my 2025

The biggest change at my boardgame blog in 2025 was the quantity. Since starting this blog in 2007, I have never written this many blog posts. The number of posts is more than double of the next highest year. This is mainly because of the many new-to-me games I played on BoardGameArena.com. Together with my long-time gaming buddies Han and Allen, we started playing asynchronous games on a regular basis. I discovered many new games this way.  

This year I have played 260 different games, and of these, 187 are new-to-me. For comparison, in 2024 I played 72 different games. In 2025, I had 777 plays, of which 280 are my usual suspects top three - Star Realms, Race for the Galaxy (played vs AI) and Ascension. My other dimes are Innovation, Daybreak, Regicide and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. I played 46 games of Innovation, almost as many as Ascension. I shouldn't count Ali Baba, because my records of games I design are not accurate. I demo them a lot and don't always record these. Also I treat demoing games as work and not play. I get all these numbers from the https://geekgroup.app website. This is such a nifty tool. It's easier to use and has more features than what BoardGameGeek.com currently does, and its data is synced from BGG. 

Surprisingly when I list my favourite new-to-me games played this year, the top two are heavy Eurogames, a genre which I proclaim to no longer like. Stupor Mundi offers very different ways to improve your capabilities. You need to compete in several different aspects. It presents difficult decisions. The many aspects in the game are linked in different ways so you have to take care of all of them. There are so many different ways to build your castle. 

Darwin's Journey was a challenge to learn. Part of why I like it is the challenge. I did so poorly in the first game it motivated me to want to do better. It was a puzzle to solve. There was so much I was supposed to do, and I was appalled by how little I had achieved by the end of the game. This is a rewarding game to learn to play at least half competently. 

My most memorable game session was Blood on the Clocktower. This is a social deduction game, and ironically social deduction games are generally not my thing. Blood on the Clocktower is an improved and more complex version of Werewolf. In the game I played, I was the demon, i.e. the main bad guy. That made me rather nervous. In this game, every single villager (here called townsfolk) has a unique ability, which makes playing the demon challenging. Thankfully there are balancing factors. Even though the townsfolk do know some pieces of information, this information might be wrong. The moderator might give them wrong information because they have been poisoned, or their powers have weaknesses in certain situations. I won as the demon, and learned that I can be a pretty convincing liar. 

I played many good games this year. Others new to me which are memorable include Santa Maria, Tiger & Dragon, Maracaibo, Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship, Duel for Cardia, and Drones vs Seagulls.

Tiger & Dragon

Santa Maria

On the game designing and publishing side of my boardgame hobby, this year I published the fourth game under Cili Padi Games - Pinocchio. This was also the year the Matagot edition of Dancing Queen was released. My first game published under an established international publisher. This is an important milestone for me. I have now exported my games to USA (Portland Games Collective) and Denmark (Games Kobenhavn). I have a second game which has found a publisher. Malaysian Holidays has been licensed to Specky Studio, and it will be released early 2026, in conjunction with Visit Malaysia Year. I thought I wouldn't be participating in many boardgame and boardgame related events in 2025, because they are tiring and sales aren't always great, but I still went to quite a few - Sarong Music Run, Dice & Dine, Keretapi Sarong, Asian Board Games Festival in Penang, and Thailand Board Game Show. There was a boardgame event at my hometown of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, but unfortunately I couldn't make it. My friends who were there said they did great sales. Looks like Sabahans are hungry for boardgames! I hope there will be a similar event in 2026, and I will do my best to be there. It's my hometown! 

Keretapi Sarong event

Asian Board Games Festival in Penang

Thailand Board Game Show 2025

I have been participating less in game design competitions. This year I've only participated in the one organised by STTOS, designing a game for Sabah tourism. However this year I became one of the judges of the Design & Play (DNP) game design competition organised under Malaysian Boardgame Design (MBD). There were six judges, all Malaysian game designers who have published games. It was an interesting experience, seeing a game design competition from the other perspective. We hope Malaysian boardgame design continues to grow and we see more and more good games from local designers. 

