Up or Down?

Up or Down? is a simple card game from from the master duo Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling which is not as simple as it looks. You collect up to three sets of cards, and within each set the cards must be played in ascending or descending order. Cards come in 6 different colours and every card has a different number. The cards in the game go from 1 to 126, but the range you use depends on the number of players. First let's talk about how the scoring works. 

For each of your sets, your score is the number of cards in the set multiplied by the number of cards of the colour you have the most of. So from the screenshot above, the three columns score like this: 8 x 3 (yellow) = 24, 2 x 1 (either colour) = 2, 8 x 5 (blue) = 40. On your turn you must take a card from the centre of the table, and add it to one of your sets. The cards in the sets must be played in ascending or descending order. In case you can't add your new card to any existing set, you must discard one of your sets to start a new set with your new card. Discarded cards go to your personal discard pile. They are still worth points, but at a measly 1 point each. 

Here is how a turn works. You always have a hand of three cards. On your turn you must play one card to the centre of the table. 

There are always six cards at the centre of the table, ordered in a circle in ascending order. When you play a card, it is added to this circle of cards, inserted at the appropriate spot. You must then take one of the two cards next to the card you just added. This is how you claim a card from the centre. At the end of your turn, you draw a new card from one of the two draw decks in the middle. One of them is face-up, and the other face-down. 

The game is played until the draw decks run out, and after everyone has played all their hand cards. Only then you check your scores to see who wins. 

So far all this sounds pretty straight-forward. Only upon playing I realised this game is a little trickier than I thought. Despite the simple rules, the correct tactics to employ are not easy to figure out. What's a good play and what's not? I must admit after two games I still have not fully figured out the game. My first thought was I should have one ascending set and one descending set, and the third can be either. However I soon realised this might not be necessary. 

Which card should you play? At first I only cared about it helping me to get a card that fit well with my current sets. Later I realised it's important to watch what cards your opponents are collecting and try to avoid putting out a card they want. The card you play will affect the circle of cards. It might become a card you can take on your next turn. It might interfere with your plans to take another card on your next turn. These are all things to think about. When you need to take a card from one of the draw decks, although there are only two options, it is not always easy to make a decision. My first thought was I should have a wide range of numbers in my hand, so that I always have more options. Later I felt that might not be right. Depending on the numbers I'm trying to collect, I might need to take cards close to those numbers. 

I think the most effective way to score well is to take many cards of the same colour for the same set. What this means is you'll need to watch what other players are collecting. If they are going for the same colour, you will have competition. You also want to deliberately take colours which others want for the sake of denying them. I realise it is important to watch what numbers and colours are useful to your opponents. 

One strategy I thought about was focusing on making only two high-scoring sets, leaving the third as a burn set. You try to keep those two sets as pure as possible, while the third set is for you to dump cards which don't fit. Expect the third set to be discarded often and to not score much. I tried this and it somewhat works, but I'm not sure whether this is the best strategy. Maybe there are others. 

The end game can be challenging. You will have to play all your hand cards eventually. Ideally you want to avoid discarding any of your sets, because cards being discarded will score fewer points. If you are not careful with the end game, you might be forced to discard a set, and you may end the game with fewer points than you have during the game. 

Up or Down? reminds me a little of Take 5 / 6 Nimmt, the classic by Wolfgang Kramer. I am intrigued by how it works and I am curious to figure it out. I think ultimately you can't have tight control over how well you do. Luck is a factor. Yet there are tactics you can employ. An experienced player will most likely beat a new player. I like Up or Down? because it gives me a good mental workout, and it brings something new to the table. I am liking smaller games like this compared to those run-of-the-mill heavy Eurogames with tons of resource collection, resource conversion and contract fulfilment. 

BGG file uploaders

A blog post on BoardGameGeek.com listed the games with the most files uploaded, and also users who have uploaded the most files. I know I have uploaded many concise reference sheets but I did not realise I am among the top 20 people who have uploaded files to BGG. I'm ranked #17. I just need two more files to go up to #16 ha ha. It feels good to contribute in some small way to this community of ours.  

