Thurn and Taxis

Thurn and Taxis by Karen and Andreas Seyfarth was the 2006 Spiel des Jahres winner. Andreas Seyfarth designed Puerto Rico (published in 2002). It was hugely popular and when it didn’t win the Spiel des Jahres many people were upset. Then a few years later Thurn and Taxis was released and won the SdJ. I have played it many years ago, and at the time didn’t find it interesting. It felt a little like Ticket To Ride, which at the time I wasn’t very impressed with either. Recently when I played Thurn and Taxis again, I felt very differently about it. I found the game a lot of fun. I like the simplicity and the difficult decisions presented to the players. It is such a well thought out package. Having now designed several games, I have learned to appreciate the beauty of the game. I looked up how I rated the game, and was horrified that I rated it 5/10. That must be fixed! I now rate it an 8/10, based on the BGG definition. 

The game is about setting up the postal network in Germany. The map consists of 9 different regions with different numbers of cities, and each region has a different colour code. During the game you will be collecting city cards and playing them to form a route. A route is a sequence of city cards which are connected. When you add a city card to a route, it must extend the route at one end. Every turn, you will take at least one city card, and play at least one card. You may discard your current route to place stations in some of the cities along that route. You may place stations in all cities of one colour on the route, or you place stations at one city for every colour. The reason you want to place stations is you will score points when you complete sets of cities, e.g. all grey cities, or all red and orange cities. You also score points when you manage to have stations in all colours. 

Another way you score points is by completing routes of certain lengths. When you manage a route with three cities you will score points, but after that, you need to make a route of length 4 to be eligible for scoring points. You can still make length 3 routes, but they won't score points. Eventually the requirement goes up to 7. If anyone manages that, the game will end. The game also ends if someone manages to place all their stations. 

These so far are the basic rules. On your turn, you may use one of four privileges. You may take an additional city card from the display. You may play an additional city card to extend your route. You may refresh the card display, hoping to find a card you need. The last option is to complete your route and treat it as 2 cities longer. Out of these four, you can only choose one to use. All of these can be very helpful. 

Although placing a station in a city doesn't block others from doing so, players will still compete for the cards in the display. You can see the routes your opponents are building, so you know what cards they need. You can compete with them and take what they want. You can also be nasty and refresh a display that is showing several cards they want. You should watch where they have already placed stations. Chances are they won't want those city cards anymore, and if you go for those city cards, there will likely be less competition. 

You are juggling several goals at once. You want to make ever longer routes. You want to complete colour sets on the map. It is always a little nerve-wracking when the cards you need to extend your route just don't show up. If you can't get one in time, you will be forced to close your route and start a new one. 

I wonder whether I was biased by the fact that the game went very well for me. I always had the right cards at the right time, and I closed the right routes and placed stations super efficiently. I notice in the past month or so I have been on a lucky streak. I seem to be doing well in many of the games I play on BGA. Let's see how long this lasts. 

There is a new version of Thurn and Taxis, called The Birth of the Post. This is a Korean / Japanese  / English edition from Playte. There is new art for it. It is not rethemed though. Should I get this? There's no more overly enthusiastic and slightly creepy lady on the cover. 

Featured on Feminine magazine

I was interviewed (in Chinese) by Feminine magazine, a Malaysian lifestyle magazine that has been around for many years. Several other local game designers were interviewed as well. More links below. 

Teaching Malaysian Holidays

Buddhima's interview article, in which he talks about boardgames, education, and children. Buddhima is part of the Specky Studio team, publisher of Malaysian Holidays. 

I like this shot of the two of us teaching visitors to play Malaysian Holidays

Logan and Velan from Faculty of Fun, makers of Nasi Lemak, spoke about why they got themselves into designing and publishing boardgames, despite their busy jobs. They are a team of doctor + vet + photographer + lawyer. 

Jon from nPips Games compared game design and his work as an electronics engineer. 

Renature

 

Renature is a game from master duo Wolfgang Kramer (El Grande, Tikal, Take 5) and Michael Kiesling (Azul, Tikal, Linko). It is a mid-weight game about nature, animals and trees. It is a tile placement game, and the tiles are dominos, each half showing an animal. During game setup, every player gets his own pile of face-down tiles, and a starting hand of three tiles. You play until everyone uses up all his tiles. 

Tiles in the game

The game board is divided into many sections (those brown, fertile patches), bordered by streams. You will place your tiles on streams to surround those sections of various sizes. At the start of the game, tiles must be placed on specific starting spots. Subsequent tiles must be placed adjacent to existing tiles, and where the tiles touch, the animals must match. By default, the butterfly is wild, as in it is a joker. It can match with any other animal. During the game you can change which animal is wild by paying some resources. The resource in the game is clouds. 

