Asian Board Game Festival Malaysia 2026 (Penang) is this weekend!

Asian Board Games Festival - Malaysia 2026 is happening Fri 7 Aug 2026 to Sun 9 Aug 2026 in Penang. By the time you read this, I'm probably on the way to Penang, or I am already in Penang running my booth. This is my third time exhibiting at ABGF MY. This time I will have two new games, Pilgrim Poker and Malaysian Holidays. If you are in Penang, come play with me!  

All-In: Predictions

Let’s play poker but in a different way. There has been several modern hobby games which make use of poker hands, e.g. The Gang. The good thing about these games is they use an aspect which most people are already familiar with. It will be easier for us gamers to convince our non gamer friends to try modern boardgames with us. 

Half of All-In: Predictions is actually playing poker, as in everyone is trying to make the best possible hand. The stronger your hand is, the more points you will score. The other half of the game is a betting game. You bet on who has the best hand. If your luck is poor and you are stuck with a weak hand, you can still score points by guessing the strongest player. 

When a round starts, everyone gets five cards. On your turn you play a card and use its power. Every card in the game has some powers, some mandatory and some optional. You use these powers to improve your hand and also to get information about your opponents’ hands. You can draw cards from the deck. You can take cards from a common pool. You have a hand limit of exactly five, and when you go over that, you must discard down to five. You can peek at an opponent’s cards. You can also ask an opponent what hand type he has, and he must answer truthfully. 

At the end of your turn, the card you play goes to the common pool. The round ends when the common pool reaches a certain number of cards. That number depends on player count. At the end of a round, everyone gets to guess who they think has the strongest hand. There is a prize to be won, and this increases from round to round. If multiple players guess right, you share the prize. Guessing the strongest is not always purely based on likelihood. The relative positions of the players can affect your pick. If the leading player is the only one making a particular guess, you know that if he is right he will win the full prize and it becomes even harder to catch up. So maybe you want to make the same guess so that if he is right, you’ll split the prize with him, slowing him down. If you are trailing, you might want to make a guess that no one else is making, with the hope that you win and take the reward by yourself. 

It is interesting how you can work towards a better hand. While you do that you want to pay attention to what cards your opponents have been taking and playing. You want to avoid playing cards to the common pool which they want. Also you want to be able to guess correctly who has the strongest hand. Card powers are shown on the two sides of the cards. In the photo above, the power of the Queen is you reveal three cards from the deck to pick one, discarding the rest. The King lets you draw 1 card, then ask one opponent which combo he has. 

The “All In” in the game title refers to one action you can do in the game. If you are confident you already have a strong hand and don’t need to take any more turns, you declare “All In”. What that means is you lock your hand and play no more cards for the rest of the round. Also no one else can peek at your cards any more. You add a card to the common pool now, and every subsequent turn you do it again. This speeds up the end of the round, putting pressure on your opponents. 

There is an advanced version of the game in which the poker hand ranking is modified. The full house is weaker while the straight is stronger. I suspect this should be the right way to play. Since the game is different from standard poker and player actions are involved in creating poker hands, the rarity of the poker hands will be different. 

I lied about this being like poker. This is a light strategy game that uses poker hands. You don’t bet or bluff. You have more control in what poker hand you eventually get. 

Lifeboats: Plank of Carneades

Lifeboats is a 1993 game. That's more than 30 years old! I am pretty sure I have heard about it before. The version I recently played is a 2024 remake. This is a negotiation game for up to 7 players. This is the kind of game which I would cheekily say can destroy friendships, and I wouldn't be lying. Be prepared for hurt feelings. 

There is a disaster at sea. The ship is sinking, and everyone scrambles onto a lifeboat. You have a group of sailors and you want to get as many of them saved as possible. They don't need to be on the same lifeboat. In fact it's best to diversify. Now these lifeboats have not be well maintained. They are leaky and some might not make it to the nearby islands. 

You have two types of sailors - captains and just regular pirates. For any voting you need to do during the game, captains get 2 votes and pirates only 1. Also when they survive, captains are worth more points. Everyone has the same set of cards. They include cards in every player colour, which is both sailor colour and boat colour. You also have three captain cards (those on the right). 

