Elemana Chronicles official website launched

The official website of Elemana Chronicles is now live! Elemana Chronicles is a 2-player head-to-head battle miniature game designed and produced in Malaysia, and features highly detailed sculpts. Check it out! - https://www.elemanachronicles.com

Koinobori

The Game

Koinobori has a Japanese theme, but it is a game from Spain. Koinobori (koi-no-bo-ri, not koin-o-bo-ri) means carp streamer in Japanese and they refer to carp-shaped windsocks. They are flown on Children's Day, 5th of May. The game mechanism doesn't have much to do with the theme. This is a market manipulation game. You collect carps and manipulate their point values. When the game ends, you sum up the point values of your carps and the player with the most points wins. 

Every player has his own flag pole like this. You may collect up to three cards containing carps. Before you collect anything, your flag pole looks like this. You refer to the three icons at the bottom, which tell you what you are allowed to do. The three icons mean the number of cards you may take on your turn, the number of cards you may play, and your hand size. When you start collecting cards and attaching them to your flag pole, you cover your flag pole starting from the bottom, covering the icons. As you do this you refer to the next set of icons which are still visible. Your abilities improve as you collect cards and cover the lowest set of icons. 

There is space at the centre of the table for five columns of cards. These are the common flag poles where everyone can play cards. Each flag pole has space for five cards. The game ends when all five flag poles are full. At each flagpole, only a single carp colour with the most carps wins and will score points. In the case of ties, both the highest colours are disqualified, and the second highest colour wins instead. If there is a tie for second place, then they too get disqualified and the third highest colour wins instead, and so on. This is a little convoluted, and the outcome can be quite unexpected. 

In the photo above, that row on the far right is card market. This is where you take cards from. You may only take cards from the top or the bottom. The market is not refilled immediately from the draw deck. You only refill when the market drops to a specific the number of cards. 

On your turn your options are to take cards from the market, play cards to the common flag poles, or play cards to your personal flag pole. Some cards have special powers which are triggered when they are played to a common flag pole, e.g. you get to take additional cards, or you can move a card from one common flag pole to another. 

Carps come in 6 different colours. There are only five common flag poles. When the game ends, all six colours will have a specific value. At least one colour won't score. The point value will not be zero. It is -3 instead. This can be quite scary. If you have carps in that colour, every carp is -3. These cards above are reminders for which colours are still -3. They are flipped over when the corresponding colours score, i.e. win at one of the common flag poles. 

At this point I have played two cards to my personal flag pole. Once you play a card here, you are committed and may not change or remove it. The card is played face-down so your opponents do not know which carps you have. The advantage of committing early is you enhance your abilities. The downside is the board situation may still change drastically, and you might be committing to colours which eventually turn out to be duds. 

The Play

This is a stock market manipulation game. Everyone can influence which colours score. This is like a horse racing game. At every common flag pole only one colour will win. A colour may win at two or more flag poles. As you try to manipulate which colours win, you have to bet on the colours too, hoping you bet on the biggest winners, and not on any of the losers. After you have committed to certain colours, you will want to do your best to help them. If you can guess what colours your opponents are committed to, you want to sabotage those colours. Sometimes there may be others who have vested interests in the same colours as you do. Here you can collaborate. This is what Koinobori is, so it's not very complicated. The challenge comes in the cards available to you. You don't have that many choices when taking cards. There are six colours and you may not always have the chance to take a colour you like. Sometimes they don't show up, sometimes others take them. Sometimes you need to go with the flow and change tact. 

These were my carps at game end. I went with red, yellow and green. 

It's a card game but it takes up much table space. 

The Thoughts

Koinobori is a mid-weight strategy game. It has secret betting and race manipulation. Everyone can manipulate the race so your control is limited. You have to observe how others play and try to make use of that. If you can invest in colours others are already working on, you can save some effort. Sometimes you have to push for the colours only you have invested in and no one else, because that gives you a unique edge which others do not have. When the time is right, it is also good to sabotage your opponents' colours. 

