KÖ-OP is a cooperative card game for only two players.  It was originally on Kickstarter back in December 2021.  It promised delivery in September 2022 and it delivered to me just last week (August 15th, 2022 or so). You read that right: this Kickstarter actually delivered early to its backers!  Kudos to the developers for this!

KÖ-OP is a 2-player only game: it’s the journey of cooperatively assembling furniture from “someplace like Ikea” (but legally distinct so they don’t get sued).  The elevator pitch of this game is that it’s Hanabi meets Fog of Love: it’s got hidden information that needs to be communicated, but within the bounds of the relationship.  Basically, players play two emotionally stunted people in a relationship who can barely communicate!  And they need to try to build furniture at the same time they are trying to repair their relationship.  

Let’s take a look.

Unböxing

This is a pretty small game game with some cards: you can see the scale of it (and its expansion: This Way Up) next to a Coke can above.

The game unfolds like a strange Ikea package with hex cards and little teeny cards. See above and below.

In case you are wondering what those little “bowling balsl” are on the inside packaging: those are Swedish meatballs. Oh yes, victory points in this game are meatballs: this is a very serious game.

There’s not much to this. It’s a small game in a small box with some hex cards and tiny cards.

Ruleböök

I struggled with this rulebook.  It’s not bad, it just seems to skimp on examples and elaborations.  And it’s missing a few rules.  There were also some things I had questions about that weren’t addressed (see fixes section below).   This needs a FAQ, and a discussion of a few more things (“What do the dotted lines mean on manual cards?”  “When do I reuse cards from the discard?”, etc).  I was able to learn the game from the rulebook, the font was decent and big enough to read, so I guess that’s a win.  It was … okay.

Sense of Humör

I like that this game has a sense of humor: it makes fun of a lot of the Ikea stereotypes: weird tools and random bags of parts (see above), Swedish meatballs for victory points, and silly names of furniture like the Vulnerlib (see below).  In fact, every piece of furniture has a fun name made by squishing two cards together.

This game does a really good job of embracing that sense of humor and the silly Ikea stereotypes (such as barren black/white design of most cards, the meatballs, the Ikea icons, etc).

Solo Play

I tried a two-handed solo game to get a feel of the mechanics: it doesn’t really make sense to play this solo.  (EDIT: or maybe it does make sense to play solo as a learning tool?  Maybe this can be a tool for a person who has trouble with relationships: if the solo player plays both sides, maybe it can give the solo player perspective into why they have trouble with relationships!  It can also give insight on why lack of communication sucks so much!)

I got kind of frustrated with the rulebook, but I was able to get through a round or two.  The game didn’t really work that great: I was hopeful that a real 2-Player game would make this sing!

2-Player Game

I watched a 2-Player game and was the shepherd for the game.  It think it was more fun to watch the game being played than actually play it!

It didn’t go over well.  One quote was “The Swedish Meatballs were the only thing I liked.”  

Discussiön

I think this game is too random.  I had perfect information playing solo 2-handed, and I still couldn’t build some of the furniture because the cards were against me: there’s no way I couldn’t gotten anything built if that were a 2-Player with imperfect information.  I got the wrong emotional cards, I got the wrong connectors, I got just everything wrong at the wrong time.  There are some ways to fix that, but in general, it was just frustrating.

I felt like a lot of times I had choices, but not information to make a real good choice.  Which needs card do I pick?  Which furniture do I build? (EDIT: I guess you can see the top Communication card, so that gives you some information).  

Mostly, the emotional needs never mattered as you built furniture:  It seemed like the best way to score meatballs was to just build the furniture, and ignore the emotional needs. It was too hard to get the pieces you need with the right connections, so most of the time (all the time? I don’t think it mattered once) the limited communication trying to communicate needs never mattered. 

Build the furniture: that’s all that mattered.  And just hope you randomly get the furniture connections you need for the furniture you chose somewhat randomly.

“Oh, Not THAT Couple!!!”

