Wouter & Ymke 
There’s something weirdly nostalgic about little plastic army men. Almost everyone has probably used them at some point. Under the sofa, on the windowsill, behind books, fighting battles that made absolutely no sense. One soldier hiding behind a lamp somehow surviving against twenty others… classic military tactics, obviously.
Little Soldiers takes that exact feeling and turns it into a tabletop game. Not in a super serious “realistic warfare simulator” kind of way either. It leans fully into the toy-box idea. You build battlefields out of mugs, cereal boxes, books, baskets, toys, whatever happens to be nearby. Then tiny soldiers start crawling around the table trying to shoot each other from behind coffee cups.
The first thing that stood out to us wasn’t even the gameplay. It was the table itself. It immediately looks fun. Not polished. Not cinematic. Just messy in a good way, like someone dumped a box of toys onto the dining table and somehow turned it into a skirmish game.
Underneath all that chaos there’s still an actual tactical system. Soldiers move around terrain, check line of sight, attack enemies, use special abilities, and fight for control of the battlefield. But the game never forgets what it wants to be. And I think that helps a lot, because if this had tried to become some ultra competitive miniatures game, it probably would’ve lost a lot of what makes it enjoyable.
👥 2-4 players, ages 8+
⌛ Playing time: 30 minutes
📝 Designers: Florent Baudry & Adrien Fenouillet
🎨 Artwork: Paul Mafayon
🏢 Publisher: IELLO Games (review copy provided)
Gameplay overview
At the start of Little Soldiers, players first build the battlefield itself. The rulebook actively encourages using everyday objects as terrain, and that’s half the fun already. Books become walls, mugs become bunkers, random boxes suddenly turn into sniper towers. We even had a soldier hiding behind a bottle of sparkling water at one point. Very tactical. Very hydrated.
Deployment tokens decide where soldiers enter the battlefield whenever they come into play from HQ. Once the game starts, players take turns moving units around the table and spending order tokens to perform actions.
The turn structure stays pretty straightforward, which helps because the battlefield itself already becomes chaotic enough. You move first, then perform an action. That simplicity works in the game’s favor because players are already busy leaning around mugs and checking weird sightlines across the table.
Movement uses flexible measuring cords instead of rulers, which immediately makes the game feel less strict. Soldiers move around scenery, try to gain line of sight, or sneak closer to enemies for extra rerolls during attacks. And line of sight is really the main thing here.
Attacks technically have unlimited range, but you can only attack if your soldier can fully see the enemy miniature’s head. Which sounds slightly silly at first… until you start crouching over the table trying to see whether a tiny green sniper can spot someone behind a mug handle. It’s one of those rules that becomes more entertaining the more ridiculous the battlefield gets.
Combat itself uses custom dice. If you roll more hits than the target’s defense value, the enemy takes damage. Once a soldier has enough damage tokens, they’re removed from play. The different soldier types all work a little differently too. Infantry weaken defenses, snipers focus on precision attacks, grenadiers flick physical grenade dice across the battlefield, and operators launch mortar shots with a tiny wooden catapult spoon.
The spoon might genuinely be the component people talk about most after the game. And yes, explosions can hit your own units too. Which means some attacks feel carefully planned, while others feel like someone accidentally recreated a low-budget action movie.
The core game uses a battle track to determine victory. Defeating enemy soldiers pushes the marker toward your side, and wiping out the enemy squad completely can create sudden swings near the end of the game.
Beyond the basic mode, the game also comes with several modules and missions that add extra rules and different objectives. There are team battles, height levels, special battlefield objects, larger squads, tactics cards, and a few scenario modes.
King of the Hill is about controlling elevated terrain and collecting candy tokens. Battle Royale turns everything into complete multiplayer nonsense. And the cooperative threat missions pit players against hostile toys controlled by scenario rules. For us, those extra modes matter quite a lot because the base game alone feels more like an introduction than the full experience.
Artwork, components, and visual design
Little Soldiers fully commits to its toy-box style, and I think that’s one of the reasons it works.
The miniatures are molded in bright green and yellow plastic, instantly bringing back memories of those cheap plastic soldiers almost everyone had at some point. But the poses are much more expressive than the classic toy soldiers. The sniper kneels with rifle ready, the grenadier looks like he’s about to ruin somebody’s day, and the operator points forward like he’s trying to organise complete battlefield chaos.
The figures are chunky and exaggerated instead of realistic, which fits the game much better. Tiny realistic military miniatures would’ve made the whole thing feel strangely serious and a bit less charming.
The cards look like exaggerated action-figure versions of the miniatures, which fits the whole plastic-toy energy really well. Everything is colorful and easy to read without making the table feel overloaded with information.
And the terrain is probably the best visual part of the game anyway. Every match looks different because the scenery comes from whatever players decide to use. One game looks like a kitchen battlefield, the next one feels like soldiers fighting through a pile of school supplies. Half the fun is just looking around the room thinking: “Can we hide soldiers behind this somehow?”