The game felt a little complicated when I started playing, but once I understood the underlying concept, it's not that complicated. The only part I wasn't very comfortable with was the tiebreaking at the common flag poles. I felt it would be a poor experience for the two leading players who had been fighting over a flag pole, when their colours tied, and the victory went to a third colour on which minimal effort was spent. It would be frustrating. However, in practice, this didn't seem to happen often. So maybe my worry was unnecessary. When players play cards to the common flag pole, they know exactly what the outcome will be after the cards are played, so the victory going to a third unexpected colour would be what the active player deliberately chooses to do. 

boardgaming in photos: Chinese New Year in Sabah

Chinese (Lunar) New Year has come and gone. It is now the Year of the Snake. One gift my wife Michelle received this year came in this pretty wooden box, which had a snakes and ladders game board on the cover. I guess that's appropriate because it's the Year of the Snake. 

I spend most Chinese New Year holidays at my hometown Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, East Malaysia. This trip I brought some of my prototypes back for playtesting. I asked my family to playtest Malaysian Holidays for me. We tried three different rulesets. I wanted to test the flow of the game to make sure it is suitable for casual gamers. 

I taught my niece and nephew Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. I suddenly felt like Uncle Roger when I said niece and nephew. They were able to follow. Lauren (10) was a little confused about multiplication (there is one x2 card in the game), but she ended up winning. Oswald (12) won a game too. I was the only one who didn't win. Hmmph... beginner's luck.

Mahjong Rummy is a Chinese New Year staple. Three generations at the same table. Not many boardgames can do this. 

Michelle had an annual gathering with her girl friends, and all the husbands and children went together. I asked the children to help me playtest Taking Sides. I brought Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs too to let them play. Two years ago before I decided to publish it, I had shown them the game, also at this annual gathering. They were highly engaged in playing the game, and it was partly their response to the game which made me decide to go ahead with publishing Snow White. So this time bringing them the published version of the game was a meaningful occasion. They had contributed to this game getting published. 

They had mostly forgotten how to play, but they picked it up quickly. As dwarfs they gave very clever clues, clues which minimised helping Snow White. It was not those weak ones like my number is larger than yours, or our numbers are even numbers. Due to the higher complexity of the clues given, playing the game was more mentally taxing. These are smart kids. 

Kariba

The Game

Kariba is a small box game from Reiner Knizia. It is a simple card game about watering holes in Africa. All sorts of animals gather around the watering hole. They all need to drink, from the tiny mouse (numbered 1) to the great elephant (numbered 8). At the watering hole predators and prey can co-exist. However if too many of one animal type come, they scare away another animal type near them. 

This little circle formed using numbered tiles is the watering hole. The numbers indicate where you must play your cards. A turn is simple - play one or more cards of the same animal type, i.e. same number. When you play the animal(s) next to the watering hole, if there are three or more of this animal type, you'll scare away all animals of the next smaller animal type. You claim these cards into your score pile. In the photo above, if you have just played the giraffe (#4), they will chase away the meerkat (#2). If there are animals in both positions 2 and 3, then it is the animal at 3 which will be chased away, because that's nearer. 

There is a special rule for the elephants (#8). They are the largest number and normally no one can scare them away. The exception is the lowly mouse (#1). Three mice is enough to scare any number of elephants away. However the mice are the weakest animal and can be easily chased away by all other animals. 

The Play

One thing I find interesting is sometimes you don't want to play any of the cards you have in hand. Some you hope to play later when a good scoring opportunity comes. Some you are reluctant to play because it might help an opponent. Aaah... tough decisions. Often you don't want to play the second card of an animal, because if anyone else has another card, they will be able to play that and trigger scoring. Since everyone is aware of this, you will start collecting pairs of cards to be played at the same time, which means an animal with just one card may suddenly get to three. There is an ebb and flow in the game. You try to ride the tempo well and score more points (claim more cards) than your opponents. 

