my 2024

2024 has been a memorable year for me. Having been a boardgame hobbyist for 20 years, this was the first time I visited the Essen game fair in Germany. For boardgamers, Essen is a pilgrimage. I went purely as a gamer. I was not an exhibitor. I did not go as a publisher or as a business. I was a consumer going there to fully enjoy myself. And what an experience it was. It was earth-shattering to me, a first timer. So many games, and so many are interesting. So much to see and to be amazed by. By gamer standards, I didn't buy that many games from the fair. Mostly small box card games, and only a few standard sized boardgames. Several months in, and there are still many I have not yet played. I have much homework ahead. 

 

Of the games I played for the first time in 2024, my favourite isn't even a recent game. It is Seven! (with exclamation mark). This is a simple and silly card game. The core mechanism is straightforward. It is something casual players can easily pick up and enjoy. Despite the simplicity, I like how it creates tension and surprises for the players. There certainly is some luck, but it's exhilarating when you feel you've read your opponents correctly. I am working hard on creating games like this - simple yet enjoyable, and not rehashes, and not dumb. 

Heat: Pedal to the Metal is a race game, and normally race games are not my thing. However I enjoyed it greatly, despite having only played it online. Days of Wonder (the publisher) is working their magic. Excellent game choice and amazing production. 

Riftforce is a 2-player card game which gave me a pleasant surprise. Even after reading the rules I wasn't confident I would like it. Only after playing it I was able to appreciate the intricacies of the design. 

An Infamous Traffic was a memorable experience. This is a game about China and the opium wars. This story is not often told in boardgames. 

I have played many trick-taking games, and by now I tend to be wary of them. OnStage / SangDen from Vietnam turned out to be delightful. It has several neat ideas, and they come together splendidly. 

Other new-to-me games I like are Hegemony, Ticket To Ride Legacy (Legends of the West), Sky Team and 300: Earth & Water. 

The number of plays I had in 2024 is less than in 2023. In 2023 I had 813 plays, of which 678 were Race for the Galaxy, Star Realms and Ascension. After deducting these three which greatly distorted my total, the total becomes 135. In 2024, I had 534 plays, of which 440 were the same three games plus Dominion. Deducting the big four, the total becomes 94. The big numbers come from games with digital versions. That is why I manage play a lot. Some are played with Han, and some against AI's. In 2024 I played 72 different games, slightly more than 2023 when I played 61 different games. I knew I was playing less in 2024, because I was busy with work, and also my boardgame time was spent not only on purely playing games, but also on designing, playtesting, publishing and selling games. 

I published two games in 2024, Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Snow White was originally slated for end of 2023, but it was delayed and released only in early 2024. Ali Baba was scheduled for December 2024, but I managed to get it out by early November. I guess that's an improvement. I have started work on my 2025 game. I have decided the next one will be Pinocchio. I have been thinking about which game to choose for some time. I pick Pinocchio because I want my next game to be something simple and has wide appeal. That means it needs to be something casual gamers and non-gamers can easily learn and enjoy. The price point needs to be low. Non-gamers find it hard to accept the typical price points of games that gamers are used to. 

My first published game Dancing Queen has sold out. I have no more stock available. There may still be stock at some of the retailers which have bought copies from me. Dancing Queen will have an international release by a large publisher likely within the first half of 2025. Since an established and experienced publisher is publishing and marketing it, normally I would not need to work on the publishing part of the game any more. They have many more resources than I do and can do it much better than I can. However there is something about the older art and theme that I still feel attached to. So I decided to still do my own small print run, with the agreement of the main publisher of course. So there will be a second Malaysian edition of Dancing Queen, in addition to the international edition. This edition will have Chinese added, because I want to enter the Chinese language market, not just in Malaysia but also hopefully in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. The international edition will be in English and French, and will likely be focused on the US and Europe markets. So I'm hoping to do something for Dancing Queen to prepare for expansion to Asian markets. 

The second Malaysian edition of Dancing Queen will be different from the first. This time I am getting Magicraft to do the printing. I won't be using the custom-made Ricola-style box. It will have normal paper based cards and not PVC cards. It won't come pre-sleeved. So the 2022 first edition of Dancing Queen will become a rare edition. If someone offers to buy your copy at a high price, please don't sell it. Either that or take the opportunity to charge an arm and a leg. The second edition will have a lower price point, because those changes above will help me lower my production cost. 

