Definitely one of my favorite games of Toy Fair, R&R Games’ Qin is an Asian-themed tile laying game designed by Reiner Knizia. I can’t help but think of it as a multiplayer version of Knizia’s Carcassonne: The Castle, though there is more to it than that. When players lay tiles, they can place their pagodas to claim cities. And whereas it’s not uncommon to have one’s city stolen by an opponent, a city can be protected with a double-pagoda if it’s been expanded to cover five squares. Lost city spaces, of which several are printed on the board, go to the player with the largest contiguous city. Qin ends when either all the tiles are used or when there is no more open space on the board. The winner is the player with the most played pagodas (not the most claimed city spaces.) Qin retails for $40 and includes an advanced-play board on the reverse side.

Another Knizia-designed title being shown by R&R was Spectaculum, a game about competition among traveling circuses. From the design perspective it’s a stock manipulation game, because circuses aren’t assigned to players, rather players buy and sell shares in all four of the circuses throughout the game. As the winner is the one with the greatest net worth at the end, the goal is to buy shares low and sell high. What I found particularly interesting was that moving the value of the circuses was accomplished by placing travel markers on the board, indicative of sending performers to visit various towns and villages. The retail price of Spectaculum is $30.

Now a third game from R&R, Hey Froggy, from a distance looked only like a very simple kids’ game. The game has cards, dice, colorful plastic frogs, and a board made of lily pads placed in a circle (retail price $16). After getting the demo, though, I can see that there’s a bit of strategy and some other interesting mechanics involved. First of all, the goal of the game is not to get the frogs to any particular destination. The goal is actually to play cards from your hand. The more cards you can play simultaneously, the more points you earn—a 1-card play is worth 1 point, a 2-card play 2 points, a 3-card play 4 points, and a 4-card play 7 points. However, you can only play cards that match the frogs that are on top of the stacks on the lily pads. Manipulating which frogs are on top is where the dice-rolling comes in.

For more straightforward fun, R&R had AttrAction. This game involves flicking and sliding magnets across a table. On your turn you slide a magnet across the table and get to keep any other magnets to which it sticks along the way. If however, it sticks to nothing or falls off the edge, you lose it. When the table is cleared of magnets, the player with the most wins.

And then there was Home Stretch, a horse-racing game where players roll dice to move their own horses but can also bet on other horses. And Hanabi, a cooperative card game with a deduction element—cards are held backwards so a player can’t see his own cards. And four more planned for release further out:

Plunder—a pirate-themed deduction game.

Strike a Pose—an activity game, where the players pose in the form of letters.

Guess the Mess—which involves grabbing cards that give clues to a location.

Unnatural Selection—a party game in which the players pile on descriptor cards (e.g., “smelly” or “lonely”) to both their and their opponent’s personality cards (e.g., “dragon” or “little girl”) in order to convince the judge to choose their personality in that round’s situation (e.g., “the first to be thrown overboard”).

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Educational Insights had a large booth, showing off plenty of toys and games. I could have spent a good amount of time there checking out all the cool new stuff, but I was there to cover new games, so here they are!

Raccoon Rumpus: Help the raccoons get dressed by rolling 2 dice and finding a card that has the correct article of clothing and color. Beware! Roll the underwear and your raccoon loses all his clothes! First raccoon to have 5 cards on it wins. 2-4 players, grades Pre-K+.

Shelby’s Snack Shack Game: A dexterity and counting game where you need to collect the most bones from the box. Seagulls and flip-flops take away bones or make you lose a turn. 2-4 players, grades Pre-K+.

Lickity Quick: A word game where 2 cards are drawn and you have to think of a word that follows the rules. 1 card has a letter or combination of letters, while the other is a challenge like “has 2 syllables.” First to come up with a correct word wins the round. 2+ players, grades 3+.

Even Steven’s Odd: Each round a challenge card is flipped and you need to roll your dice to they meet the challenge. A fast-paced game where the first player to win 10 challenges wins the game. I actually got a change to play this, and was pleasantly surprised. 2-4 players, grades 1+.

Wordical: Another word game. This time you’ve got a deck of consonants and 2 dice to roll that contain vowels. Build the highest scoring word to win. 2-8 players, grades 3+.

