Sabah National Tabletop Con - one week countdown!

 

This is happening 20-21 Jun 2026 at the Sabah Art Gallery. There will be Malaysia game designers and also designers from other countries. If you are in KK, come look for me and let's play! 

Meadow

Meadow is a game about wildlife in the countryside. The key underlying concept is the food chain. You need certain terrain to be able to support certain plants, you need certain plants to be able to support certain insects, and in turn these insects are food to small animals, and then these small animals are prey of larger animals. You collect and play cards with various icons. The icons allow you to play more cards, and as you "upgrade", you get to play cards with victory points. That is how you eventually win. 

Cards are made available in this 4x4 grid. Every round, you have five tiles which you can use for claiming and playing cards. You place a tile along the edge of this board, pointing at a specific row. Depending on the number on your tile, you take a specific card in that row. 

You can have at most 10 columns of cards in your play area. A column always start with a terrain card. Terrain cards have no prerequisites. All other cards do. Normally cards specify the icons you need to have in order to play them. When you play a non-terrain card, it must partially cover another card. You may cover icons on other cards, causing you to lose these icons. The game requires carefully planning to get to specific icons. You also need to plan carefully when to use which icons. 

You start with a hand of cards. You already have to plan carefully from the get go. The numbers on the leaves are the victory point values. They go from 1 to 5. 

Each player tile has two parts. The pointy part is used when you claim a card from the grid display. The flat part can be used for something else. Let's go from left to right. The two circles are road icons. If you use this, you get to claim two road tiles. Road tiles allow you to play cards which have a landscape layout. The second tile lets you claim any one card from the grid. This is different from using the pointy part. When you use the pointy part, you get to play a card too. If you use the flat part, you don't get to play a card. 

The third tile is a joker. You can treat it as any flat part icon. The fourth tile lets you draw three cards from any deck then keep one. 

This is the other game board. This keeps track of the round number. You play 6 rounds. All those icons around the fireplace is a source of competition. When you have a pair of adjacent icons in your play area, you get to claim the seat between these two icons, placing your point marker. You have three point markers valued 2, 3 and 4. You must place them in this order. 

Any any time there are three decks used for refilling the board. The East cards are mostly terrain cards. The West cards are usually cards related to roads, houses and fences, i.e. human civilisation. The South cards are mostly animals. At mid game, the South cards are replaced by the North cards. These are higher valued animals. 

I think of Meadow is a pyramid building game. You collect and play cards with the right icons to help you play higher value cards. You need to have a strong foundation to be able to build many high value cards. You must plan carefully how icons will be covered by other cards. Timing is very important. You don't want to accidentally cover an icon which you still need. Player interaction can be unforgiving. You will compete for those cards with rare icons. If you watch you opponents closely, you can tell what they need and you can deny them those cards. Even without intentionally frustrating your friends, you sometimes do so accidentally because you have placed your tile in a slot they plan to use. 

The game is almost overproduced. It has pretty card trays and a wooden round marker which to me are not really necessary. They do provide a nice play experience. They are a luxury. 

Gameplay is a pleasant experience. It is satisfying to collect the right combinations of icons and to play those high valued cards. Collecting the right cards can be challenging. You can't pick any card you want. You need to think about how best to use your tiles. This is not really a game for casual players. The game mechanisms are slightly complicated, and even I find myself in long pauses thinking about what I should do next. The game is certainly challenging enough for seasoned gamers. There is some luck, in terms of what kind of cards become available. It is satisfying to work out what you can do given the situation you are in. You certainly make meaningful choices. You can choose to play this in a more peaceful way, without deliberately trying to mess with your opponents. You will be kept busy enough managing your own play area. 

Quartermaster General: East Front

This game is set in World War II and depicts the battle between Germany and the USSR. This is a two player game and the story starts with Germany initiating the invasion of the Soviet Union. Every few rounds both players will score points based on controlling key locations. If you outscore your opponent by 10 points, you win immediately. Otherwise, you win by having more points at the end of 1945.

One thing that is a little different from other games in the Quartermaster General series is the granularity. You have more pieces, you also have more pieces per territory. But still, this is nowhere near as many pieces as you would have in games like Axis and Allies. This is a card driven game. Each player has his own deck of cards and most of the things you can do in the game are dependent on these cards. The cards reflect the characteristics of the two nations and also many historical elements.