Haireey, Buddhima, Chee Kong, Logan, Jon and I 

This year I did a seminar at Connaught Chinese Primary School on boardgames and parenting. I'm doing a little part in creating awareness of boardgames. When I visited Hong Kong on a personal trip, I met up with and interviewed Charles Yan, a Hong Kong publisher. It was fun to learn about the boardgame industry in Hong Kong, and to some extent China and Taiwan too. 

At SJK(C) Taman Connaught with my friends who helped run games with the attendees.

Charles and I in Hong Kong

I am running out of space at home for boardgames, and did a small purge this year, giving away some games to friends, and selling some. Now that I have some space on my game shelves, I hope I don't use it up too quickly. 

This year I participated in the annual BGC (BoardGameCafe.net) Boardgame Retreat for the first time. I've known Jeff and Wai Yan for years and they have been my main game supplier (drug dealer) for a long time. Now I'm selling my own games through them. I had a blast at the retreat. It was great to have a few days of being away from everything else and simply enjoying my hobby. 

Here's wishing everyone a wonderful 2026 ahead, and many more happy gaming moments! 

Catan: New Energies

Catan: New Energies is a variant and a standalone game in the Catan universe. 95% of the original The Settlers of Catan is still here. Some elements have been added. The additions are a social commentary. This game explores the concept of sustainable development. In order to do well, you must develop your cities and towns in an environmentally-friendly way. Otherwise you will be penalised. 

You start the game with one town and one city. Every turn, the active player rolls two dice, and they determine which hexes produce resources. If a producing hex is next to one of your settlements (town or city), you gain a resource. Resources can be spent to build roads and new settlements, or to buy development cards. You can trade resources with others. You can also trade with the game supply. Your goal is to get to 10 points. Towns are 1pt, cities 2pts. Some development cards are 1pt. Having the longest road is 2pts, and having played the most clean-up cards is 2pts. These are all the same as base Catan, just that some resources and components have new names. 

Here are the new stuff. At the start of every turn, event chips are drawn from a bag. When a specific number of chips for a particular event type is drawn, that event is triggered and players suffer (or enjoy) the effects. The bag starts with bad events, but when players build clean power plants, good events will be added to the bag. A new way the game ends is the bag being exhausted. Depending on how polluting the players are as a whole, the number of chips being drawn from the bag differs. The pace of the game is affected by player actions. 

Player board

Cities no longer produce double the resources. Instead they produce one resource and one science. Science (lightbulb icon) is a new resource. You can spend science to build power plants. Dirty power plants are cheaper than clean power plants. Dirty power plants, towns and cities all increase your carbon footprint, while clean power plants reduce it. It is always good to have a smaller carbon footprint. Many events penalise players with the largest footprint. Power plants produce yet another new resource - power. Power can be spent to increase your storage, remove pollution, remove dirty power plants or take resources. 

With these elements added, the game is a bit more complex than the standard Catan. 

Along the edges of the board there are spaces for event chips. Whenever a set is completed, the corresponding event is triggered. Brown events are bad. 

This track indicates how polluting everyone is as a whole. At different pollution levels, the number of chips being drawn from the event bag differs. 

Towns can have at most one power plant, while cities can have three. The town pieces have only one curved indent, while the city pieces have three. These indents remind you of the number of power plants allowed. 

The game instantly feels familiar because almost all of what you have seen in The Settlers of Catan are also here, just that some are called different names. I like Catan, so this game works for me. I'm just playing Catan with some additional rules. Do they make the game better? At the moment it's hard to say. I'm certainly fine with basic Catan, so the additions are not a necessity. To me it's just a variant, and it is nice to have some variety if you have played a game many times. 

I played this online at BoardGameArena.com, and I think it's not very well suited for asynchronous play, because this is a trading game. The trading aspect is slow and tedious. If playing face-to-face, or playing a live game with Zoom on, we will be able to negotiate and conclude trades very quickly. In asynchronous mode we have to wait till the next time we login, only to see our trade proposal declined, and then we try to propose another trade, and then we have to wait again. I want to play this game again, but not in async mode. 

