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equipping weapons, which quickly unfolds into a battle phase. The battling is done via dice rolling, with a unique mechanic that has you and your opponent spending resources to force re-rolls of specific dice, either yours or your enemies! A surprising number of strategic opportunities are available, and it's easy to look back and see your mistakes or lucky decisions that led to your victory or defeat. And while it may take a while to set up and play on your first iteration, by the time you are on your 4th or 5th round of the planning phase, the game really picks up and you're rolling dice in no time. Temporal Odyssey www.level99games.com For a different take on head- to-head card battlers, both thematically and mechanically, check out Temporal Odyssey from Chris Solis and Level 99 Games. Instead of a Victorian- era sorcerer, Temporal Odyssey has you piloting a time traveler, amassing characters and artifacts from the past, present, and future to defeat your opponent. There is a discrete deck for each of the time periods, and you'll be drawing from all three into your hand. Your time traveler will be casting spells, deploying other characters, and powering up the board with all sorts of different effects. When one of the time travelers loses all their hit points, they would typically die, but because these are time travelers, they travel back in time to before their death. Sounds convenient, but along the way, they earn an instability from messing with the space time continuum. These instability cards are essentially power ups that allow the losing player to gain a bit of strength and fight back with their newfound manipulation of time. However, too many of these instabilities (three, to be precise), and the traveler is removed from the timeline, permanently. Temporal Odyssey comes with everything you need to play in a manageable box that is fairly transportable. It features a lot of mechanics and will require some investment in a couple of rounds, or at least experienced card battlers that know their way around the genre. The myriad mechanics and effects create a learning curve before you'll be effortlessly traversing time, but this depth also leads to an equal abundance of tactical choices and varied replays. Wrap Up From Boston bars to the convention floor, PAX East 2020 once again had plenty to offer for hardcore gamers and casual enthusiasts alike. Social meetups, early builds, big reveals, cutting edge hardware, and all the memoriabia that you could fit on a shelf made for another successful show. Oh, and the video games! Whether it was an indie title or a new studio launching into the triple-A space, there are so many enjoyable experiences to be had at PAX East through the video game medium that it's impossible to cover them all. We'll definitely be back next year to see what kind of impact the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X have had, and how new games are taking advantage of the powerful hardware. To keep up to date with the latest PAX news, visit: www.paxsite.com