clearing my game collection

For a long-time gamer, my game collection is not very big. I rarely sell games, because I find that troublesome. You need to take photos, count components, pack and post the games, or arrange to meet for COD. I'm too lazy to go through all that hassle. So my collection only grows and rarely shrinks. In 2020 I did one round of giving away games. I gave some to friends who were interested in the games. For some games, I feel if the chances of me playing them again are low, I'd rather give them to friends who would play them. An unplayed boardgame is a sad boardgame. In 2020 I also gave games away through a Malaysian Facebook community of boardgamers. The games I offered were all quickly claimed. I did have two conditions: you need to pick up the game yourself, and you will play it within a month and take photos of you playing it for me. I later realised that even making all those arrangements for people to come pick up the games was tiring. Many of those who took games did play them and send me photos. What was disappointing was some did not keep their word. I lost faith in humanity a little. So I no longer want to give games away to people I don't know. This time round, I made the first offer to friends, and they have claimed several titles. Of what remains that I want to get rid of, I will sell them as-and-when it's convenient for me, e.g. certain boardgame events when people can inspect and pay on the spot. I set a price not for the sake of making money. I just want people to appreciate the games. People have a bad habit of not valuing what they get for free. 

Many of the games I'm giving away or selling have been in my collection for many years. I feel a little sad to see them go, but I feel happy that they are going to people who will play them. 

 

Sat 16 Aug 2025 the Magic Rain team organised All Aboard Bites at Lalaport in Kuala Lumpur. Their flagship boardgame convention is All Aboard, and All Aboard Bites is a smaller scale public gaming event. It's a much more casual meetup. I went as a participant, just to play games. I brought some of my prototypes to be playtested. Several of the finalists of the Design and Play game design competition were there, and I played Twin Towers, Jam and Teh Tarik Game. I brought my own games (games I bought, not games I designed) - Yspahan and Municipium. I wanted to play them. However during the event whenever I was about to start a game, we usually had five players, but both these games support at most four. So I didn't manage to get them played. 

Of my own designs, I playtested Malaysian Holidays and Rebels of the Three Kingdoms. I continued playtesting the two-player variant of Malaysian Holidays. By now it is pretty stable, and I don't think I will make any more changes. It has remained the same after several playtesting sessions with different players. A slight downside is it is a little different from the 3- to 5-player game in how you choose cards. The holiday cards and taking a trip work the same way. Only the card choosing mechanism is different. 

This playtest session for Rebels of the Three Kingdoms was encouraging. When we were done and I started packing, the group asked to go again. That's a good sign. We had a dramatic end to our first game. In the late game, Kenny was the obvious leader, and no one wanted to team up with him because that would help him score points and reach the winning threshold. We all wanted to force him into the weaker alliance. When it was time to choose an alliance, he was completely isolated. We had a 4 vs 1 situation. Normally under such a situation the smaller team will lose. It's simply too big a gap. However, the four of us were careless and forgot one important detail - Xiahou Dun. This character, when facing an enemy alliance of double the size, helps his alliance win immediately. Kenny revealed his character, and it was Xiahou Dun. We should have been on the alert for this. When 4 of the 5 unused characters were revealed earlier that round, there was no Xiahou Dun, and we should have been wary that it might be in Kenny's hand. 

I received one good feedback from this playtest session of Rebels of the Three Kingdoms. One question raised by the playtesters was why Chen Gong? In history, Chen Gong was a strategist serving under Lu Bu. In the Three Kingdoms novel, he is a secondary character. I picked him to be one of the 10 characters in the game partly because I had Lu Bu, and partly because I was influenced by the Japanese manga Soten Koro / Beyond the Heavens. In the manga, Chen Gong still is a secondary character, but he left a lasting impression on me. Now I have decided to swap out Chen Gong, and swap in Zhou Yu. Chen Gong was character #1. From the gameplay perspective, when character #5 Sun Quan is in the same alliance as character #1, Sun Quan's strength would double to 10. Making Zhou Yu #1 would be perfect, because in Three Kingdoms, Zhou Yu was the genius military strategist who served under Zhou Yu, one of the three kings. Playtesting is super important because it helps you discover your blind spots. 

Sorry, Chen Gong

I made Zhou Yu a moustachioed guy

Recently I have been posting daily at my blog. I have been playing many new games on BoardGameArena.com, so there is a lot I can write about. All my posts are scheduled posts. Lately, at any time I probably have 6 to 10 posts in the queue to be published automatically. This post you are reading today was scheduled maybe a week ago. 