2024 has been a busy year for me in the game design and publishing part of my boardgame hobby, especially in the marketing area. I counted that I have participated in 7 events as an exhibitor. Game On Lah in Putrajaya in February, HELP University Open Day in May, BOXCON (KLIA2) in June, Asian Board Game Festival in Penang (Malaysia) in July, MTG Family Day in August, C2AGE (comics, cosplay, anime & games) in September, Thailand Board Game Show in November. I don't always break even with my sales at events, but events are more about exposure and marketing than profitability and sales. Breaking even is nice, but it is not always something to be expected. Or maybe I need to learn to do my sales better. 

The Malaysian boardgame market is small. We the people in the industry still need to work hard to grow the market. We need to invest much effort in creating awareness, in spreading the love of boardgames. We are far behind many other Asian countries. 

Having spent much time, effort and money on many different events, I have learned much and I strive to be more selective in 2025, and to manage my booth better. I need to be clear about the objective I'm trying to achieve for each event, be it building my brand, connecting with other people in the industry, selling my games, getting my games playtested by strangers or learning from others. Certainly my trip to Bangkok to exhibit at the Thailand Board Game Fair has been eye-opening. 

Other than exhibiting, I have also attended other types of events. I went to some Tzu Chi activities. I visited the boardgame club at Monash University. Some of these help to introduce more people to this wonderful hobby of ours, and that's something I'm happy to do. 

I took part in the Pegasus pitching day, in the Young Buddhist Association of Malaysia (YBAM) game design competition, and in the Hippodice game design competition. All were good learning experiences. 

With so much time spent on all these activities, it is no wonder that I have been spending less time playing commercially published games. 

Boardgames is no longer purely a pastime. It is something bigger to me now. Not only a business I am trying to grow, but also a mission to bring happiness to people, and to help people create memorable moments. Got to work hard in 2025 too! 

my 2021

The most important milestone for me in 2021 is Dancing Queen winning the Best Overall Game at the BoardGameGeek.com 9-card Nanogame Design Contest. This was a great encouragement for me to continue working on game design. I became a boardgame hobbyist in 2003. Throughout the years I have mostly been a consumer and not a creator. I did dabble a little in game design a few times, but I never took it seriously until recent years. The first game I spent a lot of time and energy on was F My Life, a game about questionable life decisions which has some dark humour. I made a prototype and played it quite a few times with different people. However I was not able to get it to a stage I was satisfied with. Eventually I set it aside. I still like the premise. Hopefully I can think of some other way to make it work. Then I'll return to it. 

The whole idea behind Dancing Queen was inspired by the contest. The rules required that contestants use at most 9 cards to design a game. I found this an interesting challenge because I've always admired Love Letter. It only has 18 cards but it is a clever and compact design. I wanted to do something like that - create a fun game with minimal components. Dancing Queen went through many cycles of designing, playtesting and fine-tuning. It was a rewarding experience with many happy discoveries. 

In November I participated in the Game On Lah event. This was the first time I showcased my game design at a public event. It was a valuable experience. 

I have quite a few work-in-progress game designs. Some of them are portable 2-player games just like Dancing Queen. I toyed with the idea of making a 10-card game and an 11-card game as follow ups to Dancing Queen. These games are easier to work on because younger daughter Chen Rui is usually willing to playtest with me. She was my #1 playtester for Dancing Queen and even developed a strategy I hadn't seen myself. However I later shifted to work on games for bigger groups. 2-player games may be too niche. If I am aiming at the global market, the 2P target audience is big enough. However if I'm going to start with Malaysia, then a safer and easier bet is probably casual games for 4 to 6 players which can be played at boardgame cafes and at non-gaming-specific gatherings. Now I have some prototypes which are for this player range. Some game ideas started with using just a standard deck of cards. This makes creating prototypes easier, because I don't need to create a prototype. 

Jeff, Kareem and I are working on establishing a games studio to design, develop, publish and market Malaysian games. We are all busy with our other primary jobs so this is moving slowly, but we hope to make steady progress.

Work-wise, this year I joined a partnership with three other friends to work on an education business targeting young children aged 4 to 7 - Play with Purpose. We are now one of the distributors of HABA, the 80-year-old German company specialising in children's games, toys and other products. We will be bringing the HABA Learning Program to children in Malaysia. It's a blessing to work on something you are passionate about. As the saying goes - when you find a job you love, you never have to work another day in your life. You are doing what you enjoy, so it doesn't feel like "work" anymore. In 2015 when I joined a mobile game company, it was a most exciting time in my work life.  

