Three Sisters is a traditional companion planting technique where corn, climbing beans and winter squash (e.g. pumpkins) are planted together, and each of them provides benefits to the other two. The game Three Sisters is a roll-and-write game about agriculture and farming. Everyone has his own player sheet. Dice are rolled every round to determine the possible actions. You

I did a spoiler-free post about Regicide Legacy in April, giving a quick overview and showing the basic game components. This post continues from there. The first part of this post will contain no spoilers. If you have not played the game and you are thinking about it, it's safe to proceed.  I played the Regicide Legacy campaign with younger

  Gambler x Gamble!! (two exclamation marks) is a game from Japan released in 2024. It is a reimplementation of a 2016 game called Gambler x Gamble! (one exclamation mark), which won the Group SNE Contest in 2015. We all know what it will be named when it gets a third edition, don't we? When I read the rules, the first thing that comes to mind is this is Machi

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

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

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

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

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

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

I played the physical version of Rumble Nation. This is a minimalistic area majority game. I normally dislike area majority games, but this one is just so clever. It's a game from Japan, and the setting is Japan too.  You roll three dice to determine what options you have on your turn. You must use two of the dice to choose the region you will place your cubes, and the third dice

Haratama is a trick-taking game from Japan with a horror theme and great art. Every round, three card values are randomly drawn to become the penalty values for the round. That means if you win these cards you will be penalised. This is a game about scoring as few points as possible. Points are bad.  Most standard trick-taking rules apply. You must follow suit if you can. There is a

  I have been playing many trick-taking games lately. I am not specifically a fan of the genre, but I don't dislike it either. If anyone suggests a trick-taking game, I'm usually happy to play. Torchlit is a trick-taking game which emphasises making predictions. Based on your starting hand, you secretly choose one card as your torch. This number is your prediction about how

Railroad Tiles is from the same designer duo who also brought us Railroad Ink and Dragon Castle. A quick way to describe the game is advanced Carcassonne. This is a tile laying game, and you get to place meeples. But this is not a fair way to introduce the game at all. Say this to people who already like Carcassonne to hook them. This game has its own place and in many ways is

I am expecting my next game from Cili Padi Games, Pilgrim Poker, to be released at the Asian Board Games Festival in Penang, 7 - 9 Aug 2026. I am very excited about this project. This is the first time I am using a Chinese story as my theme.  This is the box cover. Certainly a bold concept from my artist Edwin. I did have some concerns when he first showed me the concept art. I was

Bean to Bar is not your typical Japanese game. When I hear Japanese game, by default I imagine a short, minimalistic and clever card game with few components. Bean to Bar is a complex and heavy Euro style game with many more stuff than just cards. It is a game about making and selling chocolate. You build and run an artisan chocolate empire.  In the game you need to

National Economy is a game from Japan. It is a worker placement card game. It is pretty compact. There are many elements which at first made me think - isn't this just like Agricola? As I played, I soon discovered it is more than that, and less than that at the same time. All in all, a different beast, despite several familiar concepts.  The game is played over 9 rounds. You start

The Kejap Food Game is not available for sale. You can get this as a free gift if you visit Kejap Food (a Malaysian fast food chain) and buy MYR 30 or more of food. While stocks last, of course. This is a simple, real-time game that is played in five minutes. It is a cooperative game. You work together to serve as many customers as you can within the time limit. Before a game starts,

   Rajas of the Ganges is a 2017 game from Inka and Markus Brand, who made the Exit series. It was nominated for and won several awards. It was well received by gamers. I wasn't very interested to try it when it was hot, because it sounded like just another worker placement game, with dice. It was suggested at a recent game retreat, so I joined the game. It turned out to be much more

I visited Kyushu, Japan on a family holiday. Needless to say, being a gamer, I looked up boardgame stores to visit well before the trip, and also took the opportunity to look for games at bookstores, 100 yen shops and such when I was there. I found some games at Don Quijote. Don Quijote is a discount store which sells lots and lots of different stuff. Most of the games I found seemed to be

Dirty Work is a party game from Thailand. This is a simultaneous action selection game, and it is very much about guessing your opponents’ intentions. You are all miners mining gold, contributing to a stash of gold, one nugget at a time. Sooner or later someone will be tempted to steal from the stash. However such thieves can be caught by miners who decide to play guard. So these are the