Hacks and Remixes

Toy Gaming is Criminally Underrated

11 toy game rulesets to play with during the holidays

I dislike X-Mas, and I refuse to make lists of gift ideas. However, this time of year is a good opportunity to experiment with toy gaming. To facilitate this, I made a list of toy gaming options. You don’t need new games. Just play new games with the toys you own or have access to. Even if a ruleset isn’t free, it adds value to whatever toys you have on hand.

STOP BUYING SHIT YOU DON’T NEED, YOU CONSUMERIST FUCKS!

BrikWars

If you have at least a reasonable amount of Lego, this may be your jam. BrikWars is The Lego Movie meets first edition 40K. The setting is a synthesis of ultraviolent slapstick and nonsensical geopolitics. Combat is moderately crunchy, but players can and often do tear out whatever rules don’t work for them. The campaign systems are in-universe excuses to wage terrible and hilarious war. Even if you never play it, you should read BrikWars.

Also, DO NOT BUY A KID KNOCK-OFF LEGO OR DUPLO! Clone bricks don’t stick together right! More is not better! Fewer bricks that actually fit is superior!

Crossfire

If you hate games that require tape measures or rulers, like I do, this is the wargame for you. Crossfire is a WWII wargame without measuring or fixed turns. Kind of like an analog RTS game. Since there’s no measuring, scale doesn’t matter much. But you do need a lot of cover. With larger toys, consider stacks of books, boxes, and household items.

Fairy Chess

I love chess variants. They’re a giant “fuck you” to convention, tradition, and conformity. There are over 200 recognized fairy chess pieces in existence! It would be a crime to not play fairy chess with toys. Just determine which pieces fit the toys on hand, label them, and play. And don’t try too hard to balance the forces. For larger toys you can allow for pieces to take up multiple squares, or make a bigger board.

Flickin’ Cars With Guns

Flickin’ Cars With Guns is to Hot Wheels what BrikWars is to Lego. Pitch Car meets Car Wars. Players move their cars by flicking them, and shoot their guns by more traditional means: dice and a tape measure. The base game is one page long and super simple. The Detours expansion replaces dice-rolling with marble-shooting, adds custom weapons, or turns FCWG into a drinking game. I only just discovered it, but I am going to play this very soon.

Floor Games

A city-building game using toys. Like analog SimCity on God Mode. Written by H.G. Wells. Yes, THAT H.G. Wells. No points or conflict or official goals. You’re just building and running a turn-of-the-century city. Includes two similar but distinct ways to play. Toys fall under 4 categories: People, bricks, boards/planks, and train stuff. Good for construction toys or, obviously, train-centric toy lines.

Note that the book was written in olden days and isn’t at all racially progressive.

Gaslands

Car Wars meets X-Wing. Players use maneuver templates to move around and through hazards and terrain. Includes scenarios inspired by Fury Road, Death Race*, and other masterpieces of cinema. This is a gamer’s game AND a modeller’s game. Unlike Flickin’ Cars With Guns, Gaslands’ rules are a bit crunchy and modding toy cars is part of the game. The designer occasionally publishes on Medium.

*That wasn’t sarcasm. Death Race is criminally underrated.

Little Wars

The militant side of Floor Games. A simple but fiddly wargame. Diceless. The default is Napoleonic war, but enterprising gamers can make it whatever. Melee combat is resolved with a simple calculation of forces. Cannon fire is resolved with toy cannons that, back in the day, actually shot pellets. Good for army men, Playmobil, and similar figures. Replace cannons with smaller (weaker) NERF guns or flick-able toys (marbles, checkers, etc.). Also consider Little Orc Wars.

Note that H.G. Wells was a pacifist. He hoped wargames would satiate the violent urges of men in power. I guess he wasn’t aware that wargaming was already a common and respected military practice at the time.

StikBash

My homebrew Stikfas game. Z-G meets marbles. As I mentioned in the article, you can use whatever toys you want, so long as they stand up well.

Stock Car Solitaire

Another non-violent option. A book of diecast racing scenarios, called Packages, that share some common rules. The author likens it to Hoyle’s Official Book of Games, but for diecast car racing. I can’t tell you if it’s good or not. I couldn’t find any reviews and the Amazon preview is short. You’ll have to research this yourself, but the book is obviously a labor of love. You don’t have to use diecast cars, but this is meant for Hot Wheels and Matchbox lovers. You’ll need 60-ish cars.

Toymallet 40¢

40K for people who lack time and money. Inspired by the designer’s angst over how expensive 40K models are. The generic “Lengths” means it can handle anything from meeples to Star Wars toys. Killing, driving back, and pinning enemies net you Happy Time Fun points. So does holding objectives. Whoever has the most HTF points at the end of six turns wins. The HTF rules plus the Tactical Point mechanic make this parody a solid wargame.

Toy War

Toy Story re-imagined for the Adult Swim audience. Simple wargame for larger and more varied kinds of toys. Slinkys, Barbies, dump trucks, etc. Uses one stat based on size. Different types of toys have different abilities. Not all that deep, but a good excuse for Elsa to fight sentient Tonka trucks. I owned the black-and-white edition ages ago but never played it. Can’t remember who I loaned it to, but I will track them down and make them pay.

Proxy and Hack Out-of-Print Toy Games

There are a lot of dead toy-based games you can steal ideas from: Z-G, Attacktix, Shadowrun: Duels, Xevoz, Crossbows and Catapults, Star Wars Galactic Heroes Game, Star Wars: Galactic Battle Game, GI Joe Micro Force, and so on. The rulebooks are probably out there as PDFs. You’re going to have to hack some rules and, obviously, components. Anyone thinking about going this route won’t find it a problem.