When three (or more) cards of one animal type chase away another type, they themselves become a big fat target. One situation that happens is people keep cards to catch these winning sets. There's always a bigger fish. Another situation that comes up is when you are afraid a particularly lucrative set will get taken by an opponent, you intentionally stick a single card just before it to protect it from bigger animals. Let's look at this below. 

There are six giraffes (#4), which is super tempting. Imagine that there are no animals at all from positions 5 to 8. If anyone plays three of any of these numbers, he will win that huge set of giraffes. You can play one single ostrich (#5) to protect the giraffes. Now people will not want to play their trios of 6, 7 or 8, because that will only get them your lousy single 5. Of course, it is entirely possible you end up helping someone else who has exactly two ostriches. 

The Thoughts

This is a lovely little game. Simple and easy to learn, yet having interesting tactics. It's a nice light strategy game. Good for traveling, as it can easily fit into a pocket. It's easy to teach casual gamers and non gamers. I like clever and concise games like this. They get straight to the point with minimal fluff. 

Happy Fox

The Game

Happy Fox is a simple card game from Wolfgang Kramer and Manfred Reindl. Wolfgang Kramer is one of the top boardgame designers in the world, but I had never heard of this game until I saw it on a shelf. Oh no, I'm falling behind boardgame trends. 

In Happy Fox there are only three types of cards - fox, goose and dog. No numbers, no suits. There are more geese than foxes or dogs. Every player has his own deck of cards, and the decks all have the same card distribution. The only difference is the card back colour. You have a hand of five cards. On your turn, you simply play one card. If it is a goose or a dog, you play it face-down before you, without letting anyone know what you have played. If it is a fox, it is played face-up, and you will go goose hunting. Beginning with the player on your left, you may reveal your opponents' cards. You go around the table revealing one card per player, and you can do this for as long as you want, even cycling back to the first player on your left. As long as the card you reveal is a goose, you are good. When you are happy with what you have, you may decide to retire your fox. You then take your fox and all the revealed geese and place them in your personal score pile. Now if at any point you reveal a dog, your fox will be captured by the dog. The dog owner takes your fox card and his dog and places them in his score pile. All geese revealed by your dog go to the score piles of their respective owners. You gain nothing, and even lose your fox. 

You play until everyone exhausts their decks and hand cards. All cards remaining before you go to your score pile. Everyone counts their score piles, and whoever has the most cards wins. 

The Play

This is an amazingly simple game. This is the kind of game which makes people think designing games is easy and they can do it too. Pfff... Despite so few rules, the game is very exciting. Your cards are mostly geese, and there's always some anxiety when you place a goose. Playing a fox and going hunting is exciting, but it is also nerve-wracking. After you catch a goose, you will hesitate about whether to go for the next one. If the next card is a dog, you lose all your geese accumulated so far. This is a painful decision to make. 

If you want to, you can card count. If you know someone has run out of dogs, you'll know his cards are absolutely safe. If you find most players have used up their foxes, you know it's safe to play your geese. Often you want to hold on to a fox until the right moment. Wait for more geese to be out before you play your fox. Hopefully you'll have a bigger catch. 

There is an optional rule where everyone removes a few cards randomly before the game starts. This way you can't card count accurately. 

The Thoughts

I was already impressed with the game after reading the rules. Only three types of cards, and such simple rules, but this is such a fun game. So much emotion in such a spartan game. This works well as a children's game, a family game and a party game. To gamers this is interesting too. If you get serious about the game (like gamers tend to do), you can think about how to bluff and how to trap. You can card count too. There is certainly luck in the game. Sometimes even the first card your fox flips is a dog. This is not at all uncommon. It's always a joy when someone else's fox gets caught. It means the geese you think you have lost come back to you. Everyone (except the fox owner) cheers the dog owner. This is a clever little game with plenty of surprises and excitement. 

