GAMA Trade Show 2011 Exhibitor Coverage–Part 12

Today’s featured vendors include Mayfair Games, Cryptozoic, Wizards of the Coast and Wizkids!.  My co-conspirator has one more post tomorrow to complete our exhibitor coverage and then we name our “GTS Best of Show 2011” winner on Monday.  The end draws nigh!

 

Mayfair Games

“Vikings of Catan” is a new metal miniature token set for the legendary tile game. The release date on this set is hopefully Origins 2011, but definitely by Gen Con 2011. A new train game,” 1830″ is on the horizon as well.

Cryptozoic

 

“The Walking Dead” board game box and trading card prototypes were on display, but by request of Cryptozoic I could not take any pictures.  No firm release date yet, but zombies are red hot now and I expect the halo effect from the very good tv series will drive big sales. “Fringe,” “The Vampire Diaries” and “Big Bang Theory” had licensed trading card set on display as well.

The “Penny Arcade” licenses were new at the show. A deck building game using the theme and characters of the Penny Arcade universe is under development. Yes, I asked and the “Fruit Fucker”  is in the game.  A PA game without him is simply not acceptable. A newer PA property “The Lookouts,” gets its own board game. “Lookouts” was a short series on the PA site involving kids tromping through a hostile fantasy forest learning how to fight and survive.

Finally, a new card game “Food Fight” uses clever cartoon characters of various food as your foot soldiers. My weapon of choice is “Flapjack the Ripper. ”

 

Wizards of the Coast

 

Rather than re-hash the Wizards GTS 2011 Seminar, please check out the liveblog I did of the event.  This covers most of their releases. Hasbro also had a space-themed (and heavily modified) version of “Battleship” that WOTC demoed at the show.

 

Wizkids!

“Quarriors” is a fresh take on the very crowded deck-building genre. Rather than cards, the entire game uses dice. 130 of them!

Here is a shot of the demo table.

Quarriors from Wizkids!

 

 

The blue “teardrop” dice represent Quiddity (cash) that you use to buy dice from the common pool and then use those dice to achieve victory.  Nice idea and the dice are much easier to deal with than the endless card shuffling of Dominion. I will definitely giving this one a closer look.

After seeing a prototype at Gen Con 2010, I finally played “Star Trek: Expeditions.” Stuart and I played a nearly complete game with two other hardy souls. We took the roles of Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Dr. McCoy in this cooperative board game.  The characters beam down, gather items, defeat enemies and complete goals. Each player has a special ability that matches their role on the show. Kirk is the best at command/diplomacy missions and Spock is a science god.  There is risk as you take damage (tracked on Heroclix-like bases) from events and bad rolling. Though not operational in the prototype I played, the track at the top tracks some attacking Klingons in orbit.

Note: This game is not Heroclix compatible!

 

Star Trek Expeditions Board Game

 

Game was a great time and the components were top-notch. I expect great things from this game.

 

One more post tomorrow and then we are on to the “GTS 2011 Best of Show” announcement on  Monday!

 

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

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trask

Trask is a long-time gamer, world traveler and history buff. He hopes that his scribblings will both inform and advance gaming as a hobby.