The Wolves

This is one very eye catching box cover! Ba-dum-tss! The game title is as literal as can be. You play a pack of wolves, and you compete with other wolf packs to be the dominant one on the map. You get to experience the life of a wolf, and all this is done using several clever mechanisms. 

The map is divided into regions, and there are five terrain types. Those six peripheral regions have tokens with quarter, half and full moons. These are the countdown mechanism in the game and one of the ways you score points. Certain actions like recruiting lone wolves to your pack, recruiting wolves from other players to your pack and stealing other players' dens advance the countdown. At certain points in the game these regions will score points based on who has the strongest presence. This aspect of the competition is related to the tempo of the game. 

The game has an interesting core mechanism, and it is related to the six double sided terrain cards every player has a set of. One of them has the same terrain on both sides, and that's the terrain your wolf pack is strongest in. In this example above I am the tundra wolf pack and I am strongest on snow fields. You get to perform two actions on your turn, and performing actions require that you flip between 1 to 3 terrain cards of the same type. All your actions are related to terrain. When you move your wolves, the terrain card you flip determines what kind of terrain they will move to. When you build a den, the terrain cards you flip determine where that den can be placed. It must also be next to one of your alpha wolves. If you don't have a certain terrain face-up, you can't do anything on such terrain. You need flip another card so that you get this terrain face-up. Or if the action you want to perform requires flipping two cards, and you only have one required terrain face-up, you are also stuck. This is the challenge the game poses. You have to plan cleverly what to do and what terrains to do them on, so that you eventually get to perform all the actions you want. You know what's on the other side of each of the terrain cards. 

Your player board is important. A big part of the game is engine building. Yes, I know it sounds weird to talk about wolf packs and engines at the same time. You start the game with many game pieces on your player board. As you perform certain actions, these pieces will be moved to the main map. This unlocks abilities and gives you bonuses. This also gives you points. When you build dens, you can increase the movement range of your wolves, you can increase the number of wolves you get to move per action, and you can increase the influence range of your alpha wolves (called their howl range). 

Wolves hunt in packs. There are five types of prey on the board, and you can score many points by hunting them. To hunt down a prey, you need to have your wolves on three different spaces surrounding the prey. 

This calendar is your countdown timer. Those wolf head coins represent lone wolves when on the map. If your alpha wolves howl near them, you get to recruit them to your pack. You get to place a new wolf on the map, and that coin is moved to this calendar. The moon icons indicate the times when specific regions will be scored. Other than lone wolves, the countdown can also be advanced by poaching wolves from other players and stealing their dens.  

There can be a mean streak in the game, because of how you can steal wolves and dens from other players. This is not easy to do though, and there are ways you can defend against it. To steal a wolf or a den from another player, the action is called Dominate. To do it, you need three terrain cards of the same type. This is only possible with your dominant terrain type. If your opponents want to avoid getting Dominated by you, they just avoid placing dens or regular wolves on your dominant terrain. Only regular wolves can be converted, not alphas. Another way to stay safe is to have two pieces on the same space. You are not 100% safe relying on terrain only. One type of bonus in the game is the terrain token. When you have such a token, you can spend it and treat it as any terrain card. This way, you can steal an opponent piece with 2 terrain cards which are not your dominant terrain, and 1 terrain token. You can even do it with 1 terrain card and 2 terrain tokens. Terrain tokens are hard to come by though, so you probably don't want to spend them like this. 

Right from the get go, you have many options. There are several different ways to grow your pack and score points. You can't do everything, and you will choose to focus on some. In one game I lost out in competing for area majority in the regions, but still did pretty well because I advanced in other areas. I like that when you advance in the various areas, they are not just a mechanism for scoring points. They do affect how effective your pack is. You do want to be able to mobilise more wolves, and to have them move further. This makes the game feel real and thematic. 

I was the blue wolf pack and many of my wolves and dens were stolen by others. Animals! 