I write about every new game I play on BGA. Sometimes I play games I have played before. I don't write about those in detail, but I sometimes I share my new thoughts on them. 

My first play of Anachrony was with a physical copy. The mechas in the physical version are impressive. When playing on BGA, there is no more such visual impact. I did not find the game particularly interesting when I first played the physical copy. This second play hasn't changed my mind. I feel the game is complicated but I don't get much fun out of this complexity. I just find it tedious. Maybe this is a personal taste thing. 

Anachrony is worker placement game in which you collect resources and spend them to construct buildings and score points. This whole sentence sounds so generic and it can describe like half the heavy Eurogames we see nowadays. That basically sums up what I feel about the game. 

There is a more than 10 year gap since I last played Kingdom Builder. When the game was released, people paid attention because it was a design from Donald X Vaccarino, who designed Dominion, a genre-defining game. Kingdom Builder later won the 2012 Spiel des Jahres. I don't remember much about the game from when I played it many years ago. This probably means I didn't find it particularly interesting. However to my surprise I quite enjoyed my recent play. I had to relearn the game, exploring strategies, making mistakes and getting aha moments all over again. 

Every turn you must place 3 houses, but the terrain you can place on is determine by a card draw. There is randomness in this, and it seems you don't have much control. However you can actually put some thought into how you place your houses, so that no matter what terrain comes up next, you have something useful to do. So placing your houses actually takes some deep thought if you want to do well. This is certainly a much more strategic game than how simple a turn appears to be. 

Every game, out of the four scoring criteria, three are randomly drawn. Only castle scoring is fixed.

During the game, as you connect to towns, you gain special abilities that can be activated every turn. These can be very powerful. Some let you move houses (literally pick them up and put them somewhere else), some let you place extra houses. Now that I have played Kingdom Builder again, I find I really admire it. If you haven't tried this, find a chance to give it a go. 

When I first played 17: Diciassette I played it with two players, and I didn't think it works with two. Now I have played it with five, and it works much better. This should not have been a 2 to 5 player game. It should be 3 to 5. It is understandable that publishers want to put on the box as wide a player range as possible, the most common being 2 to 5. 

I first played Forest Shuffle online. Recently I played the physical version. Playing the physical version did not change my opinion. My opinion of the game started with being so-so. I saw it as just a lot of cards with different scoring conditions, and you are just trying to collect cards which combo well. Then as I played more, I warmed up a little to it because it has nice art, and set collection in itself is an enjoyable thing to do. And then as I played more, I reverted to my initial opinion. It's just lots of cards with different ways to score points. I understand why it is a successful product. I also understand why it's not my thing. Comparing the physical and digital versions, I prefer the digital version because the computer does the scoring for you. It is easy to see why others enjoy it. I witnessed myself first-time players clicking with it. They start deciding which animals and trees to collect, and then they start paying attention to what others are collecting so that they avoid giving away useful cards. They also quickly pick up the tactic of overflowing the board to discard cards which others want. 

Collection snapshot July 2025

The last time I took a photo of my game collection was 2016. For the past nine years I don't feel I have bought many games. My game collection has not changed significantly. I generally don't trade or sell games. Only in the past few years my game purchases increased a little. That is because I have now become a game publisher myself and I have been active in the local game industry. I go to boardgame fairs. I now buy games for reference and for collection, and not only because they are games I think I will love playing. I'm buying not as a gamer, but also as a designer and publisher. 

If you compare the 2025 and 2016 photos, you will find many similarities. Now I am running out of space for boardgames. I think I need to initiate a purge. I need to find some opportunity to sell games. Probably I will give some away to friends. But first I need to decide on the purge list. I remember doing this some years ago and that purge list turned out to be much shorter than I expected. It is just difficult to part with your loved ones, even the ugly ones.

Jan 2016

Jul 2025

My shelves are obviously pretty full now. Compared to 2016, you will notice that many games are still roughly where they used to be. However I do have some new games now.

I keep some empty boxes because I use them for my game design work.

It feels wrong to roll up the maps for Carcassonne Maps like this and stick them into the shelf in this  unceremonious manner, but I cannot think of any better way to store them.

I bought Samurai Swords and Axis & Allies (1984 edition) before I became a boardgame hobbyist. I bought them when on a work trip to the USA. That was in the late 1990's. 

I now leave a spot for my camera. I often take photos when I play games because I use these photos at my blog. So the camera is part of my boardgame hobby. Some games here belong to Han or Allen - Architects of the West Kingdom, Undaunted, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, and this version of Unlock which features popular boardgames. 

