boardgaming in photos: Chicken Cha Cha Cha, Villa Paletti, La Granja

28 Dec 2019. Teaching my niece Lauren and my nephew Oswald Chicken Cha Cha Cha. We played this in Kota Kinabalu, my hometown. I live in Kuala Lumpur, and my sister lives in Melbourne. It is not often that we happen to be back in KK at the same time. I brought a few children's games to give to my niece and nephew. My own daughters have owngrown them.

Chicken Cha Cha Cha is a simple memory game and it is very easy to learn.

My sister Mei joined us to play Coconuts. I won! (6 cups stacked).

29 Dec 2019. I never managed to remember the rules of Villa Paletti. I find them a little convoluted. This is supposed to be a children's game, and an award winner.

Eventually we didn't play with the proper rules. Now the children were playing with it like a wooden block toy set.

Younger daughter Chen Rui (lying on the ground) feeling defeated by her two hyperactive cousins. All those wooden pillars all over the place.

Lauren being a good girl and helping to tidy up.

I'm joining in to play Chicken Cha Cha Cha, and I have no mercy on my nephew or niece. Pretty tail feather here I come!

11 Jan 2020. I played La Granja with Allen and Han. I had played once before, but had forgotten almost all the rules. So I had to learn from scratch. This is a player board. The three slots at the bottom are for inserting cards. When you insert cards this way, you gain special abilities. In this particular game, I did not like any of the special abilities on the cards I drew, and did not play any of my cards for their special abilities. In hindsight, that was probably a bad idea. If you play a special ability early, you will be making use of it throughout the game, and it should give you a decent advantage. I made one rule mistake for quite a number of rounds, making one more delivery per round than I was supposed to. Yet I still lost the game, despite this unfair advantage. Disgraceful!

This is the main game board. With 3 players, some spaces were off limits, and we blocked them off with game pieces.

Every round a number of dice are rolled and placed along this edge of the board. Players take turns claiming a die and taking the corresponding action. Once everyone has taken two dice, there will be one die left. Every player then gets to perform the action associated with that last unclaimed die. So you get to perform 3 actions in total.

Your player pieces represent different resources depending on where on the player board they are placed. You can see some arrows between some of the spaces. This means by paying a fee you may convert one resource to another. You do this by simply moving a player piece in the direction of that arrow. And paying, of course.

Along the edges of the central play area, you can see four of my (green) pieces. This means I have completed quite a number of missions on the main board. I must admit this achievement was due to me bungling the rules.

When a card is inserted at the top edge of the player board, it becomes a mission (or contract) you can complete. This is one of the ways to score points. You need to produce, manufacture or trade for the required resources, then deliver them.

23 Jan 2020. This kind of situation in Ascension is quite rare. Of the 6 cards in the card row, four are cost-8, one is cost-7, and one is cost-6. Normally even cost-6 cards are already considered very expensive. Having all cards being cost-6 and above meant for a long time we could only afford to buy the basic cards - Mystic or Heavy Infantry.

24 Jan 2020. We played Coconuts on Chinese New Year Eve after the family reunion dinner. My cousin Jia Cheng was pleased to have won the game.