Agent Avenue

Agent Avenue is a two player game with bluffing and psychological play. You are spies hiding in an innocent neighbourhood. You need to find and catch your opponent before they catch you. Well, that is how the story goes. In terms of practical implementation, you and your opponent race around a circular track, starting opposite from each other. Your goal is to run fast enough to catch your opponent. Movement is determined using a card drafting mechanism. You will collect cards during play. There are two other ways the game ends. You win instantly if you collect your third Codebreaker card. You lose instantly if you collect your third Daredevil card.

You have a hand of four cards. On your turn, you play two of them to the centre of the table, one face up and the other face down. Your opponent must then pick one card to add to their set. You take the other to add to your set. When you add a card to your set, you move a number of steps on the board as dictated by the card. If you already have other copies of the same card in your set, the movement rule will change, depending on the card. And that’s all there is to the game! Pretty simple.

Most cards in the game are good, helping you advance. However, there are some cards which force you to move backwards. Although you are the one who picks the two cards to be used on the current turn, it is your opponent who decides who gets which card. The key is making use of that face down card. When the face up card is a good card, are you hiding an even better card? Or if that face up card is bad, are you hiding an even worse card? The player who has to choose is put in a dilemma. This is where the psychological play comes in. 

The numbers on the cards mean the number of steps you move when you have one, two, or three or more cards. You first Double Agent forces you to move backwards one step, but your second lets you move forward 6 steps. 

An optional module introduces special tools when you land on the corners. 

As you collect more and more cards, the tactics change. Which cards you already have affect the power of the next card you get. Deciding which cards you want to collect and which cards you want to force or trick your opponent into taking is long-term strategy. If your opponent has two Daredevils, he will be reluctant to take any face down card. The same principle applies when you already have two Codebreakers. He wouldn't want to risk you taking the face down card. In specific situations, it is possible to make a play which lets you catch your opponent regardless of his choice. This is because cards behave differently depending on your existing set. 

I was green and I was only 2 steps away from catching Han. I would offer Enforcer and Double Agent. Han didn't have any Double Agent, and his first one would make him move backwards. If he took that and I took Enforcer, I would catch him. I had one Double Agent. If he took the Enforcer, he would move forward, but my second Double Agent would let me advance 6 steps, and I would catch him. 

Agent Avenue is a simple and clever two player game. I like that it is clean and concise. Minimal fluff. One nice touch is the art work for the same character varies. Most characters have six cards, and the art for each card is different. Check out the Codebreaker and the Daredevil cards below. 

Irish Gauge

Irish Gauge is a game about developing the train network in Ireland. It is an open information game. It is an investment game, and almost but not really a stock-control game. Players invest in railroad companies and hope to make money as the companies they are invested in do well. You don't own companies. You only own shares in them. It sounds a little like 18XX games, but this is much simpler and abstracted. It reminds me a little of Chicago Express / Wabash Cannonball. 

Five companies are in play, and as part of game setup, the first share of each company is auctioned off to the players. During the game, more shares may be auctioned off. Holding shares of a company means that whenever that company makes money, you'll get some. The earnings are divided among the shareholders based on their holdings. 

One of the things you may do on your turn is to build railroads. You can only do this for a company you are invested in. You place train markers on the board to represent your company's railroad network. You get to spend 3 action points for building railroads. The action points needed to build in a hex depends on the terrain type, whether it is urban, and whether others have built there. You want to connect your companies to towns and cities, because these help them make money. Towns are upgraded to become cities when you place a cube in them. You get to choose the cube colour when you do this. 

There are cubes in three different colours. They represent different goods. You already have 8 cities on the board at the start of the game. Cubes are all placed in a bag. They are drawn from the bag when you want to trigger dividends. The game ends when the bag runs out of cubes. 

