Toy Battle is a two-player tactical duel from Repos Production. Each turn you either draw troops into your rack or place one on the terrain. You win immediately by entering an enemy headquarters or collecting the terrain’s medal objective. If a player runs out of legal actions, medal totals decide the result. This walkthrough covers the 2025 base rules.

Set up the battlefield

  1. Choose one of the eight terrains on the four double-sided boards. The rulebook suggests Castle Field for a first game. Put medal markers on every marked region and read the medal target for your side.
  2. Each player takes one color, shuffles their troop tiles face down into a reserve and removes four unseen tiles to the box. This makes the exact troop mix uncertain each game.
  3. Give each player a rack. Choose a starting player at random. That player draws three troops; the other draws four. Keep the reserve face down and make room for a face-up discard.

The box has 48 troops total, three copies of each of eight types per color. Their strengths range from 1 to 7, with Kwak as a joker. The base game includes 16 medals. A player aid summarizes troop and terrain effects.

Your turn: draw or place

Draw two troops: take up to two face-down tiles from your reserve into your rack. You may hold at most eight. If only one tile or rack space remains, drawing one is legal. You cannot choose this action with eight troops already on the rack.

Place one troop: choose one from your rack, put it on a legal slot, resolve that troop’s effect and then resolve any special-base effect. These are alternatives; drawing does not also allow a standard placement. Some troop effects, such as Cap’n’s, can grant an extra placement.

Where can a troop go?

A normal placement must be connected to your H.Q. Trace a path from your H.Q. through only bases whose visible top troop is yours to the destination. Empty and enemy-controlled bases break the route. The destination may be an empty base, a base you already occupy, an enemy base whose visible troop is strictly weaker than the tile you place, or the opponent’s H.Q. You cannot enter your own H.Q.

Put a new troop on top of the existing stack, without rearranging it. Only the visible top troop controls a base. You may inspect stacks without changing their order. If an enemy takes a vital connecting base, placements beyond it can become illegal until you restore the route.

Example: your H.Q. connects through your occupied base A to empty base B. You may place at B. If the rival covers your troop at A first, B is no longer reachable through that route. An enemy strength-4 tile at a connected base can normally be covered by your strength-5 tile, but not your strength-4 tile.

How do medals work?

A region is enclosed by paths and bases. When you occupy every base around a region, take all medals in its center and keep them next to your rack. A single placement can complete more than one region. These medals remain yours even if the opponent later captures one of those bordering bases. A region whose medals were already taken cannot pay out again.

Troop powers and terrain effects

Troops change the placement puzzle: Star and Skully refill your rack; Cap’n can place another troop; Hook can ignore the connection rule when placed on a base; Kwak can cover any enemy troop but is vulnerable to any enemy troop. Hook still needs a connection to enter an enemy H.Q. Jumbo can remove an adjacent visible enemy troop, as described on the aid. Read the precise tile text before applying an effect.

Special bases add board-specific effects and sometimes placement restrictions. For a first game the official rulebook allows you to treat special bases as ordinary bases without their effects. Then introduce one terrain’s special rules at a time.

When does the game end?

  • H.Q. capture: placing a troop on any enemy H.Q. wins instantly, even if a terrain has more than one enemy H.Q.
  • Medal target: reaching the medal number printed for your side wins instantly.
  • No legal action: if a player cannot draw or place, compare collected medals. The player with more wins; if tied, the player whose inability ended the game loses.

More Toy Battle guides

Sources and scope

Checked September 2026 against the Repos Production game page, English rulebook and player aid. Printed effects and terrain diagrams control a particular play.

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