I somehow missed your post before the weekend! I had a really good time - honestly, it was just fun being back at PAX Unplugged after two years.
I didn’t bring home much, as I have gotten pretty good at restraining myself from buying games (pay no attention to the pending Kickstarters behind the curtain). I picked up Ashes Reborn, Lewis & Clark, and String Railway in the math trade, and bought only an Ashes character pack and Critters At War, which is a reskin of the excellent Air, Land, & Sea.
The game of the con for me was Dicke Daemonen, which was published before good game design was invented. The name translates to Fat Demons, but you can guess what I called it all weekend. It’s a dead-simple abstract game that’s played with just four loops of string and 50 meeples. It is incredibly tense and fun and plays in about 10 minutes. Brilliant.
The other excellent new-to-me games that I played were Ra and Netrunner. It turns out that they’re beloved for a reason, and now I am fond of them too. I might pick up a Netrunner starter set from the Project Nisei folks.
I also tried Boonlake, the new Alexander Pfister design that I can only describe as “long and complicated.” I would have to play it again before forming any kind of opinion.