clearing my game collection

For a long-time gamer, my game collection is not very big. I rarely sell games, because I find that troublesome. You need to take photos, count components, pack and post the games, or arrange to meet for COD. I'm too lazy to go through all that hassle. So my collection only grows and rarely shrinks. In 2020 I did one round of giving away games. I gave some to friends who were interested in the games. For some games, I feel if the chances of me playing them again are low, I'd rather give them to friends who would play them. An unplayed boardgame is a sad boardgame. In 2020 I also gave games away through a Malaysian Facebook community of boardgamers. The games I offered were all quickly claimed. I did have two conditions: you need to pick up the game yourself, and you will play it within a month and take photos of you playing it for me. I later realised that even making all those arrangements for people to come pick up the games was tiring. Many of those who took games did play them and send me photos. What was disappointing was some did not keep their word. I lost faith in humanity a little. So I no longer want to give games away to people I don't know. This time round, I made the first offer to friends, and they have claimed several titles. Of what remains that I want to get rid of, I will sell them as-and-when it's convenient for me, e.g. certain boardgame events when people can inspect and pay on the spot. I set a price not for the sake of making money. I just want people to appreciate the games. People have a bad habit of not valuing what they get for free. 

Many of the games I'm giving away or selling have been in my collection for many years. I feel a little sad to see them go, but I feel happy that they are going to people who will play them. 

 

Sat 16 Aug 2025 the Magic Rain team organised All Aboard Bites at Lalaport in Kuala Lumpur. Their flagship boardgame convention is All Aboard, and All Aboard Bites is a smaller scale public gaming event. It's a much more casual meetup. I went as a participant, just to play games. I brought some of my prototypes to be playtested. Several of the finalists of the Design and Play game design competition were there, and I played Twin Towers, Jam and Teh Tarik Game. I brought my own games (games I bought, not games I designed) - Yspahan and Municipium. I wanted to play them. However during the event whenever I was about to start a game, we usually had five players, but both these games support at most four. So I didn't manage to get them played. 

Of my own designs, I playtested Malaysian Holidays and Rebels of the Three Kingdoms. I continued playtesting the two-player variant of Malaysian Holidays. By now it is pretty stable, and I don't think I will make any more changes. It has remained the same after several playtesting sessions with different players. A slight downside is it is a little different from the 3- to 5-player game in how you choose cards. The holiday cards and taking a trip work the same way. Only the card choosing mechanism is different. 

This playtest session for Rebels of the Three Kingdoms was encouraging. When we were done and I started packing, the group asked to go again. That's a good sign. We had a dramatic end to our first game. In the late game, Kenny was the obvious leader, and no one wanted to team up with him because that would help him score points and reach the winning threshold. We all wanted to force him into the weaker alliance. When it was time to choose an alliance, he was completely isolated. We had a 4 vs 1 situation. Normally under such a situation the smaller team will lose. It's simply too big a gap. However, the four of us were careless and forgot one important detail - Xiahou Dun. This character, when facing an enemy alliance of double the size, helps his alliance win immediately. Kenny revealed his character, and it was Xiahou Dun. We should have been on the alert for this. When 4 of the 5 unused characters were revealed earlier that round, there was no Xiahou Dun, and we should have been wary that it might be in Kenny's hand. 

I received one good feedback from this playtest session of Rebels of the Three Kingdoms. One question raised by the playtesters was why Chen Gong? In history, Chen Gong was a strategist serving under Lu Bu. In the Three Kingdoms novel, he is a secondary character. I picked him to be one of the 10 characters in the game partly because I had Lu Bu, and partly because I was influenced by the Japanese manga Soten Koro / Beyond the Heavens. In the manga, Chen Gong still is a secondary character, but he left a lasting impression on me. Now I have decided to swap out Chen Gong, and swap in Zhou Yu. Chen Gong was character #1. From the gameplay perspective, when character #5 Sun Quan is in the same alliance as character #1, Sun Quan's strength would double to 10. Making Zhou Yu #1 would be perfect, because in Three Kingdoms, Zhou Yu was the genius military strategist who served under Zhou Yu, one of the three kings. Playtesting is super important because it helps you discover your blind spots. 

Sorry, Chen Gong

I made Zhou Yu a moustachioed guy

Recently I have been posting daily at my blog. I have been playing many new games on BoardGameArena.com, so there is a lot I can write about. All my posts are scheduled posts. Lately, at any time I probably have 6 to 10 posts in the queue to be published automatically. This post you are reading today was scheduled maybe a week ago. 

I write about every new game I play on BGA. Sometimes I play games I have played before. I don't write about those in detail, but I sometimes I share my new thoughts on them. 

My first play of Anachrony was with a physical copy. The mechas in the physical version are impressive. When playing on BGA, there is no more such visual impact. I did not find the game particularly interesting when I first played the physical copy. This second play hasn't changed my mind. I feel the game is complicated but I don't get much fun out of this complexity. I just find it tedious. Maybe this is a personal taste thing. 

