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Convention Report: New York Toy Fair 2006 - February 13, 2006 (Day Two)
By Rick Thornquist
February 13, 2006
Before we get to the games, a bit of a digression…
Before I got to New York I had picked up a slight cough and that turned into a full blown miserable cold shortly after I got here. Both yesterday and today I was feeling terrible, made worse by the fact that I barely slept either two nights. The consequence of this was that I didn’t get to the show until later in the afternoon today.
I did get to see a few interesting things, though, and after the show I got to play a playtest copy of the upcoming Age of Empires III game from Eagle.
Now, onto the games!
A few weeks ago, I had made an appointment with Hasbro to check out their Avalon Hill games while I was here. Well, the appointment was for this morning and, unfortunately, there was just no way I was going to make it in the condition I was in.
Fortunately, my fellow game reporter Erik Arneson did go and later in the day he let me know that they didn’t have much that we didn’t know about already. They did have a display copy of Rocketville, the upcoming Richard Garfield game, along with the next Axis & Allies Miniatures expansion - Contested Skies. I found a website that has posted pictures of these display copies - check out the New York Toy Fair 2006 » Hasbro » Games page at the website figures.com (see the bottom right of page 1 for the Contested Skies stuff and the top of page 2 for Rocketville - oh, and the fact that the pictures are labeled ‘Wizkids’, you pretend you don’t see that).
All right, that’s enough of having other people doing my reporting for me! After I finally made my afternoon appearance at the Toy Fair, I headed to the Eagle Games booth. Glenn Drover was there, along with Dominic Crapuchettes and Satish Pillalamarri of North Star Games, who were very busy demoing their game Wits & Wagers. I sat down with Glenn and he gave me the scoop on what’s coming up.
First off, Glenn has a ‘secret project’ in the works that is going to be released in Spring 2006. I can’t tell you what it is, sorry about that, but Glenn was excited about the project and looking forward to its release. We’ll let you know about this one when the muzzle comes off (hopefully in a few weeks).
The next project we chatted about was the Age of Empires III boardgame. The design is pretty much done now and the game has been submitted to Ensemble Studios - the makers of the computer game - for their approval. The game should be in production in two months and should be released in May or June 2006. I actually got a chance to play a prototype of this one - see below for more on this.
The next game is the fabled Sid Meier’s Pirates! - The Boardgame. As most people know, this one has been in the pipeline for a long time. Glenn knows this too and he’s determined that when the game finally makes its appearance it’s going to be good. He has two possible designs for the game - one from him and one from SDR (the designers of Bootleggers). The final version will be one of these designs or perhaps an amalgamation of the two. Glenn is shooting for a July 2006 release date for this one.
The last game we chatted about was the Civilization IV boardgame. At this point it time, Martin Wallace and Glenn are working on designs. Glenn hopes that this one will be out by September 2006 in time for Essen.
I made mention of Knucklebones yesterday, where I talked about the series of talks they had taking place in their booth during the fair. I wanted to touch just a bit more about their presence at the fair and the magazine itself.
The Knucklebones people put together a great booth for the fair - an open area in the middle of the Game Zone replete with couches and chairs - tailor made for weary game reporters. It was a very good meeting place for the various boardgame people at the fair and was an ideal location for their talks. The also had many samples of their latest issue out for people to peruse. While there I got a chance to meet and chat with the magazine’s editor and chief photographer - Sarah Gloystein Peterson. We chatted about the content of the magazine and talked a bit about cameras (she’s very much the expert on photography).
I’ve been very impressed with their first three issues - there have been many interesting feature articles alongside reviews and other smaller pieces. German games get a lot of space, but traditional games get some space as well. Sarah and her crew have done a very good job with the magazine - if you haven’t seen it yet, check out the Knucklebones website for a taste of what it looks like.
While at the Knucklebones booth I saw something that surprised me - a booth hawking a new version of the Gen Four Two game Hive. I knew that the German company Huch & Friends had shown a new version of the game at Nuremberg and this one looked to be the same. It turns out it was - Gen Four Two, an English company, had done the game in England and then let Huch & Friends do a German version. There were here at the Toy Fair looking for someone to distribute the game in North America.
I had missed my appointment with Hasbro this morning, but I was bound and determined to keep my second appointment of the day, which was with Mattel. Now I can’t say that I usually cover Mattel games, but Brian Yu, who is a staff game designer for Mattel, told me he had a few German type games that were being shown and I was keen to see them.
I met up with Erik Arneson at the Javits and we caught a shuttle bus to the Toy District where a number of the larger publishers had opened up their offices for visitors. We found the Mattel building and went on up.
