Links: Another Take on NY Toy Fair, Giant Carc Cake & More

Lots of posts from hither, thither and yon – mostly yon:

• Herb Levy's Gamers Alliance has a NY Toy Fair 2011 report that covers all the games that I've written about in my Toy Fair reports – with 100% less sassmouth – and many more games beside.

• Ystari Games is overhauling the graphics for Caylus: the cover, the game board and the tiles.

• Justin Gary's Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer will be released as an iOS app in May 2011, as noted on the Ascension website.

• Fantasy Flight Games is holding a deck-building contest for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game.

• As noted on ICv2, Games Workshop has acquired "exclusive worldwide rights to produce tabletop games based on" The Hobbit, which builds on the publisher's six-year agreement with Warner Bros. Consumer Products. (HT: vandemonium)

• German publisher Hans im Glück has posted a short video of its experience during the Nürnberg 2011 Toy Fair, complete with a soundtrack straight out of Ocean's 11 and a shot of an enormous Carcassonne 10th anniversary cake. If only all trade fairs could be so hip...

• If you're looking for more video explanations of board games, 5 Minutos por Jeugo has a fun approach, with lots of music and graphic effects in their creations – all of which are available in Spanish and some of which are available in English and French. Not an approach for everyone, but for me more interesting than "Hi there! This is a game..." presentations.

• Designer David Whitcher has passed along an update on the Protospiel Card Game Design contest, details of which can be found on Whitcher's PyroMyth Games website.

Quote:

The first round of judging is complete with the following ten advancing to the semi-finals:

Al-Kimia
Card Farm
Dinner with Sir Edward Lindsey
Mission Control
Mow Money
Oracle
Safe House
Venesia
Vaudeville
Wacky Stacks

These entries will be judged for Enjoyment (0-10 pts), Easy of play (0-5 pts) & Originality (0-5 pts). The four top scoring games will go to Protospiel 2011 (July 8, 9 and 10 Ann Arbor, Michigan) for final judging.

Thanks again to our sponsors: Alliance Game Distributors, Delano Services, and ElfinWerks.

• Finally, passes to Gen Con 2011 were part of a prize package on long-running daytime game show The Price Is Right. Details of this odd and misplaced promotion on LivingDice.com.