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International Toy Fair Nürnberg 2006

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The Fair

The fair in Nürnberg is a toy fair, this cannot be emphasized enough. ‘We’ board games addicts might think otherwise, but we are a small group here. A wild estimate would be that board games are not even five percent of what is showed here in total: balls, dolls, swings in all sorts and sizes, carnival clothes, model cars and airplanes, fireworks suppliers, and everything between and on top of this. The booths having to do with model trains by themselves fill a huge hall, where there is even room for a huge loc that first ran in 1889. Nürnberg, in short, is laaaarge.

We also notice this by the thousands of booth holders in the morning (nearly 2800 booths with an average of about 2,5 people in the booth gives 7000 people) who daily walk the last hundred meters in large queues to the fair in order to do their job for this day; it is an impressive sight and one can only respect this industry of which in this way it gets clear that many more earn their living in it one or the other way.

The city council and the shops of Nürnberg must have understood this too as during the fair the shops stay open longer. Moreover, all booth holders and the press may use public transport for free, even to fairly distant destinations outside the city. A shuttle bus drives around the compound and delivers you fast from hall 1 to hall 12 but be careful because an ordinary day ticket gets void when going outside.

Jeff Widderich of CardChess
- with cheese head/hat -
on his way to the Messe
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A selection of publishers and their games:
Abacus Spiele
Amigo
CardChess
Clementoni
Days of Wonder
Eggertspiele
Hans im Glück
Kosmos
Phalanx Games
Queen Games
Ravensburger
Schmidt Spiele
Winning Moves
Ystari


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Hans im Glück

Der Turm - Klaus Jürgen Wrede
The Carcassonne series gets expanded with this next module. With ‘Der Turm’ a card dispenser shaped as a tower is supplied. Besides that, new tiles with illustrated towers are in this box. On these spots wooden towers can be placed. When a piece is put on top of a tower, it chases off the farmers in the adjacent tiles. When the tower is built higher, the range is getting larger, so this will affect even more distant farmers. 2 tot 4 players, 8 years and up.

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Mauer Bauer - Leo Colovini
In this tile laying game with dice walls are built. At the beginning of every turn a player first puts a wall somewhere on the board. After that he throws three dice; these indicate which colour tower may be built on either side of the wall. Two houses may be exchanged for a palace to earn more point when an area is scored. Once an area is completely walled, there is a score and all players can play 1 or 2 cards that influence their score. There are also cards that score not walled areas; they can be played at this time. The game is over when the pile of either one of the building materials is exhausted. The player with the most points wins the game. For 2 to 4 players, 10 years and up.


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Thurn und Taxis - Karen und Andreas Seyfarth
O n a map of Germany players try to make long tracks and score points with our mail coaches. At game start each player is dealt two city cards. The game continues as follows:
• First, a city card from an open stack of six is taken
• One of the players city cards he has in his hands must be played on either side of his already existing track(s)
• The track can be scored if it at least contains three city cards.

The mail coaches start with number three, and a player has to work his way up from this number to coach seven. In a turn, a players also chooses one of four professions:
• With a postillion a player can play two city cards instead of one.
• With the mailmaster a player can take two instead of one city cards
• With the clerk all six cards get exchanged for new ones
• With the coach master a player may take a new higher numbered coach, although to qualify for it he falls short two city cards in his track.

Dependant of the length of a track a player gets points when a score takes place: 1 point with a track of 5 cards, 3 with 6, and 4 with 7 cards. Through scoring, a player gets a new, higher numbered, mail coach. If he has only 3 or 4 cards, he may cal a score but he only gets the mail coach and no points are awarded to him for the track. The game board is divided in three regions. If a player manages to form a track that entirely lies in on eof thes, he also gets extra point for that.

The player who is the first to get coach seven ends the game. Then the player with the most points wins. Voor 2 to 4 players, 10 years and up.

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