I enjoyed The Wolves. It's a mid weight strategy game. It's thematic. It has a clever mechanism. You feel there are many things you want to do, and you are forced to prioritise. You have to plan smart and get your terrain cards on the right side. Scheduling your terrain flipping well to be able to achieve several goals through a few consecutive turns is rewarding. The engine building part of the game is satisfying. You grow your wolf family, and you stand proud at its head. 

I have maxed out my prey type and wolf speed. 

Why boardgame industry people are nice

This is my theory, and it might not be entirely correct, but I'm sure it is at least partially true. 

I have been a hobby gamer for many years, but I have only been in the industry side of it for about 5 years. I count from 2022, the year Dancing Queen was released. I have met many, many nice people in the industry. Game designers, game publishers, play organisers and so on. My theory is that for many of us this is a passion industry. We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t have enough passion for it. And that’s why I meet nice people. If you’re doing this out of passion, you are not desperately fighting for survival. You are not competing. You are not plotting to get rich out of this. You just enjoy the love of playing, and of spreading the joy. Maybe this is a naïve perspective. There are many people making a living from boardgames. To them it is life and death. So I consider myself lucky being a struggling wannabe game designer. I may never make it as a professional game designer. I may never be able to build a sustainable boardgame business that can feed my family, or even just me. But perhaps that’s okay. If someone plays my game today and it makes them laugh, it is a good day. 

I always have an urge to go around asking people, how do you make money from your boardgame business? I am curious because I can't get the numbers to work for me. At least not yet. A game designer is not a real job. This is the kind of thing I'd say, looking at my financial statements for Cili Padi Games. My little indie game design studio is not being sustained by profitability, but by passion. The financially responsible side of me says I am investing in a business that may grow into a stable source of passive income. The honest side of me says you can afford this hobby so just do what you want. My boardgame business is not a distraction or escape I need from a stressful full-time job. I do love my job and take pride in it. I am just greedy and I want to do all the things that make me happy.

At TOBE 2026 my wife Michelle met some of my boardgame industry friends for the first time. Out of the blue she said to me that Milk is such a kind person. She had just met Milk, and they didn't even have much time to chat. It was Michelle's comment that made me realise I do meet many nice and sincere people in the boardgame industry. Before TOBE 2026 Milk knew Michelle was going (and they had never met), and when she saw a small red chilli hairclip at a night market in Taipei, she decided to get it for Michelle. That was really thoughtful of her. 

I met Ming again at TOBE, and his wife accompanied him too. I can totally imagine our wives rolling their eyes at each other, and talking about how crazy their husbands are, and how they are humouring their husbands by coming along. 

I am grateful for my friends, and I wish them joy. And money, if they want more of it. 

Dokkoi from Japan

Dokkoi is a family business from Japan which makes boardgame accessories. They were at TOBE 2026 in Taipei, and I got this set of component trays from Kotaro-san as a gift. He's an amazing guy. He speaks both English and Chinese, and he learned to speak Chinese by himself when in Japan. 

This is a set of six trays

The material is a soft rubber, so the trays are flexible. 

Components from Puerto Rico

They make nice card holders. These were sold at TOBE 2026.

You can find their products on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/dokkoi_jp/)  and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Dokkoi.JP) 

5-Minute One Piece

I feel pressured when I write about 5-Minute One Piece, because I feel reading my post should not take more than 2 minutes. This is a real-time game that is played in 5-minutes when you have four players. With a different player count, the time limit is adjusted. Your goal is to defeat all enemies in the enemy deck before time runs out. 

Every player picks a character, and you take the deck of cards for that character. Every character has a special ability, and the deck also differs from other decks. There are some character-specific power cards in your deck. 