When you want to trigger dividends, you blind draw three cubes from the bag. The cube colours determine which companies issue dividends. If a company is connected to at least a city with one of the colours and a town, it will make money, which means the shareholders will make money. So this is a game about setting up your companies to be able to make money, hopefully from all three colours, and then you want to trigger dividends to make lots of money. Auctioning a share means an additional player may get into the company and share its profits. This is normally an act of aggression, when you want to get inside a company to get a share of its profits. If there is only one current shareholder, they are not going to make any more money by buying this new share. They are only preventing others from also making money from this company in future. For other players who want to get it, it is about evaluating whether the money you spend to bid on the share is justifiable. Are you going to make back that money? 

Irish Gauge is a pretty straight-forward game. The actions are simple. However the strategies are not simplistic. In the game we played, there were four of us, and at the start of the game, I was the only player who controlled two companies. In hindsight, that might not have been a good idea. I couldn't grow two companies equally well. 

The game is a tight fight. This is a perfect information game. You can think many steps ahead. You know exactly how your opponents can respond to your move, if they choose to do so. In this sense the game is almost chess-like. The only uncertainty is when dividends are being issued. You don't know which colours will come out. The ultimate winner is the richest player. Issuing dividends is not about you making money, it is about you making more money than others. If your companies are positioned well to make money, you are in no hurry to take the dividend action, because when others do it, it will likely benefit you too, and hopefully more than them. 

Irish Gauge is the kind of game for smart and strategic people. It's serious and skill-driven. I also find it a little dry, maybe because of  how serious it feels to me. There is a little variability in the game setup, but the map will stay the same every time you play. Only the cube colours of the starting cities will differ. 

Malaysian Holidays: Chinese New Year

 

This is a card from my upcoming game Malaysian Holidays. It will be published by Specky Studio.  The art work, which I absolutely adore, is from Sunny Day. Here's wishing everyone a wonderful Year of the Horse ahead! Stay tuned for news for Malaysian Holidays.

Amalfi: Renaissance

Amalfi: Renaissance is a game about the age of sail. You manage a fleet of ships which helps you obtain all sorts of goods from distant lands. With these goods you can recruit characters which give you various abilities. You can secure private contracts, which give you exclusive rights to some trade destinations. You can buy great works of art. They have various benefits. They tend to be expensive, but they are often worth many points. You can and should expand your infrastructure. Build more ships to help you do more. Build lighthouses at popular trade destinations so that when others visit, you get a small benefit. The game is played over four rounds, after which the highest scorer wins. 

The main game board

The player board

The most important mechanism in the game is how you use your fleet to gain resources. You only have a limited number of ships you can use every round. They start at sea, which means they are available for use. To make a trade journey, usually you spend one ship to send several others to a destination producing a specific resource. At your player board, you shift these ships from the sea to the section representing the specific resource type. Now each ship represents 2 or 3 of that resource, which you can spend to buy other things. When you spend resources, those ships are shifted back to the sea, becoming available again. You can choose to shift them back even when you don’t need to use their resource type. However when you do this the resource they represent will be converted to a basic resource - food. 

Some things can be bought using food. More importantly, food is needed when you want to launch a trade expedition. Depending on how many ships you own, at the end of a round you must have enough food to pay for maintenance. Failing to do so leads to a harsh penalty. 

You score points in many ways. Things you buy give you points - private contracts, works of art, and some characters too. At the end of every round there is a scoring condition evaluated. There are also three goal cards you can work towards. The earlier you achieve a goal compared to others, the bigger the reward. 

A character

Various trade destinations you can visit.

Works of art

Private contracts are a special type of trade destination

Goals are randomly drawn during setup

Special scoring at the end of each round

Amalfi is a heavy Eurogame in which you try to generate resources efficiently and spend them well to expand your infrastructure and buy stuff which help you score points. Managing your resources is challenging. You need to make sure you have decent cash flow, i.e. food. If you get a good combination of characters, their abilities can help you greatly. There are many different criteria for round end scoring and there are many goals. These create variability. 

