Orapa Mine

Orapa Mine is a game from Korea. You are mining specialists and your company is about to start mining a huge gemstone mine. Your job is to detect the exact positions of the gems. You do this by directing ultrasound signals into the ground and observing how these signals are reflected by the gems. 

The game is for 2 to 5 players. With 2 players, each sets up a puzzle, and you race to figure out your opponent's puzzle. With 3 or more players, only person needs to be the facilitator and sets up a puzzle. The others are the players competing to be first to solve the puzzle. 

The puzzle is five wooden pieces placed on a grid. On your turn, you shoot a signal from a specific position. State that by referring to a number or an alphabet along the edge of the grid, and your opponent or the facilitator tells you where the reflected signal comes out, and what colour it is. Whenever the incoming signal hits a gem, it is reflected. The angle of reflection depends on the angle of the gem face it hits. Depending on the colour of the gem, the signal turns into that colour. If it hits gems in two or more colours, it becomes a composite colour. The position the signal exits the grid and its colour are the information you can use to solve the puzzle. 

On the inside of the screen you can see all the colour combinations. The colour of the outgoing signal tells you the colours the signal has hit and bounced off. For example if the outgoing signal is green, it means the signal has hit blue and yellow gems. 

Every player gets a sheet like this to record the clues and to calculate the positions of the gems.

Orapa Mine offers quite a unique gameplay experience. I find it very interesting. There is some strategy in how you set up your puzzle. You want to make it hard for your opponent to work out the positions and orientations of the gems. I did a two-player game. I needed to delay my opponent working out my solution so that I had more time to work out his. You also need to put some thought into where to direct your signal. You want every turn to count and to give you more information. This game is a logic puzzle and it challenges your creativity in identify all the possible positions of the gems. You will do a lot of thinking. If you don't like that in games, you won't enjoy this. However if you like challenges, this game will give you a healthy dose. I get particularly excited when the outgoing signal is a mix of many colours. That's when things get really interesting. If you want to further spice things up, play with the advanced modules - a transparent gem which reflects the signal without changing its colour, and a dull black gem which absorbs the signal!

boardgaming in photos: playing on BoardGameArena

I first played Architects of the West Kingdom as a physical game. Playing online in asynchronous mode is not as good as playing face-to-face. I guess that's true for most boardgames. For strategy games like this, it is still not too bad. There is much you can plan and think about between your turns. You don't have many turns in a game, so the game doesn't go too long. Some games which require much communication between players and frequent negotiations don't work well in asynchronous mode. 

My character and player board. I didn't recruit many assistants. 

This game I arbitrarily decided I wanted to focus on building the cathedral. I kept collecting resources, and whenever I had enough I went to the cathedral. I was blue. Unfortunately for me three out of four players wanted to compete in cathedral building. I was just one step too slow in becoming the biggest contributor. In hindsight, maybe I should not have been so single-minded. I should have been more flexible and I could have found other ways to help me score points more efficiently. 

I don't find the game mechanism in Let's Go! To Japan particularly innovative or outstanding, but I enjoy the game every time I play it. It must be the theme. It just works for me. Or maybe it's because I generally like tableau building games. 

Yokohama is also a game with a Japanese theme, and it is by a Japanese designer too. This is a heavy Eurogame, which is not typical from Japanese publishers. With four players, the game is rather challenging. Your opponents' bosses often block you from the districts you want to visit, and their presence mean even to place your workers in those districts it costs you money. 

Concordia is by now a 12-year-old game, first published in 2013. I have played the Mediterranean Sea map before, and this was the first time I tried the Italy map. 

Perikles is a Martin Wallace game from 2006. Sometimes playing slightly older games reminds me of how elegant and concise game design can be. Compared to many popular heavy games today, Perikles feels almost minimalistic. Yet it is strategic and offers much tension. Your actions are not many, and they are mostly simple. Games can be highly strategic and fun without being all that complicated. 

