The Disney Afternoon Rewind is a board game that took me by surprise when I saw its crowdfunding campaign launch on Kickstarter. At first, I was overwhelmed by the vibrant nostalgia of its theme. Based on several hit Disney cartoons of yesteryear, and packaged to look like VHS cassette boxes, this is a board game laser targeted at people with a ’19’ in their birth year, increasing levels of lower back pain, and a tendency to laugh at ‘Only 90s Babies Remember’ memes. I was expecting a fairly shallow, saccharine family board game. I was not expecting a rules set that sounds more like a skirmish wargame.
You know wargames, right? Combat-focused tabletop games where you maneuver an army to try and outwit your opponent? It doesn’t sound like a concept that would suit a Disney tabletop game, especially given how much licensed Disney games try to avoid Death with a capital D. Bambi’s mom can die in the movies, sure, but she simply gets tired in games like Disney Lorcana.
Nevertheless, there are a lot of traces of wargaming in The Disney Afternoon Rewind. This is a two-player board game with six boxes/scenarios to play through. Each is based on a different 90s Disney cartoon, from iconic series like Ducktales and Gooftroop to underrated gems like Gargoyles and Talespin. Each scenario is competitive, but the win conditions differ slightly from box to box – though an early draft of the rulebook implies that many of them will involve area control. Strike one for the wargamers.
Strike two comes during setup. Each box includes a host of different characters from its selected show, and you can only have so many of them on your side. Teams are built on a Point Cost system, with more powerful allies being more expensive to recruit. That’s a concept that’s straight out of games like Warhammer 40k.
Once you’ve assembled your army team, you and your rival will engage in a multi-phase ‘challenge’. Each round starts with the playing of inspiration cards, which in turn provide you with the resources to fuel your character’s abilities. After that, you’ll take alternating turns performing up to two actions with one character. Based on the early rulebook, it looks like your actions will mostly be movement and ‘challenging’. This is the Disneyfied version of combat.
Each character has a defense stat and a courage stat to protect them from incoming ‘challenges’. Successful challenges deal fear rather than damage, but this is a cosmetic change only. Once a character takes more ‘fear’ than they have ‘courage’, they are forced to ‘flee’, meaning they’re temporarily removed from play. It’s death without any of the grisly details.
If a Disney wargame sounds like your idea of a great Saturday afternoon, then The Disney Afternoon Rewind is crowdfunding until November 14. All six boxes will set you back $144, while a single title costs $30, and a set of three will set you back $75. You can find out more on the Kickstarter page.
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