Today, the Centre for International Languages was officially invited by Zainee to UiTM Arau nearby for their Geomatics Carnival 2018 exhibition. There was a hobbies exhibition section where I set up shop with tabletop RPGs with my colleague Bazli. I would talk to visitors about using RPGs as a language learning tool. Also, to run games if and when I can. Sharnizan of Serious Games UUM was also present to introduce and sell his product the Ace of Maths game to UiTM students. Though at this point he was explaining the card game to Bazli. There was no dearth of visitors to our tables when the exhibition started. The exhibition organisers even provided Bazli and I with a packed lunch. My usual suspects line up was arrayed for display at their table, eliciting enquiries once in a while. I ran two game sessions for visitors. I ran the Edge of […]
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The Second UUM Incursion
I love tabletop games. I have started to incorporate more tabletop games into my teaching and learning. Suddenly, my friend Shanizan invited me to be a jury member for the Sintok International Games and Gamification Challenge 2017 at UUM. This was nothing less than a great opportunity to be part of the community here. Anyway… After a formal invite had been sent to the workplace, I was now an official representative of the Centre for International Languages at the SIGGC 2017 event at UUM. My colleague Yuzi was also invited to be a member of the jury. Shanizan greeted us when we arrived. After the jury briefing was complete, we went on out assignments: to grade the participants’ games on display. The games ranged from standard tabletop snakes and ladders variants to mecha combat computer games. Yuzi and I brought the Thai interns from the workplace to join the fun. […]
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Tabletop Games Expo at UniMAP
After almost two years in Perlis, there arose an opportunity to host a tabletop game exhibition here at the university. Gray, a gamer I knew and interacted with online back in Kuala Lumpur, planned a KakiTabletop Northern Tour. This tour would take his team and himself from KL to Taiping to Prai to Penang to Perlis and back down to Ipoh before returning to the Klang Valley. We thought it would be great to hold a tabletop gaming exhibition to introduce tabletop games – boardgames, card games and role-playing games – to the students of this university and the local community. If you remember I even once ran Mini Six for one of my classes last semester as a speaking exercise. After proposing the event to the Centre for International Languages, we had the green light to go ahead. With the help of colleagues, we scheduled the Tabletop Games Expo […]
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Aidiladha Games
The second Eid of the year has come and gone. For Hari Raya Haji, we took the bus back to Pasir Mas. But for this Aidiladha post, we focus on games played by Irfan, Aiman and Zara when the cousins rendezvous at their grandparents house in Pondok Lubok Tapah. The bus arrived two hours late at the new Pasir Mas bus terminal as the Eid played havoc with the traffic from Kota Bharu. We arrived home late, but in one piece.
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X-Wing: The Beginner’s Luck Gambit
Last Saturday night’s Star Wars X-Wing Miniature game turned out well. It was Ain’s first game ever so Irfan and I decided to make this a straight up dogfight. No extra cards, no obstacles, no missions. Just blast each other out of the sky with what you have. I played Darth Vader in the TIE Advanced. Irfan was Luke Skywalker in the T-65 X-wing fighter and Ain, to give her an edge over me, flew the YT-1300 freighter Millennium Falcon with the Han Solo card. It turned out that even with Darth Vader’s high initiative number, the Falcon was quite a powerhouse in combat. At first I ignored it and went after the X-wing. We both passed each other at full speed and did a dropkick Koiogran turn, while the Falcon seemed to be swerving out toward the edge of the battlemat. Suddenly she banked right back into the fray. […]
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Tsuro Picnic
Once upon a time, earlier today, Irfan came up with the idea of setting up a mat out in the yard so he and other neighbourhood kids can play board games outdoors. Later, there were even sandwiches and apple juice! Here’s hoping the boardgaming will help Irfan and the other children to improve their social and language skills as they interact with one another. Perhaps someday there will be RPG picnics?
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X-Wing: The Asteroid Gambit
Yesterday, Irfan and I finally started playing the X-Wing Miniature Game that was given to us by Darren when we last visited Kuala Lumpur. What Darren gave us was astoundingly lots, so many thanks to him for letting us have this trove. We started with the basic game. Irfan controlled an Incom T-65 X-Wing fighter and I controlled two Sienar Fleet Systems TIE/ln fighters. His Pilot Card is Luke Skywalker, and mine were “Mauler” Mithel (apparently the father of Reljii Mithel) and Academy Pilot (a strange name to give your son, Mrs. Pilot). We did not carry Upgrade Cards, like astromech droids and proton torpedos. The sculpts for these minis are amazingly detailed. One might even want to collect them because they look very nice indeed. I have seen the Corellian Corvette mini in a box back in KL some time ago and it looks fantastic. And still too expensive […]
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Aidiladha at the Tenth Floor
Another year, another Aidiladha spent in Kuala Lumpur. There was no balik kampung because of insufficient resources. So yesterday we tried to make the best of it. In the morning, we went for Solat Aidiladha at the Pandan Indah mosque. This morning, for some reason the khatib was not firing all engines. Perhaps he was exhausted. Then it was time for salam hari raya between ourselves. First, Irfan salam and kissed Ain. Followed by the same with me, after which, Ain started cooking some nasi lemak in anticipation of impending visitors. In the afternoon, Irfan’s school friend Fikree and his family, as well as his cousins Aiman and Zara, came a-visiting. Apart from savouring the nasi lemak, Irfan, Fikree and Aiman played some Tsuro while Star Wars Rebels was playing on television. Even young Zara was intrigued by the game. Since boardgaming was pretty fun, the crew moved on to […]