I did not find the game interesting. For me it is just another complex resource management game. It is challenging enough. There are many ways to score points. One difficulty I have with games with many ways of scoring points is they feel like yet another Excel exercise. I'm just figuring out efficient ways to produce goods and turn them to points. I feel like I have been doing this same thing in too many other games. I am not experiencing anything new. One thing nice about the game is the characters. They are based on historical characters and it is satisfying to be able to put together a team which synergises well. 

This was my player board at game end. I had 7 characters. 

Han had 9 private contracts! And he had built all his ships and lighthouses. He won by a mile.

Happy Lunar New Year!

 

7 Wonders Dice

7 Wonders, first published in 2010, has now become a juggernaut of a franchise. The series has multiple expansions and spin offs. Some of the spin offs have different core mechanisms. They are different games, but they use the same theme and art style. The 2 player version of 7 Wonders has now been turned into a Lord of the Rings game. For the dice game version to get released only in 2025, 15 years after the original, is a little surprising. For many other successful franchises, the dice game version or the card game version would have been out much earlier. 

7 Wonders Dice is a roll-and-write game. Multiple dice are rolled every round, and you pick one to use. Everyone does this at the same time. Your choice does not affect other players. The same die can be used by multiple players. You normally use a die to tick one box on your player sheet, which represents constructing one section of a building. The game ends after any one player completes three buildings. The player sheets are the same, with two exceptions, your wonder of the world, and your university. Your wonder is in the top left corner, and it can be completed in only three steps. It is actually pretty easy to complete. You are not relying very much on other buildings to help you complete your wonder. Instead, it is your wonder which will help you complete other buildings or gain specific benefits. 

You roll the dice in a flat and wide box with a cover on, and you shake that box in a circular motion. This is because the box is divided into four sections, and depending on where a die is, the cost to use the die differs. The cost can be between 0 to 3 gold. If you can't afford any die, or if you are not willing to spend the money on what you can afford, you can choose to not use any die and collect 3 gold instead. 

The green building is the university. All the spaces on your sheet has a number below it. This number means how many resource types your nation needs to produce for you to be able to tick the space. If your nation does not produce enough, you can make up for the shortage by paying gold. This is why you need gold. At this particular university, the first spaces of the three rows mean (from top to bottom) the blue die becomes free for you, you earn 2 gold whenever you use the red die, and you get to tick your yellow building. Every player's university is different, and this nudges players in different directions. When you reach the third spaces at the three rows, they unlock an additional die - black, purple or white. The black die has faces for multiple buildings, so it gives you more flexibility. The purple and white dice are for two specific advanced buildings. 

You have two red buildings - garrisons - on the two sides of your sheet. You tick boxes representing offence and defence. Your garrisons are compared against those of your neighbours. If you tick offence boxes before your neighbours have any defences, you score more points. So here you have some player interaction. There isn't a lot in this game. You don't steal points from your opponents. It's just that they will be letting you score more if they don't put up defences. 

I played on BGA, and the convenience of doing so is a problem. It's not the website's fault. It's mine. Every turn the system highlights all the valid spots I can tick and indicates the cost. As a result I don't think much and just click. This is not a good thing. In the first game I played, I decided to be thrifty. I mostly chose to use dice which were free. Sometimes I chose to increase resource production even when it wasn't free, because having more resource types would help reduce costs in future. I later realised that this wasn't a good policy. I was reactive and I didn't really have a clear strategy. I wasn't building up any strong advantage. 

Those coin icons along the bottom of the player sheet are for recording your gold. When you earn gold, you circle coins. When you spend gold, you fill in the circles. A game starts with 7 coins circled, which means you start with 7 gold. If you look at the screenshot above (I'm at the top), I rarely earn or spend gold, much less than all my opponents. 

Being insistent on saving money greatly constrained me. I had little consistency when constructing buildings. I had no coherent strategy. Well, other than being thrifty, which I later realised was not a good strategy. I should have been more deliberate in planning which buildings and which strengths to leverage. I needed to focus on specific areas. Only with focus you can gain a stronger advantage. 