This is how you do trading when playing in async mode

I call this game social commentary because it feels like I am being preached to. It is more expensive to build clean power plants, but if you build dirty power plants and have a large carbon footprint, you will cause bad events to happen more frequently, and you will likely suffer from them more too. Pollution slows your production. More towns and cities mean more production, but also more pollution. Still, I think it is a good thing that they make a game to create more awareness about sustainable development and clean energy. Catan is a huge brand, which means they have social impact. 

Our game ended unexpectedly (to me), due to the bag running out of chips. This is a new way the game ends, and I was not prepared at all. We were all still far from the 10 points winning condition. I feel I was unlucky with the die rolls, and often couldn't do much. My progress was slow. Overall we became pretty green. When you are very green, the game actually speeds up, with two event chips being drawn instead of one. I didn't pay close attention and was caught unprepared. When the chips run out, the greenest play wins the game. 

Fishing

Fishing is a deck-building trick-taking game from mad scientist designer Friedemann Friese. The game is played over eight rounds. Every round you score points based on the cards you win. These cards are shuffled, and they go to the bottom of your personal draw deck. In the next round, you draw cards from your personal draw deck. Your draw deck starts empty. In the first round, if you don’t even win enough cards to add to your draw deck, you will get some help. This is where things start getting interesting. When your draw deck runs out, it means you need help, and the game will help you by letting you draw powerful cards from reserve decks. There are several reserve decks, each containing cards more powerful than the previous. How many of these decks will be used in a game depends very much on how the game goes. Due to how more and more powerful cards get into circulation, the landscape of the game changes as you play.

It is probably not accurate to describe this as a deck-building game since you don’t have much control on what cards get added to your deck. You just know the cards which get added becomes stronger and stronger. 

Cards come in four suits. The reserve cards will introduce a trump suit. In the reserve decks there are also cards with higher numbers than the starting cards, and also some cards with special powers. One special power in the game allows you to steal one card from the current trick, even if you don’t win it. Another power lets you become the start player for the next trick.

The game has an interesting ebb and flow. If you do poorly, you will get to draw new powerful cards, and they can help you greatly in the next round. It might not be a good idea to intentionally lose all the time. It is still important to score points. The special power card which can steal someone else’s card is important. This is one way you can improve your deck without needing to lose too much or taking too many weak cards. 

Whenever you win a trick, you place the cards in the pile on the left, so that you can keep track of how many cards you have won in the current round. When the round ends, you shuffle these cards and add them to the bottom of your draw deck, on the right. 

These are some of the the reserve cards from the strongest reserve deck (5 stars). 

For 4 players, these are the hand sizes for each of the 8 rounds.

You can do a fair bit of card counting. By observing which cards your opponents have won, you know what cards they have in their decks so you can somewhat anticipate them. This is a strategic element in the game. 

Fishing is a fun twist to the trick-taking genre. I like it! 

Little Fighters 2 - The Card Battle

Little Fighters 2 was a hit digital indie game released in Hong Kong in 2000. It was remastered and re-released in 2025, its 25th anniversary. Together with the re-release, a novel was published, and the deluxe version of the novel comes with a small box card game. This is that small box card game. 

This is a game for 2 to 4 players. You play one of four characters in the digital game and you will have a hand of 13 cards, corresponding to one suit in a typical poker deck. That means the numbers go from 2 to Ace. The card values represent strength, and depending on the character you play, some cards have special abilities, e.g. taking back a discarded card. 

Every round, everyone simultaneously plays a card from his hand. The highest number wins, but if there are ties, all tied players automatically lose. The winner of a round gets to place the winning card into a 3 x 3 grid. You play tic-tac-toe on this grid. Whoever makes three in a row in the grid wins the game. If the grid is filled without anyone managing to make three in a row, you can use your winning card to displace a weaker card in the grid.

