Let's Go! To Japan

The Game

This is not a game from Japan, but one about going to Japan. My first contact with Let's Go! To Japan was at the Essen game fair. I saw a group playing it. I didn't listen to the full rules explanation. I just took a look at the game setup and the components. It seemed rather complicated. Now that I have played it, I realise it is not that complicated at all. In fact I think this is a game which new gamers are able to handle. 

This is a game about visiting Japan. You get to visit tourist attractions in Tokyo and Kyoto. You plan an itinerary of six days, and you get to visit 18 different locations. After everyone has completed their itinerary, you calculate points to see who wins.  

Throughout the game you will be choosing cards to play to your itinerary. The itinerary starts blank, and you can play a card anywhere you like. However once a card is added to one particular day, you can't move it to another day. When you want to add a card to the same day, you can play that new card above or below the first one. However once you have decided, you cannot change their order. Gradually you fill up your itinerary, and then the game ends. 

That track in the screenshot above is a summary of what you do every round. It tells you which types of cards you draw (Tokyo or Kyoto), how many you must play, and how many you will pass to your neighbour. Any card you don't play are opportunities for your neighbour. That is something you can consider. When I played I focused only on my own itinerary. I didn't bother checking whether I'd be helping my opponent. 

Every day in your itinerary has one associated icon. This represents the ideal activity type for the day, for example great weather for outdoor activities, or there is a cultural celebration. When you play cards to a day with the same icon, you will gain some benefit. 

On each card, you can see the point value in the top right corner. The lucky cat means victory points. In the top left corner you see icons which you collect. These icons represent things you get to do in Japan, like tasting the local delicacies, shopping, participating in cultural activities, and visiting historical sites. For each of the five icon types, when you collect up to certain numbers, you will score points. At the bottom of each card there is a mission. If you fulfil it, you gain points and possibly other benefits too. You can place at most three cards per day. The missions on the first two cards will be covered and will not take effect. Only the mission on the third card will be in effect. You only check whether you fulfil the mission condition at game end. This is determined by whether you have enough of the required icons from Day 1 of your trip up to that point in time. For example, for your Day 2 mission, you can only count all your Day 1 and Day 2 cards. This is fun and thematic. This is like experiencing your trip for real. If there are activities you are planning to do but you have not yet done them, of course you can't count them as something you have experienced. 

Some activities affect your mood. You may feel guilty for have splurged on an expensive meal, or too much walking makes you tired and gloomy. Some things can make you happy, for example planning nothing for an evening and just going for a relaxing walk, or finding a fantastic deal when shopping. Too many unhappy triggers or happy triggers can cause you to lose or gain points respectively. You are not only planning an itinerary, you are also planning your mood. 

The Play

I have been commenting this about many recent games I've played - nothing unusual or innovative, but great fun. Now I am saying the same thing about Let's Go! To Japan. The play experience is wonderful. I wonder whether I am biased because my wife Michelle and I do enjoy traveling to Japan in real life. We have been there several times. We have not been to all the locations in the game, but there are some which we have visited. It is a joy to see those in the game. 

There is a reason for the two cities in the game. If your itinerary requires a lot of traveling back and forth between the two cities, that is going to be tiring and expensive, and you will likely lose points for it. Ideally you want to visit one city for several days, then take a train to the other, and stay a few days. You will only need one train trip. There are several things to consider when you plan your trip. It's nigh impossible to plan a perfect trip. Sometimes you have to compromise and choose. Every time you draw a card, you anticipate whether it's going to be something that matches well with the plan you have so far. Which missions to go for and which to forgo is not always easy to decide. Sometimes you decide on a mission and hope you will draw the right cards that can be inserted before the mission. Sometimes you have many of a certain icon, and you hope you will draw missions which need such icons. 

My first game didn't go so well. I could not complete my missions on Day 1 and Day 3. The earlier missions are harder to complete, because only a handful of cards counts towards them. Pink are Kyoto locations, and blue are Tokyo. I needed to take the train three times. Tuesday after breakfast I headed from Kyoto to Tokyo. Notice that little train ticket. Then I spent four days in Tokyo. Saturday morning I made a trip to Kyoto, just to visit one place (yeah, it was that important), and then by noon I took the train back to Tokyo to visit two other places. That was an exhausting Saturday. 

For my second trip I spent most of my time in Kyoto (pink). This time I only made two train trips, Wednesday morning from Kyoto to Tokyo, then Thursday noon back to Kyoto. This time round I managed to complete all of my missions. That was satisfying. Notice that along the top there is a track, and my yellow marker (which represents shopping) is still at 0. I'm not a shopping person, so this is an accurate reflection of real life. Realism! 

