Miams

In Miams (I think it means yummy in French) you roll five dice and try to get combinations which will score you points. Normally you get one reroll, and you get to choose which dice to reroll. Throughout the game you gain abilities which let you manipulate the dice and do other things which help you score points. The game ends when anyone reaches 50 points. 

The die faces are different types of fruits, and one cross. That cross helps your opponents. You always have at least one reroll. Which dice to reroll depends on what you are aiming for. Sometimes you take risks. When you already have a pair, you may choose to reroll one of them to attempt to make five different fruits. You might fail and get nothing. Or you may choose to sacrifice a full house to attempt a four of a kind or five of a kind. When you reroll a fruit die, you are also taking the risk of rolling a cross which will help your opponents. 

On the player sheet you can see all the combinations you can attempt. Most of them are simply rolling multiple dice of the same fruit. Then there's a full house, and 5 different fruits. Whenever you manage to make a combo, you score the next available number in the row by drawing a heart around it. If an opponent rolls a cross, you get to cross off a number on your sheet. You don't score it, but crossing a number makes the next one available, so you will potentially score more points on your turn later. 

At some positions you earn stars. This is a currency for you to buy those power cards on the right. That column of power cards work like a sushi belt, always moving downwards. The bottom card is always free, so you can always take one card on your turn even if you have no star. These powers are important in helping you make good combos. They can also help you score points in other ways too. Some of these are ongoing abilities, like being able to treat one fruit as another type. Some are single use, for example scoring 3 points per orange rolled. 

Sometimes you get extra rerolls. Sometimes you get to roll an additional die. All these help towards making better combos. Sometimes combinations of powers can be particularly potent. 

The game is quick and easy. There is certainly some luck. However there are interesting decisions you need to make along the way. You want to make good use of the power cards. Stars are worth points when the game ends. Sometimes it's not easy to decide whether to spend them to help you cross the finish line faster, or to keep them for points. Which combo to go for is not always easy to decide. The game is a race to 50. It's exciting to watch what your opponents roll. 

Chu Han

Chu Han is a two player shedding game (or climbing game). You play multiple rounds, and you win a round by playing all your cards before your opponent. You score points based on the number of cards remaining in your opponent's hand. There are a few other ways to score points. The game ends when someone exceeds 31 points. 

Cards go from 1 to 9. There are nine 1’s, eight 2’s, seven 3’s and so on up to just one 9. There is also a single 0. There is no suit concept. When you play cards, you play either singles or multiples of the same number. There are no straights or full houses or any other combinations. Smaller numbers might be weaker, but it is easier to make bigger sets with them. For the higher numbers you can’t make bigger sets because there aren’t that many cards in the game. 

So far, nothing too peculiar yet. What makes the game come alive is the special abilities of some of the cards. Every 3 and 6 has a unique ability. The 0 is a joker and can be turned into any other number. If you manage to play six 2’s you immediately score 6 points, which is a lot. The 0 (joker) can help you with this because it can be your sixth 2 when you only have five. 

Every round after cards are dealt, there are still some left in the deck. You will have some idea which cards your opponent might have, but not precisely. This is something you have to be aware of. There are 46 cards in the game, and each player is dealt 15, leaving 16 in the draw deck. If you don’t have a card, there is half a chance that your opponent has it. You can draw two cards on your turn by taking a writ. There are two risks. You may draw bad cards which make it harder instead of easier to go out. Also if your opponent wins the round, he scores extra points based on the writs you have taken. 

The 3’s and 6’s have many different powers. One 6 can be played to specifically defeat the single 9. So your 9 is not necessarily invincible. Another 6 allows you to not respond, forcing your opponent to play the next set to defeat his own set. Using this power sometimes lets you win the hand because your opponent can’t respond. There is a 3 which lets you play a set of different numbers, and they are treated as the smallest number in the set. This can allow you to play many cards at one go, taking your opponent by surprise. It can even help you play a set of six 2’s and score the bonus. There is a card which cancels the power of another card just played. And then there is a card which cancels this cancel power. 