After reading the rules, I thought the game was rather simplistic. There was nothing particularly new or interesting. Only when I played the game I found that it worked better than I expected. It is indeed pretty simple, but there are some meaningful tactical considerations. I did a three player game, and I think 3 or 4 players will be more interesting than 2, because it is possible to clash numbers. When Han was leading and Xiu Yi (or was it Xiang Yang) and I wanted to stop him, we played the same high number and lost that round to Han. With three or four players, you can actually discuss what numbers to play if you want to gang up on the leading player. It is important to count cards. If you know your opponents' Aces have all been played, you can be confident yours will certainly win. The four characters are similar but not exactly the same. When you understand their personalities, you can adjust your play style accordingly. 

Overall this is still a simple game. Fans of the original computer game will find this enjoyable. Some IP boardgames and card games are made by non-gamers, and these are painfully obvious to us gamers. Little Fighters 2 is made by gamers, so you get a package which not only honours the original IP but is also a properly decent game. 

5 Towers

The first thing 5 Towers reminds me of is Lost Cities. You have five suits, and you must play your cards in a specific order, with no turning back. However there are several important differences, so 5 Towers delivers a different play experience. You can build up to five different towers, each a different colour, and you most likely will. Building a tower means playing cards of the same suit in a column. The numbers must go from highest to lowest. At the end of the game, each card scores 1 point, but if you cap your tower with the 0 card, the tower scores double. 

You don't have any hand cards. You gain cards through a bidding mechanism. Every round, the start player reveals five cards from the deck and declares how many he wants to take. If anyone wants these cards, they must declare a higher number. This goes on until everyone has had a chance to declare a number, and the one willing to take the most cards must take that number of cards and add them to his play area. Naturally if anyone is willing to take all five, he immediately does so and the bidding ends. 

Cards at the centre of the table are not always good for you. Ideally you want to build your towers slowly, letting them grow one step at a time so that you can have many levels in every tower. If you take a card which makes you jump from a high number directly to a low one, you are forgoing the opportunities to build many levels in between. 

One important difference between 5 Towers and Lost Cities is you can renovate your towers. Once per round, you can remove the topmost card from one tower. This means it is possible to go backwards. You can remove one card to make space for other cards. However there is a cost associated with every card removed. You keep them in a rubble pile, and at the end of the game you lose points for every card there. The first card costs you 1 point, the second card 2 points, and so on. So renovation is not something you take lightly. 

The game is played until the deck runs out twice. Then the highest scorer wins. 

This is a component from another game, but we used it as start player marker. 

Playing 5 Towers you will constantly be torn between grabbing points and sacrificing opportunities. Unless you get lucky, most of the time when you take a card to play, you will skip some numbers. These are the opportunities you will lose, unless you renovate. You must constantly evaluate how useful the set of cards at the centre are to each of your opponents. If you want the cards and they are also highly desired by others, you probably need to bid a high number, or even take all five. However if the cards are bad for everyone else, you can safely bid to take only one or two that you really want. 

Player tableaus will quickly develop to become quite different, so the set of cards at the centre will often be of different values to everyone. It is always interesting to analyse how good that set of cards is for each player. You are often in dilemma about whether to take the cards, and how many to take. In an ideal world, you are able to build your towers one step at a time, wasting no opportunity. But life is not perfect, and we have to choose our imperfections. That's life. It's about the choices we make. 

The Gang

The Gang turns Texas Hold 'em Poker into a cooperative game. It's a great idea. Most of the cards in the game are just standard poker cards. Unknowing passers by will probably think you are just playing regular poker. 

Your goal as a team is to guess the order of your hands based on strength. You need to guess who has the strongest hand, then the second strongest, and so on. You need to do this right three times to win the game. If you fail for a third time, you lose. At the start of a round, everyone draws two cards. These are never shown to your teammates, and you may not discuss them at all. From these two cards, you already need to start guessing who will have the strongest poker hand. Depending on where you think you will rank among all hands, you pick a white poker chip with the appropriate number of stars. More stars means stronger. If you already have a pair, you'd probably pick the chip with the most stars. If you have a lousy 2 and 7, you'd probably pick the chip with just one star. Everyone must take a chip eventually, and you need to coordinate this without discussing your cards at all. Once everyone is happy, you move on to the next stage. 

