boardgaming in photos: Five Tribes, Tigris and Euphrates, Parks, Troyes, In the Year of the Dragon

Han, Allen and I continue to play in asynchronous mode on BoardGameArena.com. We play a mix of new-to-us and older games. However most of the games we have played before were played many years ago. In most cases I have forgotten the rules and I need to learn all over again anyway. So it is almost like every game is new to me. Five Tribes is one of these which I have to relearn. 

This was one funny match. As we played, I felt that Allen played well, and I played horribly. I did not manage to get even one djinn. In Five Tribes, djinns are powerful and should not be neglected. Allen felt the same about our game. When the game ended, we were both surprised that I won. Scores were not revealed throughout the game and we only knew when the game ended. The only reason I won was I had been thrifty when bidding for turn order. When the game ended, I had much more money left than either of them. Money was points. I did poorly during the game because I was often last in turn order, and there weren't many profitable things left to do on the board by the time it was my turn. I saved money, but missed out on opportunities. We all underestimated the power of saving money. 

The first time I played PARKS it was a physical copy. That time I didn't find it particularly interesting. Now that I have played it again, I find it a pleasant light strategy game. It is still another game about collecting resources and fulfilling contracts, but what I should focus more on is the central hiker movement mechanism. That is something innovative. It creates that dilemma of whether you want to rush ahead to grab a choice spot, or you want to go slow and claim many resources. 

Tigris & Euphrates was once the #1 game on BGG. Many say it is the most important work of Reiner Knizia. I have the physical game, but it had been a while since I last played. Playing this again reminded me of what a wonderful design this is. In the past I often felt scared about this game, because I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing, and I often did poorly. Now I am more comfortable with it, even though I still see it as a ruthless game. 

In our game a large kingdom soon emerged at the bottom left. In Tigris & Euphrates, kingdoms don't belong to any one player. Kingdoms are but tools for players to score points. Everyone has four different leaders who can be deployed to the various kingdoms. When kingdoms thrive in an aspect associated with a leader, that leader scores points for the player. You have four leaders, each in a different colour. You also score points in four different colours. Your final score is your weakest colour. So this is a game about scoring evenly. Having many points in a single colour doesn't help. 

Connected tiles form kingdoms. When two kingdoms touch, they go to war. Wars are resolved based on the four different colours separately. A war only happens if in both the kingdoms there are leaders of the same colour. If none of the leader colours overlap between the two kingdoms, there is no war, just a peaceful unification. 

Due to one early war I earned many green points. For the moment I didn't need to worry about green and I needed to work on my other colours. 

A disaster tile can break a kingdom into two. At the top right, a disaster tile has broken that part of the kingdom with two black monuments into a separate smaller kingdom. 

The little kingdom at the top left was peaceful throughout the game.

It is important to utilise monuments to earn points. Monuments give you a stable point income. Tigris & Euphrates is a game with danger lurking behind every corner. Kingdoms are often on the brink of war. Even if you are a powerful leader in a large kingdom, you never know when an usurper will show up and attempt to overthrow you. While watching out for both external and internal conflicts, you also need to plot to use these same methods to attack your opponents and gain points for yourself. 

When the final scores were revealed, Han won by a large margin. Scores are kept hidden throughout the game. You know roughly who is doing well and who is not, but you won't know exactly who is leading. Technically you can keep track of this, but normally no one has the patience for this. 

Stefan Feld is a hugely popular game designer, but instead of his most popular titles, one of his games  which I like is In the Year of the Dragon. I remember it as a game with much suffering. Every round bad things happen and you lose people, or you lose money, or your buildings crumble, which can lead to losing more people because you can't house them. You do your best to survive and mitigate the suffering.

This time playing the game, it was less painful than I am normally used to. It was because I was lucky to be the start player, and I managed to maintain initiative for most of the game. Having high initiative is very useful because every round you'll get to choose an action first, which means you can pick anything. Subsequent players who want to pick an action that has been picked will have to pay. The fee is steep. Money is hard to earn (just like in real life). But sometimes you are desperate enough to want to pay that price. Having high initiative makes life much, much easier. It also helped that despite not playing the game for some time, I still remembered the general strategy - watch out for all the bad things coming and prepare early for them. 

These were our palaces and workers at game end. I had four palaces and eleven workers, which meant I had only fired one employee. That is rare and I am lucky.  

Troyes is a game Allen likes and is good at. He used to be a top-ranked player on BoardGameArena.com. I have played this more than once before, but it was 13 years ago and I had forgotten most of the game. Troyes is a game with disasters to manage too. You have enemies attacking the city and you need to spend resources to repel them.