Kyro 5: Similar to connect 4, but without the board and with stacking. The first players to place a row of 5 pyramids wins. 2 players, grades 2+.

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Teko Toys had a small, but engaging booth. Two products were being shown, both electronic games.

Pulse: A really interesting product based around a head mounted heart rate monitor. Players compete in various challenges trying to raise or lower their heart rate. There’s 3 different types of challenges, each chosen by the game’s base with a corresponding card inserted into it.

Act3: A party game with an electronic game master. Each team uncovers 3 clues and then tries to figure out what the 3 clues mean. This is done by one member of the team seeing what the clues are, and trying to get their team mate to guess without verbal cues. Once the 3 are uncovered both members of the team try to figure out what the clues are pointing to.

 

 

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For 2013, Griddly Games is planning a Make Your Own Board Game Kit. The first version will be “Rainbows and Storms” and include a board with a path of blank spaces, a deck of erasable cards, 250+ embellishment stickers, pawns, and dice. Meant for younger children (ages 5+), it provides the components for a basic roll-and-move game but allows the kids to customize it with their own imaginations. Game designer training-wheels, if you will.

Also on display by Griddly was Show Me the Kwan. (I’m told that “kwan” means “awesome”.) This is a word game using dice and cards with categories. First you pick a card and read one of the categories. Then you roll the die with numbers. It tells you what letter position you’ll be using this round. After that you roll the rest of the dice, the ones with letters. At this point, the players can grab any die for which they can come up with a word that has the die’s letter in the select position and that fits the category. For example, if the category is “beach” and the position number is 2, then you can take a die showing “A” by saying “sand” and a die showing “C” by saying “ocean”.

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Iello got my attention last year in a big way with King of Tokyo by Richard Garfield. For 2013, Iello was showing another Garfield game, Ghooost!. Basically it’s a Crazy 8 variant with cute-horror style artwork.

The company’s Whizz Bing Bang game only asks players to play a card—any card—on their turn. Not messing that up, though, is going to be a serious challenge. Whizz cards keep play going, Bing cards switch the direction of play, and Bang cards skip players. On top of that, the card types do not use consistent colors! A person who plays out-of-turn takes a token from each other player. The first player to get rid of all their tokens wins.

Titanium Wars is more of a strategy game. Each player starts with a unique leader. Play involves collecting planets, adding improvements and buildings, and earning income. Planets also grant titanium, of which 20 something are needed to win. With 297 cards in the box (plus room for expansions), Iello plans to release Titanium Wars at Origins for a price of $40 $50.

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BrickWarriors is known for an excellent line of Lego Minifig accessories. The company makes weapons, helmets and armor, and other various accessories for everyone’s favorite brick men and women.

Now BrickWarriors has a game coming out that lets you use those cool accessories in gladiatorial-style combat! Chains to Champions doesn’t include any Minifigs, but it does come with stands that can hold and wear all the items that come with the game. Add in your own Minifigs for the perfect game customization. The best part? Cards will be released so you can use earlier released items from BrickWarriors in the game.

The game has several phases where you’re getting gladiators, vying for the best equipment, and then battling it out with up to six players in the arena.

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Robert and I had a blast playing with the Transformers, KRE-O, and Nerf toys in Hasbro’s showroom. There may still be some Nerf darts stuck up in the rafters!

In terms of Hasbro’s games, though…

Magic Jinn is an interactive, electronic, guessing game. The magical-cat-like device asks the questions and you answer “yes”, “no”, or “it depends.” One version will guess Animals; another Food & Drinks.

Part of the Elefun line for preschoolers, Chasin’ Cheeky is a monkey figure that scrambles around the floor while the kids try to toss rings over its tail. Or if someone is able to grab the banana from its mouth, Cheeky will shake his rear end.

For 2013, Hasbro plans a series of Twister-branded dance and activity games. One is Twister Rave Skip-It, which spins around the ankle. Another is Twister Dance Rave, which includes colored pads and a device that lights up to music, indicating where to put your left and right feet. (Thank goodness they didn’t make me try either of those!)

The Bejeweled Classic and Bejeweled Frenzy games, which we’ve mentioned before, were on display.