Some of the characters in the game

The game board is a pirate ship. You will play cards here. There will be four stacks of cards. You play cards here to match the topmost fight card of the fight deck. The fight deck is that deck of cards above the ship, each card showing four icons. This is a real-time game, and everyone has a hand limit of five cards. Whenever you play a card, you may immediately draw a new one. You can play cards from your hand to any slot on the ship at any time. You want to have the cards on the ship match the top fight card exactly. Then you get to claim the fight card. You claim fight cards to defeat the active enemy. You have a deck of enemy cards, and you always reveal the top card. Enemies require a certain number of fight cards to defeat. Some enemies have special powers. You win by defeating all enemies before time runs out. 

After you claim a fight card, the next one becomes visible. The cards you have played on the ship remain. If some of them match the new card, then you are lucky and you need less effort to claim the next fight card. 

Your personal deck is finite. If you run out, you don't reshuffle to form a new deck. If you don't have the right card, you can still play useless cards for the sake of drawing new cards, but your deck is a resource you try not to waste. 

That one on the right is a power card unique for your character. When you get such cards, you can place them on the table next to your character card, and you may use them at any time. They don't clog your hand. I should have five cards. When you are busy sometimes you forget to draw cards. 

This is the enemy boss for one of the scenarios. The game comes with many scenarios. Each scenario is a deck of enemies. Note the crosshairs icon on this boss. What this means is if you have a blue (chat) icon which matches the fight card, you can play an additional blue icon on the same spot to claim the fight card, without needing to match the other three icons. 

This is a real-time game so I can't take photos while playing. This was the end of a game. 

Some of the enemies. Some have special powers. 

These are some of the scenarios in the game. 

If you are reading this blog, this game is probably not for you. This is not a gamer's game. This is almost a children's game. This game is made for casual players and non-gamers. I can imagine people who like One Piece will be thrilled by this. It's very easy to play. It's short. So many elements of the TV series are present in the game. The game was originally 5-Minute Dungeon. I think it's great that it is turned into a One Piece game. It will attract people to play boardgames. 

I hope you finished reading this in less than 2 minutes. 

Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game

Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game is a spin off of the hugely successful Terraforming Mars. The background story is the same. You are mega corporations working on making Mars habitable. Three things need to be achieved. You need to create oceans. You need to increase the atmospheric temperature. You need to increase the oxygen level. Once all three are achieved, the game ends, and whoever has the most points wins.

In this game dice represent resources. There are dice in five different colours, and depending on the side you roll, a die represents a different resource. Some resources are rarer than others. For example, on a blue die, the energy resource is on three of the faces, the water resource on two, and the oxygen resource on only one. 

At the start of the game, you have some production capability. That means whenever you perform production, you can take some dice and roll them. They become resources you can spend to play cards. You have a hand of five cards. They need specific resources to be played. Some cards increase your production, allowing you to take more dice whenever you do production. Some cards have special abilities, for example, allowing you to turn dice to other faces. Some cards let you increase one of the terraforming parameters. By doing this you will score points. You will also change the face of Mars itself, adding ocean, forest, and even city tiles. Whenever you add a tile to the board, you gain some resource or ability. These help you further perform other actions.

There are some public goals which players compete over. For example, having a certain number of production cards. Only the first player to achieve an objective scores it. Some resource icons on played cards will score points at the end of the game. That is also something you can plan for because you know which icons are involve from the beginning.

 

This is a light to medium weight engine building game. In the early game, you’ll probably want to play production cards that let you produce more resources. Gradually, you will switch to playing cards that score points for you. There are ways to manipulate dice. You want to use them efficiently to get the right cards played at the right time. Whenever you do production, you can choose to discard any number of cards and then draw up to your hand limit. Although there is some luck in whether you draw suitable cards you need at each stage of the game, the ability to discard and redraw helps in mitigating that luck. 

Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game is pleasant. You generate resources and then you spend them to play cards. I did not find it captivating. It is inoffensive and it works. Just not particularly engaging for me. There is much variety in the resources (five die colours and three possible faces for each = 15) and it’s not easy to get the right resources for your cards. You need to cleverly use card powers and basic actions to get the right resource types. The game does present some challenge. It is also satisfying to build your little engine that can produce much and do nifty stuff. 