Have you ever been around that couple that can’t communicate and can’t work together?  They yell at each other and don’t help each other because they don’t know how to communicate.  I hate being around couples like that: it’s not fun, it’s uncomfortable, and I just want to leave.  We’ve all been around couples like that.  So, what does this game do?  It puts you in the place of the couple!! Players play two emotionally student individuals who can barely communicate!! I can’t think of anything less fun than roleplaying a bickering couple.  And that’s what this game is.  

“But this game has a sense of humor! There are meatballs for victory points!  Silly names for furniture!”  And you are right: that helps alleviate a little of that tension.  But once you realize that the game is too random, it sort of puts a dreary spin on the game: “Oh, we’re playing a doomed couple”.  The couple might get lucky, they might not.  More than likely, this couple’s relationship will probably not survive (even if their furniture does).  It’s sort of depressing to think: “This couple will not survive even though they are trying to make it work: they won’t be able to fulfill each other’s needs because they are so emotionally stunted!”

There might be some ways to fix this.

Pössible Fixes

One problem with the game is that there are some edge conditions or natural questions that the rulebook doesn’t answer. Perhaps a slightly more comprehensive rulebook would help. Here’s some thoughts that came up:

1. Can I move or take apart already built furniture?  Thematically, it makes sense! If you’ve ever built furniture, you know you make mistakes and may have to redo something you’ve already done.  It’s just part of life.  There is NO DISCUSSION of this in the rulebook.  This one rule might actually the savior of the game, because it can allow you to fix up some stuff after it’s been placed.   The rules are completely silent on this, implying that once something is placed/built, it can’t be changed.
2. Can I destroy 2 communication cards for one from some discard?   Sometimes you don’t get the connections you need, but there might be some you need in the discard.  It would be nice to have a mechanism where you could take two cards you have and trade them.  It’s also thematic: how many times do you have random crap laying around when building: “Oh, that’s what that’s for!”
3. Can I have a few more options of communication?  Right now, you can only do one of three very limited things to communicate with your partner.  It would be nice if there were more you could communicate: 
   I. “None of these Communication cards is in my love languages” would be nice: it happened to me many times.  But I wasn’t allowed to communicate that.
   II. “Our relationship is more important than this furniture: these are my needs!”  Rather than build on your turn, just communicate your needs (or 2 of them or some subset of them) in place of building this turn.  It’s thematic and represents more emotional depth, sacrificing the dumb furniture to learn about your partner.
   iii. “I’m happy in this aspect, are you happy?”  There is no overlap of symbols: if you both need (say) 2 “time” love language to be happy, you actually need 2+2=4 total to satisfy that!  There’s no way to discover this until the end of the game.  Again, it would be nice if this couple talked more.
4. Needs don’t seem to matter.  It was clear that the most important part of the game was the building of furniture.  It seems like there should have been some points scored if you built “parts” of furniture (points for working together) and got the love language points.  There was no way to switch gears: “Lets work on our relationship more than the furniture”.  Nope: this game was all about the building.  Maybe the Needs cards should be worth more?  The needs are ONLY worth two meatballs!!  Should they be 5 meatballs? 10?  “I mean, aren’t my needs worth anything?”

Don’t argue “Well, Hanabi only has minimal communication and it works!” with me: Hanabi is maximally streamlined and there’s only one source of randomness in the game, so they can get away with very minimal communication.  The KO-OP game has multiple sources of randomness (connectors, love languages, choice of furniture without any information), and there’s just too much randomness to overcome with such minimal communication.

CÖnclusiön

I really don’t want to play a part in an emotionally stunted couple, especially in a game with lots of randomness: it was just too depressing and frustrating for me and my group. Maybe that’s just us: you may not have that problem! You may think: “Lighten up! This is a game with good sense of humor and it’s only 25 minutes, so who cares if it’s too random”. And you wouldn’t be wrong.

Decide for yourself. If you think there might a fun time here for a short game: give it a shot! I also think with some extra rules/elaborations, this game might be a lot more fun: see our Possible Fixes section. Caveat Emptor.

