PAX UNPLUGGED 2025 Recap (Part 1) – ENTHRONE Review by The NameFather
Board Game Gumbo is pleased to welcome back long-time contributor, Steve “The NameFather” O’Rourke. Steve is back from a visit with friends to Pax Unplugged in Philly and is here to give us his thoughts on this year’s convention.
Welcome to 2026, all!
Steve here, writing to you from chilly New York, with a Gumbo blog post to kick off the new year. Here’s hoping that your next run around the sun is happy, healthy, and full of play!
During the break between the Fall and Spring semesters, I have a little spare time and thought I could use some of that to post reviews of two games that are new to me in the last two months. So I’m posting a short look at two games that came home with me from PAX Unplugged last year: Enthrone and Here Lies.
TL:DR… Enthrone is 2p tug-of-wits for thinky introverts who might be put off by the hullabaloo of the typical social deduction game. (In the spirit of full disclosure, Enthrone was a review copy graciously provided by Smirk and Dagger Games.)
BJ has yet to make the trip up to the frozen north of Philly in November for PAX Unplugged, so I have been the Gumbo’s johnny-on-the-spot for that convention. Along with friends from SUNY WCC, we traveled down again this past year to see what was new and share that with you. As you may have heard on our podcast chat with BJ, Julie, Houston, and I traveled to PAX U and had a wonderful time:
Pax U 2025 Chat with Steve, Julie & Houston
I have some very intriguing games to review from Smirk and Dagger and the three of us each got some excellent games from D.V.C Games. (We’re also looking forward to some upcoming releases from D.V.C Games, particularly Inkwell and Rosetta 2nd edition. Stay tuned for more in the months ahead.)
The first new Smirk and Dagger game I got to the table was Enthrone, designed by Sawyer West. I taught and played it with some of our Gaming Guild members at the college. It’s a 2p only game that takes about 30 minutes to play. How to describe it? Enthrone is an abstract game that involves a push and pull of hidden identity and clever movements. There are eight pawns on the octagonal board: the reigning King, the Priestess, the Knight, the Jester, the Demon, the Assassin, the Archer, and the Wizard. (Bonus points to Smirk and Dagger for making the minis for the pawns very cool looking.) At the start of the game, each player is dealt three cards representing three of these different pawns. You pick one that you will try to get to the middle of the board to be Enthroned as the new ruler. Your opponent does the same.
You win if one of three things happens: 1) You enthrone your secretly chosen pawn, 2) You eliminate the pawn chosen by your opponent as their heir to the throne, or 3) You eliminate the three pawns listed on your particular card. Think of these three targets as the publicly known enemies of your chosen champion. (There is a resource card that tells you who are the three enemies of each particular pawn. This is very useful for deduction. If I see who you are trying to remove from the game, I could infer who you are trying to install on the throne. Dangerous.)
And now begins a clever game of tactical movement, bluff and misdirection, deduction and attack. All pawns are in play and can be used by either player. But there are rules for actions that are governed by my favorite part of the game: the vertical tile track beside the main board. There are eight spaces on the track and each pawn has a card that is placed on the track from top to bottom. When you move a pawn, its card gets moved to the bottom of the track and all other cards are pushed up to fill in the gaps.
Brilliant, but it gets better.
The only pawns that can be moved on the board are the ones in the top five slots. (The bottom three can only climb the track as other pawns move and push their cards further up.) And the only pawns that can be moved to the center space and take the throne are the ones whose cards are in the top three slots. Again, you will have to maneuver your favored pawn toward the center as well as getting its card to the top to access the throne room.
Recall that you can also capture other pawns? The only pawns that can capture adjacent minis are the ones whose cards are in the top two slots on the track. If you want to attack, you’ll have to cleverly move to get close to your target, but you also need to have things ready for when that card gets near the top of the track and powers up its attack.
The push and pull of this game is very clever. You want to make the moves that will give what you need, but all moves are public and could give away your plan. If your opponent knows who you are scheming to enthrone, they can attack that pawn or make moves that shuffle the pawns you need to move or attack with down to the bottom of the track.
When it comes to social deduction games, it’s usually a fair bet that I will be both terrible at them and won’t have fun playing them. In my view, they usually devolve into a painful shouting match of baseless accusations among more extroverted people who can hide deception better than I can. So I become a spectator who gets picked off quickly. Once I’m eliminated, I leave to go play a game I will probably enjoy more. But Enthrone is a perfect game for those people who want the social deduction cleverness without the agita. The only things that can betray you are your choices on the board and they can be made quietly and without the high energy discomfort that hampers the introvert cursed with an honest face.
When we played this, the teach seemed like there were a lot of moving parts. However, once the game begins, new players are very quick to pick up the gist. Once you have played it once, it’s super-easy to re-rack and play again. To the game’s credit, there’s enough to chew on in the choices and gameplay, that you feel fulfilled after 30 minutes and want to try it again.
Go forth and king-make!
Thanks, Steve, for the review of Enthrone. Steve will be back shortly with his review of Here Lies, so stayed tuned to the blog for the next entry in the PAX U recap.
Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
** Complimentary copies of some of the games mentioned were provided by the publisher. **