Malaysia Boardgame Show is happening 18 - 19 Apr 2026!

The Malaysia Boardgame Show is happening 18-19 April 2026 in Kuala Lumpur! Cili Padi Games and I will be there. There will be pre-loved games for sale, several game competitions, and there are also game hosts bringing games for visitors to try. There is even a seminar on game design. There will be a lot of the Malaysia boardgame community and events all at one place. Don't miss it!  

More information on Instagram and Linktree. There is a free open-to-public area and a ticketed area for activities. Tickets for the latter here. I will be in the public area. Come visit me! 

Regicide Legacy: spoiler-free first glance

When I say spoiler-free, I mean up to the point when you start your first game. That means by then you will have opened the first mission box and you will see what's inside. If that's fine by you, come join me to take a look at what's in Regicide Legacy, the legacy game version of the amazing cooperative card game Regicide from Badgers from Mars, New Zealand. 

I'm a big fan of Regicide and I think it's fantastic game design. When Regicide Legacy was announced, I signed up immediately. Now I have received my copy, and completed the first two missions playing solo. I will hold off from playing the game for the moment. I will wait for younger daughter Chen Rui to be back in Malaysia before we play the full campaign together, starting from the beginning. I am excited about the game and want to show you what's in the box. I won't describe the gameplay much. The core mechanism is the same as the base game, and Mission 1 is 99% the base game. Mission 2 is a variant. 

The box is wide and thick

This is not a two-piece box. It opens with a flap, and it's magnetic. 

You get four player mats. Not absolutely necessary for gameplay, but it's nice to play cards on them. They make picking cards up easier. 

They are made of mouse pad material. The main game board too. 

You can see the main game board rolled up. There are 12 missions, each with its own box. There are five boxes labelled F, C, M, P and E. One of them is for the first time you lose a mission. I forgot to open it when I first lost a mission. So I don't know yet what's in it. 

To play a mission, you will need the components in the corresponding box. Most of them are cards. 

The player aids are double-sided. I haven't figured out what the two sides are for. Both of them describe what you do on a turn, but in different ways. One side is more detailed in describing specific steps, but it is incomplete in terms of listing when specific icons take effect. I'm not sure which side I'm supposed to use. Both sides seem to be important. 

The game comes with two types of card sleeves, normal sleeves and corrupted sleeves. You use the normal sleeves for your basic deck of cards, and the corrupted sleeves for the enemies. 

The aces, i.e. animal cards, and the two jokers, i.e. the goblins. The joker rule has changed for the solo game compared to the original Regicide. Instead of discarding your hand and drawing 8 cards, when you use a joker, it has a strength of 8, and it can be any suit, and that suit still takes effect, disregarding enemy immunity. 

Your deck represents a mercenary band. 

Sleeved and unsleeved (card back)

Unsleeved and sleeved (card front)

The game comes with two pretty metal tracker tokens and a tiny bag. 

Icons on the two sides of the tokens are different. Here on the left is the enemy attack strength, and on the right is the enemy health points. 

The game board is long and thin. The tracks on left and right are for enemy attack strength and enemy health points respectively. 

Enemy health tracker

Enemy attack strength tracker

The 12 missions

This is what you get in the Mission 1 box. You have 12 enemies to defeat, just like base Regicide. The Jacks, Queens and Kings. There is some story you can read, rules specific for the mission you have to follow, and reference cards. 

These are the enemies sleeved with the corrupted sleeves. 

I get very excited about this bit. There is a sealed pouch in every mission box. You get to open it only when you complete the mission. 

The back of the story card shows part of a map. It is not the exact same map art used for the main board, but I think it does correspond to part of the map on the main board. 

This above is Mission 1 set up for solo play. It took me two attempts to beat Mission 1. The first attempt failed because I drew too few bard cards (diamonds equivalent) in the early game. I was forced to use both my jokers very early. Needless to say when I used the jokers I used them both as bards. 

Every mission comes with one enemy stats summary card. You use it to keep track of which enemies you have defeated, so that you know what else is coming. 

Mission 1 game in progress.

I like that every character (card) has a name. I don't bother to remember their names, but still, it's a nice touch. I only remember one of the jokers is Frankie. And the duck's name is Duck. 

When I beat Mission 1, I cut open the pouch using a pair of scissors. It contained new content, and I proceeded to Mission 2. There were new rules, and stickers I was supposed to apply to the rulebook and to other game components. I didn't use the stickers. I wanted to be able to reset the game back to the start condition. Upon the completion of Mission 2, there were changes I needed to make which would make it impossible to reset the game. I could try to remember the supposed changes to the game components without applying stickers, maybe writing them down on a piece of paper, but it would be too much trouble. So I stopped my exploratory campaign there, and reset everything. I didn't reseal the pouches. I just put all the stuff back in. 

