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Chris Kovac
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
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The last weekend in January means my annual trip to the Canadian Toy & Hobby Fair in Toronto. This is a small trade show featuring toys and games for the Canadian market. Since this show is geared towards the kids market, many of the board games shown are also geared towards that market, though there are exceptions. As usual I found a few games which might interest us hobbyist gamers. Unlike in previous years, I am going to group games by distributor, then in an "Innovators" section for independent designers.
Îlot 307 inc.
This game distributor out of Quebec had a selection of Euro-style games at the show, the most interesting of which were Sultans of Karaya, Water Lily and Vizia.
• Sultans of Karaya, by Alex Weldon (MJ Games) – This is an interesting Werewolf-like small box game themed around an evil assassin who is trying to kill the Sultan. The game ends when the Sultan is killed by the assassin, the Sultan kills the assassin, or three slaves sit side-by-side, thereby starting a revolution.
At the start of the game, each person is dealt a hidden character; during the game, they can either exchange their character with another player or a neutral card in the middle of the table, or use their special power, revealing their card in the process. Other characters include the seductive dancing girl, the stalwart bodyguards, a seer (who bets on who is going to win), and the slave. This looks to be a fun party game for those who would like a change from Werewolf.
• Water Lily, by Dominique Ehrhard (GameWorks) – This is a family game with a memory aspect with a theme of frogs diving under a pond. On a turn, you move any frog forward up to as many spaces as the number of frogs on the location where it sits. This might sound fairly simple, but the cute part is that you slide the frogs into one of five slots which lead to scoring columns under the pond. You have to remember where each frog is as only the middle frogs in each column score the most, so timing of when to send your frogs under the pond is crucial. Looks to be a nice family game and the production values are good.
• Vizia (MJ Games) – In this abstract color-matching game, you are trying to build hexagons of certain colors to score points. A decent filler or cottage game which plays fast, yet is quite strategic in play.
This distributor also carries a variety of other Euro-type games, including a new edition of Bruno Cathala's quirky card game Mow (complete with solar-powered "Moo" sounds and rules for up to ten players) and a sequel of sorts by the same author called PRRRT... about farting of all things. (Yes, the box has a solar-powered noisemaker making that noise.) Îlot 307 also has a new version of Top Race and the car version of the finger-flicking game of Bisikle called RoadZters. Îlot 307 will be at both New York and Essen, so check them out at those shows if you happen to be there.
BRMB Distributors
This distributor carries the Goliath line of games, of which Tayü is the most well-known. This year it had one new interesting game of note called Panic Tower which is a dexterity game of building towers and trying not to have them collapse.
On a turn, you reveal a card which tells you what size of block you have to put on a colour-coded 3x3 grid, how many blocks, and in which order. If you knock over a tower you get a negative score chip. When all the negative score chips are taken, the person with the fewest chips wins. Looks to be a decent quick game for family or the casual gaming crowd. Bernard Rollin, the president of the company, was very helpful in demoing this game to me.
GameBrotherz
This small Canadian company produces light children's games, and the one game that might interest gamers is called Mister Mailman Junior, a letter delivery game using a roll-and-move system supplemented by a hand of three cards which provide extra movement. The object is to deliver all your letters to the houses before opponents do. The two other games on hand were Boo (a simple roll-and-move race game) and Spuzzle, a puzzle game, with both games being for kids around age five.
Innovators Corner
In this small corner of the show, independent game designers from across Canada came to show off their games, hoping to get distributors interested in them. I saw four games which might interest the hobby gamer. They are:
• Rare Earth, by Richard Gowan and James MacDonald – This card-combination game intends to teach kids and high school students basic chemistry principles using elements of the periodic table. The basic idea is to create card melds of elements based on a compatibility system that uses arrows on the cards. Only arrows of the same type can be combined. These melds are worth points at the end of the game (when the element deck runs out) and you can steal points from other players by using various one-time cards (the heavier elements) and some special action cards. The cards are nicely illustrated, and the game might looks to be an okay family-filler.
• Superpowerful Bonanza, by Lue Nuwame (Azikwe Ltd.) – A beautifully illustrated though simple superhero board game in which you pick a hero or villain, then play various superpower cards out of your hand to win duels. The first person to win all the power cards from a player wins. The designer has also created a role-playing variant complete with a comic book, but was unclear on how this differed from the board game version. The gamed seemed very simple and a bit random but looks to be okay for younger kids.
• Elimination, by Martin Metivier – A party game which is sort of a cross between musical chairs and Pit where the last person holding the elimination stick wins.
In the game you are dealt a number of random coloured cards. The dealer then calls out how many cards are to be traded and in which direction they are to be passed. This process continues until someone has four of one of the four colors of cards; this person then grabs one of the elimination sticks, which causes everyone else to grab sticks (one less than the number of players) with the person who did not grab a stick being eliminated. An elimination stick is then removed and another rounds begins. This continues until only one person is left.
• Chess Web, by Tony O'Hagan – Yet another chessboard variant, this time being a circular board allowing the equivalent of two chess boards of area in which to play.
Overall the show seemed smaller and quieter than in 2010 and years past. Hopefully the show will continue but the slowly shrinking size of the show does not bode well for the future – yet as long as the show goes on, I will be there looking at the games.
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