Anachrony is worker placement game in which you collect resources and spend them to construct buildings and score points. This whole sentence sounds so generic and it can describe like half the heavy Eurogames we see nowadays. That basically sums up what I feel about the game. 

There is a more than 10 year gap since I last played Kingdom Builder. When the game was released, people paid attention because it was a design from Donald X Vaccarino, who designed Dominion, a genre-defining game. Kingdom Builder later won the 2012 Spiel des Jahres. I don't remember much about the game from when I played it many years ago. This probably means I didn't find it particularly interesting. However to my surprise I quite enjoyed my recent play. I had to relearn the game, exploring strategies, making mistakes and getting aha moments all over again. 

Every turn you must place 3 houses, but the terrain you can place on is determine by a card draw. There is randomness in this, and it seems you don't have much control. However you can actually put some thought into how you place your houses, so that no matter what terrain comes up next, you have something useful to do. So placing your houses actually takes some deep thought if you want to do well. This is certainly a much more strategic game than how simple a turn appears to be. 

Every game, out of the four scoring criteria, three are randomly drawn. Only castle scoring is fixed.

During the game, as you connect to towns, you gain special abilities that can be activated every turn. These can be very powerful. Some let you move houses (literally pick them up and put them somewhere else), some let you place extra houses. Now that I have played Kingdom Builder again, I find I really admire it. If you haven't tried this, find a chance to give it a go. 

When I first played 17: Diciassette I played it with two players, and I didn't think it works with two. Now I have played it with five, and it works much better. This should not have been a 2 to 5 player game. It should be 3 to 5. It is understandable that publishers want to put on the box as wide a player range as possible, the most common being 2 to 5. 

I first played Forest Shuffle online. Recently I played the physical version. Playing the physical version did not change my opinion. My opinion of the game started with being so-so. I saw it as just a lot of cards with different scoring conditions, and you are just trying to collect cards which combo well. Then as I played more, I warmed up a little to it because it has nice art, and set collection in itself is an enjoyable thing to do. And then as I played more, I reverted to my initial opinion. It's just lots of cards with different ways to score points. I understand why it is a successful product. I also understand why it's not my thing. Comparing the physical and digital versions, I prefer the digital version because the computer does the scoring for you. It is easy to see why others enjoy it. I witnessed myself first-time players clicking with it. They start deciding which animals and trees to collect, and then they start paying attention to what others are collecting so that they avoid giving away useful cards. They also quickly pick up the tactic of overflowing the board to discard cards which others want. 

boardgaming in photos: Taiwan trip, Elfenland, Pax Renaissance

June this year I visited Taiwan with my family. Taiwan was where I got into the boardgaming hobby. I first learned about the world of German games there. I became a fan. That was in 2003. I worked and lived in Taipei from 2003 to 2004. After falling in love with boardgames, I also introduced them to my colleagues. We used to play over lunch time, hurriedly finishing our meals. I remember once when a public holiday was declared due to a typhoon, we ended up meeting up to play, because that typhoon turned out to be less severe than expected. 

Well before the trip I arranged to meet up with my Taiwanese friends. Unfortunately many of them were not in town when I was there. Only Crystal and Jessy were able to meet up. The last time I visited Taipei was 10 years ago, in 2015. I hope the next time won't take another 10 years. 

We played Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

In 2004 when I visited a night market it Taipei, I bought some cheap plastic chips similar to these above. I sometimes use these when the boardgame I play uses paper money. For example Power Grid. I have been using my cheap poker chips for more than 20 years. In recent years, they play a new role. I use them when designing and playtesting games. By now, a few of the poker chips have gone missing, but most of them are still there and they still work fine. I don't really need to buy more. I bought these two sets above mostly out of nostalgia. These two use a different colour scheme from my old sets. 

During the trip when I have the opportunity to visit bookstores I check out their boardgame sections. I ended up buying these games above. The one at the lower right was bought at a museum in Kaohsiung. I did not research boardgame stores in Taiwan and I did not plan to visit them. I considered visiting Witch House, which was where I learned about German games more than 20 years ago. I used to play games there regularly. However I found out that now they only have boardgame time on weekends. The only day I could visit them was a Wednesday. So eventually I decided not to go. 

Of the four games above, I have played them all by now. They are all in my queue to write about. In the past ten years I have not been buying many games. At least not by gamer standards. However in the most recent few years, I have started buying more again, and the reasons I buy games have changed. I no longer buy just because I think it's a game I'll like. Sometimes I buy a game because I want to see how other people design and produce a game. I buy because I too am a designer and publisher now, and I want to learn. The game is reference material. This time in Taiwan, I bought games not just as games but also as souvenirs. In different places, and with different people, who have different personal experiences and histories, you get different kinds of games. The games are a snapshot and a reflection of a time and place, a culture, a society. I find that uniqueness fascinating. 