Mission Impractical

I got to know Hilko Drude through a friend, and through social media. He is a game designer and game reviewer in Germany. I sent him a review copy of Dancing Queen. As I prepared to visit Essen 2024, he learned that I was going, and said let's meet up. I went purely as a visitor. He was an exhibitor. I looked for him on the very first day of the fair. That was the first time we met in person. It was like penpals meeting for the first time. Gosh, the word "penpal" is so 20th century. Hilko had prepared a copy of his game Mission Impractical to give to me. I had a copy of Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs with me, and I gave him a copy too. So we had an early Christmas gift exchange in October. 

The Game

Mission Impractical is a party game and it uses mostly cards. Every round one player will be the active player, who is in charge of completing a mission, and the rest needs to guess the mission. Four missions will be displayed, but only the active player knows which one is the true mission. The guessing players score points if they guess correctly. The active player also scores points for each guessing player who makes the right guess, so he wants to give good clues. The way you give clues is by specifying what tools you will use for completing your mission. There are four columns of four tools each. The active player must pick a tool from each column to help him complete his mission. It is based on this the guessing players make their guesses simultaneously without letting one another know their guesses. 

The four possible missions

There is one double down marker in the game. Before the active player picks the fourth tool, any guessing player may claim the double down marker. There is only one, so this is first come first served. If you are confident about your guess, you can double down. You need to commit your guess immediately. If you are right, you earn more points. However if you are wrong, it is no longer just scoring nothing. You will lose points instead. 

Before the active player reveals the answer, every guessing player must show his guess and explain why. The rulebook explicitly states that you have to describe how you are going to use those items to complete the mission you are guessing is the true mission. Only after every guessing player is done the active player will reveal the answer and also explain why. 

The Play

This is a simple game that's very easy to get into. What makes it interesting is the combination of tools and missions. Sometimes it's very challenging to pick a tool from a column because they make no sense at all for the mission. This is usually when the game is most fun. You have to think of some way to use those tools, and sometimes people get very creative and produce hilarious results. This is the kind of game which lets you explore how your friends' brains work. Sometime you find people who think just as weirdly as you do. 

The game is in English and German

The Thoughts

Mission Impractical has the usual party game tropes. It is easy for casual gamers and non gamers to get into. It requires that people be creative and express themselves. The game mechanisms are simple and they are there as a framework to facilitate interaction and conversation among players. The bulk of the fun comes from the people you play with. 

boardgaming in photos: working, playing and testing

I used a game I designed in one of my recent leadership training sessions - Tradition and Innovation. The game was not originally designed for training or learning purposes, but I realised it was fitting for the particular training programme I was doing, on leadership. The core idea I wanted to convey in Tradition and Innovation was that two competing factions have a common objective, but they pursue two very different ways to achieve it. The game was originally designed for 2 to 6 players. To turn it into a training activity, I made it playable for 12 participants. 

You have the tradition faction and the innovation faction. Both want prosperity for the world. However one wants to achieve this by honouring tradition, while the other believes innovation is the only way forward. In game terms, the tradition faction wins by pushing prosperity level and tradition level to 20 or more. The innovation faction wins by pushing prosperity level and innovation level to 20 or more. They have a common goal - prosperity. The game is played over at most 6 rounds. If neither faction achieves their winning condition, the game ends with both of them losing. 

The game was designed to explore human nature and human interaction in an organisation where people have both common goals and conflicting agendas. If an action would help the other party a lot, would you choose not to do it even if meant hurting yourself a little? Since there is a common goal, will you then focus your resources only on your own goal, and just let other people take care of the common goal? Because it's in their interest anyway? How willing are you to contribute to the common goal? 