Terra Nova

I am almost tempted to just write that Terra Nova is a simplified version of Terra Mystica. End of story. It's technically true, but that's a bit lazy. I have played Terra Mystica before. It's a hugely popular game. I can't say I'm a fan, but I do enjoy myself when I play it. 

Just like the predecessor, you play a tribe starting with small settlements, and you grow your settlements and your tribe, constructing more buildings and upgrading them. You can only build on one specific terrain type, and often you need to terraform terrain so that you can use it. There is magic power in the game. It works like charging battery. You need to charge up the magic stones before you can use them. After they are depleted, you need to charge them again to be able to use their power. 

If you have played Terra Mystica, all this is familiar. Now I must admit I haven't played Terra Mystica that many times. When I played Terra Nova, I thought, wait, isn't this the same thing? It has all the key elements that I remember of the original. The only thing I was sure was missing was the four temples. You don't need to advance your markers on the four temples to compete for majority anymore. Only when I checked in more detail I realised a few other simplifications. You have fewer types of buildings now, and you don't have workers as a resource any more. In Terra Mystica you spend workers to terraform. Now you just spend money. 

In Terra Nova you will compete for space. You want to expand your settlements. There is this interesting rule where you get a discount when upgrading your building if it is adjacent to an opponent's building. So you have incentive to build near your opponents, even if it means more competition. 

The more buildings you have, the more income you will also generate every round. The largest buildings (palaces) give you special abilities, and these are different depending on the faction you play. Every end of round there is a special scoring opportunity. You want to plan your expansion based on these, to maximise your points. For example one may give you points for palaces. You will want to build palaces in time for that. 

If you like Terra Mystica, I don't see much reason for you to want to play Terra Nova, unless you specifically want a similar experience but shorter and simpler. I think fans of Terra Mystica love it partly because of the complexity. They don't need the game to be streamlined. In fact Terra Nova may feel diluted and less interesting to them. I think Terra Nova is meant for a different audience. I like Terra Nova more than Terra Mystica, in the same way that I like Great Western Trail: El Paso more than Great Western Trail. I think the simpler versions deliver the most fun parts of the game while reducing work you need to do. They are the executive summaries of the originals. Maybe they are not the "full experiences", but they are more succinct. 

Leaders

Leaders is a 2 player abstract game played on a hexagonal board made of hexagonal spaces. You each start the game with just one game piece - your leader. In the first few rounds of the game you will get to recruit minions from a market of three options. Every minion in the game has a unique ability. You will eventually have four minions, after which you do not recruit any more. Your goal is to capture the opponent leader. You do this by having two of your pieces next to it, or you force it to be fully surrounded by pieces, regardless of whether your own or your opponent’s. 

Leaders wear crowns

On your turn you get to move all your pieces once. Your minions have all sorts of powers. Some can move more than just one step. Some move like rooks, moving in a straight line. Some jump over others. Some pieces can move other pieces, for example pulling or pushing them. Some pieces protect others from being manipulated. 

This is a perfect information game. You know exactly what powers your opponent has. You need to move and position your pieces to capture the opponent leader which protecting your own. In many ways this is like chess. 

Checkmate! White leader captured by black minions.

One part that’s different is you don’t capture or eliminate opponent pieces. You can’t land on other pieces. Blocking can be a very effective tactic. Some powers require line of sight. Sometimes you will find that you are blocking your own pieces. Positioning them and moving them can be frustratingly slow if you don’t plan well. 

Both the games I played were short. Han and I were new to the game, and we were not good at defense. Your game pieces have a good variety of powers (and you get to choose your combination of powers) and since you get to move all pieces on your turn as opposed to just one piece per turn, you can orchestrate powerful moves. 

Intercontinental Snow White (play by forum)

Recently Hilko informed me about a game of Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs being played in a BoardGameGeek.com forum. It is hosted by Dave Peters, and the players are from different countries, including from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and even Australia. I certainly have never imagined my game being played in this format, so I am watching this game with curiosity (link to thread, item 3). One name in the player list that struck me was Jeroen Doumen - one of the designers at Splotter Games. I have been a big fan of their games for many years. It is surreal to see one of my most admired game designers play my game. 

boardgaming in photos: Brazil Imperial, Take Time, Cili Padi Games, mahjong rummy

I was back in my hometown Kota Kinabalu during the Christmas period, and met up with an old friend to play some boardgames. We did a four-player game of Brazil Imperial. I have played this once before, but quite some time ago. This is a very pretty game. 