Sync or Swim is a lightweight, cooperative, realtime, card game from Bezier Games. I ordered this on Kickstarter back in February 2022 and it just arrived at my door this last week (July 23rd, 2022 or so): that’s a pretty quick turn around for a Kickstarter!

You might be wondering why I have two copies of this game! The theme: Synchronized Swimming. Yes, that’s what I said … Synchronized Swimming!! It turns out Synchronized Swimming is a very popular high school sport in Minnesota (seriously, I am not making this up). Surprisingly popular! Both of my nieces have both done quite well in the sport. To celebrate them, I picked up one copy for myself and one copy for the girls!

Unboxing

This is a fairly small box, larger than (say) UNO but smaller than (say) Codenames. I used those games on purpose as comparison … we’ll see why later …

Each player (3-6 players) will get a cardboard platform (see above) to “swim” on: see above. The theme here is that each player is a swimmer on the Synchronized Swimming team.

At its core, this is a card game. There are quite a number of cards in the box.

The analogy to UNO is even more apt, as there are a bunch of colored cards numbered from 1-10. You’ll also notice that the cards have hands and feet on them .. these will come into play later … (see above and below). These cards are called SYNC cards: players play them from their hand to their platform.

Finally, there are some ELEMENT cards: these set the challenging moves the swimmers will be performing:

That’s kind of it! 

The game is professional produced and looks good enough. It’s not especially thematic or pretty, but it’s very usable.

Rulebook

The rulebook has big text and is fairly easy to read and inviting.

… but the first few pages say it all: GET THE FREE APP. This is a game controlled by the APP, so you absolutely have to have the APP to play.

The APP does a really good job of shepherding you through the rules and scenarios.

Solo Game

In no way does this game support a solo mode! This is a big group game like Codenames! It’s for a Synchronized Swimming team trying to perform together!! I don’t really blame Sync or Swim for not having a solo mode. It doesn’t make sense thematically or from a gameplay perspective.

Nevertheless, I tried to play the game solo to learn the rules: See above and below.

I played as if it were a 3-Player game: see above. Each player gets a platform and 2 SYNC cards to start (more cards come out as the routines get harder). Swimmers can only look at their cards at the start of the timer. That’s right: this is a timed game!

During the timed phase, players can look at their cards, talk openly about what they have, and pass cards back-and-forth face down. The game is also a hidden info game: you aren’t allowed to show your cards, but you can talk openly about everything you have. This might seem a silly distinction, but in the heat of the moment of a real-time game, this is a big deal! You may not have time to tell everyone everything you have!

Each “level” will have a Swim Objective. The example above requires all swimmers to put the same number of their platform, but different colors. And this is the flavor of most trials in the game: all players must place cards face-up on their platform matching some performance criteria. (Matching colors, matching hands, feet, numbers, mismatching, etc).

You can see my solo game above with the first two platforms filled!

The game gets harder and harder as you have to fill the first platform, then 2, then 3, then 4, then finally all 5! It’s chaotic as player pass cards back and forth trying to meet all the criteria!

Ya. This doesn’t work at all as a solo game. But that’s okay. I learned it that way!

Cooperative Play

But of course, the real way to play this is cooperative.  My niece (above) won state last year at Synchronized Swimming, so the game has to pass muster with her!

This is a silly, chaotic, cooperative game.  When players “finish” their goals, they put their hands over their heads like they are diving.  Very serious game…

The cooperative game gets harder and harder until you perform 5 of the ELEMENTS: see use with a winning game above!

Cooperatively, this was pretty fun.  And silly.  We passed cards, yelled, and had a good time.

Was it like Synchronized Swimming?  Surprisingly yes! According to the expert in our group, the coach talks about the routines before they even get in the water, the routines are learned piecemeal (a little bit at a time), and when we messed up playing (because you will), it’s just like practice in real life!  “Oh, I didn’t get that the first time.  Okay, let’s do it again!”

You end up doing the synchronized swimming routines at least a few times until you get it.  It was a light silly game, about 20-25 minutes long.  We had fun.

