Singapore Open Gaming

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...

Mythos: The Dramatic Role-playing Game. Image from FFG's Gates of Arkham By and by I will be presenting the role-playing system I use in my games. A role-playing/storytelling system The system is relatively simple and is inspired by The Window , D6 and Risus . It only uses six-sided dice. A skill or trait are ranked in levels and they range from 1-7+. 1              Poor 2              Below Average 3              Average, Mediocre 3+            Competent 4              Above Average, Skilled, Good 4+ 5              Excellent, Very Good 5+ 6              Superb, Remarkable, Master 6+ 7              Grandmaster, Incredible 7+            Unbelievable Most h...

So the previous dice tray worked well, but an unfortunate incident involving mould consigned it to the trash bin. Setting out to make a second one I decided I wanted a deeper tray as well as something more square in shape. The depth especially since while the previous one was adequate for small 12mm d6s, bigger dice have a tendency to careen out of the tray, especially in times of excitement (which is often in my games). This time I used a deep photo frame, a 25cm square Ribba . It is about 4cm deep and only 9.90SGD at the local Ikea. Again I used a cork sheet bought from Artfriend sandwiched where the photo would be and viola. Yet another photo dice tray, this time a deep one. Admittedly somewhat large but nice and deep. Great if you need to roll lots of dice. Total investment this amounts to less than $12. Pretty neat, I like it!