On your turn, there is a movement phase followed by two card plays, and then finally a second movement phase. All units only move one step. Also units need to stay in supply or bad things will happen. Being in supply means you can trace a supply line to one of your supply sources. Cutting off your opponent's supply line is an important tactic in the game. Movement is not used for attacking. You cannot enter a space containing enemy units. You can only attack enemy units in an adjacent space, and this happens during the card phase. You need to have specific cards that let you initiate an attack. Normally, when you attack, you will kill one enemy unit. Your opponent can prevent that only if he happens to have the right card to defend his unit. After you manage to kill one enemy unit, normally your attack ends. If you want to continue killing, you need to have another card in hand which lets you continue attacking. So you can see that battles are pretty short, but you can save the right combination of cards to make more powerful moves.

For your second movement phase, only tanks and ships can move. For land units, the tank’s ability to move in both phases can be crucial to help you capture territories. When you enter enemy controlled but unoccupied territories, you capture them. 

At the end of your turn, you draw three cards, or up to a maximum hand size of five. Although you normally play only two cards on your turn, sometimes you spend more cards due to pressing attacks or responding to the enemy’s actions. 

For the German player, that is one complication. He controls two types of units, German and Pact (i.e. other members of the Axis). The cards for them are different and you can only use the cards on the corresponding units. Also, they cannot attack together. 

I played against Han. I was the Germans and he was the Soviet Union. I started with many units, well poised to attack. He did not have many units, and it felt almost impossible for them to hold out against the Germans. It was a matter of how far and how fast the German armies could push. The Soviet did control more victory point locations at the start, so there was pressure for the Germans to conquer and keep up in victory points. The game felt like a war of attrition. It was not easy to build new troops. Not many cards allowed building new troops. It was possible to spend cards to build new units, but it was an expensive thing to do, and it was time consuming for me to transport troops to the front lines. 

One type of card in the game is contingency cards. Both players have five contingency cards. They are always available to you from the start. It is just a matter of when you decide to use them. Your opponent can see your contingency cards so they can prepare for them. You too can plan around them. They allow strategic planning and also help create some historical accuracy.

One thing I was quite impressed by the game was how historically accurate the end game turned out to be. I thought as the Germans I did pretty OK all the way till near the end. I was ahead in points. I just needed to hold on to this lead. There were only a few more turns to go. I completely underestimated the counterattack of the Soviets. My front line crumbled and the Soviets managed to make it all the way to Berlin, entering the gates exactly on the very final turn. It was an amazing turnaround. 

This was mid game when Germany was approaching Moscow.

I was able to surround the Soviets in the south briefly, cutting off their supply line.

I was leading in points, but my front line had crumbled.

Where the heck did all these Soviet tanks come from?!

The fall of Berlin

The game gets better as you get to know it better. You get more familiar with what cards are available in your own deck, as well as in your opponent's deck. You can anticipate your opponent’s card plays. I like how the card effects steer you towards a certain level of historical accuracy. However they don’t feel restrictive. You won’t get all the right cards at the right times, so you need to manage this. You need to think about how to make the most of the cards you get. You can’t always hold on to a card to wait for that perfect situation. I think this is what makes the game challenging and fun. 

La Famiglia: The Great Mafia War

La Famiglia is a little unusual. It is a game for exactly four players (like mahjong!), and it is played in teams of two. You are mafia families in Sicily, and you compete to control the most regions. You win immediately when you control 5 regions, or your team controls 6 regions. If no one achieves this after four rounds, the team controlling more regions wins. 

Every region on the map has three spaces. You need to control two out of three spaces to control a region. On the map the cubes are your gangsters. You can build drug factories which help you make money and boost your defence. You have cars which help you in offense. You have boats that give you mobility to attack more distant spaces. 

Every round consists of a planning phase and an execution phase. Two planning boards are used in the planning phase. There are player discs and neutral discs on one board, and on your turn you must move one to the other board. The space you move it to determines the action you get to perform, for example earning money, recruiting gangsters, deploying gangsters, buying cars and placing order tiles. Depending on whose disc you move and the space you move it to, there may be costs involved. This mechanism is actually worker placement but a little more elaborate. 

In the execution phase you reveal order tiles that have been placed on the map during the planning phase, and you execute them. This is when attacks take place. Not all order tiles are for attacking. Some are for defending. Fighting involves no dice. Being the attacker you can choose to use a brute force approach to resolve the attack, which is deterministic. However if you want to achieve better results, e.g. losing fewer people in the process, you can take a gamble and play a little mind game. This involves players playing cards face down and then they choose how to apply the opponent's card - to the opponent or to themselves. The end result might be better, or it can also be worse than using brute force.

