Toy Battle

Toy Battle is a two player abstract game. My first impression is this is a game when you play with not only those tiny green toy soldiers but also with unicorns, dinosaurs and robots, and you make proper rules for a battle game in your living room, which you can imagine to be any world - space station, beach front or graveyard. The game comes with many different boards, each with a different layout and usually some unique rules. The core rules stay the same. 

You and your opponent start at opposite ends of the board. There are two ways to win. Capture your opponent’s base, or score a required number of stars. In case the game ends due to a player running out of units, the tiebreaker is the number of stars. Players have the same set of troops, numbered from 1 to 7. There are three units of each troop type. However a few units are removed randomly at the start of a game, so you can’t card count accurately. You don’t even know your own exact unit count. 

You start the game with some units in hand. The rest are in a draw pool. On your turn you either deploy a unit, or draw two from the pool. When deploying units, they must be connected to your base, whether directly or through a connected chain of friendly units. You can attack an opponent unit which is weaker by placing your unit on top of it. He might counterattack by placing an even stronger unit on top of that stack. The fact that opposing units stack up is interesting. If you use the knight power to remove your opponent’s piece from the top of a stack, it may reveal your unit, and suddenly the board situation goes strongly in your favour.  

After deploying a unit, if your units fully enclose an area containing stars, you claim them. 

As you can imagine, the fun comes from the unique abilities of many of the units. The skeleton and the unicorn let you draw units from the pool, saving you some turns. Normally you need to spend a whole turn to draw two units. The robot lets you randomly discard a unit from your opponent’s hand. The knight lets you remove an adjacent opponent unit, even if it is stronger. The toy soldier lets you immediately deploy another unit. The pirate monkey is a paratrooper and can ignore the supply line rule when being deployed. There is one funny unit type - rubber ducky - which has no number and can beat any other number. However it is also vulnerable to all other numbers. There are many clever ways you can use your units. 

The beach

Swimming pool

Graveyard

Islands

Rainbow!

At first the game sounds a little chess-like. Information on the board is open. You can calculate several steps ahead where your opponent might deploy his pieces and how you might respond. This sounds a little dry, like most perfect information abstract games tend to be. However Toy Battle has important concealed information. You may know how many units your opponent has in hand, but you don’t know what they are. And the powers of the units matter a lot. This is a game with surprises and uncertainty. 

Capturing the opponent base is not easy. However it is an important threat you can use to force your opponent into making defensive moves. He can’t ignore the threat. Your eventual goal might be to grab more stars, but your opponent has no choice but to address the other existential threat. 

I first played the digital version, then later played the physical.

You get a Scrabble style tile holder

The game box was smaller than I expected

The small unique powers on maps create interesting combinations with some of the powers of the units. One of the maps let you return a unit to your hand. That means you will get to use its power again. Getting a skeleton back lets you draw another two units! 

I talk about many fun combinations and clever moves, but this is a quick game. You only have 20 units in your pool. The game is like potato chips. When you finish one game, you get the urge to start another.