Here's what happens during a round of play. Some boats will start leaking, or leak more. One boat will move forward one or two steps. Then players can choose to have one of their sailors switch to another boat. Most of this is done using a voting mechanism. Which boat will leak? Everyone votes. If you want the green boat to leak, play your green card face down. You can negotiate. You can lie. You can try to cut deals. When everyone is ready, reveal all the cards. The boat getting the most votes leaks. A leaking boat still moves, but if there are more leaks than sailors, the boat sinks and all the sailors are lost. A leak takes up space. If there is not enough space, the people on the boat vote on who to throw overboard. In this situation, only the players who have sailors on the boat get to vote. This is when having a captain is powerful. The captain has 2 votes. It's not a good idea to totally dominate a boat though. In the leaking stage, your opponents can easily agree to vote to give you the leak, because no one else has a stake in that boat. 

Voting to give the leak is voting who to hurt. Thus hurt feelings. The next important vote is which boat to move. The boats are only 3 steps away from safety. Leaking boats move 2 steps. That means a boat can reach safety in as few as 2 rounds. When voting for boat movement, often the vote will be for an outcome which is the most equal. No one wants to help the leading players more. Everyone prefers to help the trailing players. 

One very important aspect of the game is the three captain cards you start the game with. Instead of voting with a colour card, you can vote with a captain card. If you are the only player who has played a captain card, you get to decide the outcome. You can overrule the vote. This is very powerful. You might send a boat with your people to safety. You might save a boat with your people which everyone else is trying to sink. Captain cards are single-use. Once you play it, it is removed from the game, unlike the regular colour cards which return to your hand. That means you only have three chances to overrule a vote in the whole game. Think carefully when you want to use a captain card. 

If two or more players play a captain card, no one gets to overrule. You play with the regular rules. However if everyone plays a captain card, the start player of the round makes the decision. As you can see, playing a captain card is a very important decision and it can have a huge impact to how the game turns out. The start player role is an important consideration as well. In the case of ties, the start player decides. 

You are going to do a lot of voting in this game. This is the kind of game that triggers lots of discussions. You try to convince others to help you, or to attack someone else. You try to collaborate sometimes. Sometimes you betray your friends. You say you will vote for his boat, but you play a captain card to move your own boat. 

You can doom a boat by jumping to another boat. If a boat has three sailors and three leaks, and one of the sailors go to another boat, and no other sailor joins this boat, the two remaining sailors will be overwhelmed by the leaking, and the boat will sink. 

This is a perfect information game. Everyone knows exactly the board situation. The uncertainty comes from not knowing how your opponents are voting. The game is actually pretty simple. There is some risk that a game can drag. If people want to keep negotiating and can't decide, things can slow to a halt. But you don't want to play this game without negotiations. That would be missing the point. This game is more about gaming the people than solving a logic problem. It is also a lot about trying to read others' intentions. Will anyone play a captain card? Will they vote with the colour they said they would? There will be leader bashing, because everyone can tell who is leading. 

I find the game clever and clean. Negotiation games are a special niche. They offer an experience which is different from most games. Just remember to play it with the right mindset. Don't take attacks too personally. It can feel so, even more than confrontational wargames. In wargames, it is expected that you want to hurt your opponent. In Lifeboats, you are choosing who to hurt. You have options, and when you choose a specific person or persons, that attack feels more personal. There is a certain helplessness when you play this game. Whether you succeed depends a lot of other people's actions. The captain cards are an important tool to help you in critical situations. I find that with gamers, we do a lot of analysis during play, to see who is leading and by how much. We are rational and we argue logically how we should vote, so that no one gets too far ahead and everyone does more or less equally well. This can make things a little boring and work-like. How much fun this game is depends a lot on what your group is like. 

Pilgrim Poker has landed!

 

It's always an amazing feeling to hold in my hand the final product after months or years of work. The Pilgrim Poker project went pretty smoothly. I planned to have it launched during the Asian Board Games Festival in Penang. All the art was submitted to Magicraft slightly ahead of schedule. We allowed for ample time for shipping. The games arrived at my doorstep the week before ABGF. A lot of work needs to be done once the eagle lands. 

I have been a little worried how the front cover will turn out even after I have submitted the art to the manufacturer. Not everyone I asked thought this was a good idea. Only upon seeing the final product I felt relieved. I think this works. I still get excited when I open a box to behold this sight - stacks of my games. 

Now boxes are always delivered with those plastic protectors attached to the corners. They do help. 