Our first game ended rather abruptly after the first of three eras, because Sparta lost too many battles and was wiped out. That took everyone by surprise. We all underestimated the possibility. 

I did poorly in Teotihuacan: City of Gods because I completely forgot I had to pay my workers their salaries at the end of a round. Oops, bad boss! I should have done my rules revision properly. 

This was my first time playing Challengers! Beach Cup, but the core rules are the same as Challengers!, just that now you have different card sets to play with. It was a joy playing Challengers! again. The core mechanism is so simple that it's surprising that the game works. This is a deck-building game, but it's something a little different. Your most important decisions are made when you add to your team and remove players from your team. During the actual matches there are few decisions to make.  You have to leave it to your team to play well, i.e. it's luck, but mitigated by how you have built your team. I say this makes the deck-building purer. 

Innovation: Artifacts of History

Artifacts of History is an expansion of Innovation. Currently I am playing it online with younger daughter Chen Rui on BoardGameArena.com. The implementation on BGA is based on an older version of the game. Innovation is also available on Yucata.de for free, and there it is based on the latest edition released in 2025. However Chen Rui and I are used to playing on BGA. I have other games in progress with other friends on BGA too. So we just do BGA even though it is not the latest. 

Artifacts comes with a whole set of cards, and most (probably all) of them are very powerful. However you don't get to draw artifact cards easily, and usually you will only have one artifact card. Normally there are only two ways you can draw an artifact card. First, by covering an existing card with another of the same or an earlier age. Second, by covering an existing card with another which has the hexagonal icon in the exact same position. When you draw an artifact card, you must reveal it to everyone and place it on an imaginary pedestal. From your next turn onwards, you have an additional choice at the start of your turn. You may use the artifact card (dogma it) then return it, or you may return it without using it, or you may do nothing and keep it. You can only ever have one artifact card on your pedestal. Artifacts are powerful, but everyone knows what you have, so they can try to prepare for when you use it.

I still think the best way to play Innovation with expansions is to use only one expansion at a time. With two or more the game feels a little tedious to me. Too many aspects to juggle. The fun part of Artifacts is how overpowered the cards feel. Since you will only use a small number of artifact cards every game, this expansion will last you many plays.

This is one of the artifacts. This can end the game by Age 4! Chen Rui won one game using this. At the time I had more coins than her, and I smugly told her I didn't need to fear her. However I was sloppy and forgot to collect the five colours. Since I had more coins, if she used this artifact, I would execute the dogma ability first. If I fulfilled the winning condition, I would win the game. She saw that I didn't even have five cards in hand at the time, which meant it was not possible for me to have fulfilled the condition. Since she had fulfilled the condition, she could safely activate the artifact and win the game. 

This is another powerful artifact. You get to claim an achievement even if you don't have the required points. Artifacts can be turned into normal cards. This way, you don't need to return it after using the dogma power. You meld it like a normal card. After that you can use the dogma power multiple times. 

Artifacts comes with an optional module - the relics. This is a special type of achievement. There are relics only for Ages 3 to 7. When you claim an artifact, you get to also claim a relic of the same age. If that relic has already been claimed by an opponent, you steal it from them. This aspect is different from regular achievements. Normally your achievements are protected and cannot be stolen. Relics are a quick way you can push for a win, but you have to remember they are vulnerable. Relics can be turned into normal cards. When you do this, they are no longer achievements, and they can no longer be stolen as achievements. 

Innovation is becoming an ongoing game between Chen Rui and I. When one game ends, we start another. On BGA there are several expansions. We play expansions one by one, so this means we can rotate. 

boardgaming in photos: Hong Kong trip, boardgames and adult learning

Of the four games I have published under Cili Padi Games, Dancing Queen, Snow White, Ali Baba and Pinocchio, the first three now have a second printing. Pinocchio was released just this year, but at this rate, I probably need to plan for a reprint next year. This photo was taken when I received the second editions of Snow White and Ali Baba. Thankfully my games are all small box card games. I still have enough space to store them at home. 