You can examine the discard pile, so the game becomes quite strategic. Based on how your opponent has been playing, you can make decent guesses at which cards he might have left. 

This above was one interesting situation. I played against Han. I had only one card left. He played a 9, the highest card in the game. Normally only one card can beat that, the 6 named Liu Bang. However my last card was Xiang Yu (also a 6). Xiang Yu's ability was to double the victory points for the rest of the hand while passing. Technically I lost this hand, because I passed, but I had played my last card, which meant I won the round. The various interactions of the card powers create interesting situations like this. 

Chu Han certainly offers the shedding game experience. You have to start devising a plan to go out right from the get go. Or if your hand is horrible, maybe you can only plan for minimising losses. The game is not about playing as many cards as possible immediately. You may feel a lot of pressure if your opponent plays many cards early in the round. However your ultimate goal is to go out. You don't necessarily have to rush. It is very much possible to come from behind, if you are able to keep playing sets that your opponent fails to respond to. Based on how your opponent plays, you get hints about what kind of hand he might have. 

The special powers of the cards create the character of this game. It is not just the card distribution and the core mechanism. The game becomes more fun after you get familiar with the characters. You start thinking about counter moves, and how to counter those counter moves. You can better anticipate your opponent's moves. I find Chu Han exciting and clever. 

Chu Han is designed by Tom Lehmann. His Race for the Galaxy is one of my favourite games, a game I have played more than 2200 times. Chu Han is published by Matagot, and so is my game Dancing Queen. It's exciting for me to know that I share this link with the designer of one of my all time favourite games. 

Altay: Dawn of Civilization

Altay is a civilisation and 4X game built on a deck-building engine. It is played on a simple map. Each player starts with just one small village. They defeat barbarians around them and build new settlements, expanding their territory. 

The map shows different terrain types. Specific terrain types that you control can help you boost your production of certain resources. Some territories with banners are worth bonus points and may be contested more fiercely. In this screenshot many territories still have defense tokens. These are the barbarians you need to defeat before you can settle those lands. These tokens are worth points, and some give you a resource when you claim them. 

There are four different tribes in the game, and they have different starting decks. You can categorise this as a deck-building game, because everything you do is subject to the cards you draw. During the game you can buy better cards to improve your deck. There are ways to remove weak cards too. 

Some cards simply generate resources for you. Resources not spent at the end of your turn will be converted to gold. In future turns, you can spend 5 gold to buy any single resource. It's a poor exchange rate, so ideally you try not to have any leftover. Some cards allow you to build a new village or to upgrade one. Every player has a number of village tokens, and the game ends when one player uses all his tokens. In battle, when you defeat your opponent you take one of his village tokens from the map. These are worth points. 

This is one example of a card you can buy. Some cards have point values (purple banner). This Worker card can produce one of three resource types. It gives you good flexibility. 

Some cards allow you to attack or defend. You can attack either a neighbouring barbarian, or a neighbouring opponent village. The village you attack from counts for your attack strength, for example when attacking from a size 2 village (you can call that a town), your base strength is 2. When you are attacked, you can play military cards to defend yourself too. 

You are going to construct buildings for your civilisation. These are divide into three tiers. Each higher tier building must be supported by a lower tier building. You can never have more buildings of a higher tier than a lower tier. All buildings have special abilities, and the gold tier ones help you score points at game end. You also get your own unique gold tier building, and that's something you can plan for from the start. You don't necessarily have to build it, but since it's something you already know from the start, you probably want to customise your play around it and plan to score many points from it.

The Triumphal Arch is a gold tier building - a monument. Buildings often take several turns to complete, as you accumulate the required resources. You can only work on one building at a time. 

So far I've played two games of Altay, and both were 3-player games. The first one was rather lopsided. Han and Jon started next to each other, and fought a lot in the early game. That left me free to develop my civilisation without any interference. I happily bought better cards and grew my empire on my side of the map. By the time they declared a truce and separately expanded towards me to contain me, I already had a strong lead and proved unstoppable. The second game was more normal. 