These were the three objectives I chose. Originally the plan was to play Clans of Caledonia. Then the plan changed because it was a Monday night and we wanted to do a shorter game. We had work the next day. I had never imagined Brazil Imperial to be considered a shorter game than Clans of Caledonia. I have played both, but I remembered neither clearly. I thought Brazil Imperial was pretty complex. It is a 4X game. 

Brazil Imperial was thought to be quick because it was a rush game. You need to race to complete your objectives, because if others beat you to it, you will miss your scoring opportunities. Indeed there is time pressure. I thought I did rather poorly in this game. I didn't quite remember the game and I had to learn it all over again. In the early game I chose to enhance some actions, but I later realised I didn't utilise them as much as I felt I should. That was a little wasteful. To my surprise, I ended the game in second place. A distant second, and I was only 1 point ahead of 3rd place. Still, that was better than I had expected. I was pretty peaceful and didn't do much warring. There was some fighting in our game, between Nicholas and Chua, but there isn't much time to fight in this game. Still, the outcome of battles can have a huge impact. So you do have to watch out for war, or you want to make use of it. 

I played the game in a pretty Euro way - choosing one or two aspects to focus on and maximising my points related to those aspects. Having played the game twice, my impression is about the same as last time. It's okay. It's a civilisation game. 

My sister and her family were back in KK too, and my nephew and niece loved playing mahjong rummy when they were there. This is our standard Chinese New Year game, but I guess now it's a Christmas game too. 

I saw this at a supermarket when in KK and bought one. This is the name of my little indie game publishing studio - Cili Padi Games. Coke has been making cans like this for some time in Malaysia. Coke cans have common Malaysian nicknames. Cili padi is Malay and it is a type of small chilli. People who are small in size but feisty are sometimes given such a nickname. This is also why I use it as my brand. I want to make games which are small but pack a punch. 

I played a lot of Take Time with my nephew, niece and brother-in-law. We really enjoyed this. We have only worked through to Level 3 so far. Now that I have played more of this, I develop some general strategies and best practices. Now that can be a bad thing. If these are so effective that the game becomes too easy, the game will feel solved, and it will feel pointless to keep playing. The tweaks and limitations introduced by the different levels address this problem. Also your card draws are random. The card draws can create very different challenges from game to game, even for the same level and part. 

Sometimes when we finally won a level after many failed attempts, we all stood up and cheered and gave high fives. 

What a beautiful game!

3 Jan 2026 was the first playtesting session for the year. TTGDMY (Tabletop Game Designers of Malaysia) did not organise as many playtesting sessions in 2025 compared to the year before. This first session in 2026 went well and we had good attendance. I playtested Apa You Cakap, Pilgrim Poker (aka Bet West, Saikoyu) and Math Dice. I brought Rebels of the Three Kingdoms too but did not have enough time to play it. Many other games were playtested. The session went about 6 hours! 

Draft & Write Records

Draft & Write Records is a paper and pencil game. Your put together a rock band, bringing together not only the musicians, but also producers and stage hands. You release albums and singles, you do shows starting with local pubs and hopefully eventually progressing to prestigious stadiums. Every player does this on his own player sheet. You check boxes off to mark your progress in the various aspects of running a rock band. You score points for the progress you make. To determine which boxes you can check, there is a card drafting mechanism.

The card crafting mechanism is similar to that in 7 Wonders. You get a hand of cards. You pick one and pass the rest to your neighbour. The card you choose determines which part of your sheet you get to check off. This process is repeated several times, until one last card remains and is then discarded. Then you start a new round with new cards drawn from the deck. 

Checking boxes off a sheet of paper is actually rather abstract. Some parts of the game are mechanisms unrelated to the theme. However, there are also aspects which make you feel like you are really putting together a band and managing their career, which is fun. The people you recruit each have four icons. These are used to represent whether people you bring to the team click with one another. Some spaces need to be unlocked before you can check them off, and to unlock them, you need money. That's pretty realistic. This is business. You need to worry about funding. You also want to release a good mix of albums and singles. You score points by multiplying these two. That kind of makes sense, doesn't it?