So far I am enjoying the game. I have only seen 2 out of 12 missions. It seems the rest of the campaign will be variations around the same core gameplay. I have a feeling the game will be a bit easier when playing solo. My Mission 2 was a little boring because it was too easy. However I can imagine it being much harder with two or more players. 

I will write more about Regicide Legacy, but not so soon. If you like Regicide, you'll enjoy this. Go get a copy! 

Bombastic

 

Bombastic was first explained to me as advanced tic-tac-toe. It is a two-player-only abstract game played using 9 tiles laid out face-down in a 3x3 grid. Four of the tiles show a circle, another four a cross, and the last one a bomb. Each player is assigned an icon, circle or cross. Your goal is to reveal exactly three of your icon in a row on your turn. Beware. If you ever reveal the bomb, you lose. 

On your turn you have two options. You either attempt to win, as described above, or you perform a card action. The game comes with a deck of cards, and you always have two face up. On your turn you can pick one card to use. The cards have all sorts of powers, allowing you to peek at tiles and to move them around. It is by using these cards you figure out which tiles are yours, and which are your opponent's and the bomb. You and your opponent will gain different information. You can mess with your opponent when you get to shuffle some of the tiles. It is a race to be first to reveal a set of three icons. Sometimes you have to gamble a little, if you sense that your opponent is close to knowing where three of his tiles are. 

Bombastic is a light filler. There is a memory aspect. The game is quite tactical. You try to utilise the card powers as much as possible. It is a scramble to find three of your tiles, and sometimes you have to risk the bomb. 

Skara Brae

Skara Brae brings us to the Orkney Islands in prehistoric Scotland. You manage a growing settlement. As more and more people flock to your settlement, you need to make sure you gather enough resources, build shelter, and cook enough food to feed everyone. At the same time you need to manage the waste generated by the settlement. There is a message about sustainability here. 

Players gain settlers through a drafting process. New settlers bring you resources and a single-use ability. They are also worth points at game end if they stay till then. Other than this drafting, players mostly do their own stuff at their own player boards. 

There are 10 action cards in each player area. 9 are standard, but you’ll have a unique 10th action. You get pawns to place on your action cards to perform actions. You start with just one pawn, but every new round you get a new one. As the game progresses, you get to perform more actions. The actions are mostly related to gathering resources and spending them to score points. There are three broad directions in which you score points. Settlers come in four colours. Each settler is worth points, and each set of four colours is worth points too. You can increase how much they are worth by advancing on a furnishing track. 

The next scoring approach is trading. This is another track you can advance on. The further you go, the bigger the rewards. However, you have to pay an increasing number of goods of the same type, which is not easy. Each time you advance on the trading track, you can trade a knife for a specific good type. You should make sure you have a knife on standby so that you don’t miss out on this perk. 

The third main scoring approach is upgrading your cards. You spend resources to do this. Upgraded cards become more powerful, so the earlier you do this, the more you will benefit from it throughout the game. 

One interesting challenge the game presents is the middens. Middens are mounds made of waste, like bones. In the game they are a bad thing. On your player board you have a storage area. It starts at a small size but whenever you run out of space and need to store more, it automatically enlarges. That’s not a good thing, because the larger your store room, the more middens it will generate at the end of a round, and these middens need to be stored too, potentially enlarging your store room even further. If your store room is beyond a certain size by game end, you will lose points. Managing your store room is a challenge. You don’t want to stockpile too many resources. You want to use them quickly. This game is a Just-In-Time (JIT) exercise! There is an action you can take to remove middens. Your store room automatically enlarges when space is needed, but it doesn’t automatically shrink when you have surplus space. You need to perform a specific action to reduce the size. 

Feeding your people is something you need to worry about every round. Getting roofs helps reduce the food requirement. Usually you need to cook. Animals and crops are not food. They need to be cooked first. We are not barbarians okay. Cooking is an action you can take. If you can’t feed all your people, or you choose not to, some will leave.  Losing people means losing end game points. 

Skara Brae is a resource management game. There are many resource types to handle. Storage management is challenging and interesting. Player interaction is not high. It happens in the card drafting part of the game. You spend more time doing your own thing on your own player board. That sounds boring but the fact is many fans of Eurogames like exactly this. I must admit I did enjoy figuring out the game. 

Wizards of the Grimoire

Wizards of the Grimoire is a two-player head-to-head battle game. You are wizards and you deal damage to each other by casting spells. To win the game, you need to reduce your opponent's health points to zero. This structure is pretty common. However the way you pick spells to use and manage mana needed to cast them is interesting. The game certainly offers something new. 

There is a market of spells from which you can pick new spells. There are all sorts of spell, and they are categorised into three types. Orange spells mostly deal damage. Green spells mostly help you gain mana. Purples spells are the quirky ones. At the start of your turn you can may take one spell from the market to become your own. You can have at most six spells in your play area. 