One of my tasks upon receiving a new game is to take an updated family photo. Now I have six physically published games (counting Dancing Queen as just one title). I have published five games under Cili Padi Games. Malaysian Holidays is published by Specky Studio. The Dancing Queen international edition is published by Matagot. 

I have updated my website to complete the Pilgrim Poker page. That means I needed to take photos of the physical product. I also needed to record an unboxing video. I needed to do some video editing, adding some music. I needed to upload the video to Youtube. The Cili Padi Games website front page header is a photo of all my games. That photo needed to be updated too. 

All the components of Pilgrim Poker

Oh and I needed to update the order form at my website. That meant I needed to calculate the shipping costs for Pilgrim Poker. That in turn meant I needed to find my kitchen scale to weigh the game. I need to start contacting Malaysian retailers and distributors, to see if they want to stock my new game. I take the opportunity to ask whether they need to restock my other titles. 

I had to do some stock checking. When Pilgrim Poker arrived, some of the boxes looked like they have been handled roughly. I opened quite a number of boxes to examine the games inside. Thankfully after all that checking, I only found two damaged copies. Well, I guess I have my demo copies now. Magicraft produced some extra copies for the possibility of damage, and the extras were more than enough. 

I still need to make how-to-play videos, and add them to my website. I have written a designer diary for Pilgrim Poker. It has been scheduled at my blog. I am submitting it to www.boardgamegeek.com. Hopefully it gets me some good exposure and generates some interest. What else have I missed? Gosh why is there so much to do?! 

More info: https://www.cilipadigames.com/pilgrimpoker 

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring - Trick-Taking Game

There has been quite a few Lord of the Rings games in recent years. I think that's a good thing. I hope this brings more people into the boardgame hobby. There are two games in the Lord of the Rings Trick-Taking Game series so far - The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. I have only played some of the missions in The Fellowship of the Ring. I was told The Two Towers is more challenging. That certainly makes sense. 

This is a cooperative trick-taking game. It is for 1 to 4 players, and it plays best with four. Like a book, it has multiple chapters, and every chapter is a mission you try to complete. One game is playing one chapter. The chapter specifies which characters are in play. Some characters are mandatory, i.e. someone must pick them. There are also optional characters. Cards are dealt to all players before they decide which characters they want to play. The character you pick determines the objective that you must fulfil, for example Frodo must win at least 2 Ring cards, and Merry must win either 1 or 2 tricks. To win a game, everyone must fulfil their objective. Based on the cards you get, you can determine which character is easier or harder for you to play. The player who gets the 1 Ring card must play Frodo. Ring is one of the suits in the game. I find it hilarious that you call the value 1 card of the Ring suit the "1 Ring". Sorry, I'm childish. One Ring to rule them all! 

Depending on the character you pick, you may be asked to exchange cards with certain other characters. This helps to communicate some information with your teammates. Normally you are not allowed to share information about your cards. 

Most of the rules follow standard trick-taking. The Ring suit is your trump suit. They are numbered only 1 to 5, while other suits go up to 8. You can't lead with the trump suit until a trump card has been played in a trick led by another suit. 

The ring marker on this grey side means the trump suit has not yet been played yet.

Use these tokens to mark who has completed their missions

One thing special about the 1 Ring is when you play it, you can choose to win the trick, even if by normal rules you would not, for example normally it loses to the 5 Ring. This means Frodo can almost always fulfil his objective. 

The gameplay reminds me of The Crew, which is also a cooperative trick-taking game with limited communication. Here, the objectives and characters are all related to the Lord of the Rings story, which is nice. You can't talk about what cards you have. Your communication is through your actions, e.g. which cards you pass, which cards you play, which characters you pick. 

What I enjoy about the game is how the story is told through the characters and their objectives. If you like Lord of the Rings and trick-taking, this is a no brainer. I'm not specifically a fan of either. I find the game enjoyable enough that I would always be happy to play with the full four players. For me it is not breaking new grounds, when I compare it to The Crew. However I would say the theme integration is done well. Even a casual fan of Lord of the Rings like me will enjoy the game. 

This is a campaign game. When you buy a campaign game, you will feel motivated to complete the campaign. It feels like unfinished business if you don't. If you do complete the campaign, you will have gained many plays of the game to make the purchase very much worthwhile. The tragedy of many games that we hobbyists buy is they don't get played all that many times.  

This above is a setup you have to do when you play a 2-player game. I almost played this, but we were able to get two more players to join us for a 4P game. So I have not tried the 2-player game and I don't know how it works. It looks cumbersome to me. The general agreement is the game works best with four. 

