PAX 2024 Retrospective: Fun and Games, from Video to Tabletop

pax Australia 2024 reviews

Your author is a self-professed geek. Complete and utter. I love sci-fi, anime, fantasy, video games, board games, card games, roleplaying games and more. From Stephen King to Preacher, Dungeons and Dragons, Skyrim, Gloomhaven and everything in between. That’s why, for the last three years, I’ve been to PAX Melbourne, Australia’s biggest gaming convention. This year was PAX Melbourne 2024, and it was a complete hoot. I’ve got the pleasure of blogging about it this year, and I’m delighted to share my retrospective with you. So, let’s get into the meat of this article.

The author at PAX

What is PAX?

PAX Australia is the down-under version of a large U.S. video and tabletop game convention. PAX stands for Penny Arcade Exhibition, and this year marked the twentieth anniversary of this delightful celebration of all things geek and gaming. PAX has been held in Melbourne, Australia, at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre since 2013. I’ve been going since 2022, but I did buy tickets in 2021, only to witness the event suffer the impact of Melbourne’s COVID-19 lockdowns and pandemic restrictions. 

While it’s not in Australia, PAX also runs PAX Unplugged in the States, which is a con dedicated entirely to the joys of tabletop gaming. 

When is PAX? 

Welcome to PAX

PAX Melbourne Australia dates are October 11 to 13 in 2024. Attendees can access a PAX Melbourne 2024 map online, which shows the main exhibition hall and plenty of side rooms and other spaces. 

What’s on the PAX Melbourne 2024 Map? 

Two-thirds of the expo hall is dedicated to video games, with a range of huge companies and smaller indie developers present and hosting stalls. Some big names had stalls, such as LG, who were giving away flat screen TVs to competitors at their stall, Ubisoft, Ultragear, Centre Com, Red Bull, Cooler Master, Sega, Square Enix and more. In addition to the main company stalls, there were plenty of indie video game developers showcasing new and old games across a range of platforms, including handheld devices such as tablets and PSPs, as well as PCs, consoles and even arcade games. 

The other third of the expo hall is dedicated entirely to tabletop gaming. It features a range of exhibitors, including Australian distributors Let’s Play Games and Meeple Distribution, plenty of free play space, and a PC gaming tournament at the back. I spent most of my time in this area, so further down in this blog, I’ve shared all the weird and wonderful games I played, demoed, and experienced. 

PAX Guests

Each year, PAX invites a range of local and international guests to attend the convention. I didn’t do any meet-and-greets, but I did hear the CEO of Twitch was playing a digital dodgeball experience in the video game hall. 

Some PAX Melbourne 2024 guests included:

  • Mark Meer, from Mass Effect and Call of Cthulu RPG
  • Major Sam, a well-renowned cosplayer (more on the cosplay later)
  • Kirilee Cosplay, the Cosplay Championships judge
  • Julian Wilton, from Massive Monster and Cult of the Lamb
  • Josh Weir, a dev from Half-Life 2 and Portal
  • John Robertson from The Dark Room
  • Bombastic, a digital content creator
  • Aronaztek, a digital content creator
  • Andrew Frederiksen, Lead Producer at Firaxis and Sid Meiere’s Civilization
  • Abkubar Salim, from House of the Dragon and Surgent Studios.

There were many more guests, and those interested could attend meet and greets and get signatures and photos with their favourite developer or cosplayer. 

PAX Melbourne 2024 Tickets

Tickets to PAX are badges that are worn on PAX lanyards that can be purchased at the merch store (more of that later, too!). A three-day early bird badge is $175, and a single-day badge is around $70-80. For the sheer amount of things to experience, this is incredible value. You could spend a week at the convention and still not see everything that you want to. If you had a PAX promo code, it would probably offer a discount. 

PAX Aus Cosplay 2024

Each year, there are heaps of attendees dressing up in wonderful cosplay at PAX. I kept seeing and catching glimpses of excellent cosplay characters and probably missed a whole lot more. I recognised some cosplay, such as Mizora from Baldur’s Gate 3, The Mandalorian and Grogu and Link. Still, there were plenty of characters I wasn’t familiar with. I did get a few photos of PAX aus cosplay 2024, which I’m happy to share here.