Every turn, by default you will draw three mana cards. They are numbered from 1 to 4, with 1's being the most common and 4's being the rarest. This might make the game sound luck-heavy, but mana strength is less important than you might imagine. When you cast a spell, it requires a specific number of mana cards, regardless of strength. These mana cards are placed below the spell, and you activate the power of the spell. Spells have a cooldown period. Every turn, one mana card below a spell is removed. You can cast the spell again only after all mana cards have been removed. 

At the end of your turn, if you have any mana cards remaining in hand, you can perform one basic attack by spending a mana card. Now the mana strength is important. You deal as much damage as the strength of this card. 

The game is a race to reduce your opponent's health to zero. The key in the game is how you assemble your combination of spells. Some spells combo well. You should also watch your opponent's combo. After he claims a spell, there is not much you can do to defend yourself against it. In this sense, the game is a little solitairish - you compete in building the most efficient damage-dealing machine. If yours is more efficient than your opponent's, there isn't much he can do to stop you from winning. So drafting to deny your opponent a important card can be crucial. It is also satisfying to create nifty combos. After you have six spells, you can choose to replace an existing spell. However you need to have left it idle for at least one turn. Sometimes it is worthwhile. 

Green spells usually help you gain more mana.

Orange spells deal damage.

This particular orange spell deals damage but also helps in gaining mana.

One fun combo I had was this. I had a card which gave me mana but I had to give one mana card to my opponent. I had another card which dealt damage to my opponent if he had a mana card of a specific value in his hand. By having the first card, I could guarantee that my second card always worked. Even if my opponent had used up all his mana cards (which would have been a good defence against my second card), I could give him a card, and I knew exactly what value it was. 

Wizards of the Grimoire is a clever card game about making powerful combos and managing your mana. You want to have just enough mana to power your spells and not too much, which would be a waste. Despite the head-to-head battle theme, I find this more like a race game in which you do your own stuff building the most efficient damage-dealing machine. The interaction is mostly in the card drafting aspect of the game. However it is crucial and you must pick your cards wisely. You're a wizard, aren't you?

Toy Battle

Toy Battle is a two player abstract game. My first impression is this is a game when you play with not only those tiny green toy soldiers but also with unicorns, dinosaurs and robots, and you make proper rules for a battle game in your living room, which you can imagine to be any world - space station, beach front or graveyard. The game comes with many different boards, each with a different layout and usually some unique rules. The core rules stay the same. 

You and your opponent start at opposite ends of the board. There are two ways to win. Capture your opponent’s base, or score a required number of stars. In case the game ends due to a player running out of units, the tiebreaker is the number of stars. Players have the same set of troops, numbered from 1 to 7. There are three units of each troop type. However a few units are removed randomly at the start of a game, so you can’t card count accurately. You don’t even know your own exact unit count. 

You start the game with some units in hand. The rest are in a draw pool. On your turn you either deploy a unit, or draw two from the pool. When deploying units, they must be connected to your base, whether directly or through a connected chain of friendly units. You can attack an opponent unit which is weaker by placing your unit on top of it. He might counterattack by placing an even stronger unit on top of that stack. The fact that opposing units stack up is interesting. If you use the knight power to remove your opponent’s piece from the top of a stack, it may reveal your unit, and suddenly the board situation goes strongly in your favour.  

After deploying a unit, if your units fully enclose an area containing stars, you claim them. 

As you can imagine, the fun comes from the unique abilities of many of the units. The skeleton and the unicorn let you draw units from the pool, saving you some turns. Normally you need to spend a whole turn to draw two units. The robot lets you randomly discard a unit from your opponent’s hand. The knight lets you remove an adjacent opponent unit, even if it is stronger. The toy soldier lets you immediately deploy another unit. The pirate monkey is a paratrooper and can ignore the supply line rule when being deployed. There is one funny unit type - rubber ducky - which has no number and can beat any other number. However it is also vulnerable to all other numbers. There are many clever ways you can use your units. 

The beach

Swimming pool

Graveyard

Islands

Rainbow!

At first the game sounds a little chess-like. Information on the board is open. You can calculate several steps ahead where your opponent might deploy his pieces and how you might respond. This sounds a little dry, like most perfect information abstract games tend to be. However Toy Battle has important concealed information. You may know how many units your opponent has in hand, but you don’t know what they are. And the powers of the units matter a lot. This is a game with surprises and uncertainty. 

Capturing the opponent base is not easy. However it is an important threat you can use to force your opponent into making defensive moves. He can’t ignore the threat. Your eventual goal might be to grab more stars, but your opponent has no choice but to address the other existential threat. 

I first played the digital version, then later played the physical.

You get a Scrabble style tile holder

The game box was smaller than I expected

The small unique powers on maps create interesting combinations with some of the powers of the units. One of the maps let you return a unit to your hand. That means you will get to use its power again. Getting a skeleton back lets you draw another two units! 

I talk about many fun combinations and clever moves, but this is a quick game. You only have 20 units in your pool. The game is like potato chips. When you finish one game, you get the urge to start another.