Paladins of the West Kingdom

 

Paladins of the West Kingdom is a title from Garphill Games. They make many good heavy strategy games, and they have a certain style to their games, both in art direction and in gameplay. In Paladins of the West Kingdom, you need to protect your medieval city from foreign attacks. You need to build walls, defeat attackers, maybe convert them. The stars of the show are the paladins the king sends to help you. Every round you get to pick who to support you, and utilising their strengths well is crucial in defending your city. 

The main game board

This is more or less a worker placement game. Every round you get several workers of different types, and you place them at specific worker spots to perform actions. Most of the action spots are on your own player board, so you don't interfere with other players much. On the main board, as the game progresses, some good worker placement spots will open up, and you normally want to fight for those. There are also spaces on the main board which allow you to place other game pieces to claim goods and other benefits. You will compete over these too. 

The player board

The track on the left of your player board is important. You use this to track your three attributes - Strength, Faith and Influence. You will get to increase these attributes as you perform certain actions. At the same time, some actions can only be performed if a specific attribute has reached a certain level. So you must manage your attributes. 

There are four rows of tokens on the player board - green, black, red and blue. They are related to different actions. Whenever you perform an action, you will remove one token. You want to focus on only a subset of these action types, because ideally you want to remove all the tokens of a type. Only the last few tokens are worth points (see the yellow ribbons). 

Some worker placement spots require workers in a specific colour. If you don't have the right colour, you can't use the spot. One spot lets you swap a worker for a joker (purple). However this comes with a risk. You get bad reputation, which can lead to a penalty. 

This is one of the paladins. Every round you draw three, pick one, move one the the bottom of the deck, and place one at the top of the deck. Paladins give you a temporary attribute boost, e.g. the one above increases your Strength (red) by four. Paladins also give you two workers. 

The paladins are all pretty useful

There are only two resources in the game, money and provisions. For some actions you need to spend these, so you have to make sure you generate income, or you make good use of discounts. 

The major actions require you to have certain attributes at certain levels, and when you perform them, they increase another attribute. For example you need Faith to commission monks, and when you do that, you increase Influence. When you absolve sins, you need Influence, and you increase Faith. When you pair these two action types, commissioning monks and absolving sins, you can steadily increase both your Influence attribute and Faith attribute. 

Enemies can be defeated, or they can be converted to your cause. They give different benefits depending on whether you defeat them or convert them. 

The game feels a little solitaire to me, because most of the time I'm just playing on my own board. I have my own deck of paladins to manage. Everyone has the same deck, just that the order cards show up will be different. This game is a complex puzzle to sort out, and it is satisfying to work through that. The paladins are fun because they break rules, for example allowing you to perform certain actions for free. 

Player interactions happen on the main board. They are indirect, mostly in the form of if you have taken a slot, or a card, then I can't take it any more. Sometimes the impact can be significant, for example two players can benefit much from a certain enemy and they both want it. So this is a pretty Euro kind of player interaction. Paladins of the West Kingdom is a game of planning, and maximising your resources and actions. 

boardgaming in photos: games from Indonesia, Lah Lah Land event, boardgames as a teaching tool

At the Asian Board Games Festival in Penang in August, I did a game exchange with Vito of Homp, an Indonesian game design studio. I still have not managed to play some of the games, but they look good and I want to showcase them. Sultan Spices was inspired by a children's book called Sultan Kecil Mencari Rempah (Little Sultan Hunts for Spices). 

Back of the box

The art and graphic design are nice. Every player starts with the same number of spices. They are randomly dealt, and spices have different rarity. You will only have three in your personal play area to work with. The rest are in a deck. You can present spices to the Sultan, or you can use them to complete dishes. You can trade spices with other players to help with completing dishes. 

Ssszoo is a cooperative game in which you can't talk and you communicate by facial expressions, gestures, or pointing at body parts. 

Back of the box

The animal cards (small) are held in your hand. You hold them facing away from you, so you don't know what animals you have, but your teammates do. They need to give you clues so that you can guess what they are, and then feed them the right food. The food cards are the larger ones. 