The APP

So, this game requires an APP.  That may be a turn off for some of you, but I found that it did a very good job of walking us through the game.  You could easily click on things in the APP for further elaboration. And it was colorful!   And it applauded for us after our routines!  It really did enhance the game!

I asked my niece: “Could you teach this game your friends?”  And she said yes: I think partly because the APP made is pretty easy.  

Conclusion

Sync or Swim  is a lightweight cooperative party card game. It’s somewhere around UNO and Escape: Curse of the Hidden Temple  in complexity, but it’s still fairly straightforward.  The lightweight card play reminds me of UNO (especially with the colored, numbered cards), but the sharing and chaos reminds me a little of Escape: Curse of the Hidden Temple (from our Top 10 Cooperative Dice Games).

The game requires an APP on your phone, which may be a turn-off for some people, but the APP does a great job shepherding players through the game.  It’s also a realtime game, which may also turn some people off.  Sync or Swim doesn’t evoke that much theme at first: it’s a colored card game, but it does get some points for embracing the theme (mostly because of the APP) as much as it can for a colored/numbered cards game.

It doesn’t sound like I love this game, and I don’t.  But I like it: I’d much rather play the cooperative game of Sync or Swim than UNO.  The next time someone pulls out UNO, maybe Ill pull this out in instead and see if it works better.  It was silly fun for me and my groups.

The Spill is a cooperative game for 1-4 Players from Smirk and Dagger. This game was on Kickstarter in September 2021. It promised delivery in April 2022 and just delivered to me a few days ago (Aug 7th, 2022 or so). You know, 4 months late for a Kickstarter is pretty good! No grumpiness here!

This is a game about cleaning up an oil spill and saving animals in the ocean/gulf. The main feature of the game is the giant orange dice tower: this is the toy inside that will sell the game! See below.

Let’s take a look and see if it’s any good!

Unboxing and Gameplay

The Spill is all about throwing black dice (“the oil”) into the big orange dice tower (“the Oil Rig”): thematically, the oil is spewing out of the oil rig into water.  See above.

 

You can see the tons of black dice on the right (above) and the Oil Rig in its deconstructed state. Spoiler Alert! You will have to assemble the Oil Rig at the start of every game and disassemble it to put it back in the box. I worry a little about this because the little plastic posts that hold up the tower seem “slightly” fragile.

The Spill is a cooperative game with asymmetric player powers: each player takes the role of a Specialist with different powers. There are 8 total roles to choose from (see above). Each role has a different ability to help make the game a little easier.

Before the start of the game, players choose (randomly) one of the WIN Condition cards (see above). The more little gold dots at the top left, the harder the game. But, you just choose one of these WIN Condition cards, and that sets the three things you need to do to win. Usually, you have to save so many sea creatures, clean up so much oil, and clean up contaminated wildlife. Each card is a little different, so the game can change between plays!

The Situation Board (above) shows a bunch of information (animals saved, Oil removed, icon reminders, borrowed actions), but most important: the oil drop at the top shows you how many dice you will drop in the oil rig next turn!! Every time there is a spill, that little oil drop advances, and later in the game you will be getting more and more dice per turn!

The dice drop into one of 4 quadrants: each quadrant has spaces for the dice 1-6: see above.  You can see as the dice come out, they start to fill up a sector!  In a kind of pandemic like way, if there are ever three dice on one sector, you have a SPILL OUT!

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In our game above, we have 4 SPILL OUTS! (See the orange banners marking the sectors were there are three dice in one sector). If there are ever 6 SPILL OUTS on the board at the end of a turn, players lose!

You clean dice as you go and remove SPILL OUTS, but a SPILL OUT can always come back!

The other ways to lose are: (1) if you get 3 or more of the same contaminated creatures in the Sick Bay (see above where any dolphin, octopus, or manta ray will cause us to lose!). Or (2) if one creature of each type comes to the sick bay. Creatures come to the Sick Bay if they are still contaminated at the end of the turn.

To summarize: you lose if there are too many SPILL OUTS, or if there are too many contaminated creatures in the Sickbay!!

