Where I experience cozy tabletop gaming at PJ’s Adventurers’ Hall

OCTOBER 14 — I spent a night playing Magic: The Gathering (MTG) at a little gaming store that was just a short train ride away from me.

Adventurer's Hall is a few metres away from the Taman Bahagia station on the first floor of an unassuming shoplot, with a paper sign on the stairway door grille.

I was there only because Facebook showed me a post saying it was an all femme MTG night and after meeting the Mana Coven, an all female MTG group at a recent event, I was somewhat intrigued.

Also, I really needed to learn how to play the very popular MTG format, Commander.

MTG started out as a two-player game. The premise of it is that you are planewalkers or basically, wizards, duelling with spells and creatures, all this done via cards.

"Oh just like Harry Potter."

Please do not mention that franchise to me, especially now that JK Rowling has declared she will spend her earnings on her anti-trans activism.

Why couldn't she be like Enya who made her millions and now just shuts herself up in a literal castle with her cats and is blissfully not on social media?

Commander however is a different format — you play in groups of two to four people and the objective is to be the last planeswalker standing.

Tabletop gaming is now a lot more accessible than it used to be. — Picture by Erna Mahyuni

Harry Potter-rants aside I wasn't sure what I'd experience when I arrived at Adventurer's Hall but it was a very chill old kopitiam-vibe.

A menu with finger food, a couple of separate rooms with tables, a Warhammer display, Dungeons & Dragons books and of course a counter with MTG cards.

One random dude misunderstood the theme of the Commander session and thought the "Femme" thing was a Lord of the Rings reference.

He ended up joining another group to play boardgames so all's well that ends well.

My "pod" for the night as they call them apparently these days consisted of two other lovely women, one a Master's student and another who worked in tech.

They both absolutely trampled my deck but it was a good learning experience and I look forward to being stomped on as I continue learning MTG.

My current limitation for MTG is that I am strictly only buying or getting products from the newly-released Reality Fracture set because otherwise I will not be eating.

As many of you know, I really do love food.

Adventurer's Hall, I found out later, is run by a group of friends who all have day jobs but run it as a part-time endeavour (though one of them is going to make it his fulltime pursuit due to, well, reasons).

It has been nearly two decades since I stepped away from tabletop gaming, besides playing board games (that aren't Monopoly) and it's been interesting seeing how the hobby has expanded.

The commodification of trading card games might have somewhat contributed to the scene and the frenzy for Pokémon cards thanks to influencers.

At Adventurer's Hall, though, it was a bunch of people just having some fun either participating in roleplaying game sessions or card games.

It reminded me of two decades prior when I spent my nights hanging out at a game store, watching people paint Warhammer figures, play MTG (of course) and making friends.

One of those friends is now my housemate and colleague, and one of my dearest friends.

Quite a few of the people I met in those days are now my friends on Facebook too.

I don't want to revisit nostalgia by picking up MTG now; the game has changed, as have the players.

Just like before, though, I'll watch and learn, about people, about games, about life in general.

The MTG set Reality Fracture is about a wizard trying to remake the world and remove all suffering, but ends up creating more suffering as his new universe devours the old one.

It is a strange parallel to our current times where tech bros are trying to remake the world by replacing talent and thought with randomised word generators, claiming it will lead to prosperity for all.

While in reality, the forests are burning, our reservoirs are drying up, GPUs cost the same as cars or a house downpayment and the world as we know it is being gobbled up by private equity.

Anyway I'm not getting paid for this but you can check out the events at Adventurers' Hall on their very shiny website.

Maybe I'll see you there — I'll be the half-blind middle-aged woman squinting at the too-small text on her MTG cards.