It is tempting to build big cities, because of their military strength. They are easier to defend, and they are strong in attacking adjacent territories. You can effectively create kill zones next to them. However  one way you score points is based on the number of territories with your villages, so if you are only controlling a few territories, you will lose out on this part of scoring. This is a little tricky. Building many small villages can give you many points, but they are more vulnerable. 

The deck-building mechanism is simple, compared to typical deck-building games. It is the core engine of the game. It's nothing fancy, so if you like deck-building games, you may not find this particularly interesting. It is linked to the board play, and not many other deck-building games have this. As a civilisation game, it feels a little generic and symmetrical. The tribes do start with different decks, and depending on which tribe you use, certain strategies might work better. The game system works. You get a decent civ game built on a deck-building engine. Come to think of it, I can't think of any games done this way, so I applaud this. I just get the feeling that the game works but it doesn't excite me. Logically and mechanically sound, but it doesn't tug the heart strings. Maybe the fictitious tribes don't work for me. Your mileage may vary. 

boardgaming in photos: Clans of Caledonia, Hanamikoji, Molly House, Caylus, Regicide

I took a screenshot of my list of games in progress at BoardGameArena.com. Just a snapshot of a moment in time. I spend much time in front of my computer, both for work and leisure, and I always have a browser tab with BGA open. Whenever it is my turn for one of the games I'm playing, a tiny triangle is animated at the tab. When I notice it I happily click to take my turn. 

I recently taught younger daughter Chen Rui to play Hanamikoji on BGA. This is such a lovely game. Only four simple actions per round, but boy they really make you pause and think! So much agony. We started with the standard game, but also tried some variants. The core rules are still the game, but the four action tiles are different. Hanamikoji has become a modern classic and I think that is well deserved. 

Caylus, arguably the first worker placement game. It was highly popular when it first came out. It popularised the worker placement mechanism in boardgames. I own a physical copy of this and so far it has survived every purge even though I have not played it for a long time. It is a milestone game in the modern boardgame history. 

The game takes quite long to play in asynchronous mode. I made several embarrassing blunders, e.g. claiming a spot to exchange money and cloth for a favour, and forgetting that I'm only getting that piece of cloth at a later building activation. It's fun to revisit an oldie. From 2005. 

I almost played Clans of Caledonia when I was back in my hometown, and now I have actually played it online with a different group of friends. This is another game with a long gap since I last played, so I had to relearn the whole thing. When I play such games, one thing I do is I reread my own blog post about them. It helps give me a brief summary and a strategic overview. At least I hope this helps avoid stupid mistakes from my previous plays. 

I took the MacKenzie clan, which specialises in brewing whiskey. I earned some extra money for brewing whiskey, and if I stored and aged them, I could make extra money too. 

There is contract fulfilment, and buying and selling goods affecting their prices. 

I played A Feast for Odin. I had many occupation cards but I didn't know how to utilise them well. They seemed to be useful only for very specific situations. I ended up not playing most of them, and for some I only played them for the four points. 

I played Molly House. This is quite a difficult game to learn to play because the rules are unusual. Although I have played it before, I still don't quite grasp the game. The first game we played ended abruptly with the following results. We didn't manage the gossip pile well, and there was a major crackdown. Everyone lost. 

When you chat on BGA, they are quite strict about the language you use and will warn you if you use potentially inappropriate language. So we couldn't joke about these results, which people familiar with contemporary Malaysian politics would probably make fun of. 

I thought I was getting pretty good at Regicide. I am currently not subscribed to a paid membership on BGA, but this is free to play, so sometimes I play it solo. I feel I know all the important tactics and I feel I apply them well. Sometimes I win comfortably and confidently. Yet sometimes I get into a losing streak. This is such a great game! Regicide Legacy will be reaching Malaysia soon, and I'm looking forward to that. 