Now you reveal three cards at the centre of the table. You look at your own two cards and see what kind of combo they can form with the three shared cards. You need to do the ranking again, this time using yellow poker chips. Since you have new information, your ranking may already differ from the first stage. 

In the next stage, you reveal a fourth shared card. You must always use the two cards in hand to form your combo, but now you have four cards in the common pool from which to pick three. You do the ranking for a third time. Finally, a fifth card will be revealed, and you do one last ranking before checking whether you win the round. Only the final ranking will be considered to see whether you win. The first three stages are for your reference, to help you decide how to do the ranking in the final stage. If you get the order right, you win the round. 

Every round you will do ranking four times

You do need to know a bit about poker to be able to play The Gang. You need some idea of how rare the various combos are. I learned that sometimes even just a pair can be pretty strong. If you get a straight, or a flush, you can probably confidently declare yourself the strongest. Every round you go through four stages. Any change in ranking between the stages is an important clue. For example when the fourth shared card is revealed and it is a 7, and I happen to have a single 7 in hand, this gives me a pair, which can make me change my mind about my ranking. I might go from weakest to strongest or second strongest. The key information here for my teammates is a 7 making me change my mind. Throughout the game players may not exchange any information about their cards. When players have different ideas about how strong a combo is, it can be dangerous. You may need to fail a few times for everyone to become aligned about how strong certain combos are. 

This is a creative concept for a game. Texas Hold 'em is a game many people are already familiar with. The Gang might be a good opportunity to introduce non-gamers to the boardgame hobby. The game is for 3 to 6, but I suspect the game will be more fun with more players, because it is more challenging. I love a challenge! 

We failed three times and lost the game.

Cthulhu Wars

This is Han's game, and it has a ton of miniatures. This box you see is just for the basic components, including the game board, the player boards and the player markers. However you cannot fit the miniatures into this box. There are at least two other huge boxes needed for all the miniatures in the game. When you need to bring this game to game night, you'll be carrying several bags like you're going on a trip. Or to war. 

Cthulhu Wars is an area control dudes-on-a-map wargame. You play the Great Old Ones competing to dominate Earth. Every player controls a different faction. Some basic game mechanisms apply to all factions, but each faction has its own set of abilities, units, and ways to score points. One thing everyone has in common is the cultists. You need cultists at interdimensional gates to summon your monsters. Monsters come in three classes - small, medium and large. Your large monster is your Great Old One, the lord of your faction. This is a point scoring game. Sorry that doesn't sound very wargamey, but I assure you there is still lots of warring. Some of your points are public, but some are kept secret. So you don't know for sure who is the true lead player and how close they are to winning. One of the basic ways to score points is to be in control of gates. You score points every round. 

This is the player board for one of the factions. They are all different. At the start of a round, you receive actions points, and this is marked using the track near the top. Not everyone gets the same number of action points. Factions have different ways to generate action points. Cultists in play are one way to generate action points, but there are other ways too. Whenever you perform an action, you spend action points. Once you run out, you can't do anything else and need to wait for everyone else to also use up their action points. 

The player board lists all your faction specific units, their combat strengths and their special abilities. The six spaces on the right are for your spell books. They specify conditions which you can fulfil in order to earn spell books. Spell books are faction specific abilities. They are all useful. You need to earn all six spell books before you qualify to win. 

Han's copy of the game is all painted. He did all this painting during the pandemic when he was stuck at home. It's a lot of work! 

Cthulhu Wars is a very Ameritrash-style game. You get a majestic view with so many pretty miniatures on the board. Nowadays Ameritrash games incorporate some Eurogame elements. You are not just blindly attacking. You choose how to attack and fighting is a means to an end. You must fully utilise the abilities of your faction to maximise your points. Some factions are natural warmongers. For example there is one which gets monster upgrades whenever a monster survives a battle. Fighting is no longer just about winning, it is also about surviving and coming back stronger. Cthulhu is the king of the seas. It can submerge and disappear and then emerge somewhere else (must be a sea zone) bringing troops. However there are also factions which benefit from coexisting with others. 