In my second game, I chose to focus first on completing my wonder. My wonder helped me with resource production, and when I completed my wonder (which was also considered a building), I gained the bonus for a completed building. I realise that there is a sense of urgency in this game. You really should not waste any turn. You want to watch your opponents' progress so that you don't get caught unprepared when the game ends. Or look at it this way, if you are quicker in completing buildings, you have the advantage of being able to end the game when the time best fits you. That's a powerful thing. The decision you make every turn looks simple, but you actually need to put some thought into it if you want to play well and play more strategically. 

Player interaction is low in 7 Wonders Dice. It almost feels like a solo game. Among roll-and-write games, it's about mid-weight. Although the player sheets do differ, so far it doesn't seem to make a huge difference. Maybe I have not grasped this aspect well yet. For me the game is decent but not spectacular. However there is something instinctive that I enjoy about it which I can't fully explain. I think I enjoy the options I am given, and I enjoy the sense of progress. 

Take A Number / X Nimmt

Take A Number is an advanced version of the classic game from Wolfgang Kramer, Take 5, also known as 6 Nimmt and Category 5. My copy is a gift from Allen, and it is a 2-in-1 version containing Take 5 too. It is recommended that you play Take 5 before Take A Number, which makes sense, because the game mechanism in Take 5 is a subset of Take A Number. 

Many people already know Take 5, but for the benefit of those who don’t, allow me to briefly explain this part of Take A Number which is just like Take 5. In Take A Number, cards are numbered 1 to 100, and every card has between one to seven bull icons. Bull icons are bad. They are penalty points, and you want to avoid getting them. You start a round with 8 cards. Everyone simultaneously plays a card, and then in order from small to large, they add their card to one of three card rows at the centre. Rows are always in ascending order. You must place your card next to a smaller number and it must be the nearest to your number if you have more than one option. Rows have limits and if your newly placed card exceeds that limit, you will be forced to take all cards in the row, and use your card to start a new row. 

In Take 5, cards you take this way go to your personal penalty pile. In Take A Number, not so fast. Of the cards you are forced to take, you must first add one to a personal card row before you. This row must be in ascending order. If you are going to violate this rule, all the cards in your personal row go to your personal penalty pile, and the new card starts a new row. You will be penalised for cards in your penalty pile, but not for cards still in your personal card row. That’s something you want to manage well. 

A round is played until one player runs out of cards. Since it is possible to take cards into your hand, the length of a round can vary depending on how the players are taking cards back. When a round ends, if you still have cards in hand, you will be penalised for these cards. You are only protected from cards in your personal card row. 

The game is only played two rounds. After that the player with the fewest penalty points wins.

The core mechanism from Take 5 is still there. Now you have a personal card row to manage as well. The most important strategic difference is the fact that you can card count. You know exactly what cards your opponents have taken into their hands. This is something you can plan around. You also know they know what you have. The game becomes more thinky. It is more strategic. 

I prefer the simplicity of Take 5. It’s a light game in which you can somewhat strategise, but you know sometimes luck beats strategy. That’s perfectly fine. I also like that it can be played with up to 10 players. Take A Number is max 4 players. If you are looking for something more strategic and more advanced, give it a go. It is a deeper game and offers a different experience. 

boardgaming in photos: playtesting at Apollo

7 Feb 2026. We had a playtesting session at Nasi Kandar Apollo on a Saturday afternoon. I didn't manage to take photos of every game played, not even every game that I played. I did a rough playtest of one idea I came up with just the day before. I wanted to make a simple card game that can be played on a road trip, needing no table. Everyone has a stack of 5 cards. They are ordered. The highest number cycles back to the smallest. Your deck represents a circle of rooms you will be moving through. Your topmost card is the room you are in. To move to an adjacent room, you either move your top card to the bottom, or you move your bottom card to the top. That means you will move to the next smaller or higher number. I get this idea from Revolver Noir. Every round everybody moves once, and then the active player announces a number. Then everybody shows their room. If you are in a room of that number, the active player takes your card and scores a point for it. You draw a card and insert it at the right place. It's very simple. The memory element is pretty heavy though. I'm not sure yet whether I will continue to work on this. I playtested this using just a normal deck of poker cards. 