That cat (bottom row second card) is a special case. You can only feed the cat last, when there is one last food card left. 

These are the tokens in the game. The five lion tokens mean you lose when a 5th mistake is made. When you feed an animal the wrong food, it complains and disturbs the sleeping lion. This just so reminds me of the song "In the jungle, the quiet jungle, the lion sleeps tonight... a-wim-a-wek a-wim-a-wek..."

The game comes with a guide for sign language, but it doesn't seem mandatory to use them. 

I exhibited at the Lah Lah Land event on 10-11 Oct 2026. This was not a boardgame specific event. It was a lifestyle event. People sold clothing, sneakers, watches, accessories, skateboards and so on. There was a section for trading card games, and the boardgame section was a small offshoot from that. 

Several other local game designers and publishers were there too. For those who didn't go, I brought their games to be displayed and sold. 

The TCG area was huge. I was shocked to see the number of booths. I never got into TCG's, so I had no idea it is this big. The TCG world is alien to me. Seeing single cards being sold for a few hundred and even up to a thousand ringgit felt unreal. 

Traffic for our boardgame section was so-so. The mornings were bad for us. The event started at 10am, but 10am to 12noon was for VIP pass holders only. This was a paid entry event. You buy either a normal pass or a VIP pass. People who paid to enter didn't come for boardgames. Those who paid for the VIP passes probably had specific things they wanted to buy before the masses entered. They wouldn't have the leisure time to visit our small boardgame section. 

When we local designers and publishers take part in non boardgame specific events like this, we don't expect sales to be good. The goal is outreach. To introduce boardgames to the general public. To raise awareness about boardgames, and about Malaysian designed boardgames. During the Lah Lah Land event we did have people stop by, and many were surprised to discover that there are games designed locally. So at least we were doing a bit to grow the boardgame market in Malaysia, and to spread the joy of boardgames. 

I sold one copy of Dancing Queen, and it was the Matagot edition. Now that I think about it, I think this was the first time I played the Matagot edition. Normally at events the demo copy I use is the Cili Padi Games edition. This time the visitor who was interested in the game liked the Matagot edition more. So I used my other demo copy. 

I had to keep this wristband on overnight so that I could continue to use it on Sunday. That meant taking a shower with it on, and going to bed with it on. I felt like a hospital patient. 

The TCG and boardgame area was upstairs via escalator. 

This was the boardgame area. We shared it with some other small TCG activities.

The MIECC exhibition hall was huge. 

See!

This is the other me, when I am working on my full-time job as a leadership trainer. No chilli on my head when I'm in my suit. I was invited to conduct an activity as part of a corporate management retreat. I taught them to play Pandemic. 

It is always fun to watch others learn and play Pandemic when I conduct training. I do this in big groups, and different kinds of groups have different people dynamics. Every group has some members who are more vocal. Some groups have more such people than others. How they discuss, argue and make decisions are interesting to observe.

Many elements in Pandemic are good lessons to learn in communication, leadership and problem solving. It has been a wonderful teaching tool for me. 

I did a game night with my BNI Lighthouse friends, and we played ito (pictured), Seven! (with exclamation mark), Take Time and Shady Lady. This is a non-gamer group so I only bring casual games and party games. Sometimes I bring my prototypes and get them to be my guinea pigs. ito from Japan is a great game for encouraging chit chat. It's a wonderful icebreaker. In one game, we got to discuss the best and worst things to find in our pockets. Someone said tissue paper, and another said used tissue paper. 

My long-time boardgame kaki Allen works in Singapore now and travels back and forth between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. We now play more online using BGA than in person. It was good to have had an in-person session. I taught him and Yee Ling Take Time, and we had a great time. I really enjoy this game, and everyone I introduce it to finds it fascinating. 

We did Maori too, and Yee Ling managed to make the flower circle, called the lei, which is worth a lot of points.