One of the stars of the show - Cthulhu

This is a low granularity wargame. You only have a handful of units of each type. You can't spawn units indefinitely. When you need to move units, each unit being moved costs an action point. Moving about takes a lot of energy! You have to use your action points sparingly. Your units can coexist with those of another player. When you enter a territory with units from other factions, you don't automatically attack them. In fact, if you want to attack them, you need to wait for your next turn and spend an action point to do so. Big battles take much coordination to make happen.  

Battles are resolved using dice. Some die faces have no effect, some force enemy units to retreat, and some kill enemy units. You may not necessarily score points by killing enemy units. You should fight only with good reason. Else you are wasting your action points. 

In our game I was rather passive and I focused primarily on getting all my spell books. I did not work much on points. Eventually I did get all my spell books, but not that much sooner than the rest. By then I was rather far behind in points, and it was difficult to catch up. I should have been more aggressive earlier in the game, to make sure I don't fall behind too much. To truly enjoy the game you need to know the characteristics of the factions in play. This shapes how you play. We had a 6-player game. By the time we saw one or two players pulling ahead from the group, we should have already ganged up on them to keep them in check. However most of us were busy learning the game and did not do much leader bashing. I certainly was absorbed in doing my own stuff and stayed out of fights. In hindsight that was unwise. I played a wargame like a Eurogame. That wasn't going to end well. 

The most interesting part of Cthulhu Wars is the distinctness of the factions. Your play experience varies greatly depending on which faction you play. You must learn to make good use of your faction's unique abilities. The game experience also differs depending on the combination of factions in play. If you like the Cthultu theme, you will likely enjoy this. 

Hab & Gut (The Rich and the Good)

The Rich and the Good is the English version of Hab & Gut. I’m going to refer to the game as Hab & Gut, not because I’m being pretentious, but because I’ve always heard of it being referred to in the original German name. Also it’s a much shorter name to type. This is a game of commodity price manipulation, insider information and making donations. You are an investor (well, to be totally honest you are a profiteer) making money from stocks, and you are also expected to be a philanthropist. You win by being the richest, but if you do the least charity work, you are removed from contention. So yes you want to make money, but you must also make sure you give away enough of it so as not to be the smallest donor.  This is a tricky balance. 

There are six commodities in the game. The card deck contains cards which cause their values to go up or down. There are more cards which increase the values, so generally the market goes up. Every game only a subset of cards will be played. They are put on racks, and each rack is placed between two players. You can only see the cards on the two racks immediately next to you. You know these cards will be played. You share some information with the neighbour on your left, and some other information with the neighbour on your right. 

There are two stages in every round. In the first stage you buy or sell shares. Shares are limited in quantity and they do run out. In the second stage you manipulate share prices by playing cards. You pick one card each from the two racks next to you. One card is applied in full, but for the other you only apply half the effect. Halving the effect can mean reducing the growth, or cushioning the fall. All the cards on all racks will eventually be played. It is only a matter of time and whether the effect is reduced. 

The game is about buying low and selling high. Information is power. Although you can half the effect of some cards, this is not your most powerful weapon. You can try to guess whether share prices will go up or down based on the actions of your opponents. How players share some common information is interesting. You have a bit more information when you try to analyse what your neighbours are thinking. The donation part of the game is a game of chicken. Giving money away is in direct contradiction of your winning criteria, i.e. money. Yet if you donate the least, you will not even qualify to compete. There is a mid game checkpoint where you can see how much everyone has donated so far. One challenging aspect about the donations is they are made using shares, not cash. That means after you make a donation, the value can change. This adds some unpredictability. Donations also affect the availability of shares in the market. 

Cash flow is very important. You need cash in hand to be able to invest and that is the only way you make more money. Without cash, you cannot grab opportunities. So sometimes you have to sell some shares, even if they have not made you much money yet, if you believe there will be other shares with higher potential. You must watch your opponents closely.  Their actions will give you clues about the insider information they have. 

Hab & Gut has several clever ideas, and they are well implemented in a no-fuss manner. I think that is admirable.