Convention Report: New York Toy Fair 2006 - February 15, 2006 (Day Four)

By Rick Thornquist
February 24, 2006

This is my report from the last day of the New York Toy Fair.  My main victim today was Out of the Box Publishing and I also made a quick visit to Front Porch Classics, who had a deluxe version of a classic game.  Here we go!

Out of the Box Publishing
While at the Out of the Box booth, I had the pleasure of having Mark Osterhaus, the head honcho of Out of the Box, to give me the scoop on what’s going on with his company.

The first thing we talked about the recently announced partnership with Rio Grande Games.  Mark told me that the purpose of the partnership is to bring games from Rio Grande to a broader market.  Out of the Box distributes to 2500 specialty toy and game retailers along with a small number of mass market retailers - many of these retailers don’t know about Rio Grande.  This partnership will expose Rio Grande to these retailers and will result in the games being sold in new outlets.  As part of this, Out of the Box is now listing all of Rio Grande’s games in their catalog.  Also, Out of the Box had a display of Rio Grande’s games at the Toy Fair, and Mark told me that he had already sold some Rio Grande games to a number of retailers who had not previously heard of them.

How will this affect Rio Grande?  According to Mark, Jay Tummelson will continue importing and translating the best in German games as he always has.  This partnership will only bring the games to a wider market.

Now, onto the new games!

The first two games Mark showed me are the inaugural games in Out of the Box’s new Masterpiece series - the games are called Cover Up and Mix Up.  Both of these are two player abstract games made of plastic and both of them are variants on the ‘four in a row’ types of games. 

Cover Up was designed by UpWords designer Elliot Rudell.  In this one, players take turns placing plastic disks in small wells on a 5x5 plastic board (see the picture below).  The disks are different sizes and it’s possible for you to cover the disk of another player with a larger disk of your own.  The first player to get four in a row wins.  This game is to be available in Spring 2006.

Mix Up was designed by Marueen Hiron.  This game has a plastic panel with a number of columns and players take turns placing tiles into the columns.  Each tile has a symbol that is a certain color.  One player is playing the symbols and the other player is playing the colors - whoever gets four in a row wins.  This game is also to be available in Spring 2006.

The next game Mark showed me was the Reiner Knizia game Pantheon.  In this one, players use plastic blocks, each with a number and a color, to build buildings.  Points are scored for the building the biggest, tallest and widest buildings.  This is a bit more involved than the usual Out of the Box fare, though it is still not a complicated game.  It plays from 2 to 4 players.  The game is due for a Summer 2006 release - for the Origins game convention.

Just as we were finishing up talking about Pantheon, designer Maureen Hiron dropped by the booth.  I talked to Maureen about talked Abridged, a new variant of a Bridge that is going to be released by Out of the Box.  Maureen is a very highly ranked competitive bridge player and though there are many bridge players, she told me she was concerned that most players were elderly and she thought the hobby needed young blood.  Unfortunately, Bridge has become such a complicated game these days with the bidding process become very esoteric - this has made the learning curve for the game very steep and this has become an impediment for younger players to learn the game.

Maureen has solved this by making a variant of bridge that cuts out the complicated bidding and gets the game back to the way it used to be.  She describes Abridged as basically bridge without the bidding.  Also, the game comes with a set of cards that are specially marked to make the gameplay and scoring as simple as possible.  Abridged is to be released by Out of the Box in June 2006.

Next up was Cineplexity.  This is a new party game.  In the game there is a deck of cards and each card has something like an actor’s name or a descriptive word of phrase like ‘Comedy’, ‘In New York’, ‘A Mummy or Mommy’.  Two cards are turned up and the first player to name a movie that fits the descriptions on both of the cards wins a card.  Another card is turned up and the game continues the same way.  The game is extremely simple and fast game that plays from 3 to 10 players.  The game is due for release in Summer 2006.

I also talked to Mark about a few other games on the Out of the Box schedule.  Pepper is due for sometime in Early April 2006 and 10 Days in Asia is due in Q4 2006.  The Apples to Apples Party Box Expansion #2 and Party Crate Expansion #2 should also make an appearance in Early April 2006.

Front Porch Classics
My last stop was Front Porch Classics.  Now I don’t usually cover Front Porch’s games as they don’t really do German type games.  Their claim to fame is simple games with extraordinary production values.  You should see some of the components in their games - beautiful wooden boxes, real metal coins and tokens, and much more.  Beautiful games, but the gameplay is not really for the gamer crowd.

They were showing one game at the Fair, however, that may be of interest to gamers.  Front Porch has a new version of Liar’s Dice that features wooden shakers in a wooden box shaped like a die (see the picture below).  The game plays up to four players.

And that’s it!  After visiting with Front Porch Classics it was time to head out and get prepared for the trip home.  This was a good New York Toy Fair - it was good to see some of the usual boardgaming crowd and it was fun to seem some of the new games.  See you next year!

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	Out of the Box Publishing
	Rio Grande Games at the Out of the Box booth
	Cover Up
	Mix Up
	The Cover Up and Mix Up boxes
	Pantheon
	Designer Maureen Hiron and Abridged
	Front Porch Classics
	Liar’s Dice

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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