Elfenland is an old game by Alan Moon of Ticket to Ride fame. It was the 1998 Spiel des Jahres winner, 6 years before Ticket to Ride won it. I checked my records, and the previous time I played this was 2007. In 1998, there weren't any heavy Eurogames like we do now. When playing games from the late 90's, I find them clean and simple, yet strategic and smart. They feel like a breath of fresh air. You don't get overburdened by too many rules and subsystems. I wonder whether I'm just being the nostalgic old fart. 

Elfenland is played over four rounds. Your goal is to visit as many cities as possible. You place transportation tokens on paths. This opens them up for us, and at the same time also determines the modes of transportation you must use. To travel, you spend cards, which are the various modes of transportation - dragons, clouds, rafts, unicorns, boars and so on. 

I have played a physical copy of Pax Renaissance before. This is a game about the Age of Renaissance in Europe. The board is divided into 10 major kingdoms. You buy cards which allow you to do all sorts of things, like taking control of kingdoms, changing them to republics (or back), creating armies, initiating wars, influencing religions and so on. 

There are four ways to win. As you manipulate the political scene in Europe, you must think carefully which one to go for. While you work towards that, you need to remember to stop your opponents from achieving their goals too. Achieving a winning condition doesn't mean you immediately win. The victory condition needs to be enabled first, by buying a comet card. Comet cards only start appearing in the second half of the game. 

I was pretty extreme in this particular game. All the cards I bought were for the western half of Europe. I had no influence in eastern Europe, but when I had so many cards for the western half, I could do many many things every turn. When you take an action to activate cards, you must choose either east or west. 

At this point 5 of the kingdom cards had been claimed.

This winning condition is globalisation. 

boardgaming in photos: Jaipur, Blood Rage, Agricola, Caverna, Puerto Rico

These are some older boardgames which I recently played with my old friends Allen and Han, all played on BoardGameArena.com. 

Jaipur is a 2-player card game. It has been a while, but the game is still as enjoyable as I remember. It is always tempting to take multiple cards from the centre row, but then you are always anxious whether the new cards which refill the row present an even better opportunity to your opponent. There is always the tension of collecting more to redeem a greater reward, or redeeming quickly before the juiciest rewards are claimed by your opponent. 

Blood Rage is my weakness. I really suck at playing this game. We've played this some years ago, and I did poorly. Now, I am doing just as poorly, if not worse. It isn't really a complex game. I have no idea why I can't even play this half decently. I think I have some kind of mental block when it comes to this game. It's not because of the battle theme. I'm not against wargames. I have no idea why. 

I had played a lot of Agricola in the past, but it had been a while, so I was a little rusty. This was my farm in the early game. I had two cattle, but I couldn't breed them because I did not have enough space. In fact the cow had to live inside my house. Not exactly hygienic. 

Needing to analyse fourteen occupation cards and minor improvement cards was a little overwhelming. Gosh I was rusty. However there was also sweet nostalgia. Eventually I only managed to use a small subset of my cards. 

One thing I am annoyed with is how they have changed some of the names of the worker placement spots. "Plow" is now called "Farmland". "Sow and bake bread" is now called "Grain utilisation". Seriously?! "Plow and sow" is now called "Cultivation". I find this frustrating. Why not keep things simple and straightforward? Okay, maybe this is the grumpy old man talking. He is incapable of letting go of the past. "Family growth" is now called "Wish for children". 

This was my farm near game end. I had wanted to upgrade my house to a clay house, but I didn't manage to gather enough clay. So we still lived in a wooden house by game end. 

Caverna is a reimplementation of Agricola. Some aspects were changed and simplified, several things were added. This was the early game. 

I have played the physical game. There were many game components to manage and it was quite a lot of work. You have so many options that it is exhausting to go through them one by one. The upside is you can try different buildings every game so there is much replayability.

Family members in Caverna don't score as many points as those in Agricola. They only score 1 point each, compared to 3 points in Agricola. However it is still useful to have more family members. You get more things done. I (red) worked hard on making kids, and I managed to reach the max of 6 family members. Han focused more on arming his family members. He had three armed family members and I had only one. Only armed family members can go on adventures.  

By the end of the game all of my forest and mountain spaces were developed. I did not have to lose any points from undeveloped spaces. One cute thing about this game is your dogs can help to guard sheep. So some sheep can be left in the fields as long as you have enough dogs taking care of them. 

Puerto Rico was once the #1 game on BGG. Many years ago I bought it because it was #1. At the time I had not played many Euro style games. My favourite games then were games like Axis and Allies. When I first read the rules of Puerto Rico, I was confused. This is it? This is the #1 game? It seems too simple. Where is the excitement? Later as I learned to appreciate Euro games, I understood the fun in Puerto Rico. 

Han beat us by a large margin. He had two large buildings. He had four quarries, which gave him deep discounts on buildings. 

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.