Singapore Open Gaming

We ran and concluded SOG's first Star Wars: Armada, the Jakku Tourney on 27th Dec 2015 at our usual SOG venue at Teck Ghee CC. It was a fantastic start to our 2016 Armada organised play events that saw ten players turn up to vie for the Jakku Tourney champion! We were all excited as this would be the first time Wave 2 ships features in a tournament! The tourney was ran using FFG's latest tournament guidelines and rules FAQ released in December. There were three swiss rounds, each round players gained tournament points, with the cumulative total tournament points determining tourney winner. As per the tournament rules, the margin of victory is recorded (this proved important for this tourney). The first swiss round kicked off at 1210hrs, followed by the second at 1430hrs and the last at 1700hrs. Each round is 135mins with time called approximately two hours in allowing every game to finish their current round regardless of how long that took. The ten players

As gamers at some point we all fantasise about having a dedicated gaming room where all our prized games and miniatures can be displayed and brought out to play at a moment's notice, with no kids, parents or spouses to disturb a Very Important Activity.  Our dedicated gaming room will of course have a custom made gaming table with tricks and little creature comforts that not only make it fantastic to game on, but also a place where non-gaming items like drinks and stuff can be kept out of the way safely yet within reach. We can all dream and while a dedicated gaming room might not be feasible for most of us, a custom gaming table is a lot more achievable. Check out what a fellow tabletop gamer has done.  What I especially like is how he integrated his TV /monitor into the gaming surface so that it sits flush. The stained wood surfaces are a nice classy touch although personally I would preferred painting it all black or a dark mahogany. The TV and the inner surface can be c

So a certain movie will be hitting the cinemas in a week.  It is December, and the weather is a just a bit chillier (and if you are in Singapore, wetter), not a bad time to be indoors, and what better way to spend that time playing tabletop games! (I hear someone mention bedroom games; yes that is an option too, if you insist. I hear some variant uses Karma Sutra dice...) Also the Force will be awakening. Be prepared. SOG@Teck Ghee is happening this Sunday and we have some interesting happenings! We mentioned there will be a Dropzone Commander demo courtesy of Derek Ho. Dropzone Commander is a 10mm tabletop miniatures game set in the 27th Century where humans are fighting to regain their homeworlds overtaken by deadly parasitic aliens. Along the way, allies and foes aid or impede them, sometimes both! In addition we will be having a Flames of War demo and full game as well courtesy of the local FOW enthusiastic players. Flames of War is of course the very popular

SOG will start a new series where we will highlight gamers in Singapore and around the region. We recently caught up with Xeo Lye of Capital Gains Studio who is running a Kickstarter for his card game, Wongamania: Banana Republic. Xeo designed and produced the earlier incarnation of Wongamania, and the game has been featured in the papers as well as TV. I first got to know him through SOGCon 2015 where tried to showcase locally designed boardgames. Tell us more about what you do for a living. XL: I am the co-founder of Capital Gains Studio and we design games and tools to get people to talk about topics which we Asian has a strong affiliation to but reluctant to talk about at the dinner table. What lead you to this? XL: I have been working in the wealth management industry in the past 12 years and I get invited to give talks every now and then. As much as I am a pretty animated speaker, it is still difficult to explain complex financial concepts using only some powerpo

Written by Derek Ho Join us this Sunday 13th December at SOG as Derek will be demoing Dropzone Commander! https://www.facebook.com/events/1528303610823017/ As you gaze upon the table, the first thing that pulls the eye are the buildings of various shapes and sizes sprouting from a road network. On closer inspection, certain buildings are full of activity: people fighting in close quarters to secure crucial objectives. But the frenetic battle is not just within their walls, as dropships hover nearby deploying men to reinforce the action happening in the buildings and armoured vehicles to stop their opponents from doing the same. Gunships and fast moving interceptor aircraft prowl the corridors between the buildings, engaging in cat-and-mouse games with the anti-aircraft weapons stationed below. If this sounds like your kind of tabletop game, welcome to Dropzone Commander . You join this universe in the earliest days of mankind's ambitious invasion to retake the cen

Clash of Cultures by Z-man Games flew under my radar for a couple years, despite the fact that I like Civ-like games. I got to play two games (with the expansion) recently and here some thoughts. Clash of Cultures casts up to four players in the role of different civilisations from their humble beginnings to about what might be termed their zenith of their development in the bronze/iron age, loosely speaking. To win, players must score victory points. You can gained this as advances in technology, economics, culture and politics.  You also gain victory points for building cities (the larger the better), claiming objectives (more on this later) and building wonders of the world. The game is divided into six round of three turns each, where during each turn, each player can do three actions. Actions typically consist of gathering resources, paying for advances, moving troops and building cities. At the end of each round is a status phase, where objectives can be scored and a f