The pandemic situation in Malaysia was much worse in 2021 compared to 2020. I attended even fewer boardgame meet-ups than last year. This year I have slightly more than 30 new-to-me games. One which stands out is MicroMacro: Crime City. It is certainly something very different from the typical boardgame. It is essentially a solo detective game. It's the kind of game you can only solve once, just like reading a detective story. 

MicroMacro: Crime City

This year I played quite a few new-to-me games on BoardGameArena.com. They were all played with Han and Allen. We play with a Zoom conference call on at the same time, so that we can chat. The experience feels much closer to playing face-to-face. The three of us used to game regularly some years ago. We all like to play fast, often starting our turns when the previous player is still wrapping up his moves. Our tastes in games overlap well enough. We clicked well as a small gaming group. Now Han lives in Johor Bahru, about 4 hours drive away, so we don't get to meet up often. Due to the pandemic we actually met up and played, albeit virtually, more than in recent years. Among the games played online this year, I liked Carnegie the most. I can't really justify why I like it better than other similar games. It's a strategic Eurogame. It is a development game in which you improve your abilities and get more and more powerful. You get a sense of achievement as you see your efforts pay off. You get to set long-term goals, and when you are able to achieve them, you get much satisfaction. Yet many heavy Eurogames have these too. 

Carnegie

I bought a used copy of Baseball Highlights 2045. I rarely play sports-themed games and generally don't find them interesting. I am not familiar with baseball. However I quite enjoyed this game. It's a tactical 2-player game with some deck-building. You gradually trade mediocre players for better and better ones, augmenting your team. You will leverage the abilities of your players. At the same time you watch what kind of players your opponent is buying, so that you know how to play against them, maybe even recruit new players who are good at defending against or even neutralising your opponent's strengths. 

Baseball Highlights 2045

I bought a copy of Imperial Struggle, designed by the makers of Twilight Struggle. It looks more intimidating than Twilight Struggle, but once you get into it, it is not that scary. I enjoyed this sweep of history game. 

Imperial Struggle

Traders of Osaka has the Japanese game signature - small box, few components, simple rules, but everything is intricately crafted and comes together as a clever and tightly-woven game. Often when I read the rules of these Japanese games, I cannot fathom what makes them fun. Only upon experiencing them first hand I am able to appreciate their brilliance. 

Traders of Osaka

In 2021 I have bought only six games. If declaring oneself a boardgamer requires a license, mine would have been revoked. I bought MicroMacro: Crime City, Imperial Struggle, A Kindly World and Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 because they promised a certain experience I was keen about. I have owned Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 for almost a year now, and still have not started playing the campaign, because of the actual pandemic happening around us. Hopefully next year I will at least get the campaign kicked off with the same team who accompanied me through seasons 1 and 2. 

I bought Priests of Ra because I was curious to see how it worked. Ra is a game full of happy memories for me. Priests of Ra is not new. In fact it is probably out of print in most places. I bought it mostly because of nostalgia for its predecessor. Strictly speaking it was my wife Michelle who bought JOME. For now I count all game purchases in the household as mine. Michelle bought JOME to support a local game designer. 

My most played games in 2021 were all played on digital platforms - Race for the Galaxy (played against AI's), Star Realms and Ascension. I played more than 400 games of Race for the Galaxy, and more than 100 games of both Star Realms and Ascension. Other games played more than 5 times include MicroMacro: Crime City (I solved all the crimes in the base game), Betrayal Legacy (my family and I continued the campaign late last year and completed it early this year), and Sky Towers. I have certainly played many games of Dancing Queen too, just that I didn't record them when I was still in the designing and playtesting stage. Because of that I didn't develop the habit of recording plays for it even after the game was done (as in submitted for the contest). Maybe I feel the game is never quite done because it is my own design. I can always decide to change it and improve it further. 

Race for the Galaxy

I was interviewed by Sinchew Daily again. The last time was 2017 and it was a different reporter then. This time round a few others in local boardgame circles were also interviewed. The reporter wrote a series of articles and they took up quite a lot of space. This was good exposure for boardgames. 

