Convention Report: New York Toy Fair 2010 – Mayfair, ThinkFun, More

By W. Eric Martin
February 16, 2010

So my first encounter with games during this year’s trek to New York Toy Fair came when I stopped in Rite-Aid to buy a small spiral notebook as I had forgotten to bring one of the many that I already own. (I also forgot my camera, a print-out of my appointments, a snack, and many other things. Taking a page from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, however, I did bring a change of socks, a boon to any traveler who plans to walk ten hours. With socks in reserve for the train ride home, everything else seems manageable.)

The game in question turned out to be barely a game at all: Rite-Aid Pharmacy’s The Game of Life Collect & Win contest. True to Life‘s storied game play, Collect & Win requires you to open random ticket packs randomly, then place the random image segments on a grid to complete some random product sold at Rite-Aid.

Well.

Hardly an auspicious start, but thankfully things picked up from there. Here’s the first of umpty-um reports on the publishers and games on display at Toy Fair 2010:

Let’s start with the most mainstream Eurogame company, Mayfair Games, which continues to find new markets for Settlers of Catan in the U.S., making it the most well-known, obscure game in the country.

In June 2010, Mayfair and designer Klaus Teuber will branch the Catan line in new directions with Settlers of America, part of the Catan Histories series. The essence of the game is that players initially populate the East Coast of the U.S. with their depots and use the resources they generate to build railroad tracks to the west, building new depots along the way. As you build, goods are made available to you from your personal display, and these goods must be delivered to depots owned by the other players. Thus, you need to both build and deliver in order to win. Yes, Mayfair has crossed the streams of its two main product lines to deliver what might be referred to as “The Catan Train Game.”

One other interesting aspect of the game is that – somewhat in the manner of The Settlers of the Stone Age – as a player builds west she may build a depot in a hex that has no resource number. When this happens, she takes a number chip from one of the existing hexes in the east to place on this hex, with the old hex having its production value degraded, mimicking deforestation or land going fallow.

As this point Settlers of America will be available only in English from Mayfair Games. (3-4 players, ages 10+, 60-90 minutes, approx. $55)

Vegas Casino is a new title from James Ernest and Mike Selinker that will appear in Q2 2010. Players start on the barren Las Vegas strip owning only parking lots, then use the proceeds they earn from those lots to develop the land into casinos. Over time, the casinos will start to crowd one another, leading to mergers that aren’t always friendly as the owners try to lure the best (i.e., losingest) customers to their offerings. (2-4 players, ages 10+, 60-75 minutes, $TBD) Edit, Feb. 22: Mayfair Games has clarified that the Selinker/Ernest title will actually be titled Casino: Vegas.

Francis Tresham’s 1830 will appear in a new edition in Q3/Q4 2010, but Mayfair’s Larry Roznai says that the exact composition of the game – that is, whether it will be changed from the original Avalon Hill publication – is still being finalized. The most important update, from his point of view, will be a set of rules that allows someone to learn 1830 out of the box. That’s the plan anyway.

I’ve previously published details on Glenn’s Gallery, Nuns on the Run, Ablaze! and Wacky Wacky West, which are respectively released, due in March 2010 and due in April 2010. Head to the links above for details.

Also available on BGN are details of Klaus Teuber’s new Catan Card Game, known as Die Fürsten von Catan (The Princes of Catan) in the German Kosmos edition, due in September 2010. Mayfair plans to release its English edition, with a title yet to be determined, in August 2010 in time for Gen Con.

Info about the new edition of Martin Wallace’s Automobile, previously announced from Mayfair and Phalanx Games, might be forthcoming in the near future.

Roznai said that Mayfair Games won’t have a new crayon rails game on the market in 2010, but the line is by no means finished.

In the weeks leading up to Toy Fair, various publishers contacted me to see (a) whether I would be attending and (b) whether I’d specifically visit their booth. Sometimes I said yes, sometimes I said, “You don’t publish any games, so no,” and other times I made vague “I’ll do what I can” hand-wavey motions and made a note to hit the booth if I was nearby and time permitted.