A chat with Eric Lang

 

31 Jan 2026. Eric Lang (Blood Rage, Rising Sun, Ankh, Chaos in the Old World) was in town. He has been staying in Malaysia on and off for many years, and is now planning to spend more time living in Kuala Lumpur. He wants to get to know the local designer community and the local boardgame community. Aaron arranged two meet-up sessions for game designers and other industry players to get to know Eric. I almost couldn't make it due to prior appointments, but luckily one of them was rescheduled and I made it to the session at BGC Space. 

This was an inspiring and insightful session. Eric shared some of his experiences being in the industry for so many years, and also his perspectives on the boardgame scene in Malaysia, Singapore and Asia. He had decided he wanted to become a game designer from very early on, and had been highly committed to make this work. Here are some of my takeaways from the session: 

1. Be clear about what you want to be. What kind of role do you want to play in the boardgame industry? Do you want to be doing this as your life career? Choose one clear role you want to be good at. What kind of games do you want to make? How does a day in your life look like in 5 years? Envision what you want to be in 5 years, and don't let limiting thoughts stop you from moving towards it. 
2. If you want to pitch to a publisher, look at the games they have been publishing for the past 3 years and pitch the right games to them. Know their standards and meet them before you pitch. 
3. Always hold yourself to high standards and to international standards. Surround yourself with people with that level of standard. 
4. Game designers who are gamers often overestimate the appetite of the general public for complexity in games. Machi Koro is too complex. 
5. If you want to make a mass market game, the back of the box should have 3 bullet points that describe and sell the game, but not teach the game. 
6. Monopoly Deal is a great gateway game to convert non-gamers, more so than Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne. 
7. If you run a boardgame cafe or boardgame store targeting non-gamers, make sure you have chess, Scrabble and Monopoly in your shop window. 
8. For an industry to grow, say the Malaysian boardgame market, you need multiple people who are good at different specific things. E.g. game designers, game retailers, game distributors, game reviewers, event organisers, marketeers, content creators. These people need to be very good at what they do. Don't try to do everything, because you will likely burn out. What Eric has observed in Malaysia is we local publishers are generalists who do the whole spectrum of stuff, which might not be healthy. 

One thing we discussed was bringing people into the hobby. This is something Malaysia needs to do. Boardgames is still too niche a hobby, and the market is tiny. But that also means the potential for growth is big. 

Eric is enthusiastic and energetic, and keen to help the Malaysian boardgame scene. It is great to be able to learn from him. I look forward to more opportunities to meet and learn from him when he settles down in KL. 

Captain Tsubasa

Captain Tsubasa is a 2 player game based on the manga and anime of the same name. This Japanese manga and anime from the 1980’s is hugely popular not only in Japan but also around the world. It is about football (soccer). In the game you play a football match between two key teams in the story, Nankatsu and Toho. This is a card game, and you will see many characters from the series. If you are a fan, this will be fun. 

The game is divided into two halves, and you play 6 rounds in each half. You have your own deck of cards and you draw cards from it. At the start of a round, each player also drafts one card from a common pool. Every round one player is the attacker and the other the defender. You take turns playing cards until there are nine cards in total played, or both players pass. Cards have various effects, and one of them is giving you strength in attack, passing or defense. You may also get tokens for one of these three aspects. When the card play phase ends, the attacker must decide whether to attempt to score a goal or to retain ball possession. Attacker and defender compare their attack (or passing) and defense strengths respectively. They may add tokens to increase their strengths. They also roll dice to add to their strengths. If the attacker has a higher total, they score a goal or retain ball possession. Retaining possession means not scoring a goal, but remaining the attacker in the next round. If a goal is scored or an attempt fails, the other team becomes attacker next round. 

There is no board play or pawns on a football field. The characters in the story and their strengths are represented by cards. Goalkeeper cards make it possible to save a round you are about to lose. There are some special attack and special defense cards which let you play a form of rock paper scissors. 

There is an ebb and flow like a football match. You take turns attacking. You try to maximise your odds by utilising your cards well. There is some luck in the game, not just in terms of the die rolls, but also in terms of card draw. I think that’s a good thing because it’s exciting. Football is supposed to be like that. 

