Sabah National Tabletop Con is tomorrow!

 

This is happening 20-21 Jun 2026 at the Sabah Art Gallery. I will be there together with many other Malaysian game designers, and also many from overseas. Early copies of my latest game, Malaysian Holidays, published by Specky Studio, will be available! If you are in KK, come visit me! 

Tournament Arc

This is a game about preparing your team of anime characters for a tournament. Everyone has a team of three characters. During the game you get to train them, modifying their stats. You can mess with your opponents by modifying the stats of their characters too. When the game starts, you don't know yet what the tournament is going to be about. It will only be known by the mid point of the game. The tournament card when revealed specifies how many characters you get to send, and which stats are taken into account. Some tournaments have special rules. During the game, the tournament card may change, and suddenly you may find that your team has all the wrong skills. The whole game is about manipulating the characters and also the tournament. The game culminates in that one grand tournament which is resolved at the very end. 

Everyone starts with three characters. You choose one then pass the other two left. From those two given to you by your neighbour, you pick another character and you pass the one you don't want left. Everyone will end up with three characters. 

You have a hand of five cards. Every round you get to play two cards. The cards have all sorts of powers. Some modify the stats of characters. You can play them on your own characters or on those of other players. There are fancy powers like swapping characters with others, drawing a new character, and so on. 

Cards modifying stats are tucked under character cards. Every character has four stats. 

This is one of the tournament cards. If this is the tournament in effect, all four stats of characters will count (all of them have plus signs). You only get to send one character to compete. The character with a strength closest to but not above 21 wins. 

This is a pretty chaotic game. There is a lot of attacking your opponents. Generally you try to boost your characters, but in the early game you don't really how which stats are important. It is fun to see all the nice anime characters in the game. The card effects are funny too. There is not a lot of control. You are rarely able to protect your own characters. You can save some of the powerful cards for the right moment, or till late enough that it's hard for others to stop you. 

The game didn't work for me. The setting is entertaining. The art is nice. I don't like that this is a pretty random game with lots of attacking. I find that the stats are tedious to keep track of. When I have a bad card I want to play on an opponent's character, I need to examine all these characters one by one to see who is the strongest in a particular stat. That means I need to add up all the numbers attached to the characters. We had 5 players, and thus around 15 characters in total. It felt like a lot of work for me. This is a light game with much player interaction which works better with a casual crowd. 

boardgaming in photos: playtesting

Choon Ean and I were at Kinokuniya bookstore (Pavilion Damansara Heights) demoing our games over the weekend of 30-31 May 2026. This time our tables were occupied more, compared to two weeks earlier when I was there by myself. There were people who stayed to play for quite long. It feels great to see people enjoy my games and want to play again and again. That weekend I think I sold out all the copies of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves at this Kinokuniya branch. At least I didn't see any more left. Not sure if they still had some in storage. 

My friend TS Tan visited, bringing his family. This was the first event I used my new apron. The colour is not the same red as my Cili Padi Games logo, but I quite like it. 

This was my setup. 

Jon had an ad hoc game session at Lolla Paluza cafe on a Tuesday which was a public holiday (replacement for Agong's birthday, which was offset by the replacement for Wesak Day). This was one of the games we played, Martin Wallace's Hit Z Road. It's a zombie game, and it's an auction game. Yeah, this sounds weird, but the game works pretty well. 

The currency in the game is bottle caps. There are three types - ammunition, fuel and adrenalin. 

Every round there are as many pairs of encounters as there are players, and the players bid for turn order to pick a pair of encounters. Encounters are a mix of good and bad. As the game progresses, they get worse - more zombies, fewer resources, more types of dangers. I think we bid too much. We spent a lot of resources to try to avoid bad encounters. When bids go high, it's bad for everyone. We have fewer resources to help us survive and fight the zombies. 

I was the first to lose all my people and thus lose the game. It happened in the second last round. Jon and Ji Li lost in the final round. Darryl was the only player who managed to survive and get to California. 

One of the encounters. 