I invested a lot into that box of Netrunner at the bottom right. I have packed many expansions into this box. I have been wanting to get into the game system, and I have made several attempts, but I was never able to persist. So I am still a beginner. Yet I cannot bear to part with it. 

I have several Alea titles here. Also several games in the Mystery Rummy series. I am now desperate enough to squeeze games into crevices among my games. I quite like that small box game Seven! and I feel a little guilty sticking it in a crevice like an afterthought. 

Here you see many small box card games.

My games fight for space with other household supplies. Daybreak is stuck under tissue paper. At the top right I still have several unopened Netrunner expansions, called data packs. I think I have only played the Food Chain Magnate expansion once. What a shame. It's a great game and the expansion comes with many modules. 

These are the more recent games. Some are from the Essen game fair last year - 2024. I am buying more card games and small box games nowadays. I have also been buying party games. This would have been unimaginable for me 9 years ago. 

My downstairs offshoot is still there. Many years ago I placed some games there which are suitable for children, so that I could easily pick one up to play with my children. At the time they were still in primary school. Now they are in university. These games have not yet migrated back to the main collection space, because I don't have enough space. 

This is not my game collection shelf. This is my home office. When I work at home and I need to conduct online training or attend online meetings, I sit in front of this shelf. This shelf was deliberately arranged like this to be presentable. When having Zoom meetings I prefer to have a real background and not a virtual one. It feels more authentic and personal. I intentionally placed a few boardgames. They can be good conversation starters.

If the person at the other end of the online meeting says they have played Twilight Struggle, then I know this is a gamer. Not many people ask me about Twilight Struggle though. The game people ask me about most frequently is Lord of the Rings. Because they think it is the book.

My home office is just one of two new offshoots compared to nine years ago. The other new offshoot is this to-play pile. These are the games I need to remind myself to play and write about.

My boardgame shelf in 2004

I recently came across an old photo which was taken shortly after I became a boardgame hobbyist. It brought back many memories and feelings, of when I first started out in this hobby, the kinds of games that were popular back then, and what made me buy the games I bought. 

This is my collection in 2016, and you can contrast it against the photo below taken in 2004. The 2016 photo shows about 80% of my collection. I now realise I have not taken photos of my game collection for six years! I have not been buying many new games in recent years, so my collection now does not look all that different from 2016.  

This is the photo from 2004 of my game collection then. This shelf was not bought specifically for boardgames. This photo was taken in Taipei. At the time I worked there on a long-term assignment, and my company rented an apartment for me. This was an existing shelf at the apartment. 

When I look at these games, I feel I am transported back in time. These are games from a different age. Mexica has a newer edition now. Java has gone out of print. Many other games have newer editions now - Carcassonne, Ra, Medici, Saint Petersburg, Puerto Rico and Lost Cities. Samurai wasn't mine. It was Crystal's. I wasn't particularly fond of it when I tried it then, so I didn't order a copy. Crystal liked it very much so she got herself a copy. Good on her. This edition here is the best one. The later editions were not as pretty. 

Ticket to Ride, Goa and Saint Petersburg are games released in 2004. Goa was a gift from Yoyo. I visited his boardgame cafe regularly then, and often ordered games from him. He had a copy of Goa with a slightly damaged box. He said if I didn't mind he'd give it to me. I said yes thank you. The game inside was in perfect condition. 

Most of the games in this photo are published before 2004, but they still represent the kind of games hobbyists would buy circa 2004. There is much sentimental value to me, and I would say there is some archaeological value too. The photo was taken with a film camera and not a digital camera. That's archaeology! 

boardgame chain

Oct 2019. I decided to do a minor purge of my collection. I got into the hobby around 2003, and over 16 years I had acquired about 250 games. Many of them had not been played for years. So I wanted to give them away to people who would play them. Why giving away instead of selling? I had thought about my objective. My objective was to have the games played. Boardgames should be played, and they should bring joy to people. I also wanted to declutter my home and make space. Another consideration was I didn't want to deal with the hassle. I imagined if I tried to sell the games, the buyer would ask for photos and component checks (which were reasonable). Finding buyers would likely take time too. When I listed the games as free, they were all claimed within 12 hours. Later, I found that even when giving games away, there was much effort required - making appointments, reminding people, needing to stay home to wait.