When I planned my Hong Kong trip in November, I was going to meet Charles of Hong Kong publisher Time2Play, so I asked my fellow Malaysian game designers and publishers whether they wanted to gift some of their games to Charles, to introduce Malaysian titles. I ended up bringing 12 different games for Charles. 

This trip I did a rather IG (Instagram) generation thing. I took lots of photos of my games and posted them on IG. My hotel was at Tsing Yi. When booking the hotel, the room was said to have a harbour view. It was technically correct, just that a more precise description would be a port view. 

I strolled down Nathan Road and kept an eye out for suitable backdrops for my games. I thought jewellery store signs would be appropriate for Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. 

The iconic red taxis of Hong Kong

Temple Street entrance

I found this Pinocchio magnet at a bookstore on Nathan Road. The series is about fairy tale characters set in the modern day city life. Adult Pinocchio looks rather sad. My younger daughter Chen Rui commented that the colour scheme was exactly the same as my version of Pinocchio. I didn't realised that until she told me. It is not surprising though, because both the drawings are based on the Disney Pinocchio. 

Underground icon

Train to Disneyland

Underground station

We do have Watsons in Malaysia, but not with the Chinese name

Hong Kong mini bus

We visited Macau too. When we walked past this restaurant, I said I must stop to take a photo. It's a Pinocchio restaurant! This is a Portuguese restaurant. 

My old friend Horace was our guide

Jetta from Hong Kong is also a professional trainer like me. I got to know him through a trainer community, and this was the first time we met in person. He got into boardgames only a few years ago, but he has played many games, quickly becoming an expert. He has won several game competitions in Hong Kong. 

We have played games online before. This was the first time we played face-to-face.

I have played Boop before on BGA. 

It looks cute, but this is a 2-player perfect information abstract game

Cats and kittens

For many years I call the Chinese version of Ticket To Ride "che piao zhi lu"《车票之旅》 which roughly means journey of a ticket. The more commonly used name now seems to be "tie dao ren wu" 《铁道任务》 which means railroad mission. 

Jetta and I played at a boardgame cafe in Fo Tan called Board Game Station. It is spacious and they have a great library. 

My friend Seet Han is active in a Buddhist association, and they run training camps twice a year. They use games as part of their learning activities. They have just developed a new game, and they invited fellow Buddhists to do playtesting. Seet Han invited me to join too. This is a three-hour activity. It is mostly a cooperative game. As a team of 11 people we needed to work together to complete a mission. 

Every round we had to discuss and decide what to do. Then we had to roll a die to determine whether we were successful. Different decisions have different success rates and possible consequences. Our die rolls, all done by our team leader, were unbelievably lucky. As I played the game, I observed the players and thought about the mechanisms mostly from a game designer perspective. I did calculations based on the laws of probability, and several times I found that our group decision was not sound. However our team leader was so lucky that our die rolls threw all these odds calculations out the window. They didn't matter. We were just amazingly lucky. 

One of the game props

After the three hour game, we had dinner. We did discussions and feedback after dinner. It took us almost 2.5 hours. Everyone was keen to share. Several suggestions were offered. A few days after that Seet Han met up with me again to ask for input. Hopefully my feedback and suggestions are helpful to them. 

The Asian Board Games Festival was held in Singapore 28 - 30 November. It was held at the Singapore National Library. I did not participate as an exhibitor, but my games were there via Choon Ean of LUMA. She sold many Malaysian games at her booth. She sent me this photo above of Smoox from Taiwan Boardgame Design helping his friends buy my games to bring back to Taiwan. Thank you so much to Taiwanese gamers! 

