Chris Kovac: 2008 Canadian Toy & Hobby Fair

Over the weekend of January 25th, I put on my “game reporter” hat and headed down to the Toronto Convention Centre for the 68th Canadian Toy & Hobby Fair. Attending this convention is a little like being New Hampshire in the American presidential elections: It’s a small start of far bigger events to come. For me, the Toronto Toy Fair—as it’s generally known—marks the beginning of the game convention and fair season which ends every year with Essen.

This toy fair is small, with slightly under 100 booths (many being distributors) of which perhaps ten sell board games of interest to our hobby. There is, however, a small inventors corner where various gaming entrepreneurs show their games to potential buyers and distributors.

I found six games which might be of interest to the hobby, so here’s the list in order of interest:

1. Destination Wild West, by Michael Truchon (Kynox Editions)
   

   I found this game at the booth of Filosofia Games, a French Canadian distributor. After a quick peak at the rules, the game seems to be sort of a take of Ticket to Ride with a bit more advanced track laying. The author is out of Quebec, and some interesting game designs percolate out of that province on occasion.

   The game has an Old West theme, and based on a quick peak in the box it seems to be fairly well produced by North American standards. Unfortunately they did not have the game set up, so I have only a shot of the box. I am trying to get more information from the author and will see what I can find out about the game.

2. Multiple titles from Family Games, Inc.
   

   Okay, this isn’t a single game, but a game company that manfactures a very nice line of wooden abstracts and puzzles. The titles reminded me of the Gipf series of games and look great as well. Perhaps the best known of their games are Knight Moves and Cathedral, available both full-sized and in a travel edition).

   Family Games has some new games of which Sprocket, a game with rotating gears that’s about getting rid of lug nuts, and Stratum, a multi-layer tile-laying game, look to be the most interesting. Most of these abstracts will retail for around $50-60 Canadian, but they look great for the price. If you are a fan of abstract games or need something new on the coffee table to show the neighbours, you should check out the product line from this company.

3. SIAM, by Didier Dhorbait (Ferti Games)
   

   Distributed through Le Valet D’Couer, the big French Canadian distributor in Montreal, SIAM is a checker-like game with gorgeous wooden pieces. Now, this game has been released since 2005 and is by the same company which produced Pitchcar, but this is first time I had seen it. The main goal of the game is to use your pieces—either rhinos or elephants—to push one of three mountain pieces from the centre of the board. The person who pushes the first mountain piece off wins. You can push only in the direction your piece is facing, and the number of figures in a row facing the same way tells you how many spaces you can push. It sounds fairly simple—a nice 15-30 minute game for two players.

4. Siege, from Siege Games
   

   Normally I would bypass Chess variants, but Siege takes the basic game and adds a real interesting twist. You play on a circular board and the object of the game is to get your king into one of your opponent’s four goals, called “declaration spaces.” You play from either the centre going out or the outside going in.

   You start the game with only a knight and some pawns; during your turn, you move a piece, then declare a piece which you are going to bring on board and place it on one of your declaration spaces. On the next turn you can move this piece onto the main board using normal chess moves. So you feed your pieces onto the board over the course of the game, which along with the interesting board adds an extra element of planning and strategy.

5. Big League Manager, by Ian Hanomansing (BLM Games)

   Once again this isn’t a new game as the NHL edition has been around for about a year. Big League Manager is yet another hockey management game, this time designed by the Canadian TV personality Ian Hanomansing.

   In this version you have a roll-and-move outer track where you collect players, and if you land on the right spaces, you play an abstracted game against other players. The management part of the game seems to be somewhat interesting since you have to deal with things like a salary cap, but the Monopoly part of the board was a letdown since it has been done so many times before. If you are a fan of hockey games this might be of interest to you.

6. Big Board Raiders, from CANUSA Trading
   

   This was a rather complex economic game about coporate trading and raiding. The game has a fairly simple roll-and-move mechanism overlaid with a very complex stock-trading system. The object of the game, if I understood correctly, is to take over one of the four companies on the board by getting a majority of shares and directorships by buying and selling shares through the outer roll-and-move track. The game includes six levels of play, starting with the basic concepts of share trading, then adding more complex parts as you get familiar with the game. This game might appeal to those who like heavier economic simulations.

   Editor’s note: I’m not sure I share Chris’ confidence with who might like this game, but the video on the company’s website is a hoot, a veritable flashback to mass market commercials of old.

There were other games at the fair, but they were either the usual quasi-educational games for children or yet another release of the tired old family games (Monopoly, Sorry, Wizard, Uncle Wiggly, etc.).

After talking to some of the distributors, mainly Lion Rampart, I learned that the following games will probably be released in the next two to four months in Canada: Horus; the new edition of Diplomacy; the Tide of Iron expansion Days of the Fox, and if all goes well Agricola (the French edition from Ystari is expected in May).

One final observation is that most distributors had some Eurogames, mostly from Mayfair or Rio Grande, and most of the game designers knew about BoardGameGeek and a few knew about Boardgame News—hopefully a few more after my visit. So as we look forward to Nuremburg and New York, I can get back to playing games and hang up my official reporter hat for another year.

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