Every player has a player board. One of the things you can do is to remove discs from your player board. This upgrades your abilities, for example making your car bombs more destructive. When you improve beyond certain thresholds, you unlock new order tiles that are better than the basic ones you start with. Notice that the families in the games are a little different. They have different advanced order tiles. 

When you control regions, you enjoy special bonuses, for example, allowing you to recruit more gangsters. You can choose these bonuses but you need to coordinate this with your partner because you can’t both take the same one. These region bonuses allow you to customise your play.

This is generally a dudes on a map game, an area control game. You have to manage two important resources - money and gangsters. You attack, you defend. You do your best to control regions. There are neutral pieces on the map. In our game, I didn’t attack them much, because the other team was the bigger threat to me. In hindsight I should not have taken such a simplistic approach. After all, the goal is region control, not killing enemies. This is almost a perfect information game. The main uncertainties are the order tiles which are placed face-down, and the little mind game you can choose to play when you attack. There is much strategising and planning you can do. The game is confrontational. It is also calculative due to how deterministic most of the game is. The art is colourful, but make no mistake. This is a pretty serious game. 

I first saw the game at Essen 2024, and it's pretty!

Dewan

Dewan in Malay means "hall", and the boardgame Dewan has nothing to do with any hall. It's just the name of the game world. But I'm stuck with thinking "what the hall" whenever I say the name of the game. Dewan is a clean civ game. I am tempted to call it 4X, but it doesn't have all four X's, just eXpand and a bit of eXploit. No eXplore or eXterminate. You start with a little settlement, and you spread out to settle other lands and fulfil your destiny of greatness. The game ends when a player builds his 9th settlement. 

This is what a 3-player game looks like. There map tiles are randomly set up so there is variability from game to game. One key concept in the game is the region. A region is a set of connected hexes of the same terrain type. For example there are four grey regions in the map above. To complete objectives (here they are called stories), you need to have settlements in multiple regions. Normally you'd only place one settlement in a region, because if you have two, they still only count for one region that you have access to. 

On your turn, you have only two options. You either claim two cards, or you build a new settlement. You claim cards from a display of six (see above, lower row). You must claim adjacent cards. This is interesting. I can't think of any other game that has this rule. There probably are some. I wonder whether this will work with Ticket to Ride. My guess is it will be too frustrating. Here, it works well. 

To build a settlement, you pay cards. You must be able to trace a path from one of your settlements to a new empty site. For every hex your settler moves through, including both starting hex and destination hex, you must pay a matching card. Water cards are an interesting mechanism here. When you pay with a water card, you may move as far as the river (or lake) takes you. That's pretty thematic. 

The row of tiles at the top are your objectives (called stories). They give you points if you fulfil them. They require that you settle a specific number of regions of a certain terrain type, or that you control certain resources on the map, or that you have settlements on riverbanks, or some combination of these. You draft a story tile at the start of the game, and throughout the game you may claim up to three more. When you complete a story tile, you score points and also earn one free card. 

This is your player board. The settlements are placed along the bottom, and there is a reason for this. When you place your 2nd, 4th or 6th settlement, you unlock a story tile slot and you get to claim a story tile. When you place your 3rd, 5th or 7th settlement, you may tuck a card under your player board. These cards count as you having access to an additional region and possibly resource too. 

Those that look like star icons are berries. They are worth 2 points each. Other icons on the edges of hexes are resources you can gain access to if you build next to them. 

When playing the game, in a way you are just doing your own thing, planning how you want to expand and fulfil your story tiles, but at the same time, this is a land grab. Although you don't get to fight your opponents or steal their settlements, you are competing for a very precious resource - land. If you think they are aiming to settle a specific spot that you need, you'd better hurry. There is certainly some tension among players. It's not direct aggression, but you do have to watch what they are doing. 

Three of the story tiles I had needed red terrain. Getting story tiles which are similar saves much work. I use the cards I tuck under my board to help fulfil my story tiles. One nice thing about the component design is the story tiles are placed recessed slots. When you complete a story, you can slide the tile up to reveal a worship icon. It gives you a free card. 

The game I played against Han and Jon was mostly peaceful. I am not sure whether this is normal. We didn't seem to get into one another's ways too much. Possibly I got into their ways just that I was oblivious. 

Dewan is a pleasant family strategy game, at least based on my personal experience. I have a suspicion that it can be more cutthroat. I like that it is streamlined cleverly. You only have two options, drawing cards or placing a settlement. There are several scoring conditions you need to juggle at the same time. You want settlements that form groups, because groups score bonuses. You want to have more fires than others, because you get a bonus for that too. You need to manage all these while trying to make sure you can score all four of your stories. You probably should block your opponents sometimes, if it doesn't distract you too much from your own plan. 