You win (typically) if you if you clean up enough oil and save enough creatures. See a winning board below (with 10 oil removed, 3 sets of marine life saved, and 4 contaminated marine life saved).

How do you save creatures and remove oil? With Action Points of course! Each player gets 4 Action Points (abbreviated AP throughout the game). Each Specialist card has a summary at the bottom:

It’s pretty expensive to remove Oil (3AP), but pushing a plain oil cube is only 1 AP: movement is 1 AP, and rescuing a healthy marine animal is 1 AP, but rescuing a contaminated one is 2 AP.

Every player must drop oil into the oil rig, then use their 4AP to do what they need to. There is a cool mechanism for borrowing AP which we’ll discuss below.

Overall, the game looks really nice and has nice quality components.

Rulebook

The rulebook is quite good.  It was easy to read,  it gave great directions and pictures for set-up, and it was easy to reference for questions.  I think there’s only one question we had (“What if the spill out marker goes past the end?”) that we couldn’t answer.  

Seriously, this was a very good rulebook.  The components were well-labelled and marked in the first pages, and it had easy directions for assembling the dice tower.

Set-up was easy:

The rulebook had a nice big set-up section with pictures and easy-to-read fonts.

The rest of the rulebook was easy to read. The rulebook ends with a bang with a nice summary on the back.

Seriously, this was a really good rulebook.

Solo Play

Congratulations to the Spill for following Saunders’ Law: this cooperative game has a solo mode! It’s easy and well-specified. It’s easy to follow because basically all games (no matter how many players) always must have 4 specialists! The solo player simply plays all 4 Specialists like a 4-Player game. See my solo game with 4 Specialists above. At first, I was concerned that this would be too much (we’ve complained at Legends of Sleepy Hollow for this sin) because 4 Specialists will have a lot of context switching between characters! See How To Play A Cooperative Game Solo here for more discussion of this.

It turns out, it’s not that big a deal to play 4 characters in the Spill because they each have very simple powers. This is both boon and bane because the powers are simple enough to context switch between, but it also means the Specialists aren’t “that different” from each other. (One thing you can say about the characters in Legends of Sleepy Hollow: the characters are all very different and interesting but context switching between them is difficult). For The Spill, I think this simplicity was okay: this game feels like entry game (more discussion below).

I was able to win my first game of The Spill, but it was challenging. I got a few rules wrong (which we discovered after we played it cooperatively), but that’s my own fault. I’d say the only “slightly confusing” thing in this game were the weather dice.

Occasionally, you will draw one of 4 blue weather dice from the bag, and it will cause something in in the game to be harder: see above as saving marine life now costs one AP more. The weather die affects everyone, but you can reset the effect ON JUST YOUR SPECIALIST at the end of your turn.

Playing solo was straightforward and I had fun. I was “concerned” that the game might have too much randomness. We’ll revisit that below.

Cooperative Play

Our first cooperative play was 4-Players, which was the perfect size (because you must always play 4 Specialists anyways).

I taught my friends the game very quickly and they picked it up quickly. We made choices on out turn and.

One interesting thing that happened (which I didn’t reflect upon until later) was that this game tends to prevent Alpha Players! (See our discussion of Alpha Player Syndrome here). I think the reason was that each player “typically” only can operate in their own quadrant of the board because movement is expensive. Players have to be spread out over the quadrants to “cover” each quadrant, or they will lose! So, even if there’s a cube you want to get on your turn, it’s too expensive to move across the board. And the Oil Rig dice tower kind of “blocks” other sides of board: you can only see your quadrant and your neighbors. So, you can’t ALpha Play because (a) you can’t see everyone’s state without serious looking around (b) movement is too expensive to be traipsing around the board. This means that each player tends to concentrate on their own quadrant and shut-out/down the Alpha Player.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t communicate: we’d discuss ways to use the Resource Cards, what we needed to get, things to concentrate on. We had the high-level discussions and each player would tend to concentrate on the low-level activities of their own sector.

This game went over like gang-busters! Everyone seemed to really like it!

