoles on display and when the event began players who managed to get their hands on one and make their way through the demo (showing off the new battle sequences) received a random dog tag featuring the legendary Pokemon from either X (Xerneas) or Y (Yveltal).
Panel – You Game Like A Girl: Tales of Trolls & White Knights
This panel gave an overview on many of the problems facing women in the gaming community. Discussed along with the ever popular “fake geek girl” topic were cosplay shaming, nerd checking, online bullying, and real life harassment. My favorite statement of the panel was that there is a definite difference between criticizing an over sexualized character design and criticizing a fan who cosplays that character accurately because of the character design. The panel emphasized that people need to become more vocal and stick up for others when they see bullying in a gaming space.
Panelists included: Anja Keister (Founder, D20 Burlesque), ZP Keister (Co-producer, D20 Burlesque), Shoshana Kessock (Game Designer), Ashly Burch (Writer), Stella Chuu (Cosplay Model), and Iris Explosion (Sex Educator/performer).
The Photos
A random selection of pictures were taken.
Closing Thoughts
PAX 2013 was an amazing experience. I do wish more cosplayers were there, but the people who did dress up looked amazing. The Magic Tournament took up much of my time there but it was a great experience and I met lots of cool people! This is my first convention since moving to the Seattle area and I will definitely be coming back next year (I’m not used to having a huge convention in my backyard and it is awesome).
ABOUT KAYCEE
KayCee is a disco ball. Sometimes the disco ball opens and inside is a small, sad kitten. She’s holding a big plush Millennium Falcon. She feels very bad about having inconvenienced whoever is looking at her at the time.