Let's look at some aspects of the player sheet: 

Those Polaroid photo slots in the middle are the spaces for your band members. Some icon spaces are linked. You want these linked spaces to have the same icons. You get a bonus for that. At the top right you have a grid of icons. You want to complete rows and columns (including diagonally) to score points or to get to check off other spaces. On the right side when you check off the bigger icons, you get to claim the bonuses between them. 

There are four public goals. They are evaluated at the end of every round, and multiple players can achieve the same goal. Goals are discarded at the end of a round if scored, and new ones will be drawn. One way the game ends is when any player completes 6 goals. When you complete a goal, you not only score points, you also gain some bonuses allowing you to check off specific spaces. Like many pencil and paper games, you can trigger nice chain reactions. 

Whenever you get to perform, you advance on these paths. There are forks, so you have to choose which paths to go down. The money icons mean you need to unlock those sections before you can pass through. 

I must say this is a lot of fun. I am not specifically a fan of pencil and paper games but I don't dislike them either. This one works for me partly because of the theme. I had a rock star dream once, many moons ago. The card drafting works well. It can be tough to choose between the incredible vocalist and the god-tier lead guitarist. Sometimes a plain producer by himself may not score many points, but if he clicks well with others on the team, together they can do amazing things. Should I pass on this good singer and hope to get an even better one who also works with the rest of the band? I only have one singer slot after all. Card drafting means sometimes you hate draft to deny your opponents what they want. There is a penalty mechanism in the game. If you are forced to take a person but you have no more slot, you will suffer a penalty. These penalties get more are more costly as you accumulate them. This is something to watch out for. There is no direct player interaction, but the hate drafting can sometimes be devastating due to the penalty mechanism. Most of the time this game is quite pleasant because you generally focus on building your own dream band. 

So yes, being band manager can be as much fun as being lead singer. 

I was aiming to perform at the Sydney Opera House (bottom left).

I almost completed the top right section!

Karakorum

Karakorum is a title from Reiner Knizia about mountain climbing. It is a game about evaluating and taking risks, and knowing when to rest and claim progress. At the same it is also a race on several levels. The mountain climbing theme is pretty much pasted on. Story-wise you have three climbers each working on a different peak. You help them climb as far as possible, and you will score points based on their progress. 

Everyone has one such player board with pawns in three colours. The three pawns will mark your progress in climbing the three peaks. The three peaks depicted here are a little misleading. To reach the summit in all three colours you need to hit 30 for all, not 10, 20, and 30 respectively. 

To make progress in any of the three colours, you need to collect, play and trade-in cards. On your turn, you must reveal some cards from the deck - at least one, and at most one more than the number of players. Of these card revealed, you must take at least one, and you can take more than one as long as they are all of the same colour. Cards are in one of the three colours, and they are numbered between 1 to 9. Some cards show axes. Of the cards you don't take, they are offered to everyone else. The other players may take one card each from what's left. This mechanism means when you reveal many cards, you are increasing the chances of getting cards you want, but you are also increasing the chances of helping your opponents. If the first card you reveal is good for you, it is perfectly fine to not reveal any more and just take that card for yourself. 

You must play the cards you claim in front of you. You can have four columns in front of you, one in each colour, and then one more can be a duplicate colour. Cards played to the same column must be in ascending order. Cards with the same number can be played next to each other. When you add a card to a column, and it now has at least three cards, you can trade that column in to make progress in that specific colour. The progress you make depends on the number of axes. In case you are forced to discard a column with fewer than three cards, you are penalised and your pawn moves backwards three steps. That's very bad, because in this game it is not easy to make progress. 

When you trade-in a column to make progress, if you fulfil one of the 12 public objectives with your column or columns, you can instead discard your column to make progress according to the rewards shown on these objectives. These are first come first served. Once an objective is claimed, it is turned face-down. The objectives are: at least four cards, two columns of three cards each, at least 6 cards, and at least 10 axes. 