The Collectors Court event was held at the Summit USJ mall over the weekend of 6-7 Jun 2026. This was mostly focused on trading card games (TCG's). Jon and Haireey had booths there. There were tables made available for playtesting. The Design & Play game design competition is ongoing now. Jon, Haireey and I are part of the judging team, together with Chee Kong, Logan and Buddhima. Contestants were encouraged to come to the event to playtest one another's games. We the judges also brought our games to be playtested, even though they were not contest entries. News at 8 is Haireey's prototype. I have seen it being playtested several times, but this was my first time trying it. By now it is already different from the earlier versions. 

Every round, one player needs to perform. He reads a news item, and depending on the intensity card he draws (which the other players cannot see), he needs to fill in some blanks to convey the intensity level (or newsworthiness). 

Intensity goes from 1 to 10, so 8 is high.

The guessing players need to fight for these number tokens. There is only one for each number. You need to grab the one you think is the correct answer. 

This is Vinod's prototype, a game about matchmaking. It will be released by I-van under Roll Rebellion. It is a simple game for casual players. 

To win the game, you need to find bride and groom of matching colours, a date which matches their colour, and also you need a priest. 

On your turn you draw two cards, one after the other. You can take a card for yourself, or you can give it to someone else (they must accept). This is a game where you can mess with your friends a lot. The fate cards have all sorts of powers, some good and some bad. 

Playing this game and observing it being played gave me much food for thought. This is a very simple game with plenty of luck. It is not my type of game. However in the same game I played, I noticed how much others enjoyed it. People liked the setting. I-van's HR Game has been hugely successful in Malaysia. Also a simple game, and also not my type, but it has been very well received. I think I-van has made a good pick with Vinod's matchmaking game and I think it will do well. When I choose which games of my own to publish, I have been moving towards simpler games, which I hope will get more acceptance by the Malaysian general public. My first published game Dancing Queen is the most complex, and my fourth, Pinocchio, is the simplest. The next one, Pilgrim Poker, is not as simple as Pinocchio. It is roughly at the Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves level of complexity, i.e. not very complex. I have a weakness in making simple games. I do try to make my games as simple as they can be, while still offering something unique, or a least some twist. However I can never quite make a truly simple game that the casual crowd will immediately like. I hope Malaysian Holidays can be something like that, but even then I think I have some rules that will require some effort for non-gamers to digest. 

Many contest entries for the Design & Play competition were playtested at the Collectors Court event, but I did not get to try many of them, because I couldn't stay long. It is encouraging to see many people actively participating in the playtesting session. 

Jeixel brought his contest entry, a game about lousang, a Chinese custom during Chinese New Year, practised by Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese. Lousing is about tossing various food ingredients to bring good luck. In the game, you mix the cards and make a messy pile at the centre of the table. You then drop dice to claim ingredient cards. When Jeixel explained the rules to us, my first thought was "What? That's it?!"  However once we started playing, this turned out to be more challenging and more fun than I had expected. Those dice that you drop, most of the time they roll away, forcing you to take a different card from what you originally intended. Sometimes they roll off the card pile and you get nothing. You can try to knock your opponents' dice away, and this happened a lot in our game. If two players have dice on the same card, it is the higher valued die which wins. Very simple concept, which didn't sound like much at first, but once I started playing, I was pleasantly surprised. 

Each card is 1 point. 

When you have three of a kind, you get +2 points.

I asked others to help me playtest my Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦) game. I have a nagging feeling that it is too simple. Maybe I should not think that way. Simple is good. Now I am experimenting with adding a bit more to the game. This might be my next game for 2027. 

The green cubes are a new element. When you play a meld, if the exact same meld has been played before, whether by yourself or by other players, your latest meld scores a bonus 1 point for each previously played meld. At the moment this little new rule seems to work okay. People don't find this difficult to remember, and it adds a little bit of strategic consideration. Players may hold back on playing a meld, hoping someone else will play theirs first. Is this absolutely necessary? Maybe not. This might end up being a variant. 

Another rule change I have playtested is giving Jia Baoyu (the 0 card) a special power. If you don't play a meld on your turn, you may discard JBY to take any card from the discard pile. This can be a very powerful move if you are short of just one card for a big meld. However, JBY is often a very important card you need for big melds too. So using it for its power is not something you take lightly. I've only playtested this once. The players did use it. I'm not sure yet whether this is a good addition. 