Asian Games: Jom Burger, Card Bullet Reload, Fly-A-Way

I tried quite a few games at the recent Asian Board Games Festival in Penang. I check my list of games I have played and will write about, and I currently have 22 titles to talk about. Gosh I have a lot of homework to do! 

Jom Burger is the latest title from Specky Studios (Malaysia). The designers are my friends Ah Hong and Buddhima. This is a simple dice drafting game about the local Malaysian street burger. This would be a great collaboration project with Ramly Burger. Everybody loves Ramly Burger! 

Every player gets a little player board - this burger card above. There are spaces for 12 dice, 2 in each colour. Dice represent food ingredients. Pink is drink and fries. They turn your burger into a set meal, but you need to have at least a completed basic burger for them to score points. Every round you roll some dice, and then you claim them. The pips are your points. When claiming the first die, you do it in player order. For the second die, you do it in reverse player order. 

Everyone starts with two special ability cards. They let you draw a new die or reroll a die. They will hopefully help you increase your score, but it is not guaranteed. If you don't use them, they are worth 2 points each at game end. 

You will score points if you complete a basic burger or a deluxe burger. The first player to achieve these score extra points. 

We had a preview play before the event started with Buddhima (right, one of the designers).

Card Bullet Reload is from Mousou Games (Japan). The artist NONNKI came all the way to Malaysia to attend the festival. 

The game is designed by Hiro's son. This is a first person shooter in microgame form. Every round is a melee, and you shoot at one another until only one player remains standing. That player scores one point. You then start a new round. The game ends when a player scores his second point and wins. 

There are only 5 types of cards in the game. There are simple attack cards which you play to inflict damage on any opponent. There is a counter card which you can use to deflect an attack to anyone else, including your attacker. If you get hit, you place the attack card before you indicating that you've taken a hit. Get three hits are you are out of the round. There is one card which allows you to give a damage card to another player. That's almost like an attack card.

On your turn you either play a card or draw a card. To attack, you need to play a card. One thing the game does in an interesting way is you don't always play in clockwise order. If you attack, and someone gets hurt, it is the player who gets hurt who goes next. If you draw a card, then the player on your left goes next. In this game you don't want to get mired down in a duel. If the two of you keep spending cards, you will soon get pounced on by the others. 

This is a simple game with plenty of player interaction. I love the art. 

Fly-A-Way is a game from Play Logue of Singapore. It is a successfully Kickstarted game. It is a game about the paths of migratory birds. 

The map shows most of Asia Pacific. At any time there will always be three pairs of destinations showing the two ends of the migratory paths of bird species. Your job is to connect the two destinations using your player pieces. This actually feels like a train game. Whenever a pair of destinations is connected, everyone who has pieces involved scores points. 

Cities with different shapes affect scoring. Some cards you claim give you points based on these shapes. 

When you complete a path, you claim the bird card, score points for it, and you also get to start using the special ability. 

This is a beautifully produced game with lots of research done on the bird species. The game mechanism is not particularly noteworthy for seasoned gamers, but it is something casual gamers can quickly pick up. Also this is quite educational and will be attractive to bird lovers. And this is not at all like Wingspan. 

Point of View: Circus Island

This is a microgame. This was given away for free at the 2024 Essen game fair. I should call this a brochure game, because it was given away by a guy walking the halls just like how brochures are given away. It's an advertisement. It's a free sample. Maybe this should be called a sample game. The idea is if you like the sample game, you'll visit the publisher's booth to try other games or buy the main game. 

These are all the game components - that small deck of cards above. Even the "game box" is just a folded card. This is a cooperative game. The key idea is four players are looking at the same scene but from different angles - north, south, east and west. Due to the different perspectives, what they can and cannot see are different, and they have different understandings about the situation they are looking at. The players are given several questions which they must answer together. They each get one card which they have to study and cannot share with others. They can only discuss what they see on their card. The more answers you get right, the higher you score. 

Point of View: Circus Island is just a demo game. The story is about a circus troupe stranded on an island. This photo above shows the perspective of the player to the north of the island. The three other players get different pictures. A question posed to the players may ask them to count a certain item. Some are only seen by only one player and blocked from view from the others. The player who can see it must alert their teammates. Some items might be visible to two or more players. When counting these, you have to be careful not to count them twice. Some questions may ask you about what you think has happened. You will need to look at clues in the pictures to piece together what might have occurred. 

This is a puzzle game and everyone works together to solve it. Everyone must contribute, because you are the only one who can see your picture. The copy I have is in German, so I needed to use my phone to translate while I played. If this sounds interesting to you, go look up their main game. 