This training activity I ran turned out to be very exciting. In Round 4, one of the factions already had a chance of winning. However the events had to be resolved first to see whether the two required levels could be maintained. Unfortunately one of them dropped below 20, so there was no victory yet. In Round 6, again one faction was poised to win. So now it came down to the last three event cards. Event cards were all bad. It was a matter of which stat was hit. At this point the innovation level and prosperity level were both above 20. The innovation faction would win if they both stayed at 20 or more. The first event card revealed affected the tradition level. No problem. The second event card affected the prosperity level. Thankfully it dropped from 23 to 20. That was still good enough. So it came down to the very last card in the very last round. And... innovation level dropped below 20. The innovation faction groaned in disappointment. The tradition faction cheered so happily it was as if they had won. In fact they were just happy the other team lost the game together with them. I teased them - you should be ashamed of yourselves. 

This was a boardgame gathering with my BNI friends. They are all non-gamers, so I mostly bring light games. I often bring my game design projects to get some playtesting done. This round I brought some prototypes too, but we were so engrossed with playing other games I forgot to bring them out. Blokus is very easy to teach, but as you play, you'll learn that it can be quite tricky and strategic. 

I was finally able to play Potato Tomato, which I brought back from the Thailand Board Game Show. I also managed to play Jinx-O from Indonesia. More and more games checked off from my to-play list. 

Ubongo is a game with a spatial element. It requires a different kind of brain power. Even if you are smart and strategic, you may not have that spatial reasoning ability. Alex is one of the smartest guys I've met, and he had difficulties with Ubongo, so Susie had to come to the rescue. Susie grasped the techniques quickly, and was often first to solve her puzzle. 

The gems of Ubongo

18 Jan 2025. TTGDMY playtest session. This is Jon's Dive for Gold, a push-your-luck game about diving for treasures. You keep revealing cards hoping to get valuable treasures. Each card comes with an oxygen cost. If you exhaust your oxygen supply, you will be forced to return without taking any treasure. So you need to decide when is good enough. If you decide by yourself to return, you don't necessarily claim all the revealed cards. You only get the most recent cards, up to a weight limit. You must take treasures beginning from the most recent, and you must take as many as you can, up to the weight limit, even if it means some are rubbish. 

You can take at most 10 treasures. Once anyone has 10, the game ends. The bikini is a treasure with no value. It just takes up a slot. 

This is Chee Kong's new game. He continues to develop new games using components from Zodiac Go. If you have a copy of the game, you will keep getting new games. You can download them from the Zodiac Go website. This particular new game in development has a bit of trick-taking. You win tricks to compete in five areas. 

I continue playtesting and developing Taking Sides. Number 7 is Liu Bei (from Three Kingdoms). I am now focusing on playtesting the 3 and 4 player variant rules. The game has 10 characters, each with a different strength value and special ability. Every round, you draw a random character, and then you have to decide which of two factions to join. For just that round, members of a faction fight as a team, but next round they may be on different teams. Now that I am using the Three Kingdoms theme, I name these two factions the loyalists (to the Han Dynasty) and the rebels. In the early days of playtesting, I mostly played with 6 to 8 players. At a high player count, many character powers came into play, and there was enough interaction between the powers to make the game interesting. However at a low player count, the game became less interesting. That is why I want to introduce variants for the 3 and 4 player games. The idea is I want to always have at least 5 characters in play. 

With 4 players, during round setup, one of the unused face-up cards becomes the Han Emperor, an NPC (non-player character). This character is already in the loyalist faction. After knowing who is already in the loyalist faction, the (human) players take turns deciding which faction they want to join. Knowing which character is already in the loyalist faction affects players' decisions. If my character works well with the Han Emperor, I probably want to join him. If my character's power can neutralise the Han Emperor, I will not be afraid to join the rebel faction. 

With 3 players, in addition to the Han Emperor NPC, there is another NPC - the Yellow Turban Rebel. In the Three Kingdoms story, the downfall of the Han Dynasty usually starts with the Yellow Turban Rebellion, which is a religious movement. When playing Taking Sides with 3 players, the identity of the Han Emperor is known. There will also be four characters face-up at the centre of the table. When players take turns choosing a faction, whoever is first to pick the rebel faction gets to claim one of those four face-up characters. This will be the Yellow Turban Rebel, who of course joins the rebel faction. Being able to choose an NPC teammate is attractive, especially when one of those four combos very well with your character. When you see an opponent pick a character to be the Yellow Turban Rebel, that gives you some clue too as to who that opponent's character might be. 