In my full time job as a leadership trainer, I sometimes let my students play Pandemic as part of the training course. Pandemic is a popular game worldwide, but in Malaysia not many people know about it. Having done this so many times, there has been only one instance when one of my students had played the game before. It is not easy for new players to beat Pandemic. This particular group I taught recently managed to do so. 

Cat Between Us

Cat Between Us is a game from a Taiwanese designer. The copy I have is a Thai version, bought when I was in Bangkok for the Thailand Board Game Show. The idea of the game is you want to get as close as possible to the cat by luring it with toys. Whoever manages to get the closest to the cat wins. However, if you are overly enthusiastic and go overboard, you will scare the cat away. I suspect this is just a pasted on theme. This is a game about brinkmanship and hand management. It is also about guessing your opponents’ intentions and trying to spoil their plans.

At the start of a round, a target number is randomly determined. Every player starts with a hand of cards, and will take turns playing cards until everyone has three cards left. These three cards are the toys you use to attract the cat. Their total value needs to be as close to the target number as possible, without exceeding it. Whoever is closest wins the round. There are six types of toys in the game. Every card in the game shows one toy and one number. The six toy types are laid out in the middle of the table. During a round when you play a card, you use its number. You play it under one of the six toy types, changing the value of that toy type. Every toy type can have only two cards played under it. The round ends when every toy type has two cards. By then the cards in your hand will be treated as toys. You ignore the numbers. The values of your toys in hand are determined by what everyone has played during the round. 

I find this very clever. You know the target, but you don’t know how the other players are going to manipulate the values of the toys. You have some control, but your opponents will influence the toy values too. Sometimes you try to stay flexible by keeping as many toy types as possible for as long as possible. You have a constant dilemma because with every card play your options dwindle and you will be more committed. Since each toy type only allows two cards, once the second card is played, the value is locked. This gives you some certainty and makes strategising easier. 

The black jack-like rule is fun. It is about brinkmanship. It is also about guessing how you might be able to push your opponents over the target. How they play cards may give you some clues as to what toys they might have in hand. If your total is low, you can win if you push everyone beyond the target. 

After you win a round, your hand size increases for the next round. At first this sounds like a good thing, because you’d have more flexibility. However having a larger hand size means you have more toys left in hand when a round ends. That means it’s harder to keep your total low. That’s another interesting twist. 

Faraway

Faraway is a set collection card game. Throughout the game you will play 8 cards into your tableau, representing your journey. The cards are played from left to right. However, at the end of the game when you score points, you resolve the cards from right to left. This is the most important twist in Faraway. 

All cards have a number and a type. Some cards have features. Some cards have scoring conditions, and some of these scoring conditions have prerequisites. You are playing cards in the reverse order of how they will be evaluated. That means in the early game you can play a potentially high scoring card with many prerequisites, and after that you try to play cards which satisfy the prerequisites. This game is literally about working backwards. You want to play many scoring cards, because, well, they are scoring cards. Ideally they have similar prerequisites, so that you can try to satisfy them all. You have a hand of three cards, so you can somewhat plan ahead. Every round there is a pool of cards you will refill your hand from. The lower the card number you have played that round compared to your opponents, the earlier you get to pick a card. By watching the kind of cards your opponents pick, and also the cards they have played, you can strategise whether to compete with them. 

Features are along the top, scoring conditions are at the bottom right. Activation conditions, if any, are in the middle just above the scoring conditions. 

You have incentive to play your cards in ascending order. If a card you play has a larger number than the previous card, you will get to take one sanctuary card. Think of sanctuary cards as places you have already visited before you do your final scoring. All the features and abilities of sanctuaries take effect before you start evaluating your eight main cards. Sanctuaries are very helpful in fulfilling those prerequisites for scoring cards. 

The smaller cards along the top are the sanctuaries

This is a light strategy game with a fun little twist. It is mainly about collecting card combos. The challenge in the reverse order evaluation and the incentive to play cards in ascending numbers presents a fun puzzle.

This is one high-scoring journey by Han