When we got to the reception area, our problems began. First of all, they had the wrong appointment time for us and secondly, and more importantly, our contact that was supposed to show us around was nowhere to be found (I found out later her flight got delayed). Another Mattel employee was kind enough to show us around - and considering we only wanted to see the games, it didn’t take too long (if you wanted to see the Barbies, you needed much more time). As you’d suspect, all the games were either sequels (like Uno variations) or had licenses.
Unfortunately, none of the games were of any interest to me and I couldn’t find any of Brian’s games there (I found out later they are supposed to be at the Mattel booth at the Javits - I hope to see them on Wednesday). Erik did get information on some of the games - if you are interested in the Mattel stuff, be sure to check out Erik’s reports at About Board / Card Games when he gets them posted.
After finishing up with Mattel and saying goodbye to Erik, it was time to head up to Times Square to meet up with Eagle Games. Before the Toy Fair I had gotten an invitation from Eagle to play one of their prototypes one day after the show closed and this was the night. I grabbed the subway from the Toy District, got off at Times Square, and then found the pre-designated hotel. There I met up with Glenn Drover of Eagle who had the prototype of Age of Empires III under his arm. We pushed together two tables in the restaurants, set up the game, and started to play.
First off, Age of Empires III is a German style game through and through. This is not a conquest game - you are not going to be moving units and rolling battle dice. The game is more on the gamer game side of things - it’s not really complicated, but it is a bit more involved than, say, Ticket to Ride.
The basic premise of the game is you are sending your colonists out to colonize the new world, in this case represented by a map of North and South America divided into areas. Each area is worth a certain number of points at the end of the game and the player with the most colonists in an area scores that area. There are a number of other ways to score victory points as well. At the end, whoever has the most points wins.
When Glenn first started describing the mechanics of each round, the resemblance to one game immediately came to my mind - Caylus. At the beginning of each round, each player gets five colonists to work with. On the board, beside the map, is a series of tracks each with a number of spaces. Each track corresponds to something you can have your colonist do - discovery (check out an undiscovered part of the board), colonize (move to a discovered part of the board), get goods (like fur, tobacco, etc), build buildings (which give you special powers), create special units like soldier and merchants, etc. Each player in turn plays one of his colonists onto a space until everyone is out of colonists.
After this is done, each track is executed one by one and each colonist takes whatever action he chose. For example, if we are executing the colonize track, the player in space one will take his colonist and move it to the new world into a discovered area. Then the next player on the track does the same thing.
Now up to here the game really does sound a lot like Caylus. At this point, though, the games diverge. The actions in Age of Empires III are quite different from Caylus (except for a turn order track) and area majority part of the game looms large over the game. One might be tempted to describe the game as an area majority game with a Caylus action selection mechanic, but I think that would be oversimplifying things - the game is much more than that.
I do want to explain the game end bonuses, which I think are quite neat. There are four different bonuses (one for most money at the end of the game, etc) and on your turn during the game you can allocate your colonists to one ore more of these bonuses. At the end of the game, the bonus that has the most colonists (no matter whose) on it is worth 15 point to the player that fulfills the bonus (which may be different that the player that has the colonist on the bonus!). Each other bonus is worth 10, 5 or zero, depending on the colonists on the bonus. This way the bonuses aren’t automatic - you’ve got to work for them!
A bit about the production of the game. The game should come in the now standard Eagle box - the size of the Conquest of the Empire and Railroad Tycoon boxes. In a departure for Eagle, the board will not be huge - the board for this game will be four sections with each section being the length and width of the box. The game will have miniatures, of course, for the colonists and special units, and lots of other components.
So what did I think about the game? Actually, I thought it was very good. Of course, one might say I loved Caylus so I’m bound to like this, but aside from the similarities to that game there is a lot going on here and I very much liked the way the different mechanics interwove with each other. The game just worked very well and I was engrossed the whole game. I’m very much looking forward to the game’s release so I can play it again!
After the game finished it was time to head to bed (and hopefully some sleep) in preparation for another day tomorrow. Stay tuned!
| Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version | |
 | The Eagle Games Booth |
 | Knucklebones editor Sarah Gloystein Peterson hides behind her magazine |
 | The Gen Four Two Booth |
Posted by Rick Thornquist on Feb 14, 2006 at 10:04 PM in Special Features, Convention Reports, Convention Report: New York Toy Fair 2006 / 5204
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What about the pictures for AOE III? Posted by Mario Aguila on Feb 14, 2006 at 11:14 PM | #
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