On Friday we were down a member so we played Carcassonne New World and King of Tokyo. CNW is a fun game when everyone’s on the same page. Two of us try to play as many tiles west (and sometimes north and south) as we can before anyone starts the scoring. But inevitably one player will want some instant points or go for scoring every turn, which pushes the surveyors west and causes all our long-term plans to go down the crapper because we lose our meeples. This really gets to one member of our group who rarely scores above 25, so when he realizes he’s losing, he does everything in his power to kick everyone else off the board. I can’t blame him. It gets annoying for me too, but at least I scored above fifty last night. Here are some pics, one after a few turns of game play and the other two after the final score. I was blue. Black won by a hair and red came in second. Yellow was last place having never passed fifty at all. Poor guy got lapped twice by black and red.
When one of our group went home sick, we decided to switch over to another game, but were arguing about what to play. That’s when the owner of Jax Game Center pulled out King of Tokyo for us. We were looking for something new and fast to learn. He’d been meaning to set it out as a demo. So it worked out. The rules of King of Tokyo are simple (mostly). It’s a board game with dice and cards and counters, so there’s elements of chance to the game which pure strategic gamers won’t like. But it’s very fast play and kind of manic.
Every player picks their monster. Every monster starts out with the same stats, 10 health and 0 victory points. The first player to 20 victory points or the last player standing wins. Victory points are earned by three methods: conquering & staying in Tokyo, getting numbers on the dice, or buying cards that give points.
There are 8 dice, 6 of which are rolled unless the player has a card saying they get one or two extra dice (the extra dice are green while the 6 main dice are black). The dice are all 6-sided with 1, 2, 3, a lightning bolt, a monster paw, and a heart on them. Hearts give back health points, lightning bolts earn energy cubes (which are used to purchase cards), and the numbers are what earns the victory points. However, the player has to roll 3 of the same number (1-1-1, 2-2-2, or 3-3-3) to get that number of victory points. So if I roll a 2-2-2, I get 2 victory points. If I roll 2-2-2-2, I get an extra victory point added to my 2 for a total of three. If I roll six 3s then I get 6 victory points.
BTW, the dice can be rerolled up to two more times after the initial roll (though a player does not have to reroll all three times if they like what they have). And any number of dice can be rerolled (including extras). So if I save two hearts aside to heal health points and reroll four dice to end up with four lightning bolts, I can take a chance by rerolling the two hearts on my third roll to see if I can score an extra two lightning bolts. Is this advisable? Well, it depends on how badly I need the health points.
Only three cards are up for purchase at a time. Two energy cubes can be spent to trash them and pull three new cards. Any number of cards can be bought in a turn so long as a player has enough cubes to spend.
No one starts in Tokyo. The first player to get inside Tokyo is the first player to roll one or more monster paws (this is the attack symbol). A victory point is gained by the player who takes Tokyo and 2 victory points are gained if that player is still in Tokyo when her turn next comes up. Any attacks rolled by the monster in Tokyo affect all monsters outside of Tokyo while any attacks rolled by monsters outside of Tokyo only affect the Tokyo monster unless that player has a card that says otherwise. (Why yes, there is a card that says all your attacks affect all other monsters!)
While staying inside of Tokyo sounds like a good strategy, there’s a caveat to that position. The hearts dice can’t be used to heal any monster inside of Tokyo. So unless the player has a card that allows them to spend energy cubes to heal himself, the hearts rolls are useless. And the only way to vacate Tokyo is to be attacked by another player and deciding to vacate the city, leaving it to the attacking player. And the leaving player still takes the damage from the attack roll.
Each monster paw is a point of damage, -1 to health. And there are six to eight dice that can be rolled. If a player gets lucky (and they do), your monster could be down some serious health points in one single attack. OUCH!
The board actually has two points of city entry, Tokyo Bay and Tokyo itself. But the Bay is only used if there are five or six players. If there are four or less, only Tokyo is used and only one monster can be in the city. As we were playing with three people, we didn’t go over the Bay rules to see if the Bay monster caused damage to the monster in Tokyo itself.
This game can be over within 10 minutes if you play with a brutal group. Otherwise, you can stretch it out to about 30 minutes if you go with the energy cube hoarding. Still, it’s a fun and fast way to pass the time. The major issue is all the tiny little pieces that come with the game. The energy cubes are about the size of the tiny tiny D6 dice sold by Chessex, which makes them very easy to lose. Plus there are all sorts of penny-sized counters to use with the Poison Quill, Smoke, Mimic, and Shrink Ray cards. That’s in addition to the six monster cards, the six stands, and the six cardboard characters to fit in the stands. I am thinking of sending it to one of the nephews as a Christmas present. I think he’ll get a big kick out of it. Then again, it’s a boardgame where you get to play a Godzilla-like character. Who wouldn’t like that?
GameBoardGeek.com has a page for this game, if you want to take a look.