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Mos Eisley Shoot-Out
Peter Schweighofer, who was a writer and editor at West End Games back in the ’90s and the editor-in-chief of their Star Wars Adventure Journal periodical, sent a couple of rare gaming memorabilia to me which I received earlier this month. The first was the Mos Eisley Shoot-Out miniature game. The game is a simple boardgame that came with a paper foldout grid map of the streets of Mos Eisley and cutout miniatures of characters you could play in the environment. The rules were a simplified version of West End Games’ Star Wars The Roleplaying Game combat rules. It was also marketing material that cleverly generates excitement for the RPG itself. I don’t think I’ll be clipping out the paper figures out of the document. And not just because I have other paper minis that I could use for the purpose. I’m uncertain, but the map looks to be a […]
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A Birthday Once More
It’s Irfan’s 12th birthday. We were supposed to set something up for him, like allowing him to invite his friends over. But because of low resources, we had to cancel. But Cikma and Ayah Cik The Younger came with a cake anyway, so we held a small gathering. I was not even in the right frame of mind to take photographs so we do not have photos of the cake. The GOKL group did pass the gift they bought for Irfan, which was the boardgame Tsuro. I did however take a picture of Irfan unboxing and playing Tsuro. We love you Irfan. It’s been a rough year what with – among others – the UPSR fiasco and the absolute unreliability of this country’s education system at this point in time, but we will strive for a better year for you next year. Also, many thanks to everyone who wished him […]
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Gundam Battle on the Dinner Table
Last week I made some Mobile Suit Gundam paper minis for Irfan to play with using pictures downloaded from the Gundam Wiki. He has deviced a turn-based Gundam battle game based on the minis. I arrayed the Anno Domini universe Gundams for a group photo, as can be seen above. Left to right: 0 Gundam, Gundam Exia, Gundam Dynames, Gundam Kyrios and Gundam Virtue. We played a one-on-one battle. My Build Strike Gundam vs. his Unicorn Gundam in a desert environment with boulders and one crater for cover. The Build Strike Gundam stats as written by Irfan. Only D6s are rolled. Weapon damage depletes hit points. The mobile suit is destroyed when its hit points reaches zero. The two Gundams from different universes face off in the crater. After his beam magnum blows my head off so I can’t use my Vulcan cannons, we engaged for beam sabre duel. Both beam sabre […]
Continue readingPacific Rim Heroclix Battle
Ivan and Kai of the GOKL gaming group dropped by to visit us for Aidilfitri. The Aidilfitri visit is of course an excuse for some gaming shenanigans. [[image:heroclix-pacrim01.jpg:L-R Slattern, Knifehead, two Gipsy Dangers, Coyote Tango and Scunner:center:0]] Once upon a time – about a month ago – I asked Kai if he knew where to get any Pacific Rim Heroclix figures. At the time, there was none in town. When his order from Noble Knight Games arrived, he offered to sell two figures so Irfan and I can play! The jaeger I picked was Gipsy Danger and the kaiju I picked was Knifehead. This game needs more jaegers and kaiju. A Tacit Ronin clix would be awesome. But since a host of clix were arrayed on the dinner table, Kai taught Irfan to play. [[image:heroclix-pacrim02.jpg:Needs more whipswords:center:0]] Here we have Kai playing Scunner and Irfan playing Gipsy Danger. Gipsy Danger […]
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Battleship
Recently I’ve been teaching Irfan how we played Battleship back in school, using a grid paper and pencils. And soon after, in addition to yelling “You sanked my battleship!” his cruise missiles being launched and flying it toward my ships were also being dramatised using hands and voice. Later, he used his duit raya to purchase Battleship: Hidden Threat card game where the traditional game is ported to cards where you randomly array your battleships with your Missed cards in a grid, and you have a hand of different cards that you can play either to reveal your opponents’ cards, attack your opponents’ ships, repair your damaged ships, implement shields on your ships and even allow you to play more than one card per round. It doesn’t take a lot of time to play, perhaps 30 minutes at the most, but we can easily bring it about with us anywhere […]
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Small World
Created by Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton, Geek and Sundry’s new biweekly TableTop web series features 30 minutes of tabletop gaming video that shows how much fun it is to pay tabletop games from boardgames like Ticket to Ride to card games like Munchkin to roleplaying games like Fiasco! Each episode, hosted by Wil, shows how each game is played by playing it onscreen. Every episode also has different guests. Irfan and I saw the first episode together and he totally fell in love with the board game they played, Small World. Small World allows a player to control a society of one fantasy race after another, allowing your race to expand or decline each round using the game rules. The game randomly mixes in special abilities and racial abilities, and by planning a combination of these abilities you are able to maximise the number of points you acquire each […]
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Escaping the Death Star using Dice
Once upon a time, Sila brought back with her a Star Wars: Escape the Death Star Action Figure Game, which is actually a board game with two sets of rules (an easy and an advanced rule) as well as two Hasbro action figures, a Luke Skywalker in stormtrooper disguise with removable helmet and lightsaber, and a Darth Vader figure with removable helmet (complete with exposed back of head) and lightsaber. It must have been ten years since, and I’ve never actually played it until recently. Because Irfan wanted to try it out. However, I realised that the easy rules were too easy and straightforward, and the advanced rules were too complicated for Irfan. So the gamemaster in my blood took over, and I not only modified the rules so that the difficulty level of the rules are something in between and it’s something Irfan can play and enjoy. Also, I […]
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