There are other more complicated additions I am toying with. In the game there are 11 types of melds. I have a little board listing them all. When you play a meld, if this is the first time in the game this meld is played, you mark the board with a cube. Every meld in the game refers to a chapter in the book. The characters required for a meld are the main characters in the corresponding chapter. Instead of playing 3 rounds, the game ends after all melds have been marked. This is thematic. The story is complete after all chapters are covered. But this might be tedious. I'm not sure whether the experience is worth the tedium.

The next addition is also related to marking melds off. The player gets a bonus 1 point whenever the 2nd, 4th, 6th etc meld type is marked. Whoever marks the 11th meld type gets 2 points. This mechanism introduces a new layer for planning. I have not tried this, and I am already worried it is tiresome. 

Another one related to marking off melds - the ironman rule. Every meld can only be played once within the same round. If someone else has played a meld, you can't play it any more. You don't need a central board to track this. You just need to check the melds in front of other players before you play any meld. This might be an interesting variant. If someone has already made the strongest meld (11 points), if you have been working towards that, you are forced to switch tact. There will be some anxiety because the melds are first come first served. 

I have just started playtesting my Water Margin (水浒传) game. I am trying to make this a negotiation game. One key concept in the story of Water Margin is how those 108 main characters are stars fallen from heaven. They are the chosen ones. Now if I imagine myself in that world, in a bandits' lair with lots of outlaws, how would I know who are the fated 108 and who are not? Everyone wants to be the chosen one. So the game is going to be about being the chosen ones. 

My initial idea is that all players must play a card simultaneously, and they want to plan such that all their cards added up will make 108. If they can achieve this, everyone who has contributed cards scores points. If they go beyond (i.e. go bust), then some cards are discarded, and those who are forced to discard cards lose points. Some cards have special powers, e.g. being able to remove another card, being able to double the points of another card, and being protected against attacks. This is not a cooperative game, even though every round you generally try to work together to achieve the 108. Ultimately it is everyone for himself. You will want to discard your sworn brother's card if it's going to score him many points. 

I have playtested two versions of my game, and the big big problem is this - too much math. I made the card values 0, 4, 8, 20, 40, and 80, hoping to make the math manageable. However it is still too much. Too tiresome. For my next iteration I will completely remove this math part. The negotiations, the discussions, and the coordination before committing a card, all seem to work reasonably well. You have to rely on others, but you know no one is your friend. 

In the next version, instead of every card being numbered, I'm just going to have some cards which have a "1", some with a "0", and some with an "8". To "achieve 108", you need to have exactly one each of these numbered cards in play. If any number appears twice, there will be penalties and cards will be discarded. Doing it this way will be much simpler. No more math. 

The Architects of Amytis

This is a 2-player game about city building, where you compete for the same pool of resources to build your individual cities. 

You each have your own player board, which is a 3x3 grid. On your turn, you place one of your four pawns on the common board, which is also a 3x3 grid. The common board has stacks of tiles. When you place a pawn, you claim the topmost tile, and you must then place it on your own board. You can place it on an empty space, or you can stack it on top of another tile. The tile colours are for you to complete missions. You start the game with some missions, specifying configurations you need to achieve - specific combinations of building colours (regardless of building type) in a certain layout. During the game when you claim a certain building type you can take more missions. Completed missions are one of several ways you score points. 

Buildings come in four colours, and also six types. The colours are for completing missions, while the types help you score points during building placement. So while working on your missions, you try to claim buildings that help you score points at the same time. One building type scores points based on how many pawns you have on the common board. Another scores points based on building types visible on your player board. 

The positions of your pawns when you place them on the common board can also help you score points. You want to place three in a row, because whenever you manage that, you get to place one of your discs on the bonus board. These are called the king's favour. These give you additional ways to score points, for example at game end each stack on your board with exactly one tile scores 3 points. Or every staircase configuration (three stacks in a row of 1, 2 and 3 tiles) giving you 6 points. While trying to place your pawns in straight lines, you also try to stop your opponent from doing so. 

