RichieCon 2023 was just this last weekend of July!  RichieCon is the gathering of friends of Richie in Tucson every year to play games! 

The last few years were quite nice because the monsoons kept the temperature down.  Unfortunately, the monsoons weren’t quite as prevalent this year, and we had some 111 degree temperatures.  Luckily, we were all inside playing games!

A few brave souls did enjoy the pool at RichieCon (there’s a kiddie pool and bigger pool)!

We’ve done 6 RichieCons over the last 7 years (missing only one year due to CoVID).  See here for 2022 report and here for a 2021 report and here for a 2019 report and here for a 2018 report  (we didn’t do reports for the earliest years).

This year’s 2023 token glowed in the dark!  Did you know that 3D printing to flourescent material can wreck your print head?  I had to pay Max an extra $20 for a new print head!  Thanks for Josh for designing this year’s token and Max for printing it!

You must have a RichieCon token to participate.

Prep

Prep is a lot of work as we have to get the sodas, waters, and utensils! Thank goodness for CostCo!

The other part of prep is getting games in boxes for people! Thank goodness for Sam and Teresa!

Preplay

A lot of people come from out of town, so I try to go out of my way to special things with my out-of-town friends! See above as Lon (from Pittsburgh, PA), Kurt (from Las Cruces, NM), and Lexey (from Hayes, KS) play AquaGarden. Kurt is a big fan of this game .. And of Mike Delisio from the Dice Tower who introduced this game to him. I saw Kurt teaching this at least a few times over the next few days. People (except for me) seem to like it.

RichieCon House

The Rec Center (where RichieCon proper happens) is only available for Saturday and Sunday, so this year we got a house as a venue for the out-of-towners to play games. And Ivan, Joe, and Jeremy (from Las Cruces, Las Cruces, and Denver resp.) all crashed there! This was a great decision, as it gave people and place to play games which was “lower stress” than RichieCon proper.

The house was quite nice, and the owners were very friendly. They even anticipated some of our needs!

Little plastic holders that allow you to eat Cheetos without touching them and the cards! Neat!

Set-Up At RichieCon Proper

Recently, the Rec Center was renovated and the carpet was replaced with vinyl floor! WHile it looks great, we knew noise would be an issue (it had been in the past when it carpet, now it would only be worse!).

To this end, we bought a some mats from CostCo (about $18 each) in hopes they would damped the noise. They did … a little. Currently, the Rec Center knows about the noise problem (we emailed them) and they will be working with an interior decorator to address the problem (curtains? Area rug? panels?). So, hopefully next RichieCon will be better!

But of course, the games were the most important! This was a selection from my collection of what “I thought people would like”. People also brought their own games.

In general, the Rec Center looks nicer this year!

Games Of The Con

There were some surprising and not-so-surprising games played!

The first “official” game of the Con was Arkham Horror 2nd Edition! This game is a favorite in my game groups, and it makes my (admittedly outdated) Top 5 Cooperative Games of All Time!

Indiana Jones and The Sand of Adventure was played! We reviewed that just a few weeks ago .. it seems ideal as a convention game!

Ares Expedition was a pretty big hit (we reviewed it here)! I saw it played numerous times, using the 5 and 6 player expansion!

Mystic Paths was a surprising hit! It was played many times!

Earth was quite big! Kurt taught this many times and people seemed to love it!

Fiesta De Los Muertos was also a surprising hit! This huge cooperative party game made this group laugh so many times! It also made out Top 10 Cooperative Party Games!

We won a game of Pandemic: Hot Zone, a smaller game version of Pandemic from our Top 10 “Small” Cooperative Games.

I was the champion for Marvel United and both me and Jeremy and Alex played it, as well as me and Jon G! We love Marvel United here at Co-op Gestalt and have talked it about here and here and here and here.

We got Return To Dark Tower played! This was a “What in the world is That?” Game as many many people stopped (asking that question) by as we played! It’s a cooperative game which won the BoardGameGeek 2022 award for best cooperative game and is a redo of the old Dark Tower game from 30-40 years ago!

Flamecraft was also very popular! See our review of it here!

A staple of every RichieCon has been Canvas (see above: we reviewed it here). I have seen this played at least three times every year for the past few years!

Race To The Raft was quite popular! We literally just got this in (and reviewed it last week) and it was one of the more popular games of the Con!

Summer Camp was a big hit: a light deck-building game with a cute theme seemed to get played a lot.

Oh yes, many Dwarf games got played! The cooperative Renier Knizia Dwarf game Siege of Runedar was Sara’s most anticipated game for her brothers! (And we saw it reviewed here). We also saw Deep Rock Galactic (not pictured) played at least three times! It was quite the hit! See our review of that here!

Another surprising game (which is a huge favorite of mine) was The Captain Is Dead! We love this game so much, it made our Top 10 Cooperative Space Games!