Charge & Spark

Charge & Spark is a 2 player microgame from Jelly Jelly Games, Japan. I have just played another game that sounds just like this, Bahamut Dispute. Both are about reducing your opponent’s health from 4 to 0, but here the execution is a little different. Humankind is extinct. You are robots competing for supremacy. You win by destroying your opponent or by reaching the centre of the game board.

The players have the same set of cards when the game starts. Every round, you simultaneously choose and play a card. Cards let you shoot, block, charge your batteries, collect data and so on. The most recently played card is left face up in front of you. You cannot use the same card twice in a row. When you shoot, if your opponent also shoots, only net damage is inflicted, i.e. when one attack is of higher strength than the other. Attacking consumes energy. Different actions consume different amounts of energy. Some are free. If you fully charge your battery, it goes to 4 bars. Data works the same way as batteries. Some actions consume data, for example of being able to bounce the attack back at the attacker. You need to collect and store data in order to perform these powerful actions.

Whenever you advance on the board, you get to draw a new card. These are better cards which give you more action options. You can get at most two additional cards, because by the time you advance for a third time, you would win the game.

This game is very much about guessing the psychology of your opponent. If you shoot when he makes a move, he gets damaged and he will not be able to advance. If you move when he charges his battery, you will be able to safely advance and also earn an action card. The best thing is when you are able to choose to deflect his attack exactly when he chooses to attack. You do have some basis for making guesses. You know there is one specific action he cannot take because he has just done it in the previous round. Also, if he is low on battery or data, you know there are some actions he cannot perform. You want to have your battery and data sufficiently charged because it gives you more flexibility. In a way, this is advanced rock paper scissors. I am hesitant when saying this, because there is much more here than just simple rock paper scissors. Sometimes you choose an action for the sake of your flexibility in the following round. You know if you deplete your battery, next round it is easier for your opponent to guess what you are going to do. 

I played this with Chee Kong. I like that it is satisfying when you successfully guess your opponent's mindset and choose the right action card to foil his plans. It reminds me a little of Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. 

boardgaming in photos - Risk and Race for the Galaxy

In my work as a leadership trainer, I regularly collaborate with others in the industry - fellow trainers, coaches and training providers. Being in a business community called BNI, I regularly meet fellow members of the community and we help one another in our businesses. One of my friends Captain Fuaad has developed a training game based on Risk, and he asked several of us to help him playtest it. We did this at Bored boardgame cafe. It was a weekday afternoon so there was not much crowd. They let up take up a fair bit of space. The giant game board needed much space. I have my own giant boardgames which I use for training too. I am lucky to be able to integrate my passion of boardgames with my passion of helping others become effective leaders. 

I can't recall the last time I actually played Risk. It was probably Risk Legacy that I played, and that might be more than 10 years ago. 

It is an amazing feeling to see my games being promoted in a language I cannot read at all. Box & Brew Cafe of Thailand stocked some of my games. They bought from me in bulk when we met at the Asian Board Games Festival in the Philippines. 

If you are in Thailand, you can find my games at Box & Brew Cafe! 

We visited Xiaozhu's home and I took the opportunity to ask my friends to help playtest my Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦) game. One thing about this prototype that I did not deliberately plan for is the combination of 6 and 7. It's a thing that teenagers say now, which old timers find annoying. And also in Chinese (well, Cantonese) it can be misread as something... ahem... inappropriate. I have been thinking about changing the numbering system. Instead of 0 being the main character Jia Baoyu, maybe I should make him the 9. The reasoning is when I play sets containing him, I fan the cards in such a way that he will always be hidden from view, while the largest number of the set will be visible. Him being 0 means he is always the first card on the left, so he will always be hidden from view. How can the main character be always hidden from view? He should be the most visible. By making him the 9, whenever there is a set containing him, his whole card will always be visible. That is my rationale. Now that there is this coincidence of the 67 set, maybe I don't have to change it. Also if on the table I only see tons of Jia Baoyu, the game looks a little boring too. 

I also played this prototype with Pey Ling, a teacher who specialises in studying and analysing Dream of the Red Chamber - the true expert. One thing she shared with me was that Xue Baochai, one of the two main female characters, was probably a little plump. In one particular scene after some light exertion she was already panting hard. Hey you learn something new every day. 