The game mechanism is pretty straight-forward. You are just placing a pawn to claim a tile in order to place it on your player board. However there are multiple scoring opportunities you need to think about - the missions, the building abilities, and also the positions of your pawns. The game ends when two stacks on the common board run out. 

The Architects of Amytis is smooth. I like how simple each turn appears to be, but there are actually several considerations behind that simple turn. Some elements feel tactical, for example if taking one particular building is going to score you many points now, you probably can't resist the urge to take it. Also if your opponent is almost making three pawns in a row, you may just want to block him. However there is also long-term strategy to think about. One thing I deliberately tried to do was to keep as many single-tile stacks as possible. I decided to do this about mid way through the game, when I noticed that I had many such stacks. The king favour which rewards single-tile stacks gave 3 points per stack, which was lucrative. The Architects of Amytis is polished, well balanced, and provides plenty of player interaction. 

Sabah National Tabletop Con - one week countdown!

 

This is happening 20-21 Jun 2026 at the Sabah Art Gallery. There will be Malaysia game designers and also designers from other countries. If you are in KK, come look for me and let's play! 

Meadow

Meadow is a game about wildlife in the countryside. The key underlying concept is the food chain. You need certain terrain to be able to support certain plants, you need certain plants to be able to support certain insects, and in turn these insects are food to small animals, and then these small animals are prey of larger animals. You collect and play cards with various icons. The icons allow you to play more cards, and as you "upgrade", you get to play cards with victory points. That is how you eventually win. 

Cards are made available in this 4x4 grid. Every round, you have five tiles which you can use for claiming and playing cards. You place a tile along the edge of this board, pointing at a specific row. Depending on the number on your tile, you take a specific card in that row. 

You can have at most 10 columns of cards in your play area. A column always start with a terrain card. Terrain cards have no prerequisites. All other cards do. Normally cards specify the icons you need to have in order to play them. When you play a non-terrain card, it must partially cover another card. You may cover icons on other cards, causing you to lose these icons. The game requires carefully planning to get to specific icons. You also need to plan carefully when to use which icons. 

You start with a hand of cards. You already have to plan carefully from the get go. The numbers on the leaves are the victory point values. They go from 1 to 5. 

Each player tile has two parts. The pointy part is used when you claim a card from the grid display. The flat part can be used for something else. Let's go from left to right. The two circles are road icons. If you use this, you get to claim two road tiles. Road tiles allow you to play cards which have a landscape layout. The second tile lets you claim any one card from the grid. This is different from using the pointy part. When you use the pointy part, you get to play a card too. If you use the flat part, you don't get to play a card. 

The third tile is a joker. You can treat it as any flat part icon. The fourth tile lets you draw three cards from any deck then keep one. 

This is the other game board. This keeps track of the round number. You play 6 rounds. All those icons around the fireplace is a source of competition. When you have a pair of adjacent icons in your play area, you get to claim the seat between these two icons, placing your point marker. You have three point markers valued 2, 3 and 4. You must place them in this order. 

Any any time there are three decks used for refilling the board. The East cards are mostly terrain cards. The West cards are usually cards related to roads, houses and fences, i.e. human civilisation. The South cards are mostly animals. At mid game, the South cards are replaced by the North cards. These are higher valued animals. 

I think of Meadow is a pyramid building game. You collect and play cards with the right icons to help you play higher value cards. You need to have a strong foundation to be able to build many high value cards. You must plan carefully how icons will be covered by other cards. Timing is very important. You don't want to accidentally cover an icon which you still need. Player interaction can be unforgiving. You will compete for those cards with rare icons. If you watch you opponents closely, you can tell what they need and you can deny them those cards. Even without intentionally frustrating your friends, you sometimes do so accidentally because you have placed your tile in a slot they plan to use. 

The game is almost overproduced. It has pretty card trays and a wooden round marker which to me are not really necessary. They do provide a nice play experience. They are a luxury. 

Gameplay is a pleasant experience. It is satisfying to collect the right combinations of icons and to play those high valued cards. Collecting the right cards can be challenging. You can't pick any card you want. You need to think about how best to use your tiles. This is not really a game for casual players. The game mechanisms are slightly complicated, and even I find myself in long pauses thinking about what I should do next. The game is certainly challenging enough for seasoned gamers. There is some luck, in terms of what kind of cards become available. It is satisfying to work out what you can do given the situation you are in. You certainly make meaningful choices. You can choose to play this in a more peaceful way, without deliberately trying to mess with your opponents. You will be kept busy enough managing your own play area. 

