August 2010 Notable Toys — General Games

This combination game set features popular games including chess, checkers, backgammon, cribbage, dominoes, dice and cards. It comes in a wooden box with an old-world latch.

The yo-yo has been around for 2,500 years and is considered the second oldest toy in history, the oldest being the doll. A yo-yo was also the first toy in outer space. This classic wooden yoyo is designed to delight kids of all ages as it has through all the ages.

Dice can be found in almost every culture in the world, and the number of games that can be played with a set of dice are virtually limitless. Dice games, by their very nature, tend to rely much more on luck than skill. This wooden dice game includes instructions for 10 different games. It comes with a magnetic closure and is designed for travel. The old-world, palm-sized wooden treasure box contains eight wooden dice.

This game is a 5" solid wood set with marbles that store inside the board with a sliding magnetic closure. "This is a high quality game with a great price!" Wood Expressions manager Christine Oda told TDmonthly.

This is a 5" solid wood game set features marbles that store inside the board with a sliding magnetic closure. Designed for travel, Nine Men's Morris is an abstract strategy board game for two players that emerged from the Roman Empire. The game's popularity peaked in Medieval England. This version of this historic game is crafted from wood. The pieces, "or men", store neatly inside the game when not in play.

This 5" solid wood game board includes marbles that store inside the board with a sliding magnetic closure. It is portable and designed for traveling. "Our game is a high quality product at a great price!" Wood Expressions manager Christine Oda told TDmonthly.

The 9 Square Shooters dice are printed with a full deck of 52 cards plus 2 jokers – you can use them to play almost any card game!  The patent-pending dice are designed so you can roll hands for rummy, poker, twenty-one and many more games. Includes Dice, Playing cards, Game cards, Scorekeeping chips, Dice cup and Instructions.

If you can bounce a ball you can play this fun party-ready game. With just two people, or a table full of friends, bounce the ball to victory. The first player to get all his/her coins in the cup wins. For two or more players.

For 2 to 6 players, or up to 3 individual players, Sequence Numbers is similar to the original Sequence game, except the cards are a mathematical equation, whose answer is a number found on the game board. First player or team to achieve the required amount of Sequences wins the game.

The Merbs™ Motivational Game System is an incentive-based program with a twist. This tool provides a game-based storyline that motivates kids to complete schoolwork. Students are challenged to help a populations of creatures, The Merbs™, build a civilization. They earn cash to buy game properties, creating an economy. The competition of the system encourages increased homework completion and class participation. This allows the instructor to evaluate students daily through simple game play. Parents can also use the System at home to motivate children to complete homework. For 2 or more players.

S’Quarrels is a card game based around the theme of squirrels collecting acorns before winter arrives. Under a nearby oak tree, embark upon the rigorous task of collecting and storing acorns before winter sets in. Your opponents are trying to take them all before you do. Whirlwinds, Ambushing, Quarreling, and Hoarding are all part of the game. Get the coveted Golden Acorn, while avoiding the Rotten Acorn. The player to store the most Acorns before Winter arrives wins.
— "What's selling really well for me is S'Quarrels," Jude Larene, owner of Izilla Toys in Seattle, told TDmonthly in July 2010. "I'm selling piles of it and I need to order more today. It gets into a neighborhood and everybody wants it."
— S’Quarrels received a great reaction from The Board Game Family. “Bring out the S’Quarrels cards,” they explained, “and kids can automatically picture being a little squirrel running around gathering acorns.” However, the reviewers cautioned that younger players may get “more frustrated when they aren’t quick enough to slap the hoard pile when that card is played.”
— As of 10/30/2012 this product had 4.6 out of 5 stars from 7 reviews on Amazon.com. Pros: Easy for kids to learn, but enough strategy is involved to appeal to adults; fun for groups. Cons: Not as fun with less than three players.