This was a smaller playtesting session with just the five of us. Erin left slightly earlier. Darryl was camera-shy. Thus only the three of us (me, Chee Kong, Jon) in this photo. 

Chatting Rivers and Lakes with Tao

 

Brian Bankler from Tao of Gaming, a blog I have been following for many years, read my recent post on Rivers and Lakes, a business simulation activity I designed for my leadership training work. He was intrigued and contacted me to chat more. We did an interview through email exchanges. We went into more details about the activity itself, my experiences running it, and also the thinking processes behind the design. Here's our conversation. 

If you are interested in my leadership training, contact me. 

Email: cs@simplifypeople.com

Website: simplifypeople.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiewchoksien/ 

Dungeon Roll

The Game

Dungeon Roll is fantasy dungeon crawling designed as a dice game. You play three rounds, in which everyone takes a turn to explore and plunder a dungeon. After three rounds, you compare points to see who wins. 

White dice are the player dice. They represent the party of adventurers you explore the dungeon with. Black dice are the dungeon dice. They represent the monsters and also the treasures you encounter. Most faces of a white die are different adventurer types, like fighter, cleric and thief. They have different abilities. They are used to defeat black dice. Treasures and potions on the black dice need to be "defeated" too. You need to spend white dice to open treasures and to quaff potions. However you do get something in return. 

Exploring a dungeon means fighting through it level by level until you are defeated or decide to retreat. There are 10 levels, and every level is harder than the previous one. You only roll one black die for the first level, two for the second level, three for the third, and so on. Every time you clear one level, you have to decide whether to retreat and keep the score you have so far, or to attempt the next level and hope to score more. In case you fail to fight through a level you are attempting, you won't score points for the whole adventure. The next level will have more black dice. You will gradually use up your white dice. Some abilities let you restore some of them. At the moment I can't imagine how you can get to Level 10. By around Level 5 it already feels like the max. Maybe I need to learn to play better. 

The different types of adventurer have different abilities. By default they can always defeat one monster. However they specialise in certain monster types. E.g. a single cleric can defeat any number of skeletons. So if you roll many skeletons, and you have one cleric, you're in luck! 

When you use white dice to open treasure chests, you get all sorts of treasures and equipment. A thief can open any number of chests. Some items behave like a specific adventurer type. You keep them for future use. Some items have point values. Potions you quaff let you restore white dice. One of the black die faces is the dragon. Rolling a dragon means you are starting to disturb it. Dragon die faces are set aside. Once you reach three dragons, you wake the dragon and must fight it in order to complete the current level. Defeating the dragon requires three different adventurer types, so it's not easy. If you manage it, you score points and gain a treasure. 

Scrolls, which appear on white dice, let you reroll. Sometimes this can be a life saver. Sometimes it makes things worse. 

Every player gets a character card. You have one ongoing ability, and one once-per-excursion ability. When you reach a certain experience level (which is also your victory points), your character upgrades and both your abilities change. 

The Play

This is mostly a solo game. Only one player is actually playing at any one time. The others spectate. The only player interaction is thinking about well your opponents are doing and deciding how much risk you want to take in order to catch up to them or stay ahead of them. Rolling dice is exciting. There's an element of surprise and uncertainty. The game is tactical in nature. You do your best with what you roll. Overall it's pretty straight-forward. Still, the dungeon crawling theme comes out pretty well. You do feel like you're fighting your way through monsters and traps. The fact that you need to roll dice makes the experience one of risk-taking. 

The character card being tilted 90 degrees means you've used your single-use power.

The Thoughts

Dungeon Roll is a light and brisk dice game, and it's flavourful as a fantasy adventure game despite the simplicity. 

Happy New Year