The dice and tokens also match the playful tone. Big symbols, bright colors, oversized effects… it all feels intentionally toy-like. Then there’s the catapult spoon.
I know I already mentioned it, but it’s impossible not to. Launching mortar shots with a tiny wooden spoon captures the entire personality of the game in one stupid little component. And if your mortar accidentally wipes out your own soldier, that’s still less painful than stepping on Lego.
Our experience
Our experience with Little Soldiers was a bit mixed at first, but the more we played it, the more we started understanding what the game actually wants from players.
The first thing we noticed was how quickly the game creates interaction around the table. Before the first turn even starts, people are already discussing terrain placement, making jokes about hiding behind cereal boxes, or trying to build “the perfect defensive position” out of coffee mugs. It creates a fun atmosphere almost immediately because everyone naturally starts treating the table like a toy battlefield instead of a strict strategy game board.
The actual rules are also fairly easy to learn. Move, spend order tokens, attack, use abilities… after a round or two, most players already understand what they’re doing. What surprised us most was how physical the whole thing feels once the game gets going.
You constantly lean across the table checking visibility, measuring movement with cords, moving miniatures around objects, flicking grenades, launching mortar shots… it feels active in a way many tactical games don’t.
Most of our favourite moments came from things going slightly wrong. A grenade bouncing into friendly units, a sniper barely seeing someone through a gap between books, a mortar shot flying completely off target… those situations become the stories people remember afterwards.
After a few games, we realised the actual fighting is less about distance and more about who can peek around objects without getting spotted first. Terrain placement changes everything. Open tables feel completely different from crowded ones, and movement becomes less about rushing forward and more about controlling angles and hiding vulnerable units.
That said, the base bootcamp mode started feeling a little limited after several plays. With only two soldiers per side and short matches, games can swing very quickly from one lucky attack or one failed defense. We still enjoyed it, but it definitely feels more like a learning mode than the version we’d personally keep returning to long term.
Once we started adding modules, matches became a lot more interesting for our group. The levels module especially changes the table in a fun way because suddenly everyone starts fighting over height advantages. The object module adds weird battlefield effects that make matches less predictable. The missions also helped because players suddenly had reasons to leave cover and actually move across the table.
Battle Royale was probably the mode that created the most laughter at our table. Not the most tactical. Definitely the most chaotic. Meanwhile, the cooperative threat missions were a nice surprise because they changed the mood completely and gave the game a different kind of challenge.
We also noticed pretty quickly that the game feels smoother when nobody takes the measurements too seriously. The more relaxed everyone was, the more enjoyable the whole thing became. Because once two adults start debating whether a plastic soldier can see half of another soldier’s forehead behind a coffee mug, the illusion starts disappearing a little.
Our thoughts
I think Little Soldiers succeeds mainly because it understands exactly what kind of game it wants to be.
It’s not pretending to be a hardcore miniatures game. It’s not trying to simulate military combat realistically. It’s basically a structured version of children throwing toy soldiers across the living room floor… just with slightly more rules. And for the right group, that works really well.
The biggest strength is probably its identity. Every part of the game supports the same idea. The miniatures, the terrain setup, the measuring cords, the dice, the catapult spoon… everything feeds into the same toy-box battlefield feeling. A lot of games have good themes, but fewer games make the theme feel this physically present on the table.
It manages to keep the toy-box chaos while still being easy enough to teach in one sitting. Players still get positioning, line of sight, unit abilities, terrain interaction, and tactical decisions, but without needing expensive armies or giant rulebooks. That makes it much easier to bring to mixed groups or casual players who normally wouldn’t touch a traditional skirmish game.
At the same time, expectations matter a lot here. The base game alone may feel too light for some hobby players. The modules and missions honestly feel almost essential if you want longer-term variety. Without them, I think the novelty could wear off fairly quickly.
There’s also the issue of balance. Since players build their own terrain, some battlefields naturally favor certain units more than others. Open layouts make ranged attacks much stronger, while crowded tables create more chaos with explosives and movement tricks. Personally, I think that flexibility is part of the charm, but it also means the game probably won’t satisfy people looking for extremely controlled competitive play.
The grenade flicking and mortar launching will probably be the thing that either completely wins people over… or completely loses them. For us, they added personality to the whole experience. But I can absolutely imagine some players preferring a more controlled tactical game without bouncing grenades and flying mortar shots changing their plans.
We also noticed that larger games with multiple modules can become slower if players start overthinking every move. The game really benefits from keeping things moving and treating the battlefield a little more casually.
I can already picture the kinds of groups that will absolutely love this thing. Families, mixed-age groups, casual gamers, or hobby players looking for something lighter and more social will probably get the most out of it.
It ended up giving us way more laughs and table stories than we expected from a box full of tiny plastic soldiers. And there’s something refreshing about a game that fully commits to being playful without constantly trying to prove how serious or complicated it is.
Tiny plastic soldiers fighting around coffee mugs probably shouldn’t work this well… but somehow, it really does.
📝 We received a copy of the game from IELLO.