The Thoughts

Let's Go! To Japan is a pleasant game to play. Planning a holiday in itself is a fun thing to do. I would even say this is an educational game. All the cards come with a description about the location or activity. You will learn something about Japan. The train ticket token in the game looks exactly like a real train ticket in Japan, and I appreciate that kind of detail. How much player interaction there is in the game depends on how you want to play it. I played without bothering with what others were doing. I just wanted to happily plan my own holiday. The game works fine that way. If you are more competitive, or if you want to play at a higher level, then certainly you can pay attention to what kinds of cards your opponents are looking for and try not to give them such cards. 

This is an immersive game. The logistical challenges you face are indeed like those when you plan a trip. Because of that this is a game which makes a lot of sense and it is easy to understand. It also makes me want to plan my next trip to Japan. 

Dancing Queen is back in print!

The Malaysia second edition of Dancing Queen is now out! This uses the same art as the first edition. The international edition from Matagot was released only recently. It uses new art. I have a soft spot for the original art by Edwin Chong, so although I knew that Matagot would be doing a global release for the international edition, I decided to do a local reprint of the game using the old art. One addition in this edition is Chinese language rules and reference cards. The international edition has English and French. By adding Chinese I hope to be able to get into the Chinese market - the Chinese community in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. 

The Malaysia first edition of Dancing Queen sold out around the end of 2024. I decided to work on a reprint at the same time as my 2025 game project Pinocchio. 

This time I use a two-piece box instead of a tuckbox. Also this time round I did CE safety testing. 

Game components

English reference sheet

Traditional Chinese reference sheet

Simplified Chinese reference sheet

I remove the card power text from the game cards. I make them language independent so that the same components can be used for players using different languages. The rules and the reference cards come in specific languages. The card names remain. These are song titles. They don't directly affect gameplay. 

The gameplay remains the same

Now I have three rulebooks. They use a new format. 

First edition on the left, and second edition on the right. It looks significantly bigger. The card sizes are actually the same between the two editions. Late in the project, the manufacturer suggested to increase the box size. I had specified a requirement that the box should fit after all the cards are sleeved. The manufacturer was conservative and suggested an increase. 

After sleeving all the cards, it looks like this. It looks like almost a perfect fit. There is still some space on all sides, and the box could have been a few millimetres thinner. So it's a comfortable fit. 

Malaysia first edition, Malaysia second edition, and international first edition

Family photo of Cili Padi Games titles as at July 2025

Official page of Dancing Queen (includes order form): https://www.cilipadigames.com/dancing-queen

The Asian Board Games Festival (Malaysia) is happening 11-13 Jul 2025 in Penang. If you are in the area, come play Dancing Queen at my booth! 

boardgaming in photos: Rebirth, Whale Riders, Regicide, Lost Ruins of Arnak

My copy of Rebirth is a special memento, because it is a signed copy. I had queued for about an hour for Reiner Knizia's autograph at the Essen game fair 2024. I had played a demo copy at the fair before I bought my own copy. Since returning to Malaysia, I did not play my own copy for more than half a year. I only managed to get it played recently. Younger daughter Chen Rui and I did a two-player game. 

The board is double-sided. One side is Scotland, and the other Ireland. The Scotland map is easier, so we started with that, since Chen Rui had not played the game before. Since it was a two-player game, some areas of the map had to be blocked off. We used the red player tokens for this. 

Playing Rebirth again made me appreciate the skill and art of the master. What you do on your turn is deceptively simple. You are just placing that one tile you have in hand. Its type restricts where you are allowed to place it. You don't have a plethora of options to give you analysis paralysis. The game moves so briskly that I feel rude to pause to take photos. Despite the apparently simple choices, you do have to think strategically. This is not a game of maximising individual turns. You have to think about your long term goals and how to maximise your end game score. 

When I taught the game, Chen Rui asked, "Is this like Carcassonne?" My first reaction was, "What?! That can't be. This is obviously more like Through the Desert." However when I thought further about it, I realised she was probably right. You draw a random tile every turn, and what tile it is limits where you can place it. In Through the Desert, you get to choose whichever camel you fancy. 

I bought a used copy of Whale Riders, also a recent Reiner Knizia title. I had played this before and I enjoyed it. When I noticed Ivan selling his copy in the Board Game To-Go Facebook group, I shared my earlier blog post hoping to help him promote the game. Eventually I couldn't resist and I bought it myself. 