As were two additions to the Angry Birds Star Wars Jenga series: Angry Birds Star Wars Jenga Rise of Darth Vader and Angry Birds Star Wars Jenga Tie Fighter. The former includes Sith pigs.

Tetris Jenga adds quite a bit of challenge to the original Jenga game. Instead of straight blocks, they’re shaped like Tetris pieces.

To coincide with the release of the Despicable Me 2 movie this summer, Hasbro is planning Despicable Me 2 Monopoly and Despicable Me 2 Operation. Each comes with a set of miniature Minion figures. Additional Minions, to complete the full set of 50, can be purchased separately.

World Series of Yahtzee is a frantic game of simultaneous dice rolling. The first player to match a pattern on one of the cards takes it and presses a button. Then the rest of the players have seconds to roll better.

Scheduled for release in the fall is the Game of Life Fame Edition. In this version of Life, instead of building a family, players are gathering an entourage. Instead of a nice four-passenger sedan, players travel the board in a limousine. Also, the board is pentagonal and made of five sections, each of which can be flipped over to vary play.

Another fall board game release planned is Monopoly Empire. While no prototype was on display, Hasbro explained that the basic concept is buying and selling iconic brands instead of real-estate—a better fit, I think, for the modern business environment.

A prototype of the new Monopoly cat token, though, was on display.

And a whole range of Transformers Bot Shots Battle Game products. The Transformers Bot Shots Battle Game Dragon Track especially looked fun! Two bot shots race in from opposite sides while the center pit spins.

Beyblade had a stronger showing than expected with a new Beyblade Shogun Steel line. Shogun Steel is Hasbro’s version of the Zero-G series from Japan. These Beys come to the United States with little-to-no modification, except some really nice recolors. The new stadium, on the other hand, was a bit of a disappointment. Takara Tomy’s Zero G Beystadium features a rounder bowl and three holes for ring outs. Hasbro’s Beyblade Cyclone Stadium has a flatter bottom, so it rocks less, and has 2 pockets near the top for ring outs. This also can affect the rocking motion of the stadium if they hit the table.

Last but not least, Hasbro’s plans for 2013 include a major push for a new product line, B-DAMAN. It’s a competitive marble-shooting toy with collectible shooters and an online game tie-in.

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Try Try a Game describes A Way With Words as a “reverse word search game” and I sort-of get what they mean by that. The game’s board is a grid, seeded with vowels. Players start with three letter chips and each turn can play one chip anywhere on the board. For each letter of each word formed with the chip that they played, they get 1 point—whether that word is spelled forwards, backwards, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally—whether it represents the whole string of adjacent letters or only part of it.

A few of the chips are actually not letters but special actions, for example allowing the player to switch two chips already on the board.

In a variant, everyone plays simultaneously, only able to place a chip if it forms a word of three or more letters. The first to get rid of all his chips is the winner.

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Tucked into the corner of Toy Fair was Wisemen Games, and a beautiful game that caught my eye. The makers of Gemblo were showing off 3 main games, each of which looked fantastic.

Forest: The game that initially caught my attention. A beautiful game with a conservation theme. Try and grow fruit trees while avoiding deforestation, industrialization, and poachers. It’s a card game with a central scoring board in a beautiful little package. Unfortunately I seem to have misplaced my notes on number of players and age range.

Gemblo Mini: A 1-2 player version of the classic gem game. Just as great looking as the original.

Tremblex: Stack your pieces on the disc without knocking any off. The player that has the most segments showing when looking at the stack from the top wins. I actually had a chance to try this one out…and wasn’t very good at it. 1-4 players, ages 5+.

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Buffalo Games newest is Celebrity Throw Down. The game includes 300 celebrity cards and 162 situation cards. Players start each round with four celebrity cards. Someone draws a situation card (for example, “Who’s the best celebrity to read you a bedtime story?”) and then everyone submits one card representing the celebrity that they would choose. The player who drew the situation chooses one celebrity to eliminate. Then the player who’s card was eliminated chooses another, and so on, until only one celebrity card is left. At that point, whoever’s celebrity is left keeps the situation card and a new round begins. The winner is the first player to collect five situation cards.

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