(Gangster Storm Troopers cosplay)
An Imperial Tie Fighter Pilot cosplay
Deadpool cosplay
Bowser cosplay
A Dreadnaught from Warhammer 40,000 cosplay
Space Marine from Warhammer 40,000 cosplay
Snorlax cosplay
Beetlejuice cosplay
Kaalia of the Vast cosplay
A soldier from Halo cosplay with me
An Owlbear cosplay

My Time in the Tabletop Area on Friday

As mentioned, I spent the majority of my time in the tabletop area. It’s a bit like crack for me, with shiny new board games to demo, board games to buy, and card games to play. I’m always guaranteed to run into heaps of gaming mates from the Melbourne tabletop gaming community as well. 

After queuing in the entry hall from around 9.30am, where the crowd was abuzz with energy as Enforcers, or PAX staff, pumped up the crowd as the timer counted down to entry. After a quick walk and a glance through the video game PAX Expo Hall, I entered the tabletop area. I started off on Friday morning with a few demo rounds of Star Wars Shatterpoint and Marvel Crisis Protocol, which are tabletop skirmish games using dice, and featuring all your favourite Star Wars and Marvel Heroes and villains.

Next up, I visited the Null Signal games booth, which is a community-run organisation keeping the classic card game of Netrunner alive and well. Netrunner is an asymmetric 1vs1 card game where one player plays a nefarious corporation trying to score agenda points and a hacker or “runner” trying to crack servers and steal the agenda points. I faced off against one of the booth staff. I won that game with a few lucky “runs” and breached the servers by hacking through “ice”, or barriers that the corporation installed to protect its servers. 

After that, I demoed Dead Cells, the board game, which is based on the video game of the same name. A rouge-lite dungeon crawl with a cool sci-fi theme, the game uses deck-building mechanics and loot draws to power your characters. I played with a mate along with Adrian and Joe from the Board Game BBQ, Australia’s best board game podcast. You can listen to them on all your favourite podcast apps or check out their website. They also run Play Con, Australia’s dedicated board gaming convention, which I missed out on this year but hope to attend in the future. I enjoyed my play of Dead Cells, but didn’t feel the need to buy it (which my wallet was grateful for). 

Joe and Adrian from the Board Game BBQ playing Dead Cells

After that, I visited the Westgate Wargaming area, where they had a few tabletop miniatures games set up, including Dead Man’s Hand, Mordheim, Mars Racing Federation, Bloodbowl and Dungeonbowl. I played a game of Dungeonbowl, published by Games Workshop, and in this game, the Chaos Beastmen faced off against the Norse raiders. It was a truly chaotic experience, with lots of dice, teleporters that transport you around the map and chests filled with explosives. The aim of the game is to score a touchdown on the opposing side’s entry point. We played for a while, but I had to leave before anyone won to demo the next game, which was Heroscape.

Dungeonbowl board game

Heroscape is a miniatures skirmish game originally published by Hasbro and now published by Renegade Games. It is based on the classic Heroquest dice system, and my friend and I took out the enemy dragon, taking the win.

Heroscape board game

After that, I signed up for a Call of Cthulhu RPG one-shot adventure. The game is published by Chaosium Inc. and uses a different percentile dice system from Dungeons and Dragons. Our band of plucky 1920s investigators were trying to find a mutual friend who was a doctor in the Massachusetts town of Arkham who had sent us all mysterious correspondence. We traced him to a morgue in the local hospital, where we were promptly beset by re-animated, mummified limbs wielding live electrical wires. I played a Doctor and failed a sanity check, which drove me insane and resulted in my character becoming paranoid. I made a break for it, got crash-tackled by another character who was also insane, got up, promptly slipped and fell. Meanwhile, the other players managed to skewer the limbs on a broken broom and burn them in the morgue’s incinerator, saving the town from the cosmic horrors from beyond the stars. 

PAX Aus Merch

After the Friday games, I queued for some PAX Aus merchandise. It took nearly two hours to queue, pick some items, and check out. They had a range of different merchandise on offer, including beanies, t-shirts, jackets, hoodies, and tracksuit pants, all branded in various PAX colours. I nabbed a PAX Aus 2024 t-shirt and zipper hoodie. After that, I had to head home to hang out with my daughter, so I caught a train home.

PAX Aus 2024 Saturday

Welcome to PAX Melbourne 2024

I arrived back at PAX Aus around 9am on Saturday, queued for a strong coffee, and once I was good and caffeinated, I lined up in the queue hall. The crowd was buzzing with anticipation and energy, and on the stage at the side of the queue hall, punters were invited on stage to spin a wheel and engage in various games and dances. Someone failed miserably at Flappy Bird; others busted out the Nutbush and the Cha Cha slide, with crowd cheers determining the winner. The massive crowd counted down the timer displayed on a giant screen to from 60 to 0, and then Darude’s dance classic Sandstorm emitted from the speakers. This PAX Aus attendee may have danced to it, along with many others. 

