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To (sort of) coincide with the release of Toy Story 4 in 2019, U.S. publisher The Op released Toy Story: Obstacles & Adventures, a co-operative deck-building game built on the engine first seen in Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle from the Prospero Hall design team. In this 2-5 player game, each player takes the role of a toy — Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Rex, or Bo Peep — and starts the game with a slightly customized ten-card deck.
On a turn, you reveal 1-3 danger cards — losing life or cards, or advancing a token on the adventure path toward your doom — then suffer the effects of 1-3 hazard cards — same — then play cards from your hand to gain insight that fights hazards, give health to you or your fellow toys, and acquire new adventure cards for your deck in the form of traits, friends, and items. Your goal is to overcome all the hazards in play before the token reaches the end of its path, with the hazards representing scenes from the Toy Story movies and short cartoons.
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Victory at the end of adventure #1
The game includes six boxed adventures, with the first three adventures representing the first three Toy Story movies. If you can escape from Sid at the end of adventure #1 before Andy makes it to his new home and has a psychotic breakdown over the loss of his playthings, then you advance to adventure #2, adding new cards to all of the decks with the final goal of overcoming Prospector Pete.
As more cards get added to the game, you have more variety in what you can add to your deck — sort of. Six different cards are always available in the market, but those cards come out of the deck at random, so if you're interested in acquiring items — which I am since I play Buzz and in later adventures Buzz receives a bonus for playing three items on a turn — and no items are available, then I can either buy nothing (which might leave me facing the same choices on my next turn) or I can buy a trait or friend, which will probably dilute my deck and make it less likely for me to get that item bonus.
Yes, this is a deck-building game, so you're somewhat at the mercy of chance. You might hit a stretch of five danger cards in a row that move the token on the adventure path, with some of those moves then increasing the number of danger cards you draw, thereby escalating your doom. No adventure cards that move back that token might be available for you to acquire, so you just have to watch the game skid away from you. Those games do happen, and you just have to pull your cowboy hat on a little tighter and try again.
Lotso goes down, buried under insight...
I've now played Toy Story: Obstacles & Adventures eight times on a review copy from The Op, all two players with me being Buzz and my partner being Rex. We've made it to adventure #4, which is based on the short film "Toy Story of Terror!" and which changes up the formula of you confronting a randomized series of hazards ahead of a predetermined finale. We've died repeatedly on that adventure, partly due to chance and partly due to choices. We also discovered a line hidden in the "Reminders" section of the rulebook that is not a reminder, but a new rule, namely that once per game you can remove all the adventure cards and put out new ones.
The rulebook is a little clunky this way, hiding things you should know about or not answering a question that will come up during play. (Two such examples: (1) Your starting cards don't have a cost of 0, but rather no cost at all, so they don't qualify as even-costed cards for certain situations. (2) You can't assign insight to the ultimate hazard in adventures 2 and 3 until you've removed all other hazards in play.)
One change from Hogwarts Battle to Toy Story: Obstacles & Adventures seems to be that the game scales better based on the number of players, with a four- and five-player game having a longer adventure path than a game with two or three players, thereby giving larger groups more time in which to play. Adventure cards seem to have a greater percentage of cards that affect all players, with the army men cards being playable out of turn to provide a bonus to one or more players, thereby allowing you to act rather than just being clobbered by dangers and hazards between turns.
For more on the game, check out this overview video:
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