Some people really got into Dune: Imperium!

Oh ya, and we already mentioned Ares Expedition!

A few other games that seemed to get played a lot: Planted, Golem Edition Century Spice Road, and Illusion. These lighter games got played quite a bit!

Interesting Games Since Last Summer

We used to do a Top 10 List at other RichieCons, but we decided to make something more “interactive” so the crowd could participate: we started this last year and continued that tradition this year.  This year, we asked 6 question about Board and Card Games we’ve played since the last year: this was “just an excuse” for us (as a group) to talk about Board Games!  So, me and Sam led a panel and posed the question to the crowds (with our own answers of course).

#6 What game from the last year surprised you the most?  Good or bad surprise?

 

Richie: Race To The Raft: “I picked it up a fluke and just happened to adore this cooperative tile-placement game much more than I expected.  Race To The Raft is a good game!!  See out review here!!  I also got Isofarian Guard: I put 20 hours of gameplay into and just could not get into it.  I did a review which was tainted by misplay (so I took down the review) and I just ended up selling it.  I really thought I’d like Isofarian Guard and I just didn’t.”

 

Sam: Tie between Lost Ruins of Arnak and Co-Op: The Co-op game.

I was surprised (in a good way) by remembering how much fun they were when I played them

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#5 What game in the last year did you think the Dice Tower) is wrong on their rating?

Richie: Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game (see our review here). “I was surprised how low they gave this (6 and 7).  Me and all my game groups love this game and would give it an 8!  The complaints seemed frivolous.” My second pick was Sam’s pick (below).

 

Sam: Big Pig (see our review here)

“The Dice Tower rated it as a 6 (kind of meh) but I thought it was really fun. I’ll agree with their comments about the food pieces not really fitting on the board as something that could have been done better in the initial printing but it was still a really cute and fun cooperative game.” (And my game group agrees with Sam!)

 

Kurt: Sleeping Gods.  “The Dice Tower folk give it 9s and 10s and that has not been our experience: It was just a grind and I didn’t enjoy it.”   I tend to agree: see my review here.

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#4 What game (that you paid for) did you really dislike?  It’s easy to dislike games other people paid for, but what did you pay for that you disliked?

 

Richie: Monster Pit (see our review here).  “Absolutely gorgeous components, stunning player aids, but the game is too random for how many rules it has.” 

 

Sam: Harry Potter: Death Eaters Rising

“Perhaps we were playing it wrong (not the first time we’ve done that) but I just found the dependence on the dice frustrating and it felt like I couldn’t roll well enough to actually do anything.”

 

 

#3 What game that came out in the last year that you liked but other’s didn’t?

 

Richie: ApeQuest.  “Apequest has humor all over it, and I laughed while playing it.  It has a terrible rulebook and it is objectively probably not a good game.  But I still kinda liked it.”

 

Sam:  Welcome To…

I really enjoyed it and also liked the solo mode as an airplane activity. Others thought it was ok.

 

#2 What was your favorite expansion that came out in the last year?

 

Richie: Cantaloop 3 (see our review here).  “I loved the point-and-click nature of this ridiculously funny series.  Cantaloop 1 was fantastic and 2 was pretty good, but Cantaloop 3 brought it home. It was funny and challenging!  It’s probably my favorite solo game of all time?”

Sam: Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition: Crisis (see our review here)

“I really enjoyed how it made Ares Expedition cooperative. I liked coordinating as a group for which phases we would do and how we would go about mitigating the crisis. I enjoyed the cooperative corporation powers where we could help each other specialize some. I also liked that the crisis helped focus what to do or play out of all the great options I felt like I had and wanted to use but couldn’t do everything.

Also, the Dice Tower were wrong about this one too.”

Kurt: Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition: Discovery and Foundations. “My group didn’t like Crisis, but we adored adding 5 and 6 players and the new tracks and all the new upgraded cards”

 

 

#1 What was your favorite game that came out in the last year?

Richie: The Arkham Asylum Files: Panic in Gotham City.  See our review here. “I adored this Escape Room game with the augmented reality: it was fun and exhausting in a good way! The excitement was amazing … I kept saying ‘this is so cool! This is so cool’!”

The Quintessential RichieCon Experince

Rich Campbell wanted the quintessential RichieCon experience: play a game with Richie at RichieCon while playing a game Richie designed!  See above as Rich Campbell (not Richie), Mike, Lexey, Jake and myself play CO-OP: the co-op game.

It was unfortunate that we were not able to save the CO-OP: we were all groovy, but we were off by $1 at the very end! Ah well! It’s not a fun co-op if you win all the time!

Pictures

Conclusion

Another year of RichieCon has come and gone. Thanks to everyone who came from out of town! Thanks to everyone who made it! Thanks for Josh and Max for making the RichieCon 2023 token! Thanks to Will F. who made the chocolate chip cookies!

I look forward to seeing everyone next year!