One of the greatest virtual reality experiences around has just had its price slashed. We can now get the space flight/combat/trading/exploring sim/game Elite:Dangerous for just £9.99 https://community.elitedangerous.com/node/344 Not sure how long the sales will last but I intend to pick up a copy for myself. I have been a fan of the original Elite and have put off getting a copy due to high price and the fact that the early reports were the game, while very good, wasn't quite ready for release. Now, nearly a year later the gaming is slowly maturing, and at this great price point I feel it is worth picking up. Screenshot from Elite Dangerous I spent many afternoons exploring the original 256 star systems (I never bought the inter-galactic hyperspace drive, so couldn't go to other galaxies) in vector drawn 3D graphics. Doesn't matter that the system's star/sun was just a round non-aliased circle in the space, and that ships were no more than polygonal shape

In the November SOG I had a chance to try this co-operative game and here's my first impression. Robinson Crusoe allows the players to take on the roles of up to four different shipwrecked on an island and basically trying to survive and maybe prosper. It takes about two to three hours to play. Each player/character has different advantages and skills, and they must work together as a team to make sure they achieve their goals, primary of which is not dying to natural disasters or starvation. Z-Man games has done a nice number on this well produced board game. The map look good, the components are generally good. The cards are more than serviceable. You typically start out exploring the island, hexagonal tile by hexagonal tile, which is revealed to you as you move along. At the same time, by the end of the day you need food and some kind of shelter. In my game, we discovered trying to accomplish all of this is difficult to say the least. We played the first scenario, and i

D-Day tomorrow as in a few hours Teck Ghee CC doors will open its doors and first ever Singapore Open Gaming Convention begins. A lot of hard work went into this event, with a score of people stepping forward to help in one way or another. Thank you. Can't wait to see everyone!

Some of you may recognise the background image we use for our website as that from the cover of the ZX81 operating manual. The ZX81 was one of the earliest microcomputers for consumers of the 80s and it was for a short period of time quite popular. I have very fond memories of it. I think I might have cut my first programming teeth on it, typing on the, in hindsight, hellish membrane keys.  The artist is John Harris and you can find out more about the artwork as well as purchase it here .

This month we look at one of the most popular cooperative game of the 2000s, Pandemic. In this award-winning game for 1 to 4 players, there are four different deadly viruses threatening to engulf the world. Players take on the roles of operatives and researchers who will criss-cross the globe working together to contain and cure the infections. Players take turns moving around the board and using their actions to attempt to contain and eradicate these hotspots. With each turn the outbreaks multiply and may spill over to other cities. As time goes on, epidemics will sprout up making it harder and hard to control. It is a balancing act for the players to keep the outbreaks under control while finding cures for each of them before it is too late. If players are able to cure all four diseases in time and keep the outbreaks under control, they will win the game. Pandemic has relatively simple gameplay, yet it is a good representative of the cooperative genre where players must wor

Today I am very excited to announce on the 12th July 2015 we will be holding our first ever Singapore Open Gaming Convention! This is an idea I have been toying with over the past year, and finally with the help of Teck Ghee Community Club's Youth Executive Committee, we are going to make it a reality. So what can we expect from the one day event? We have booked the main multi-purpose hall of Teck Ghee CC, which has a very comfortable capacity of 200 persons. So yes, it is going to be a small convention, hopefully what we lack in size we will make up with vigour! We will have about 15 to 25 GMed table where we have prepared a whole bunch of games from popular tabletop board games to card games to miniatures wargames. We plan to also give away prizes so watch out (and stay till the end) for that! We have made a deliberate attempt to showcase games created in Singapore, so expect to see many local game designers to be present. I will be making the announcement for SOGCon

Every month we will highlight a game or two that has seen play at or will be tabled at SOG. Citadels, first published in 2000 and since released with its expansion, Dark City as a smaller, more transport friendly size was popular in the 2000s. While its popularity has faded, it is still a good game and hold its age well. Not everyone's favourite card game, but if you have five to seven players looking for a game playable in about an hour you could do worse. In Citadels, each player competes to finish building their city, which consist of District cards they play from hand. The last round happens when a player successfully builds eight districts. Points are awarded for completing a city, being first to do so, and the value of your districts. Districts are builded by paying for their cost in gold which varies from one to six or more. Each district also has an associated character; more on this later. The gold are represented by nice plastic tokens that look a bit like cand

One of the great card games we have at SOG is Iliad, a card game from Asmodee. First published in 2006, Iliad has become a classic and a favoured multi-player card game. In Iliad, which is based on the ancient Greek epic poem of the same name, each player is besieging Troy with the aim of winning sieges to take over Troy (or Helen, we will come to that later) Each player is deal a hand of ten army cards at the start. These army cards consists of hoplite, archers, chariots and various war-machines. Players take turns playing cards and the player with the highest army value at the end of the siege, wins the siege. Starting from the winner and highest army value of each army on the table, the spoils of wars are distributed, with the winner having first pick, followed by he second place, etc. The spoils consist of victory points cards with one negatve victory points card going to the lowest ranked player that siege. Furthermore victory points cards are divided into city and ship ca