There is some deck building in the game. You only have a small deck. Whenever your deck runs out, you will shuffle your discard pile to form a new deck, and you continue to draw. During the game you can remove cards, and you can recruit new cards. This adds some longer term strategy. You can customise your football team.

The game is light. It’s fast and furious. There is some tactical play.  There is also a healthy dose of luck. If you like the original series, I think you will get a real kick out of this. Pun intended. 

Up or Down?

Up or Down? is a simple card game from from the master duo Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling which is not as simple as it looks. You collect up to three sets of cards, and within each set the cards must be played in ascending or descending order. Cards come in 6 different colours and every card has a different number. The cards in the game go from 1 to 126, but the range you use depends on the number of players. First let's talk about how the scoring works. 

For each of your sets, your score is the number of cards in the set multiplied by the number of cards of the colour you have the most of. So from the screenshot above, the three columns score like this: 8 x 3 (yellow) = 24, 2 x 1 (either colour) = 2, 8 x 5 (blue) = 40. On your turn you must take a card from the centre of the table, and add it to one of your sets. The cards in the sets must be played in ascending or descending order. In case you can't add your new card to any existing set, you must discard one of your sets to start a new set with your new card. Discarded cards go to your personal discard pile. They are still worth points, but at a measly 1 point each. 

Here is how a turn works. You always have a hand of three cards. On your turn you must play one card to the centre of the table. 

There are always six cards at the centre of the table, ordered in a circle in ascending order. When you play a card, it is added to this circle of cards, inserted at the appropriate spot. You must then take one of the two cards next to the card you just added. This is how you claim a card from the centre. At the end of your turn, you draw a new card from one of the two draw decks in the middle. One of them is face-up, and the other face-down. 

The game is played until the draw decks run out, and after everyone has played all their hand cards. Only then you check your scores to see who wins. 

So far all this sounds pretty straight-forward. Only upon playing I realised this game is a little trickier than I thought. Despite the simple rules, the correct tactics to employ are not easy to figure out. What's a good play and what's not? I must admit after two games I still have not fully figured out the game. My first thought was I should have one ascending set and one descending set, and the third can be either. However I soon realised this might not be necessary. 

Which card should you play? At first I only cared about it helping me to get a card that fit well with my current sets. Later I realised it's important to watch what cards your opponents are collecting and try to avoid putting out a card they want. The card you play will affect the circle of cards. It might become a card you can take on your next turn. It might interfere with your plans to take another card on your next turn. These are all things to think about. When you need to take a card from one of the draw decks, although there are only two options, it is not always easy to make a decision. My first thought was I should have a wide range of numbers in my hand, so that I always have more options. Later I felt that might not be right. Depending on the numbers I'm trying to collect, I might need to take cards close to those numbers. 

I think the most effective way to score well is to take many cards of the same colour for the same set. What this means is you'll need to watch what other players are collecting. If they are going for the same colour, you will have competition. You also want to deliberately take colours which others want for the sake of denying them. I realise it is important to watch what numbers and colours are useful to your opponents. 

One strategy I thought about was focusing on making only two high-scoring sets, leaving the third as a burn set. You try to keep those two sets as pure as possible, while the third set is for you to dump cards which don't fit. Expect the third set to be discarded often and to not score much. I tried this and it somewhat works, but I'm not sure whether this is the best strategy. Maybe there are others. 

The end game can be challenging. You will have to play all your hand cards eventually. Ideally you want to avoid discarding any of your sets, because cards being discarded will score fewer points. If you are not careful with the end game, you might be forced to discard a set, and you may end the game with fewer points than you have during the game. 

Up or Down? reminds me a little of Take 5 / 6 Nimmt, the classic by Wolfgang Kramer. I am intrigued by how it works and I am curious to figure it out. I think ultimately you can't have tight control over how well you do. Luck is a factor. Yet there are tactics you can employ. An experienced player will most likely beat a new player. I like Up or Down? because it gives me a good mental workout, and it brings something new to the table. I am liking smaller games like this compared to those run-of-the-mill heavy Eurogames with tons of resource collection, resource conversion and contract fulfilment. 