Players compete as Givers or Takers to save Paradice, a metaphor for the world, by uniting the humans to gain the power to give life back to the forests, before one human Takes too much and Paradice is lost for ever. The game includes 38 2” x 2” tiles, one die and rules. It is made in the USA from vegetable inks on recycled paper and is designed for one to two players. Awards: Dr. Toy Best Green Toy Award 2010

Lemming Mafia - a leap of a game by Michael Rieneck. Leap into the wild world of Lemming mafia! Bet on lemmings as they race to be the first to Jump. But yours more than a mere wager. Lemming bosses give you missions. You must slow some lemmings, or stop them altogether by putting them in concrete shoes. You must guide your favored lemmings, using jackhammers to cut off any concrete and limos to speed them along. Pick the right mission, and the swiftest Lemming, and you win! Laughingly Larcenous Leaping Lemmings.

Contains 1 Game Board, 6 Mafia-Lemmings, 36 betting cards, 18 mission cards, 2 Lemming Dice, 1 Regular die, 12 concrete markers, Rules.

For 3-6 Players

Conflict of Heroes merges the elegance of streamlined Eurogame rules with deep strategic wargames. The series is designed to create a tense and highly interactive game play experience. You must manage multiple command resources to move, attack, and take other actions with your units. This gives you great flexibility in executing your battle plans, but makes constant caution necessary as unit activations on either side can happen at any time. Price of Honor is an expansion and requires ownership of either Rise of Hero or Storms of Steel to play.

Price of Honour includes 2 new Polish landscape mounted boards, 2 Sheets of early war Polish, German and Russian tanks, airplanes and other units, 1 Sheet including all Awakening the Bear upgraded counters with new artwork and updated stats, 16 firefights. 10 playable with the AtB base game and 10 playable with the SoS base game, New summary sheets summarizing terrain and unit data for all of the Eastern Front games, Rule sheet adendum covering cavalry charges and other new unit data.

For 2 Players.

Las Vegas. The Strip. To the untrained eye, it's a sleepy desert crossroads. A wasteland of cheap hotels, gas stations, and dust. But to you, it is Paradise. Your brilliant plan? You will construct a magnificent chain of casinos and fill them with light. You will manufacture the ultimate dream of easy money and impossible luxury. You will sell-basically-nothing. You are not alone in this plan. In Lords of Vegas, you and your friends play rival developers, building on the Las Vegas Strip. You can get ahead by building the glitziest, most glamorous, and most popular casinos. But you can fall behind by letting your enemy become your boss. Lords of Vegas is a clever strategy game with all the thrills, risks, and rewards of the casino business. You start out with empty lots, build small casinos, and expand them as your bankroll grows. Your rivals can build next door, and they just might take you over with a clever paint job or a lucky roll of the dice. Buy, sell, trade, and gamble your way to the top as you build your empire along the storied Strip. So come on, roll the dice, and build your piece of Paradise!

For 2-4 Players.

Contains Snazzy game board, 4 turn summaries, 55 cards, 40 chips in 4 colors, 48 dice in 4 colors, 4 poker chips, Money, 45 casino blocks, Rules

Yamodo! Party Time challenges players to draw and define a set of made-up Yamodo! words. The game becomes comical as each player attempts to explain his or her words. Awards: The Toy Man Q2 Top 10 Award

The old dragon Drakon has captured a brave band of adventurers who have sneaked into her lair to steal her gold. In Drakon, players each control one of the heroes trapped in Drakon’s lair. The first player to collect enough coins for a total value of at least 10 gold immediately wins the game. On each turn, a player either places a tile (then draws another), or moves his of her figure one space. Rick Nauertz, Sales Associate for Fantasy Flight Games, told TDmonthly, "Drakon is cutthroat fun for the entire family. After all, you don’t have to outrun the dragon, you just have to outrun your opponents!"

Created by Nexus Games, known for War of the Ring, Moto GP, Wings of War and Age of Conan, Micro Mutants is a game of strategy and dexterity that’s fun for players of all ages and experience levels. Micro Mutants: Evolution is the first Micro Mutants game and includes everything up to four players need to do microscopic battle in 30 to 60 minutes, including the Usarthopod, Flyborg, Sovietopter and Chitinian armies. Fantasy Flight Games Sales Associate Rick Nauertz told TDmonthly, "Micro Mutants is surprisingly simple to pick up and learn."