This time I played with both the mini expansions. This was Chen Rui's first game, but both the expansions are simple, and the game itself is pretty simple too, so I felt she would be able to handle it. The first expansion is the missions. You set up four random missions at the start of the game. Whenever anyone fulfils a mission, they claim it. Missions give you either money or points (pearls). Money is for buying goods, which eventually you use to fulfil contracts and gain points. 

The second expansion has a bigger impact to gameplay. Everyone gets to pick a superpower. The one I picked (that rectangular tile in the middle) let me fulfil contracts with one resource fewer. Since I fulfilled so many contracts, this power saved me a lot of resources. The superpower Chen Rui picked allowed her to buy tiles with only one resource for free, even when they are priced at $3. She made good use of it and took lots of single-resource tiles. 

I only recently realised that I could play Regicide on BoardGameArena.com, and it was free! I played quite a few solo games. It is still not easy to win. My win rate is probably around 25%. I'm keenly anticipating Regicide Legacy, which has a release date of July 2025. I have pre-ordered a copy, and I hope it reaches Malaysian shores soon. 

I played Lost Ruins of Arnak with Han and Allen. We have played this before. This is a game I still have not played a physical copy of. I remember it as a mostly typical heavy Eurogame, nothing ground-breaking. My opinion hasn't changed. However it is an enjoyable game, and this recent session was fun. It is definitely a game worth trying. 

MESOS

The Game

MESOS is a tableau game. You collect cards with different abilities to form your prehistoric tribe. This is before the dawn of human civilisation. The different cards are tribesmen with different specialties. You play for a fixed number of rounds, and at the end of that the highest scorer wins. 

The core mechanism for collecting cards is in the second row above. You have a small board for tracking player order for the round, and then a large board for determining how many cards you can collect and from where, the upper row or the lower. During a round, players move their pawns in player order from the small board to claim a spot on the large board. After all spots are claimed, you take cards following a new turn order which is based on the position of your pawn, from left to right. Notice that the spots on the right let you take more cards. If you claim those spots, you will go later in turn order, and you will have fewer choices by the time your turn comes. The positions on the large board also determines the turn order for the start of following round. In addition to that, whoever goes first earns extra food, and whoever goes last loses food. 

At the end of a round, the lower row of cards is discarded, and the upper row is moved down. The upper row is then refilled. This means every card will be available for at most two rounds. If no one wants it, it will be lost forever. 

This is a game of collecting cards, i.e. your tribesmen. There are six types, and they have different abilities. 

Some cards are event cards. You can't take them. They take effect when they are discarded from the lower row. Some events are opportunities to score points. In the picture above the event on the left gives you one food and 3 points per hunter that you have in your tribe. Some events penalise you, for example when it's time to eat and you don't have enough food for your tribe, you lose points based on the shortage. 

These are building cards. They are handled a little differently. They only get moved down once per era instead of once per round. So they stay available for a little longer. You have more time to prepare to buy them. You can't take them outright. You need to pay food for them. Buildings give you points and may also provide other benefits. The one on the left is worth 6 points. It also gives you one food per painter when there is a cave painting event. 

Buildings are randomly set up every game, so there is some variety from game to game. There are three eras in the game, and there are different buildings for each era. The later era buildings are more expensive, but also more powerful. 

The Play

What a lovely little game with so much angst! There is nothing complicated about the game, but it presents so many tough decisions. The events keep you on your toes. You feel like you need all the types of tribesmen to do well or even to survive. But then you also need to worry about feeding them. You want shamans because during the shaman event, the player with the most powerful shamans gains points, while the player with the least loses points. This creates competition. The core mechanism is simple yet effective. You want more cards? Be prepared that you may not have many choices, and you won't have a favourable turn order next round. There is one card which is very good for you, and it'll work splendidly with another card? If you are desperate enough for that first card, maybe you have to claim a position which guarantees you'll get it, and forgo the other card. Apparently simple actions, but these are not simple decisions. 

Among the six types of tribesmen, you will probably need to make some compromises. Generally the more tribesmen you have in one particular type, the more powerful that group will be. So you want to have big groups, and that means you probably have to forgo some other groups. 

I assembled a huge team of builders, and they gave me a deep discount when buying buildings. They helped me buy three buildings, which gave me many points, especially the third one. I did not completely neglect my hunters or gatherers though, because otherwise the penalty from not having enough food would be too painful. 

The Thoughts

Some games are a delight to play, even when they are not particularly innovative. MESOS is a game like this. It is simply well made. The core mechanism is clever and gives you plenty of angst. That's what a good game should be. MESOS is a pleasant experience and it is a game I'd happily recommend. 