Pey Ling's specialty is not just Dream of the Red Chamber. She studies and teaches all four of the major Chinese literary works. So we also played my Pilgrim Poker prototype, which has a Journey to the West theme. I showed her my Rebels of the Three Kingdoms prototype too. 

Sun 17 May 2026 I was at Kinokuniya bookstore at Pavilion Damansara Heights demoing my games. Currently they stock Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs. They invited me to do a demo session because they were running a promotion. Pavilion Damansara Heights is not a very busy mall, even on Sundays. Maybe it is because the place is spacious, the mall felt rather sparse to me. Kinokuniya itself did have some foot traffic. There were always people around. Most people didn't stop to examine the games, whether mine or others at the same table. They just took curious glances. Some did stop to ask, and I gave them brief overviews of the games. Very few wanted to sit down to play. I mostly just showed the game components and explained briefly how the games worked. Some were happy to buy after listening to the overview. Ironically none of those who sat down to play bought the games. 

Boardgames is still very much a niche hobby in Malaysia. This afternoon at Kinokuniya reminds me of that. At boardgame events, yes, we attract people who are already interested, and we get the impression that hey there are so many fellow boardgamers in Malaysia. Half a day at a regular bookstore reminds me that we as the boardgame industry still have a lot of work ahead of us to promote the hobby and to create awareness. Although it was a little depressing to be idle for much time, especially compared to when I booth at boardgame events, I am still happy that I'm doing a little bit in introducing tabletop games to the public. Keep hustling! 

I did a five player game of Heat on BGA. This is such an enjoyable game, and I'm happy that it is doing well. It has many expansions. I don't own a copy, but if I were new to the hobby, I would have purchased one. 

I'm super happy to be assigned green, my favourite player colour.

I'm don't have a paid account on BGA so my colour assignment is random.

This part of the board is challenging - several consecutive corners with low speed limits. We played with some expansions - just a few extra rules here and there. In some ways Heat is a push-your-luck game. How far are you willing to push your car to get that extra bit of distance by paying the price of clogging your hand with heat cards? Movement is often deterministic, only occasionally you roll a die, and usually you are the one deciding when to take the risk. The decision of whether to discard cards and hope to draw better ones is not always easy to make. This game should be in some hall of fame. 

I did a two-player game of Molly House with Han. This time I was pretty determined to help the mollies (i.e. LGBTQ community) survive and gain acceptance. They have never survived in all the games I played. This time I approached the game like a cooperative game. I tried to keep track of the cards in the gossip pile. I worked hard to help the community score points. As the game progressed, Han outscored me by a lot. I was arrested for indecent behaviour and I had a major indictment which might lead to a death sentence. My resolve shattered, and I decided to betray my comrades. I became an informer. Eventually the community was infiltrated and shut down by the authorities. Han was hanged for sodomy. I won the game, but I felt so dirty. Aaarrgghh! 

Having played several games of Molly House, I now conclude that it doesn't quite work for me. It is a design I admire for how bold it is, and I like the premise. I don't like the memory element. Because the game mechanisms are unusual, I find the game hard to learn and to play. It feels like a lot of work. After having played several games, I still don't feel I know how to play it. 

I have been enjoy my ongoing plays of Race for the Galaxy with Jon and Yasmin. When I open up my browser tab of BGA games, this is usually the game I most look forward to to take the next turn. 

I completed a game of Signorie on BGA. I have played this before but I have forgotten most of the rules. I had to relearn. I continue to suffer the consequences of my own laziness when playing games on BGA. I do play the tutorials, and I download the rulebooks in case I need to refer to them. However since BGA handles most of the game mechanisms, I usually end up being too lazy to learn the game rules properly. I just click without fully understanding the consequences of my actions. It's not the fault of BGA. It's entirely mine. 

I read up my previous blog post about Signorie, and one thing I did differently this time was I tried to set up many bonus actions in the early game. Investing in this gave me extra actions throughout the game. I didn't do as badly as the first time I played the game. I didn't do particularly well either, since I didn't really understand some parts of the game. 

Signorie is a decent game and I should learn it properly. 

I might be losing the appetite for more complex games. Many of them feel convoluted and tiresome. 10 years ago I would not have imagined myself saying this. Heavy Eurogames is supposed to be the pinnacle of boardgaming for me. 

Splotter Games announced Bailiff of Boscoop. For many years I had this rule: when Splotter releases a game, buy it. Don't wait and see. Just buy it. I like almost all their games. But now I am discarding this rule. I am certainly interested to try the game, but I might not buy it. I bought Horseless Carriage. It is a good game, but I have only played it once. Till now I have not made time to play it again.