Ingenious is the new abstract placement game from internationally-renowned game designer Reiner Knizia. Ingenious offers players a new way to train their brains by combining the simplicity of dominoes with the strategy Knizia is known for. Players place colored tiles on the hexagonal board, scoring points, blocking opponents’ tile placement, and trying to protect themselves from being blocked by their opponents. Ingenious is suitable for up to four players, as well as for solo play. Rick Nauertz, Sales Associate for Fantasy Flight Games, told TDmonthly, "Marvelously elegant and compulsively replayable, Ingenious is an excellent introduction to German-style abstract board games. It’s ingeniously simple, and simply ingenious!"

This edition of Colossal Arena features updated components and a more portable format. Colossal Arena is a game of titanic battles and high stakes for two to five players. Designed by the legendary Reiner Knizia, this Silver Line classic is a new version of Titan: the Arena originally published by Avalon Hill. Features include 12 creature cards, 132 combat cards, 11 spectator cards, three referee cards, 25 bet tokens and a rulebook. Rick Nauertz, sales associate for Fantasy Flight Games, told TDmonthly, "A game as comfortable in your family’s closet as on a table at a gaming convention, Colossal Arena is must buy for all gamers!"

In Through the Desert, two to five players each control a tribe of nomads vying for control of the desert. By establishing caravans and taking over oases, the players gain points as their tribes increase in power. Game play is designed to be under an hour. Fantasy Flight Games Sales Associate Rick Nauertz told TDmonthly, "From the award-winning game designer Reiner Knizia comes a game of strategy, patience and cool plastic camels!"

Kingsburg is a game of city building and resource management for two to five aspiring medieval governors, and is playable in roughly 90 minutes. Players adopt the role of a governor, and vie for resources to build up their province, military power to defend their homes, and above all the influence of the King. Over five years (five turns) players rely on various advisors to the King for resources. From tangibles like gold, wood and stone to soldiers and portents, each acquisition will shape the future of your community. Fantasy Flight Games Sales Associate Rick Nauertz told TDmonthly, "Combining many of the best elements of European and American board game design styles, Kingsburg has been praised for its clever use of dice and its high level of player interaction."

In the Warhammer world, four Gods of Chaos battle for supremacy: Khorne, the Blood God/Skulltaker, lusts for death and battle; Nurgle, the Plaguelord/Father of Corruption, luxuriates in filth and disease; Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways/Great Conspirator, plots the fate of the universe; and Slaanesh, the Prince of Pleasure and Pain/Lord of Temptations, lures even the most steadfast to his six deadly seductions. In the Chaos in the Old World board game, each player takes the role of one of the malevolent Lords of Chaos. Each god’s distinctive powers and legion of followers give the controlling player unique strengths and heretical abilities with which to corrupt and enslave the Old World. Yet, as the powers of Chaos seek domination by corruption and conquest, players must vie not only against each other, but also against the desperate denizens of the Old World who fight to banish the gods back to the maelstrom of the Realm of Chaos. Fantasy Flight Games Sales Associate Rick Nauertz told TDmonthly, "Chaos in the Old World takes place in the world of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game, and Warhammer Online, and so is bound to garner some name recognition."

In Dust, 2 to 6 players command vast armies of technologically advanced tanks, submarines, aircraft and “mechs” (massive piloted robots), all produced at factories which can be purchased and placed. To win, players must take territory through dice-based combat, controlling the most “power centers” in order to finance the expansion of their forces. By controlling the most of these power centers, along with the most capitals, players score victory points. The first player to score a set number of victory points claims the win. The game includes two variant rulebooks (quick-playing “Premium” rules and grand “Epic” rules), a puzzle-cut game board, more than 800 plastic figures, 45 lavishly-illustrated cards, 10 custom battle dice, 25 game tokens and three player reference sheets. Fantasy Flight Games Sales Associate Rick Nauertz told TDmonthly, "A few unique mechanics keep Dust somewhat shorter than other epic games of global conquest. In each player’s turn, for example, there is a cap on the amount of building, moving, and attacking allowed."