When you place a tile, you may also place a plant next to it, in an adjacent section. You have your own player board and it starts with many plants of different sizes. There are plants in your colour and also plants in a neutral colour. You place plants to do area majority competition. The plants of different sizes have different strengths. When a section is completely enclosed, you compare who has the highest strength in it. The highest and second highest score points. The neutral colour competes too, and if it does well it will reduce the points the players earn. One interesting thing is if two players tie in strength, they are both disqualified, and it is the next player who scores. If you use the neutral colour plants well, you can force your opponents to get disqualified and score nothing. By the end of the game, ideally you place all the plants from your board, because any remaining costs you points. 

Whenever you place a plant, you score 1 point. If the section it is placed in contains other plants, you can score additional points. This encourages you to compete with others, because it makes you want to barge into sections others are already in. Also, whether you score the additional points depends on your plant size. You score for existing plants which are smaller or of the same size as your newly placed plant. If you place a small plant, you won't earn points for existing plants which are larger than yours. This mechanism also encourages players to compete. You are incentivised to place large plants so that you'd score more points, and when you place large plants, you will be competing with the existing players in the section. Whenever you fully close a section, you score points too. That's yet another way to earn points. If you are leading in a section, you probably want to close it to prevent others from sneaking in a plant at the last minute to take over the lead. 

The game looks a little complex, but once you start playing, you will find that it runs smoothly. The area majority competition can be merciless. Players more or less have the same resources. You want to optimise how you use your resources. You want to win at as many places as possible, while spending as few resources as possible. You only have a hand of three tiles, and that often limits where you will be able to play a tile. 

Renature has an old school feel. It is a solid design. It is mature and well crafted. Picture an experienced artist patiently shaping a sculpture, paying attention to every little detail. No superfluous bits. Every stroke has its place. This may look like a peaceful game about nature, but nature can be highly competitive and brutal. There is a nice balance between being tactical and strategic. It is tactical in that you are limited by the three tiles in your hand. The map may be open, but not all spots are available to you due to your hand. You need to watch out for opportunities and grab them. For example another player places the second last tile around a section and you have the opportunity to close it. You will be making these tactical assessments and trying to utilise as many of them as you can. At the strategic level, you do have to plan where to compete and where to give up on. Although you only have three tiles, you can still plan ahead a little. Clouds (the currency in the game) let you do some nifty things, which means breaking the restrictions. You don't get many clouds in the whole game so you will be saving them for the most crucial moments. When you use clouds to change the wild animal, you create flexibility for yourself. You can also use clouds to take back plants for reuse. I feel the theme of the game is interchangeable. I wonder whether this design started with this theme, or the theme was applied only later. 

What else I saw at TOBE 2026

This is a small part 2 of sharing my experience at TOBE 2026 (Taiwan Original Boardgame Expo). Part 1 is here. This is a photo dump. Throughout my three days exhibiting at the fair, I had very little time to visit other booths or try other designers' games. I basically demoed my games at my own booth 8 hours straight for three full days. I had a little time in the mornings before the doors opened to walk through the halls and take photos, and these below are the photos I took. 

In Malaysia I am used to seeing English versions of boardgames. Seeing familiar titles but in Chinese is a novelty. At first I thought the Chinese version of Sagrada has a different cover. Then I checked and found that this is the 2026 edition cover for all languages. The cover I remember is from the 2017 edition. 

This game is called Ice. It is from Taiwan Boardgame Design (TBD). 

This is Garden, also from TBD. 

Isle of Bears

The Asmodee booth had a section set up like a comfy sitting room, which is nice. 

Miniatures from the game Lionwake which I first saw in Bangkok. They are based on lions in the traditional Chinese lion dance. 

A cooperative card game. A rough translation of the game title is "Chaotic Summoner War".

Horse Racing Jam: Memory and Luck Showdown! This is a game from Hong Kong. The Chinese name is a word play which only works if you read it in Cantonese. If you read it in Mandarin the pun doesn't work. 

Bugcat Capoo from Asmodee. This is a reaction and rhythm party game. I have no idea how it works. Asmodee heavily promoted this. They made cardboard headbands of the main character to give out to visitors. I saw many people wearing them walking about. I should have asked for one to keep as a souvenir. 

Chinese editions of Ticket to Ride and Ticket To Ride Europe. I can't quite get used to these new edition covers. They are pretty though.