Asian Board Games Festival - Malaysia 2026 (Penang)

Asian Board Games Festival - Malaysia 2026 is happening Fri 7 Aug 2026 to Sun 9 Aug 2026 in Penang. Cili Padi Games will be there. This time I will have two new games, Pilgrim Poker and Malaysian Holidays. Pilgrim Poker will be available at the Cili Padi Games booth, and Malaysian Holidays at the Specky Studio booth. Come play with me if you are in town!  

boardgaming in photos: Rumble Nation, dnup

I played the physical version of Rumble Nation. This is a minimalistic area majority game. I normally dislike area majority games, but this one is just so clever. It's a game from Japan, and the setting is Japan too. 

You roll three dice to determine what options you have on your turn. You must use two of the dice to choose the region you will place your cubes, and the third dice determines how many cubes you will place. You are somewhat restricted in what you can do, but you do have meaningful choices throughout the game. I played this in KK with Buddhima and Jon. This was Buddhima's copy. 

Now that I have added Malaysian Holidays to my list of published games, I need to update this group photo. My next game Pilgrim Poker is coming out soon too, so this group photo will need to be updated again soon. 

I played the physical version of dnup. I must say it is much better playing this in person compared to playing in online async mode. This doesn't work so well in async because you don't remember well what has been played before. You break your session down to many small turns over several days. dnup is much more fun with table talk and discussions. You are able to better gang up on the leader. 

Reference card showing the four options on your turn

Notice the cards are rounded only at two corners

That day we playtested Buddhima's upcoming game called Change. I have played this before and this was a game I already wanted to buy after the first try. Buddhima has been a little worried about the timing of publication for his game, because it shares a similarity with SCOUT, dnup and Panda Spin. It too has cards which have different numbers at the two ends. You will also rotate your cards and change their values. After dnup, we played Change, and I am confident it delivers a different play experience compared to other games which shares this rotate concept. It requires a different strategy. 

This is Jon's worker placement game, about Grab Food and Lalamove delivery services. You prepare and deliver food, or you deliver items. In game design Jon is heading towards slightly more complex games. Not yet heavy games, but around light-medium to medium weight. 

One challenge Jon presents in this game is storage for goods. You can exceed storage temporarily within a round, but you need enough storage space to be able to carry over goods to the next round. To increase storage you must recruit, and once you recruit, your salary cost increases permanently. 

This is the worst starting hand in Mahjong Rummy. I don't have a passport - a straight flush meld of at least 3 tiles. Without a passport I can't play. I have already lost in the first round of play. Now that's player elimination. I can heap on tons of complaints as a modern gamer, but this is just a traditional gambling game and people have fun with it. There is some skill involved but it is mostly luck. You play this to spend time with family and friends, not for good game design. 

Now that younger daughter Chen Rui is back in Malaysia for her summer break, we have started playing our Regicide Legacy campaign. We are on Mission 9 out of 12 now. It has been an interesting ride so far. I am amazed by the amount of work they have put into creating this campaign. There is so much art created, and much of it is only used in one mission. If you beat the mission on your first try, you will use this art only once. Playing the campaign is playing many variants of Regicide. There is a story which unfolds as you progress. Your deck changes. You get to play with different powers. You fight different bosses. Some of the missions took us many attempts to beat, we also managed some with just one attempt. 

I have played a second game of Quartermaster General: East Front. This time I played the Soviet Union and Han the Axis. Han managed to get to Moscow, and even Vologda. At one point (above) I managed to encircle his forces, cutting off his supply lines. I gradually pushed back, but by game end I did not manage to reach Berlin. We were tied in points, and I lost on tiebreaker. What a close game! 

We played Soothsayers again. It's July now, and I'm still pretty confident this will be my favourite new-to-me game in 2026. 

I only recently discovered that the art is from a real tarot card deck, and not art created specifically for the game using the style of tarot cards. 

We played Madeira. I did horribly because I have forgotten many of the rules and I didn't relearn it properly. I want to blame BGA for making playing blindly too easy, but I know it is my own fault. 

I had a session with Jon, Ji Li and Buddhima. It's great to meet up in person to play. Nowadays I play more games online than in person. I should do physical sessions more. 

For probably less than 24 hours, the designer diary of Malaysian Holidays was on the front page of BGG. Of course I took a screenshot.