Great Western Trail: El Paso

The Game

Great Western Trail: El Paso is the little brother in the Great Western Trail series. It is a simpler and shorter game, but it retains all the key elements of the original. This is not a children’s game version. This is still a mid-weight strategy game. Think of it as a game for the boss. The boss is busy and does not have time to waste. Get to the point and leave the details to the workers. El Paso gets rid of some details, and focuses on the core messages and decisions required. It is an executive summary of Great Western Trail. 

Every player has one cowboy which moves in a circuit, herding cows from the starting point to El Paso, and then returning to the starting point again to deliver a new batch. Every turn you move one to three steps, and you get to use the function of the building you stop at. You can build your own private buildings during the game, which will give you more options. 

Herding cows in this game translates to manipulating your hand cards to be as valuable as possible. The value of your hand is the card values added up, but only one card per colour is counted. So you want a hand of all different colours. Whenever you arrive at El Paso, you score points or gain benefits based on your herd value. You then discard your hand, and draw a new hand for the next cycle. This part of the game is a deck-building game. There are many ways you can increase your chances of having a high valued herd. You can buy higher valued cattle cards. You can permanently remove low valued cards. Some buildings allow you to sell cards. You get to discard cards to your discard pile and draw new and hopefully better cards. One action allows you to draw and discard. There is also a way to increase your hand size. All these help in improving your herd value.

You will recruit workers. El Paso handles this differently from Great Western Trail. I find it very clever. Workers are now cards, just like cattle. Okay this sounds wrong but I’m talking about game mechanism. Workers are now part of the deck-building mechanism. When you recruit, the worker is placed before you, ready to start work. Once you use a worker, they go to your discard pile. You have to wait for the next reshuffle for them to become available again. Whenever you draw a worker card, you immediately place it before you and draw another card. If you are lucky, after each reshuffle most of your workers are near the top and they all become available again quickly. 

There are three types of workers, plus a joker. Not joker as in they don’t do work and only fool around. Joker as in wild - they can do any task required of them. You need workers to buy cattle, buy buildings and use train carriages. The higher valued a cattle card is, the more workers you’ll need, and the more it will cost. The same goes for buildings and train carriages. Train carriages let you gain various benefits, like claiming missions to score points.

Whenever you complete a circuit, you are given an orange cow. This is just an average class cow. Useful in the early game but not at late game. You can’t choose not to take it. It’s something you have to manage. When the orange cow deck runs out, the game enters its last leg. How soon the game ends depends on player actions. If everyone speeds through the circuit, it will be a shorter game. 

The Play

El Paso is a strategy game in which you have to do long term planning. You need to keep increasing the value of you herd. You need to recruit employees and use them to get you better stuff. Despite the complexity, on your turn it comes down to just deciding to move between one to three steps. That's a good way to reduce decision paralysis. You only choose between 1 to 3. There may be a lot you want to do, but for now, just think of which one of the three is most relevant. This is almost like a life lesson. Stop worrying about the one hundred possibilities, just choose one thing to do and do it well today. 

Every time you complete a circuit, you must place your token on a space to claim a reward. The higher your herd value, the better a position you can use. Generally you can only use each space once, which means you are under pressure to perform better and better, otherwise you may not be able to place your token, which is bad. Being able to outdo yourself every cycle is satisfying. You do small things to keep elevating yourself. 

The Thoughts

In the Great Western Trail family of games, El Paso occupies an awkward spot. There are already several heavy weight games. A simpler and shorter version will not be interesting to players who already like the heavy and complex older brothers. These players are not going to mind the complexity and the longer play time. I find that El Paso has all the most important elements that make the original game fun, and it presents them in a cleaner and more succinct manner. You get the same fun with fewer rules and a shorter play time. But then that's me. I doubt I can convince people who like the original to like this. Many fans of the original enjoy its complexities. Removing some of the complexities is fine by me. I am not very attached to the original. I think the publisher decided to create a simplified version of Great Western Trail because they wanted to leverage its popularity to reach out to a new audience. People who are not interested in the original may be tempted to try a simpler and shorter version. If they like it, maybe they can then be enticed to try the original and others in the series. Gosh, I'm making them sound like drug dealers selling gateway drugs. 

Asian Board Games Festival (Malaysia) 2025

The Asian Board Games Festival (Malaysia) was held at 1st Avenue Mall, Penang, on 11 - 13 Jul 2025. This was the second time this event was run. I was there last year too. This year it was held over three days, Friday to Sunday, compared to just two days in 2024. This meant more stamina needed. Elder daughter Shee Yun went with me last year to help out, but mostly I did the demos and game teaching. This year she didn't join me, and I looked for local assistants through the organisers.

Four of us travelled together from Kuala Lumpur to Penang - Jon, Nick, Buddhima and I. This was our fresh and energetic "before" shot. We took it so that we could compare it with an "after" shot at the end of the event. 