One of my games is Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs. This is Snow White Apple Roulette, a game originally from Japan. This was first published in 2019. 

This is the Hakuroku booth. There's something about the art of this game that attracts me. The game is Kamisama no iu toori. It means "listen to the gods", or I guess "at the gods' whim", as shown on the poster. 

Siew Ping from Miri helped out as an assistant at this booth, so she learned and taught this game. At the small dinner gathering on Saturday, I asked her to explain to me how it worked. This is a trick taking game. The winner of a trick distributes cards of the trick between themselves, the loser of the trick (last player), and a display at the centre of the table. The display determines which suit is trump and the values of the cards players collect. When you collect cards, they are worth points only if you have an odd number of cards. If you have an even number, they become a penalty. 

The Taiwan Board Game Hall of Fame awards were held for the first time this year. This is Taiwan's boardgame awards. This is for games published in Taiwan, including games which are not Taiwan designed. So big international titles are eligible too, as long as there is a Taiwanese edition. The Game of the Year is Dune Imperium. I am curious to try the best Taiwan original game Double Agents, but unfortunately did not manage to. 

This is Lucky Dumpling, a simple push-your-luck game. This packaging is simply irresistible. 

Accusation

Maze of the Mountain

Chinese edition of Dune Imperium

The art for Bloom Kingdom is interesting. Not a Taiwan design though. I was curious and sat down to read the rulebook. At the time the exhibition had not started and the booth was unattended. 

During the game you will play cards to the centre of the table to manipulate the values of the card types. You will eventually keep two cards, which will score for you at the end of the round. 

Games from Vietnam

Pretty merchandise

My Cat Cafe - I bet it's a game about managing your own cat cafe!

Looks like it's also a polyomino game

Jiangnan: Life of Gentry has a very pretty cover. 

It's a worker placement game

Characters in the game

5-Minute One Piece is 5-Minute Dungeon with the Netflix One Piece characters attached. It's a real-time cooperative game. I write this blog post and share quick descriptions about these games I saw at TOBE. Most of this information is from what I look up on www.boardgamegeek.com or Google, and not what I learned from the exhibitors during the fair. Most of these photos were taken before opening time when I could roam the halls before returning to my booth to get ready for the start of the event. 

It is not surprising that there are other games based on the Three Kingdoms setting. My Three Kingdoms will need to compete with many of these games when it comes out. This one above is Three Kingdoms with cats. 

Adventurer's Guild Girls is a deck-building game and a little risque

The game is based on characters from an art series by a doujin circle - an indie art creator group - called PaintCan. This is a well-known group, and the art series is popular in Taiwan and Japan. 

Small box card games, Tanuki and Flow.

Ankh: Rune of Life is a Taiwanese design with an Egyptian theme. 

Devil Slayer was launched at TOBE

I'm not sure if this is from Japan or Taiwan

The White Castle Duel won the best 2-player game award. The original White Castle was just okay for me. Not bad but didn't really hook me. Maybe I should try the 2-player version. 

Box cover of The White Castle Duel

This is another Egyptian themed game. This one is called Gods of Egypt. It's a 2026 release from a Taiwanese designer. 

Flow caught my attention because the cards have two ends with different numbers, just like SCOUT, dnup, and Panda Spin. Also Change, designed by fellow Malaysian Buddhima and published by Swan Panasia of Taiwan. Change was launched at TOBE, and I am excited about it because I playtested it when it was still in development. I really like the game and I find it offers something different from the other games also using cards with two different values. When I saw Flow I immediately asked Buddhima to check it out. I took a quick skim of the rules, and it is rather different from Change. 

Breadrush

Tanuki

Magic Eleven is a football (soccer) game. I like the box cover. 

Sweet Lands looks cute but it is a heavy Eurogame.

Look at all the components!

9Upper is a highly successful game from Hong Kong, and there has been many expansions. This is nominally a trivia game. Every card is an obscure term or name. Only one player can see the description and knows what it actually means. The rest must make things up to convince the judge that they know the real meaning of the word. If you play it a lot, you will gradually learn all the words. So expansions are needed to keep the game fresh. 

Pot of Gold. I can't find this on BGG yet. 

Looks like a dexterity game

This booth is Dokkoi, from Japan. They sell boardgame accessories. 

There is a special Taiwan edition for the card holder illustrated by Sai Beppu. 

Tango from Taiwan visited me!

Plum and Toan from Ngu Han Games, Vietnam were my first customers at TOBE, buying Pilgrim Poker even before the doors opened.