The Oil Rig

It feels stupid to say this, but dropping dice into the Oil Rig was really fun! It’s silly, but the kinesthetic experience of dropping the dice and watching them disperse was quite enjoyable. Even if you don’t like co-ops, this dexterity element was fun. And everyone got to drop dice on their turn, so it was a shared experience: everyone got a turn!

Seriously, the Oil Rig made the game more fun.

EDIT: We just finished watching the Dice Tower do a playthrough of The Spill, and they had trouble with dice spilling out (no pun intended) outside the little container. It looked very frustrating! We didn’t have this problem when we played. We tended to throw the dice in all at once, and it didn’t seem to be a problem for us. Not sure what the difference is between our set-up and the Dice Tower set-up, but it was definitely an issue for them. It wasn’t for us. Caveat Emptor.

Resource Cards 

This would be a pretty “by-the-numbers” co-op if the game were just what we described. But two things really elevated the experience: first was the Resource Cards. See above.

At the start of the game, each Specialist chooses 1 of 2 Resource Cards to go out (4 will be out at the start of the game). Whenever you get 3 oil removed or gain a set of three animals, you get an orange marker to put on one of the Resource cards! These resource cards are GOOD THINGS to can choose to do (they reminded me of the resource cards in Pandemic that you can play at any time) during your turn, if you have enough orange markers on it.

If you look at the Situation board, you can see the little orange cubes on the board, clearly demarking when you get on! It was great to have these Resource Cards, as you could choose to do some out-of-the-box turns to get something done! Resource Cards promoted some more strategic thinking, as we had some “helpful” mechanism near the endgame.

You could argue these are just like the Pandemic “anytime” cards, and you’d be right. But it was cool that you got to select them at the start of the game and that anyone could activate them: they took the Pandemic idea and gave it an upgraded twist!

Extra Actions

I think what really made the game special was the “Extra Actions”: see the “Extra Action Pool” on the right side of the board.

Basically, it allows you (if you want) to add 1 or 2 more Action Points to your turn, at the cost of adding an extra oil dice for the next turn!! I can’t tell you how many co-ops I have played where I said “OH!! I wish I had just one more action to get something done!” With this mechanism, you can!

Basically, you can choose when you need a few more APs, but you know the cost. This mechanism feels like you have more agency on your turn.

I loved this mechanism and the it really elevated the gameplay for me!

Discussion 

My major worries with this game was that “it was too random” and “it was too much like Pandemic“. Let’s look at both of these in turn.

After playing a few times, I think the randomness can still be an issue, but there are several reasons why this wasn’t an ongoing concern. Firstly, The Spill is a fast game! It’s about 45 minutes, so it’s easy to get back and play again. I can think of games of Pandemic where the randomness wrecked us: it’s just the nature of the beast for some co-ops. Sometime you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you. Secondly, there are enough mechanisms (between Resource Cards and Extra Action Points and Special Powers) to mitigate a lot of this randomness. Randomness is debilitating when players feel they don’t have any agency to counteract it, but I think The Spill contains enough mechanisms to give players that agency. Said another way, the randomness didn’t seem to get to us.

As for the “it was too much like Pandemic” argument, my friends really thought this felt different from Pandemic. Granted, there are a lot of similarities, but there’s enough differences for this to be its own game. Between the dice throwing and Extra Actions and Resource Cards, gameplay was different enough to enjoy this outside of Pandemic.

In the end, my friends and I think this is entry cooperative game. It’s slightly more complicated than Forbidden Island (the prototypical entry co-op), but less complicated than Pandemic. But we still liked it and would love to play it again. It’s just not a super heavy game, but that’s not a ding! I could see this on the shelf at Target!

Theme

Some people might have a problem with the theme, but after playing the game, the theme wasn’t a concern.

Most of my game group did NOT like Endangered (see our review here) because the creatures you were trying to save actually got killed!! I was worried my friends would have the same problems here! Nope, the creature aren’t killed … they go to “SickBay“:

Our joke was “Is SickBay like the farm my dog Rover went to when he was sick?” The Spill got around the issue by just calling it SickBay (good job guys!).