Pinocchio is released!

The first batch of Pinocchio has landed in Kuala Lumpur! I flew a small batch in by air, so that I can bring them to the Asian Board Games Festival in Penang on 11 - 13 July 2025. My plan has been to launch the game at ABGF, but the project was a little slower than I had hoped. If I were to send all the games by ship, they wouldn't make it for the event. So I split them into two batches. The second, bigger batch will be coming by sea. 

Pinocchio is my fourth game release.

The box is a little bigger than I had imagined. I had originally envisioned it to be about the same size as the first edition of Dancing Queen, i.e. like a regular deck of poker cards. Late in the production process, the manufacturer suggested adjusting the size to be larger. I had requested that the box be big enough so that after the cards are sleeved, they can still fit comfortably. The manufacturer is more conservative and recommended a larger size. 

This is what it looks like after sleeving all the cards. It looks like a perfect fit. There is actually still a little extra space, but not too tight is good. I won't stress the box and risk tearing it. 

Now I add both Traditional and Simplified Chinese rulebooks to my games. 

All the game components

Some of the cards

Mock-up of game in play

Pinocchio cards

Donkey cards

This is the unboxing video: 

This is an overview of how to play the game: 

Webpage (and order form): https://www.cilipadigames.com/pinocchio

The Asian Board Games Festival (Malaysia) will be in Penang 11-13 July 2025 (Friday to Sunday). If you are in Penang or in the north, come visit me to try Pinocchio!

Orleans

The Game

Orleans is a bag-building game from 2014. That was an era not long after Dominion the pioneer deck-building game was released in 2008. Bag-building, mechanism-wise, is the same thing. It’s just that the physical components are different. In Orleans, instead of cards in a deck, you have chips in a bag. Poker chips, not potato chips. Chips are workers of different types. Every round you draw a number of chips from your bag and use them to perform actions. Once they are done, they go back to the bag. 

The various buildings on your player board require specific combinations of workers types to work. If you don’t have that combination in hand, you can’t work the building. You can still choose to assign some workers there and hope that next round you will draw the remaining workers you need. But those workers sent will be idling this round. 

One thing some buildings let you do is to buy new chips (workers). This augments the composition of your bag. There is also an action which removes chips from circulation. Your chips are boatmen, traders, soldiers, craftsmen, scholars and the like. When you recruit a new worker, you get to advance on a specific track. There are many tracks in the game and as you advance you get various benefits.

You will have opportunities to construct new buildings. These are new places you can assign your workers and they give you new abilities. 

One aspect of the game is a map showing towns around Orleans. You have a pawn on the map and you can travel about to claim goods and to build trading posts. Goods are worth points at game end, and trading posts too. 

The game is played over 18 rounds, and events happen every round, sometimes causing trouble and sometimes presenting opportunities. That’s another aspect you have to handle. 

The Play

The game gives you many strategic options - which kind of workers to go for, any buildings which you want to get, how do you travel on the map, which of the tracks to pursue. It’s interesting to manage your pool of workers. You want to tune your worker mix to best serve your strategic direction. Sometimes your needs change and you need to tune again. 

Competition comes in many aspects. You race to grab buildings. On the tracks there are spots offering citizens (which help with map scoring) and you need to race to grab them. Movement on the map is a race too, because there are plenty of goods tiles to be picked up by whoever passes by first. There is a finite number of workers of each type. It is possible that they run out and you can't recruit any more. That's another thing you race for.

Worker retirement involves some competition too. When you want to remove a worker from circulation, you need to place it on an Important Deeds board. They go there to retire. There are different sections which give different rewards. Naturally you want to go for the bigger rewards most of the time. One twist is the player who places the last worker in a group gets a citizen. Now you need to be careful not to set up for your opponent to gain a citizen. 

In a two player game there is less competition on the map. We went in different directions and did not interfere with each other. By late game we had established many trading posts and claimed many goods tiles. 

This is a development game. Everyone starts with the same capabilities, but as you play you augment your abilities in different ways. It is satisfying to watch your powers grow. 

The Thoughts

Orleans is a little different from typical deck-building games. Many deck-building games have two currencies, one is like money which you use to buy other cards, and the other is like strength, which you use for defeating monsters or beating up your opponent. Card deck-building games usually have cards with nifty powers. In Orleans, you simply have different types of chips, which can be used in different combinations for different purposes. The dynamics are different, and that is refreshing. You are constantly adjusting your bag composition, and it is satisfying to be able to see things pan out. The "reshuffling" happens very soon, because once a worker completes their task, they go back into the bag. Instant gratification!