As the crowd surged forward into the PAX Aus expo hall, I quickly made my way back to Westgate Wargaming for a game of Mordheim, which I owned as a kid but never got the chance to play. In Mordheim, Warhammer race warbands faced off in a ruined city on a hunt for Warpstone and other treasures. Playing against Ben from Westgate Wargames, I chose to play a Lizardman warband, hunting a small dragon in competition with a Beastmen warband. 

Mordhiem is incredibly fun, as you can climb terrain to give ranged attackers an advantage and use terrain to hide or position yourself. I got lucky with a bunch of critical hits and quickly took out a pack of boars and some Vestigors. Meanwhile, my opponent’s leader engaged the dragon and got it down to a single wound. My leader then charged the dragon and Beastmen leader and managed to dispatch both, which routed the Beastman and snared my victory. 

Ben from Westgate Wargamers and Mordhiem

After that, I signed up for a Dungeons and Dragons one-shot, playing an Aasimar Sorcerer. Our party found ourselves trapped in a cursed tavern, trying to discover the mystery that was kept magically sealed within its compound. We were served pink champagne on ice and told that we could check out any time we liked, but we could never leave. I didn’t register the references until the scenario was over. Still, it was all themed around The Eagle’s classic Hotel California song. Our nemesis was a metal Gorgon, who was only vulnerable to magic because we stabbed it with our steely knives, but we just couldn’t kill the beast. I cast a failed Guiding Bolt spell attack, which promptly triggered a wild magic surge that resulted in a magic missile spell, so I got to throw a bunch of dice and do a decent amount of damage to the boss. We ran out of time, just as we were able to trigger a trapped mirror shield to cast lightning bolts against the Gorgon, which would have won us the scenario. 

Dungeons and Dragons 

After the one shot, I visited the wargaming area again. I had a few turns of Warhammer 40,000 One Page rules, which are a streamlined and simplified version of the classic wargames complex ruleset. After that, I went back to Westgate Wargaming for a game of Mars Federation Racing, which uses cards and movement templates to plan out your racing moves. I am terrible at spatial programming games, so I broke my brain, and promptly crashed into the terrain and wound up going backwards, but it was still a hoot. In true tabletop miniatures games style, fierce rules debates were occurring throughout this game.

Warhammer 40K One Page Rules

Next, I headed to a Meeple Distribution game demo table, where I played Things in Rings. This word-guessing game requires you to guess an attribute, context, and word rule using cards with images of random items placed into interlocking string rings. It was quite difficult for a light word game but hilarious once the attribute, context, and word rule were revealed. 

Things in Rings 

After Things in Rings, it was time for dinner, and I paid far too much money for a felafel, but it was quite tasty. I then caught up with a mate for another game of Netrunner, which was a tense, nail-biter of a session, and I lost one turn away from stealing the win myself. It was getting late by this point, so a few of us played a few rounds of Kingless, which is a dwarf-themed take-that card game, and then it was time to Uber home with a mate. 

PAX AUS 2024 Sunday

Each year, I bring my daughter to PAX Aus with me on Sunday. She loves video games and board and card games as well, so she always has fun, but as she is neurodivergent, the crowds, sounds and sensory overload can be a bit much for her. As such, we spend a bit of time in the AFK room, which is a relaxing, quiet and low-impact space where people can have a break from the crowded convention. She did some drawing and played a game of Dog Lover, which is one of her favourite card games, as a special interest of hers is dogs. It is also a lovely little set collection game, which I enjoy playing, too. We also did a PAX Aus-themed word search and crossword puzzle. We also got some photos with some of her favourite characters being cosplayed, such as Eevee from Pokemon, and Grim from the Sims 4. In addition, we played a few quick rounds of Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, which is like a hilarious modern version of Snap. We headed home to unwind, thus ending my PAX Aus 2024 experience.

As a hardcore introvert, PAX is taxing, draining my energy and taking me a few days to recover afterwards, but as a hardcore gamer, board and card game geek, and massive nerd, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

PAX AUS 2025 has not been announced yet, but as soon as it is, you’d better believe I’m buying my three-day pass. My wife has said she’ll come along on Sunday as well. Families who game together, stick together. Until next year PAX, au revoir! 



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