Quartermaster General: East Front

This game is set in World War II and depicts the battle between Germany and the USSR. This is a two player game and the story starts with Germany initiating the invasion of the Soviet Union. Every few rounds both players will score points based on controlling key locations. If you outscore your opponent by 10 points, you win immediately. Otherwise, you win by having more points at the end of 1945.

One thing that is a little different from other games in the Quartermaster General series is the granularity. You have more pieces, you also have more pieces per territory. But still, this is nowhere near as many pieces as you would have in games like Axis and Allies. This is a card driven game. Each player has his own deck of cards and most of the things you can do in the game are dependent on these cards. The cards reflect the characteristics of the two nations and also many historical elements.

On your turn, there is a movement phase followed by two card plays, and then finally a second movement phase. All units only move one step. Also units need to stay in supply or bad things will happen. Being in supply means you can trace a supply line to one of your supply sources. Cutting off your opponent's supply line is an important tactic in the game. Movement is not used for attacking. You cannot enter a space containing enemy units. You can only attack enemy units in an adjacent space, and this happens during the card phase. You need to have specific cards that let you initiate an attack. Normally, when you attack, you will kill one enemy unit. Your opponent can prevent that only if he happens to have the right card to defend his unit. After you manage to kill one enemy unit, normally your attack ends. If you want to continue killing, you need to have another card in hand which lets you continue attacking. So you can see that battles are pretty short, but you can save the right combination of cards to make more powerful moves.

For your second movement phase, only tanks and ships can move. For land units, the tank’s ability to move in both phases can be crucial to help you capture territories. When you enter enemy controlled but unoccupied territories, you capture them. 

At the end of your turn, you draw three cards, or up to a maximum hand size of five. Although you normally play only two cards on your turn, sometimes you spend more cards due to pressing attacks or responding to the enemy’s actions. 

For the German player, that is one complication. He controls two types of units, German and Pact (i.e. other members of the Axis). The cards for them are different and you can only use the cards on the corresponding units. Also, they cannot attack together. 

I played against Han. I was the Germans and he was the Soviet Union. I started with many units, well poised to attack. He did not have many units, and it felt almost impossible for them to hold out against the Germans. It was a matter of how far and how fast the German armies could push. The Soviet did control more victory point locations at the start, so there was pressure for the Germans to conquer and keep up in victory points. The game felt like a war of attrition. It was not easy to build new troops. Not many cards allowed building new troops. It was possible to spend cards to build new units, but it was an expensive thing to do, and it was time consuming for me to transport troops to the front lines. 

One type of card in the game is contingency cards. Both players have five contingency cards. They are always available to you from the start. It is just a matter of when you decide to use them. Your opponent can see your contingency cards so they can prepare for them. You too can plan around them. They allow strategic planning and also help create some historical accuracy.

One thing I was quite impressed by the game was how historically accurate the end game turned out to be. I thought as the Germans I did pretty OK all the way till near the end. I was ahead in points. I just needed to hold on to this lead. There were only a few more turns to go. I completely underestimated the counterattack of the Soviets. My front line crumbled and the Soviets managed to make it all the way to Berlin, entering the gates exactly on the very final turn. It was an amazing turnaround. 

This was mid game when Germany was approaching Moscow.

I was able to surround the Soviets in the south briefly, cutting off their supply line.

I was leading in points, but my front line had crumbled.

Where the heck did all these Soviet tanks come from?!

The fall of Berlin

The game gets better as you get to know it better. You get more familiar with what cards are available in your own deck, as well as in your opponent's deck. You can anticipate your opponent’s card plays. I like how the card effects steer you towards a certain level of historical accuracy. However they don’t feel restrictive. You won’t get all the right cards at the right times, so you need to manage this. You need to think about how to make the most of the cards you get. You can’t always hold on to a card to wait for that perfect situation. I think this is what makes the game challenging and fun.