Israeli game stores, continued

I went back to the toy store while my daughter went shopping for a skirt.

My first check was to see which Foxmind games were available, as I incompletely reported on them last time. Turns out that the games published by Foxmind in Israel are Gamewright games: Rat-a-Tat Cat, Slamwich, Snap, and so on, as well as some other games, like Speed (looks like Blink) and Set.

I also noticed for the first time some cheap but interesting looking abstract games by Orda Industries (here, and here), makers of Duello, 1,2,3 Go, and some other stuff. Orda's games were cheap, about $6 for the first, and $3.50 for the second.

Duello looks cute. Each piece is a square with its movement capabilities illustrated on its top, and you have to capture your opponent's pieces by landing on them. You get access to your own pieces in random order. Looks a little like a possible influence for Gilad's Rooster Coop game.

There are still a few games in Hebrew that look original and "meaty", but I haven't yet figured out what they are. Something called "Enchanted Forest"? It might be the one on BGG. The rest of the games are translations of English games, SuDoku, classic abstracts as well as Abalone, Blokus, Batik, DisX, Gobblet, Pylos, Quixo, and Quarto, or knock-off trivia, roll-and-move, or matching games.

They still have original copies of Talisman (bleah), European 4-player Stratego, and a Stratego-like game where your pieces can stack, called Super Tactico.

I saw what looks like another sort-of Monopoly clone called "Canyon", which means "Mall" in Hebrew. You have to buy stores that customers are visiting in the mall; I couldn't figure out the rest of the rules from the back of the box.

Some very prominent games include:

- Blanko, a Hebrew Scrabble variant

- Rummikub (of course)

- Monopoly (Israel, and the Hebrew edition of Wonders of the World)

- Hebrew Scrabble

- Rolit (marbles colored on 4 different sides embedded at each point in a grid; you obviously have to get N in a row of your color via some sort of restricted mechanism for turning the marbles)

- Manhattan; this one matches neither of the same named games on the Geek. You have to place 2x3x4 blocks on a grid, and when you enclose a space you get points. I can't tell how deep this games is from the box.

No "Ingenious" this time.

Yehuda