This is Jon's money laundering game. The idea is we all run illegal businesses, and we have to launder our dirty money in order to fully use it. Money is victory points. There will be police raids and if you don't clean your money in time, you may lose your hard earned money. It's dirty money, but still, it's hard earned. 

Qing Ye lost lots of illicit goods several times, due to the unfortunate (for him) timing of the police raids. In this game you have to set up legitimate businesses in order to launder money. Not necessarily laundry shops. Restaurants work too. 

Faris brought one very pretty and complex-looking game, but I did not get to try it. All of us Malaysian designers are pinning our hopes on him to make it big in Eurogames internationally. He designed Philharmonix. 

This is Chee Kong's Slow Life Academy. There are four tracks where you get to advance your markers, and only the players with the highest and second highest markers will score points. There is a value marker you need to advance too, and it determines how many points the leaders score. You have cards numbered from 0 to 3, and you play them simultaneously. Only the highest card gets to advance. If you win with the powerful 3, you only advance one step. However if you win with the lowly 1, you get to advance four steps. If you win with a 2, you advance two steps. I find this quite clever. When you play a 0, you won't win, but you will advance the value marker. This can present a dilemma. If you give up on a track and don't want to waste any of your higher cards, the 0 you play will help the winner score more points. 

Another fun twist is the tracks wrap around. If the value marker or any of the player markers exceed 8, they go back to 1. If you do too well, you may accidentally end up losing. If the value marker gets pushed too far, it resets to a low value. I find this game promising and I'm looking forward to it. 

Jon has complained to me several times that he's not good at designing simple dumb games for the mass market. No it's not the type of games that seasoned gamers like us enjoy, but I told him he could do it. And he did. This is his haunted house game. It's a simple push-your-luck game. You flip over cards one by one and you try not to exceed 10 hearts. If you do, you gain nothing on your turn. You can stop drawing cards any time to take whatever you have so far. When the game ends, the player with the most cards wins. The player holding the fiery skull cannot win. If you go bust, you'll take the fiery skull. Some cards when drawn make the player with the fiery skull lose a card, after which if anyone else has the most cards, the fiery skull is passed to him. The game is very simple and I think this will work well for the casual crowd. I must say I enjoy it too. 

This is Qing Ye's Georgetown, about the various historical figures and organisations in Georgetown, Penang. You buy and sell goods, and manipulate the prices to your advantage. You build a tableau which helps you score points. It's a light strategy game with fun combos. 

With Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) coming up, some of us met up for a lousang. Lousang is a Malaysian / Singaporean Chinese thing. It's a ritual where we wish for good fortune for the coming year. 

I playtested Pilgrim Poker with some of my BNI friends. They are trainers and coaches like me, and I did a sharing session about how I develop and playtest games. They found it fascinating. It was a good opportunity for me to playtest my game with people new to it. 

Jetta is a trainer friend from Hong Kong. I visited him in Hong Kong late last year, and I didn't expect we would meet again so soon, this time in Malaysia. He had a training job here. 

Jetta likes real-time games. I showed him Escape: The Curse of the Temple. We only did the basic game for our very first game, and we lost rather horribly. I thought we'd do okay since we were both seasoned gamers, and I had played the game before. It was fun to lose. This photo above was for a later game after we added the curses and the treasures. We won this one. 

Some of the curses I had

I showed Jetta Take Time. It's a little easier as a 2-player game. I enjoy it more with four because it's more challenging. Still we didn't always win, even at Level 1. I should play this like a campaign. Find three other people who will accompany me to do this whole thing over several sessions, all 40 challenges from Level 1 to 10. 

When we played Cat Between Us, we had a perfect tied game. For three consecutive rounds both of us had perfect scores (or purrfect scores), landing exactly where the cat was. So it was a perfect tie. Maybe this game is a bit easier to play with two players too.