It’s taken two days but I think the nervous energy associated with PAX has finally dissipated. Hopefully those of you that attended PAX 06 will agree that the event came off pretty damn well. Obviously there were some issues with the amount of people being crammed into that space but I think we made it work. The final count for PAX 2006 was 19,323 (almost 20,000 people!) and there is no doubt that we’ve outgrown the Meydenbauer center and thankfully this was the last year we will have to deal with that. PAX 07 will be moving to the absolutely gigantic Washington State convention center in downtown Seattle. We’ll have more than triple the space and we plan on putting it to good use. I was blown away by how understanding everyone was this year. I know we had some long lines and some big crowds but I never heard anyone complain about the situation. All I heard all weekend from people was how great the show was and what a good time they were having. You guys really are awesome.

It has become the Saturday tradition to do the next strip upon the expo's stark and terrifying stage, but since Armadeaddon needed its proper epilogue it got moved out to Wednesday. Gabe was highly indulgent of audience suggestions in the final version, far more than he is to me, adding many, many things based on them being called out from the microphone - he has a version with more additions still that he'll be putting up later today. But there are things in there like the blue ball in the last panel - to say nothing of the official "Hot-Dog Fairy" merchandise! - that began as anecdotes and have now graduated to true PAX lore.

There were some truly unconscionable spelling issues with the 1.0 version of that last post. I think I got them all.  But I am afraid to look.

(CW)TB
 

Here is the final sequence of Armadeaddon, which you may think of as a kind of bonus stage. The next time poor diet or exhaustion leaves us without rejoinder to infernal continuity, panel two should provide more than enough raw material.

I just wanted to give you all a quick update from PAX. Things are pretty crazy here but I thought you all might like to see a couple pictures Kiko took yesterday.

I could have taken more rigorous steps to prevent it, but circumstances have conspired to leave me in a hotel room the night before PAX, a heavy black mug of hotel cat piss coffee cooling on the nightstand while I thumb my post into the server from my mobile phone. I love to depict times like these in apocalyptic terminology, but the truth is that I love almost everything about them. I know it's ridiculous to find fault with my lot - it's boorish in a way, like complaining about the weight of your scepter. I hope it's understood that these posts are largely a pageant I hold for your benefit! I'm not actually of the opinion that staying in a hotel room on the eve of my convention constitutes "hard living."

I just read through one of the conduits of Leipzig gaming news, and was jolted by a piece of news: Xbox Live is going to be moving into classic board games.  I don't mean, like, Chutes and Ladders or some shit - though I don't doubt that GrowPot420 would snap that up on day one.  No, I mean like Settlers of Catan and Carcassone.  Pillars of the tabletop gaming community, so to speak.

This is probably the biggest news of that convention for me.  Getting people together to play these games, or finding people to play them with at all can be a trying endeavor.  This is near Goddamn optimal.

(CW)TB
 

On10.net has posted a video interview they did with us at our office a couple weeks ago. Honestly not much real information gets conveyed. The past couple months have just been nuts for us and with PAX coming up we’re just sort of loopy. You’re welcome to watch it but please don’t expect to get anything useful out of it. Also, if you are one of the few people left who has never seen us in our true forms I’d recommend staying away from this clip. Like a child who still believes in the Easter Bunny I want you to go on thinking we look just like the cartoons for as long as you can. No one wants to find out that the Easter Bunny is actually a couple of retarded looking dorks.

Ask and ye shall receive!

Just like the blistered, hungry dead, Armadeaddon itself lumbers - toward its inevitable conclusion. There are two more installments, or perhaps I should say there is one more installment and then an epilogue. Because that is the caliber of site we operate: a site with epilogues and denouements and perhaps even the occasional finale.

If you pre-registered for PAX and you have not received your pass yet, please send a mail to pax@penny-arcade.com

You can download homebrewed ROMs for the Fruit Fucker that enhance the efficiency of the feed reamer or allow you to juice via SMS. I'd read on FFHacks.com tweaking boards that the machine had an array of sensors that had no apparent juicing purpose. Of course, "hackzors" up to their spectacles in system-level code are probably the last people to read the manual.

If you'd like to submit some questions for the PAX panels next week, we won't stop you.  Indeed, we might actively encourage such a thing.

(CW)TB
 

We'll return to those two in a moment - for now, let's get a look at our supposed protagonists. What are they doing? Let's find out. Did they make any new friends?

It's "limited," but not that limited.  There's fifteen hundred of them total, if you are interested. 

(CW)TB
 

The World of Warcraft CCG is just around the corner. Upper Deck is letting us premier a few of the cards I did here on the site. The first one is the Leeroy Jenkins card.