There are several dilemmas you have to face in the game. The first one is how many cards to reveal from the deck on your turn. Drawing more cards can help you more, but this can also help your opponents. You can only pick one colour, and sometimes you will be torn between two or even three colours, knowing that whatever you don't take will become useful to others. Deciding whether to trade-in a column of cards is not always straight-forward. Should you wait for one or two more cards, so that you can make even more progress? However when you delay, it can mean a long wait before your next opportunity. This is an opportunity cost. Even choosing whether to take a card can be tough. If you have a red 1, will you take a red 4 as your next card? It will mean you lose the opportunity to play any more red 1's to 3's. This is a pretty simple game, but it presents many difficult decisions. 

The end game scoring is interesting and has a Knizia-style twist. You are not just summing up your scores in the three colours. First, to be eligible to win, you must be the top scorer in one of the three colours (this reminds me of Samurai). If you are not a top scorer in anything, you are immediately eliminated. Among those who are still in contention, you score your two other colours. What this means is during the game you must make sure you lead in one colour, and at the same time you need to do well in the other two. If anyone is doing well, you can plot to eliminate him by denying him the top position. This is an interesting dynamic. 

Karakorum is simple yet clever, and deserves more attention. I have not heard much about it at all. 

Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor

Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor is a standalone game in the Forest Shuffle family, with the same core mechanism but a different set of cards. You collect cards from a common area. You play cards into your own tableau to score points. In the process you often need to pay with other cards, and they go to the common area, thus making them available to other players. The game is about collecting and playing cards which combo well and give you many points. 

One new element in Dartmoor is the bogs. In addition to trees, you can play bogs as habitats. Animals and plants can be attached to them, similar to trees. However they are played sideways, and other cards can only be attached to top or bottom (two each) and not to the two sides. 

If you have played Forest Shuffle, you will feel right at home. It will be a familiar experience but there is some variation. I find that the game is mostly about deciding on the combo or combos you want to make and then focusing on them. You do want to watch what your opponents are doing and try not to give them cards which help them a lot. However it is more important that you build your own super combo. 

One small variation in Dartmoor is your cave cards have special powers. You get to draft your own cave card during game setup. 

I went with a bog strategy. I had some cards which rewarded me if I had the most bogs, so I focused hard on making sure I stayed in the lead. Han also had many bogs. Thankfully I drew many cards which supported a bog strategy, e.g. those which let you play a card as a bog for free. That helped me secure my leading position in bogs. I had many cards which scored points based on the number of bogs I had. I ignored everything and just worked on bog related cards. I only occasionally looked at others’ tableaus to see whether I needed to deny them any specific lucrative cards by playing them as my bogs. 

Similar to Forest Shuffle, Dartmoor wasn’t particularly interesting for me. Seeing the many animals and plants is nice, and I can understand the fun in collecting cards which combo well. I can certainly see why the Forest Shuffle series is popular. 

Diced Veggies

I must say this game is gimmicky, but it does work and it's certainly eye-catching. Talk about creative use of dice! 

Dice in the game represent different cooking ingredients. They come in five colours, representing five different ingredients. At the start of the game, you roll them all and randomly organise them into a slab like this. Players then take turns using that cardboard cleaver to cut sections of dice off the slab. This is how you collect ingredients to cook various dishes. Actually it's a little troublesome using the cleaver, we ended up mostly using our fingers.

When you carve sections off the slab, you can take as many dice as you want as long as the total is not more than 10. For example in this photo above, you can take the three dice at the bottom right - green 5, beige 3 and green 2. When you cleave a piece off, you cannot break the slab into two. It must be a proper straight cut and not a jagged line. Most of the time you are cutting one of the corners off. 

As more and more dice are cut off, eventually the slab will run out of one of the ingredient types. This is when the next player will have the option to reroll all dice, adding those which have been used and discarded, to create a new slab. 

You use dice to cook dishes. This is standard contract fulfilment. You have a special power token which lets you change one die to a different value or different colour. This power is refreshed every time the central slab is reset. 

In addition to the dishes you can cook, you have optional special missions that can be attached to each dish. If you can fulfil these additional conditions, you score extra points. 

This particular special mission works perfectly with this dish. It requires discarding an extra mushroom (beige die), but it scores 3 points per mushroom in the recipe. 

This is a pretty simple game and it's something for the casual audience. A bit too simple for gamers, but it'll work as a family game.