Here are my hopes for next year. I hope the pandemic situation gets better, and I can have more face-to-face gaming sessions. I hope to make more progress in game design and game publishing. I hope to introduce the boardgame education programme (HABA Learning Program) to more children, parents and educators. Here's wishing a happy new year to everyone! 

my 2020

Looking back at 2020... okay that doesn't sound like an appealing idea. Indeed it has been an unusual year, all over the world. For me personally it has been a year with some big changes. I took a very different career path. I wrote a book. There has been, and there still is, much uncertainty. Amidst such uncertainty, boardgames (or any hobby) can be a soothing balm. A moment of escape. A quiet solace. We still need to face new challenges every day, and sometimes things don't turn out the way we hope. Having a hobby which gives us some respite is good, maybe necessary even. Spending time with friends and family helps remind us of what's important in our lives. Not that we want to run away from our problems. Taking a break can help. Sometimes we gain new perspectives. Sometimes an unexpected idea presents itself. 

In 2020, I played 57 different games. I had about 300 plays in total. Both these numbers are lower than 2019, but not by much. What dropped significantly was the number of new games played - only 20 this year. This was the lowest since I got into the hobby in a serious way in 2004. The number of boardgame sessions I joined plummeted, and so did the opportunities to try new games. I don't buy many new games. For quite a few years most new games I played were friends' games and not my own. The number of games purchased this year was also a new low - just four! 

I wonder whether boardgame publishers are doing better due to the pandemic. Since many people are stuck at home, are they buying more boardgames to play at home? Or are people buying more computer games? If people are stuck at home with their families, maybe family games are doing better than heavy gamer games. Hardcore gamers probably play more with friends than with family, and need to attend meetups to play. 

I had three dimes in 2020. In addition to the evergreens Ascension and Star Realms, Race for the Galaxy made a come-back, because I have been playing the iPad version against AI's. The app is well-made, and the AI's are decent opponents. 

The four games I bought in 2020 are Bus, Ticket to Ride: London, Ticket to Ride: Japan and Baseball Highlights 2045. Bus because Splotter. London and Japan because both places have special meaning to my family. Michelle used to live in London, near Elephant & Castle, which is featured on the game map. As a family we have visited Japan and enjoyed our trip immensely. I bought Baseball Highlights 2045 because it is by Mike Fitzgerald, who designed the Mystery Rummy series, which I enjoyed. 

I only had a handful of new-to-me games this year, and none particularly stood out. What was a little different from past years was I managed to bring out more of my own older games. Often as boardgame hobbyists we are so busy going after the new and shiny, we neglect our own games gathering dust at home. This year, it has been a pleasure revisiting some of my own games I had not played for some time. Boardgames is not always about pursuing new novelties. This year I also managed to play some good and more recent games which I had missed previously, like Nippon, The Voyages of Marco Polo, and Vinhos. Due to the pandemic, I had fewer opportunities to play face-to-face with other gamers, so I played some games online, and these were available. 

New-to-me games in 2020: 

1. Bus
2. Keyflower
3. Madeira
4. Exit: The Game - The Mysterious Museum
5. Exit: The Game - The Sinister Mansion
6. Exit: The Game - Dead Man on the Orient Express
7. Ticket To Ride: London 
8. Nippon
9. Endeavor: Age of Sail
10. Pax Transhumanity
11. Ticket To Ride: Japan 
12. Age of Steam: Argentina
13. Kuih Muih
14. Crystal Palace
15. Vinhos
16. Gettysburg
17. The Voyages of Marco Polo
18. AIEOU
19. The Crew
20. Baseball Highlights 2045

I am designing my own game now. I started this late 2019. I have been playing boardgames for many years, and this was not the first time I dabbled in designing a game myself. Prior to this I had tried doing this at least twice, but these previous attempts eventually petered out and came to nought. For a long time I just stuck to enjoying playing, and did not contemplate making my own game. I was happy enough that way. This time I decided to go for it again because I wanted to create something I could call my own. It is a vanity project. I am doing it for fun and I'm not trying to make a lot of money from it. It's about enjoying the process, and creating something that others will have fun with too. 

I intend to go all the way with this one, likely self publishing it. I want to see the physical game in my hands. I have created a prototype and I have done some playtesting with different groups. More playtesting is needed. I'm in no hurry. I want to do this properly. The working title of the game is F My Life. It is a game about questionable life decisions. It's a little cheeky and has some dark humour. 

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.

my 2019

My boardgame playing patterns and statistics have been about the same since 2016. There was a significant drop from 2015 to 2016. I realise now the change might have been because of a transition in my work life in 2015. Aug 2015 was when I joined a mobile game company. Work became busier. I had much fun at work and also committed more energy to my work, compared to my previous jobs. I had less time to play boardgames, but I still played a lot, and I still enjoyed boardgames as a hobby. Overall it was good - I found more satisfaction at work, while still having enough time to enjoy my hobby. I am now undergoing another change in work. I will be starting something new in 2020. I don't expect my boardgame playing to change much, and I'm pretty happy with its current state.