In general, the theme wasn’t too gross or debilitating. Honestly, the Oil Rig dice tower is so fun it kind of “suppresses” the kinda dismal theme. (I mean, the theme is a broken oil rig polluting the oceans and killing animals!) But, we are working to fix it! So, we are doing a positive thing and the theme didn’t seem to get to anyone. It might for you: Caveat Emptor.

Conclusion

I liked The Spill a lot more than I expected to! It’s an entry level cooperative game, but it was fun! It was fun to throw dice in the Oil Rig, it was fun to discuss concerns at a high-level, it was fun to try to solve the puzzle here. Although this game has some randomness in it, the mechanisms to mitigate said randomness worked really well: I think the Extra Action Points mechanism was just brilliant and really elevated the game from a “by the numbers co-op” to something more interesting.

I’d recommend this game as a good entry game (assuming the theme doesn’t get to you: it didn’t cause us any consternation) or for players who want a light but fun co-op.

What does it mean if RichieCon weren’t a success? An unsuccessful RichieCon would mean:

• People would be unhappy (but everyone had a great time)
• Weather would bad (but it was fairly mild for Tucson, and it rained just enough to keep it cool but not enough to cause problems)
• Games were not played (but a ton of games were played!)

So, RichieCon 2022 was a success!

Day 0: Preparations

Before RichieCon 2022 could start, games had to be boxed from the RichieCon Collection so they could easily be taken to the Rec Center;  most of this happened the week before!

Day 1: Thursday, July 28th

A small cadre of people showed up at (what we dubbed) “The Las Cruces house” or “RichieCon After Dark”.  Basically, all the Las Cruces people (and a few others) stayed at one big house for RichieCon.

Some games were played (and a lot of Sentinels of the Multiverse)!  People said Hi, and got ready for the big event!

Day 2: Friday, July 29th

A food run was critical: RichieCon provides for lunch on Saturday, so a quick trip to CostCo was necessary for foodstuff.

Preparations were made at the Rec Center!  Most importantly, drinks had to be put in the fridge so they’d be cold for Saturday!

Days 3 & 4: Saturday, July 30th, Sunday July 31st: RichieCon 2022 begins!

Games of the Con

The game I saw played most at RichieCon 2022 was Canvas! I saw it played SO MANY times!  This is a light, beautiful game that everyone seems to enjoy!  And it’s not even a co-op!

Train games were a surprising hit!  I saw a bunch of people playing the older Railways of the World (well, the older version called Railroad Tycoon) and the newer and hotter cooperative Switch and Signal!

Ark Nova seemed to always be out, but only because it takes 4 hours to play! I saw it played once on Saturday and and once on Sunday! Some people liked it, some people thought it was okay, and some people did not like Ark Nova!

Century Spice Road: Golem Edition and Splendor (original and Marvel) made a splash last year, and again this year: I saw everyone playing both of these!

My Father’s Work was one of the longer games played, and I was able to be in it! Fun but very involved games!  This is a huge worker placement game! 

Ivan brought his Return to Dark Tower (a bog sprawling co-op with a cool tower) and it got played twice as well! Two big, long games!

Heroes of Terrinoth, an older co-op by the Sadler Brothers got played at least twice.  It also got pimped out! See below.

Pimp My Board Game

We tried something different this year: Junkerman set-up a “Pimp By Board Game” table.  While he worked on my copy of Heroes of Terrinoth to pimp out, he would chat with people about ways to help your board games!

If you wanted a “relaxing” time after playing a longer game (like Ark Nova or My Father’s Work), we had the perfect activity: Pimp My Board Game!  Below, Linda helps Joe.

 

Top 6 List: Games of Interest from 2021/2022

This year’s Top 6 (was a Top 10 last year, changed to a  Top 6 to make it shorter) was all about games we’ve played since we last met!  The idea was that pose questions and try to get people involved!

More Pictures

Conclusion

Another year has come and gone: we saw new friends and old friends! We played, chatted, laughed, and partied. We look forward to seeing you next year!