BGG file uploaders

A blog post on BoardGameGeek.com listed the games with the most files uploaded, and also users who have uploaded the most files. I know I have uploaded many concise reference sheets but I did not realise I am among the top 20 people who have uploaded files to BGG. I'm ranked #17. I just need two more files to go up to #16 ha ha. It feels good to contribute in some small way to this community of ours.  

Terra Nova

I am almost tempted to just write that Terra Nova is a simplified version of Terra Mystica. End of story. It's technically true, but that's a bit lazy. I have played Terra Mystica before. It's a hugely popular game. I can't say I'm a fan, but I do enjoy myself when I play it. 

Just like the predecessor, you play a tribe starting with small settlements, and you grow your settlements and your tribe, constructing more buildings and upgrading them. You can only build on one specific terrain type, and often you need to terraform terrain so that you can use it. There is magic power in the game. It works like charging battery. You need to charge up the magic stones before you can use them. After they are depleted, you need to charge them again to be able to use their power. 

If you have played Terra Mystica, all this is familiar. Now I must admit I haven't played Terra Mystica that many times. When I played Terra Nova, I thought, wait, isn't this the same thing? It has all the key elements that I remember of the original. The only thing I was sure was missing was the four temples. You don't need to advance your markers on the four temples to compete for majority anymore. Only when I checked in more detail I realised a few other simplifications. You have fewer types of buildings now, and you don't have workers as a resource any more. In Terra Mystica you spend workers to terraform. Now you just spend money. 

In Terra Nova you will compete for space. You want to expand your settlements. There is this interesting rule where you get a discount when upgrading your building if it is adjacent to an opponent's building. So you have incentive to build near your opponents, even if it means more competition. 

The more buildings you have, the more income you will also generate every round. The largest buildings (palaces) give you special abilities, and these are different depending on the faction you play. Every end of round there is a special scoring opportunity. You want to plan your expansion based on these, to maximise your points. For example one may give you points for palaces. You will want to build palaces in time for that. 

If you like Terra Mystica, I don't see much reason for you to want to play Terra Nova, unless you specifically want a similar experience but shorter and simpler. I think fans of Terra Mystica love it partly because of the complexity. They don't need the game to be streamlined. In fact Terra Nova may feel diluted and less interesting to them. I think Terra Nova is meant for a different audience. I like Terra Nova more than Terra Mystica, in the same way that I like Great Western Trail: El Paso more than Great Western Trail. I think the simpler versions deliver the most fun parts of the game while reducing work you need to do. They are the executive summaries of the originals. Maybe they are not the "full experiences", but they are more succinct. 

Leaders

Leaders is a 2 player abstract game played on a hexagonal board made of hexagonal spaces. You each start the game with just one game piece - your leader. In the first few rounds of the game you will get to recruit minions from a market of three options. Every minion in the game has a unique ability. You will eventually have four minions, after which you do not recruit any more. Your goal is to capture the opponent leader. You do this by having two of your pieces next to it, or you force it to be fully surrounded by pieces, regardless of whether your own or your opponent’s. 

Leaders wear crowns

On your turn you get to move all your pieces once. Your minions have all sorts of powers. Some can move more than just one step. Some move like rooks, moving in a straight line. Some jump over others. Some pieces can move other pieces, for example pulling or pushing them. Some pieces protect others from being manipulated. 

This is a perfect information game. You know exactly what powers your opponent has. You need to move and position your pieces to capture the opponent leader which protecting your own. In many ways this is like chess. 

Checkmate! White leader captured by black minions.

One part that’s different is you don’t capture or eliminate opponent pieces. You can’t land on other pieces. Blocking can be a very effective tactic. Some powers require line of sight. Sometimes you will find that you are blocking your own pieces. Positioning them and moving them can be frustratingly slow if you don’t plan well. 

Both the games I played were short. Han and I were new to the game, and we were not good at defense. Your game pieces have a good variety of powers (and you get to choose your combination of powers) and since you get to move all pieces on your turn as opposed to just one piece per turn, you can orchestrate powerful moves.