In 2019, I played 58 distinct games (lowest since 2003) a total of 339 times (slightly higher than the previous 3 years). I played 40 new-to-me games, which is the highest in the recent 4 years, though not by much. My wife and children still played some games, each having had around 30 plays of 10-15 distinct games. We completed the Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle campaign, and also the Machi Koro Legacy campaign. We played some Exit games. My family are not regular players. They are occasional players.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

Two of my dimes (games played 10 times or more) are the same ones again - Star Realms (146) and Ascension (79). Han and I are still not yet tired of them. Another dime is The Mind (12), which I found very interesting. It worked very well with casual players and non-gamers. The last dime is Machi Koro Legacy. The campaign takes exactly 10 games to complete. I played most of them during the Christmas holidays back in Sabah. My fives are Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, Keyforge, Spyfall and Pandemic: Rising Tide.

The Mind

13 games entered my collection in 2019. Four were Exit games which my wife Michelle encouraged me to buy, so that we could play them as a family activity. Two were legacy games, Machi Koro Legacy which I have just completed with my family, and Betrayal Legacy which I am now playing with Benz's group. 6 of the 13 games were bought because of nostalgia, or because I liked the series - Pandemic: Rising Tide, Mystery Rummy: Murders in the Rue Morgue, Santiago (out-of-print game which I first played many years ago in Taiwan), Machi Koro Legacy, Food Chain Magnate: Ketchup Expansion, Axis & Allies & Zombies. Only two games were completely fresh - Res Arcana and Photosynthesis. I bought Res Arcana due to my admiration of Tom Lehmann and his Race for the Galaxy. Photosynthesis was a gift. I don't buy many games nowadays. There are more than enough new games in my circle of friends. I am a lucky guy.

I gave away some games in 2019. Most of these are games I have not played for a long time. I think it's better to give them to people who would appreciate and play them. Some of the games are children's games which my daughters have outgrown. They were given to my nephew and niece, who are of the right ages for these games.

The most memorable new-to-me game was Three Kingdoms Redux from Singapore. Happy discoveries this year include games by Wolfgang Warsch - The Mind, The Quacks of Quedlinburg and Fuji; and Mooncake Master (also from Singapore).

Three Kingdoms Redux

The Quacks of Quedlinburg

The most memorable game session was Wingspan, due to the juvenile jokes about birds and eggs. I must clarify that the game itself does not encourage or condone such inappropriate behaviour. I introduced Ra to Benz, Ruby, Xiaozhu and Edwin, and that turned out to be a very funny series of games we played. Ra is magical.

Ra

New-to-me games in 2019: (alphabetical order)

1. All Manor of Evil
2. Axis & Allies & Zombies - A fun Axis & Allies variant which shakes things up a bit, but it's still Axis & Allies.
3. Betrayal Legacy
4. Caverna - For me mostly an Agricola variant.
5. Colonial Twilight - COIN (counter insurgency) game for 2 players.
6. Cryptid - Interesting deduction game, something different from the usual Eurogame fare.
7. Detective: City of Angels
8. Era of Kingdoms
9. Exit: The Game - The Forbidden Castle
10. Exit: The Game - The Sunken Treasure - Too easy for experienced players. I played it more because I wanted to spend time with the family than because I was looking for a challenge.
11. Fireball Island
12. Founders of Gloomhaven
13. Fuji - Cooperative and unusual.
14. Greenland - Somewhat complex, and luck can screw you. I like Neanderthal better. Luck can screw you too there. Life is not fair. Just enjoy the ride and laugh at your own misfortunes, and often others' misfortunes too.
15. Gugong - Popular, but it didn't work for me.
16. Hurlyburly
17. Illusion
18. John Company
19. Knister
20. Machi Koro Legacy - I prefer Machi Koro with the expansion rule, i.e. the dynamic card market. Machi Koro Legacy offers some novelty, and a shared journey.
21. The Mind - One of the more memorable games. Something quite unusual. It is fun to teach this to new players, and watch how they learn and strategise. Don't teach them the tactics. See how they figure them out.
22. Mooncake Master - A simple and pretty game that'll work for non-gamers.
23. Mystery Rummy #2: Murders in the Rue Morgue
24. Mysthea
25. Neanderthal - Successor to Greenland. See Greenland above.
26. New Frontiers - The Race for the Galaxy boardgame which has similarities to Puerto Rico. It's just okay for me. I prefer the two earlier games.
27. Pandemic: Fall of Rome
28. Pandemic: Rising Tide - More unforgiving than expected. I guess that's not surprising when one of the designers is Jeroen Doumen (Splotter Games).
29. Photosynthesis
30. Q.E. - Clever but a little dry.
31. The Quacks of Quedlinburg - Enjoyable push-your-luck and combo-building game.
32. Res Arcana - Few but impactful decisions. You have to know what you are doing. No muddling around.
33. The River - Worker placement for beginners.
34. Scythe
35. Spyfall - I played using an app and not the physical game. It's very much about lying convincingly, and quick thinking.
36. Stephenson's Rocket
37. Terror Below
38. Three Kingdoms Redux - A complex economic game that rewards good planning and prioritising. At its core a worker placement game, and it has some area majority too.
39. Western Legends
40. Wingspan - A well-deserved KdJ winner. Well produced. Decent gameplay. I had a pleasant experience with it.