After picking all the games I was ready to give away, the first thing I did was getting approval from the board - my family. Sure enough, they vetoed a few games. Next, I offered the games to a few gamer friends. They claimed some. Finally I went to the Facebook group Board Games To-Go (MY) to offer the rest. I set two conditions. (1) You have to come pick it up yourself. (2) You will play the game within 30 days, take a photo, and send it to me. In every box I put a sheet of paper. On that sheet of paper I wrote my email address, as the first item of a list. I asked the recipient of the game to add his email, then play the game and take a photo, and finally send the photo to every email address on the list, i.e. to all past owners of the game. I asked that when he or she no longer played the game, to give it to someone who would play it. This was how I wanted to create boardgame chains. I set my own expectations that this might not work as I hoped. Afterall, the people whom I was giving games to were mostly strangers. These below are some of the games I gifted, and friends I made along the way.

These were the initially shortlisted games. Games vetoed by my wife and children were Monopoly Express, Rabbit Hunt, Carcassonne: Discovery and Confetti.

These are Spielbox mini expansions. Log from Meeples Cafe has been giving me copies of the Spielbox magazine for years, and I stash away every mini expansion that comes with the magazines. However I rarely get to use them, because I usually don't own the corresponding games. I decided to give these away. I offered them to friends I know, then fellow boardgamers I met at boardgame sessions, and finally I asked Meeples Cafe for permission to leave the box with them, to allow their customers to take any expansion they fancy.

Caesar & Cleopatra was gifted to Ong Dun Chuan. I bought this around 2003 when I was in Taipei. It was one of my earliest games, and there is certainly some sentimental value, but I am happy to see it get played again.

Sblap went to Yusup. This is a children's game / casual game and a word game.

Mykerinos went to Jason Law. This is one of the earlier worker placement games. It was published by Ystari (who published Caylus).

Zombie Tower 3D went to Sea Lin Yao. This is one eye-catching game because of that 3D tower.

Trias went to Abraham from Vivae Boardgame Cafe. This is an older game. It has dinosaurs and tectonic shifts. Something a little different.

Kingdoms of Crusaders went to Choe Chee Kong. This is a 2-player card game from Russia. It has some similarities to Lost Cities.

Victory: The Blocks of War went to C. E. Chua. This is an old Columbia Games block game. This has sentimental value too, because I bought it even before I became a boardgame hobbyist. I had only played it a few times. After I got into the hobby, I never played it again, because by then there were plenty of other games I chased after. So I never revisited it. It is great to see it played again.

collection snapshot Jan 2016

The last time I made a photo record of my boardgame collection was not that long ago - October 2014. I'm doing it again because I just made a major rearrangement of my games. I switched from vertical storage to horizontal storage. I did this after reading an article on Spielbox magazine. According to a museum curator grade boardgame collector, the best way to store boardgames is horizontal. I have been doing vertical all these years. If I remember correctly I got the idea of vertical being better from BGG. Vertical storage means you won't have boxes stacked atop one another and the upper boxes damaging the lower ones due to their weight. Also it is easier to take a box off the shelf. However one problem I always have with the vertical system is for some games the components fall all over the place inside the box and they get quite messy. Most boardgames have some form of box insert, and these box inserts are usually designed for horizontal use. When you store a boardgame vertically, components may fall out of their designated slots. The Spielbox article says that horizontal storage is better as long as you only stack boxes of similar dimensions, and you don't stack too many. I have decided to trust the professional and ignore the hobbyists. I did a major rearrangement, and while I was at it I also did some cleaning. Many boxes had gathered some dust and I wiped them clean using a slightly damp cloth.

Since the last photo record, I had not gained many new boardgames (by boardgame hobbyist standards, mind you). Maybe just a dozen or so.

Here's my main storage area. Most games are now horizontal. From this photo it may seem like I still have much room for growth, but this is misleading. I have brought some games to my office, so this photo record is not 100% complete.

This photo was taken in Oct 2014. The games were mostly vertical then.

Zooming in to the leftmost columns of my main storage area.

Recently acquired games include Ships, Pandemic: The Cure and Machi Koro Deluxe.

Some of the games at the bottom are still vertical, because these are Han's and Allen's games. I didn't remember whether they prefer their games vertical or horizontal, so I didn't touch them.

This is the first offshoot section, where I keep some children's games and games which children can play too. That stack of magazines at the bottom right are Spielbox magazines. Log from Meeples Cafe still keep free copies for me.

This is the second offshoot section, downstairs. These are also children's games or games which children can play. The other boxes contain my children's toys. Only when I took this photo did I realise that I had forgotten to rearrange the boxes here. I did it afterwards, but I have no photo to prove it.