One publisher poking me was Pressman Games, which has an unimpressive record in terms of its game catalog, but the PR rep mentioned a new adult strategy game called Chinese Revolution and with thoughts of Gang of Four in mind I said, sure, I’ll swing by.

Alas, Chinese Revolution turned out to be a weak overthrow attempt of Pressman’s spotty catalog. The game was – are you ready for this? – Chinese checkers with a middle ring on the gameboard that rotates whenever you draw a “spin” card at the start of your turn. So the pieces sitting in that ring might be moved closer to their target or moved farther away. Flip the cards and find out for yourself!

The former U.S. publisher of Blokus had only one new game on offer at Toy Fair, a game that’s already available on store shelves. Stix & Stones, which includes short and long sticks (actually bendy rubber) as well as lots of stones, could be described as a cross between Name That Tune and Squint.

Players divide into two teams, with a picture builder being chosen on each team; the picture builders look at a secret word on a card, then bid on the number of stones and sticks they need to get their teammates to guess the word. Once bidding stops, the lowest bidding picture builder has 60 seconds to arrange bits as she likes, then her team can confer before making one guess about the image. If correct, they keep the card; if incorrect, the other team can keep the card, or attempt to name the object itself, in which case it scores two cards or none. The first team to collect ten cards wins. (4+ players, ages 7+)

In addition to Seven Card Samurai, described here on BGN, Mindtwister USA will release Multiplayer Pentago in March 2010. This title has the same gameplay of Pentago XL – get five stones in a row to win by placing stones on a grid, then rotating a section – but the gameboard uses new plastic components that allow all nine grid sections to rotate rather than only the exterior eight sections. The player tokens are two-sided so that four players can play in teams or as individuals.

Virginia-based ThinkFun, née Binary Arts, creates mainstream games for a young audience as well as solitaire puzzles for a wide range of ages. For 2010, ThinkFun has spun its existing Zingo! into two new games: Zingo! 1-2-3 and Zingo! To Go.

Both games use the same game play as Zingo! – you reveal two plastic tiles that players race to grab before anyone else and put on their “Zingo” (aka bingo) board, repeating the process until someone fills the board – but with 1-2-3 the tiles show numbers instead of words and images. The two-sided Zingo boards either show numbers directly or give simple math equations that players need to solve in order to know which tiles need to go where. Zingo! To Go uses a travel-friendly set-up in which players want to complete their traffic light before anyone else. (both games – 2+ players, ages 4+, $20/$15)

FlipOver! is another title for the youngsters, with semicircles showing half of an animal on one side and another half-animal on the reverse. To start the game, you divvy up the tiles, flip one tile over, then players play the other half of the animal, flip that over, etc. Strangely, the tiles form a closed group, so players aren’t racing to play a tile before someone else; only one tile can be played, and a single player will have that tile. The PR rep mentioned that the rulebook includes a list of which tile will be the final tile if you start with tile X, which gives parents a way to force a win onto their kiddo. I disapprove, but perhaps I’ll feel otherwise in a couple of years… (2+ players, ages 4+, $15)

Knot So Fast is a race game in which players are presented with a card showing a particular knot. Whoever ties the knot first, whether with string alone or with carabiners, scores a point, which is recorded by pulling the “tug of war” scoring rope closer to you. Players can score multiple points by challenging an opponent’s knot. (2-4 players, ages 8+, $20, available September 2010)

The only solitaire puzzle ThinkFun has on the calendar is Solitaire Chess, which includes sixty challenge cards from Beginner to Expert. Each card shows a number of chess pieces on it, with pawns moving away from the solver. Your challenge is to move the pieces in such an order that only one piece remains. As always, a nice challenge from ThinkFun. (1 player, ages 8+, $20)

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