The event started on Friday, and by Wednesday the tables and chairs had been set up. Exhibitors could start preparing on Thursday. We arrived Thursday afternoon. The event space this year was much larger than last year. The event was held on Ground Floor and First Floor in 2024. This year it was all in one single larger area on Second Floor. 

After doing our setup, we took the opportunity to play some games. This is Jom Burger, the latest game from Specky Studios. This is a light dice drafting game. 

Hiro is a designer and publisher from Kyoto, Japan. We had connected on Facebook some time ago, but this was the first time we met in person. I tried his new game Olenon and was really impressed with the design. I immediately bought a copy and also asked for an autograph. 

Friday morning and ready to roll! (still at full batt) 

This time I had my own little wooden display rack

Helmer (left) is a gamer from Norway. He read my blog on BoardGameGeek.com and my upcoming game Malaysian Holidays caught his attention. That was how we got connected. This was the first time we met in person. He is an expert in Asian culture and history, including holidays and celebrations. 

Giant Trishaw Frenzy

Pinocchio's first public play after launch

My cousin Jackson lives in Penang and came to support me. 

My booth stamp this year featured Pinocchio

“If you lie, you die!”

Group photo Friday evening (courtesy Kee Sit)

Saturday (Day 2) morning and we were already showing some wear and tear

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves was published last year after ABGF, so it wasn't at ABGF 2024. This year was its first ABGF too alongside Pinocchio. However quite a few visitors had already played Ali Baba because I had distributed it to Penang through retailers. 

The booth of Meja Belakang - one of the most successful Malaysian publishers

Pinocchio in play

This group wanted to play Pinocchio but I still had another group at my booth. I hunted around for an unoccupied table so that I could teach them to play while my assistant taught the other group at my booth. That's why the tablecloth is not red. I use red as my brand colour. 

Thank you for your support! Quite a few visitors told me they had already played Ali Baba before and that they liked the game. That was nice. 

A group of six playing Pinocchio. Pinocchio plays 3 to 7 players. Later this group moved on to play Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs. When I show people Snow White at conventions, the first reaction is often "how do you get such a game played at a convention?" However I do usually get it played despite the minimum player count of seven. People are attracted by the art, and they come ask whether they can play. When they don't have enough players in the group, I ask them to go grab strangers to play with them, or I try to grab other people passing by. Most of the time we manage to assemble seven. 

I taught Dancing Queen to this publisher team from Indonesia - Whatt Play

I knew Gazelle through a business community. Prior to this we were only connected online. She lives in Penang and came to visit, and this was the first time we met in person. 

We had our lunch + dinner at 11pm, after the end of Day 2

Sunday (Day 3) we had dimsum / yumcha before showtime

Freddie of Ludus / Larong Atin is an industry veteran in the Philippines. I asked for his help to give me feedback on my games Dancing Queen and Pinocchio, in particular whether they would be a good fit for the market in the Philippines. He also bought some stock of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Pinocchio to sell in the Philippines, to test the market. Friends in Philippines if you are interest in either of these game titles do reach out to them. 

The biggest gain for me this trip was getting to know many industry players from other countries in Asia, especially South East Asia. I learned a lot from speaking to them, and that's something money can't buy. 

Heng Hee's Papermade Duel made an appearance

Sunday was a very busy day. My booth sales was better than the previous two days. 

This year I engaged several helpers for my booth, so I had the opportunity to go try the games at other booths. Last year I was 100% stuck at my own booth and I didn't get to play other people's games. This year I was able to meet many more people and have good conversations. Getting decent sales is good, but more important is the publicity, marketing, networking, exploring collaborations and opportunities, and learning from others. 

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Over the three days, my booth was almost always fully occupied except for Day 1, which was Friday and a work day. I was lucky to get a booth right at the front. I had a very visible spot. 

BGN from Thailand had a giant poster

Thank you for supporting my game!

At the end of Day 3 I had a game exchange with Play Logue from Singapore

It always makes me happy to see a happy customer, and dayum he looks 5x happier than I am

Nicholas was of the helpers who assisted me at my booth

Tom (小东老师的卓游乐园) from Taiwan brought many fun party games and also showcased a few small and clever abstract games. After trying Coco Boom (爆爆椰) and having a blast I bought a copy. I'll write more about it later. 

Behind the scenes: packing up after 10pm on Sunday

Movers at work

We still looked full of energy, but actually we were all exhausted. I only had 3 or 4 hours of sleep every day. However it was great working together with friends who share the same passion and mission. 

Just to be a show-off, I quickly made this Instagram post after the event. I should have brought more copies. I was pleasantly surprised when Note from Wisebox (Thailand) told me that Snow White is being sought after in Thailand, and he wanted to buy all the copies I had with me in Penang.