why you totally should hire a boardgamer

You are a company CEO. Your business is growing. As your headcount grows, you start needing a strong management team, from middle to senior level, which can help you run your business. You get your HR person to create a job posting at Jobstreet (recruitment website), or LinkedIn, or Glassdoor, or Wobb. You get a flood of resumes to sift through. You dread the many interviews you'll need to conduct. This is so much work. But there is a simple solution - go hire a boardgamer! Here's why.

They are fast learners - These fellas play a new game every week, often more. They devour new rules faster than most people finish a glass of teh tarik. They are always keen to learn and to explore. Think of all those weird strategies they come up with trying to break a game. Remember the Halifax Hammer?

They are strategic thinkers - Many employees drag their sorry bums to work day in and day out and work like mindless zombies. Boardgamers, however, are people who are motivated and think three steps ahead. When playing A Game of Thrones, they consider every possible move of every opponent and the implications of every move. They always see the big picture, the bird's eye view. They know what are important and what are not, where the risks are, and where the opportunities are. They know how to prioritise.

They are good at planning - In Agricola, they are already building a new room and stockpiling baby food even before the make baby action card (a.k.a. family growth action card) appears.

You save on legal costs - These rules lawyers... if they can argue game rules so convincingly, like the honour of their family depends on it, imagine what they can do in real business.

They are often good judges of character - Such skills are honed in games like Poker, Sheriff of Nottingham and Liar's Dice.

They are decisive - If they can send thousands to die on the beaches of Normandy, you can rest assured they have the stomach for tough decisions. They weigh their options coolly. They quantify the risks and rewards. They pick the most practical approach without being swayed by their personal biases.

They are creative - Those crazy stories from Dixit; those wild clues from Codenames; those seemingly NSFW sculptures in Klaus Teuber's Barbarossa. That's innovation. That's genius.

They are excellent warehouse and storage experts - How else could they have managed their collections of indecent sizes?

They are well trained in stealth and deception - Think about those games they manage to sneak past their spouses without leaving any financial trace.

They are top-notch negotiators - These people would trade their grandmothers in Diplomacy and Genoa. Sometimes even Bohnanza.

They start with the end in mind - They are crystal clear what their goals are. They have a laser focus. You don't need to remind them what the victory conditions are. They are trained to remember all the sources of victory points. They are able to quickly analyse and determine the most efficient ways of scoring points. In Puerto Rico, they are already eyeing the large purple buildings by the end of Round 2.

They are good at maths - Especially those who play Power Grid without a calculator. Even more so those who play Francis Tresham's Civilization without a calculator.

They are walking encyclopedias - They can tell you about obscure ancient battles, names of towns in countries you don't even know exist, and how cats meow in more than 7 languages. They can strike conversations with any kind of client you may be serving. They are well learned and they are excellent spokespersons for your company.

They are excellent trainers - If they can teach Paths of Glory, they can train your staff on any topic.

They are dedicated and hardworking people - All those painted miniatures, sleeved cards, pimped components, laminated player boards. I've seen people sleeve Carcassonne tiles and Samurai tiles. These boardgamers have passion. That's love and dedication!

Warning: Never make them your financial controller - The way they buy games... how they Kickstart games... and the sets of metal coins in their collections. They are going to bankrupt you if put them in charge of procurement.

So yes, go boardgamers!