by SPBTooL
The damage is simultaneous as is the monsters choosing to leave or stay. Any effects triggered from what the players in Tokyo do is also simultaneous. The only thing that maters is which monsters remain, leave or die.↧
Reply: King of Tokyo:: Rules:: Re: Turn order of yielding when two players are in Tokyo
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Reply: King of Tokyo:: Variants:: Re: King of Tokyo 2 player Texas Tornado Variant.
by pdrseuss
Thank YOU!! This is a blast! And then we tried it with King of Tokyo: Power Up!. Atomic Blast!! Fun Fun Fun 2 player variant. Bravo!↧
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Reply: King of Tokyo:: Rules:: Re: Turn order of yielding when two players are in Tokyo
by nerman8r
jonahmaul wrote:
Each player decides, if the monster in Tokyo Bay yields you take that, if the monster in Tokyo City yields then the monster from the Bay moves in and you take that.
If you want to house-rule that it works the other way, I recommend it, but that's not officially how it's done.
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Reply: King of Tokyo:: Rules:: Re: mimic and discardable cards
pastabatman wrote:
Noob question here. Mimic (a 'keep' card) says:
Suppose the Mimic counter is placed on a discardable card, and the owner uses it during the same turn. On the Mimic player's next turn, can he pay an energy cube to return his counter to that same card and use it again? That seems extremely powerful, as the Mimic player can simply pay one cube over and over to use an expensive discardable card. We ruled in our game last night that Mimic could not re-use a discardable card, but this seems counter to how the rules are written, and relies on player's memories too much. Am I missing something here?
"Choose a card any monster has in play and put a mimic counter on it. This card counts as a duplicate of that card as if it just had been bought. Spend 1 energy cube at the start of your turn to change the power you are mimicking."
Suppose the Mimic counter is placed on a discardable card, and the owner uses it during the same turn. On the Mimic player's next turn, can he pay an energy cube to return his counter to that same card and use it again? That seems extremely powerful, as the Mimic player can simply pay one cube over and over to use an expensive discardable card. We ruled in our game last night that Mimic could not re-use a discardable card, but this seems counter to how the rules are written, and relies on player's memories too much. Am I missing something here?
Discard Cards aren't held in your hand, and therefore aren't duplicable. For discardable Keep cards, you said it yourself: Mimic counts as a duplicate. An exact duplicate, with the caveats that it has a cost of 8E for the purposes of Parasitic Tentacles or Metamorph, and that you can change the power for 1 energy at the start of your turn.
If you mimic Plot Twist, Mimic becomes Plot Twist. If you use Mimic Twist, you change one die, then discard, exactly like the card were Plot Twist. Whenever you are using Mimic Twist, it is not the "start of your turn," so it'd be discarded before you even have the opportunity to change it to another power. Even if you found some way to use Mimic Twist during the "start of turn" phase, it'd still be a different action than changing Mimic.
Same thing would happen if you mimic Psychic Probe to get two forced rerolls-per-turn, and you roll a Heart. Mimic Probe gets discarded, unless you have both cards and manage to convince your group that the Heart was rolled while you were tapping the original Psychic Probe. If it were my table and you had both, you'd probably have to physically touch one card when forcing a reroll, then touch the other if you force a second reroll, just so we'd know which was being used. If one gets the heart, though, you might be able to use the other to reroll that heart and avoid discarding any of them, maybe. That's something you'd have to discuss with your table, though, unless there's an official ruling somewhere.
If you mimic Monster Batteries and let the energy on Mimic Battery run out, you'd have to discard it. If you change Mimic to another card (or even re-mimic Monster Batteries again) before you remove the last two Energy from Mimic Battery, you'd lose the remaining Energy on the card, since the card has to be active to dispense it to you. That's at least a loss of 2E return, and 1E to force the change before discard, and probably 1E to mimic it in the first place. I think that's more expensive than the original Monster Battery. Also remember that if the card you are mimicing is removed from play, Mimic gets immediately blanked. If you mimic Monster Batteries, keep in mind the initial investment on the actual card when making your own investment on Mimic Battery, or else you might lose that Mimic investment when the actual Monster Battery runs out. Monster Battery needs, 3E investment and 3 turns to get get a profit of 1E. Mimic Battery is harder to get a ROI with. It needs at least 4E or 5E (and 3 or 4 turns, respectively) to get a profit of 1E and still keep Mimic.
Smoke Cloud, though, has potential. If you mimic Smoke Cloud, you'd get three Smoke counters on Mimic Cloud. You could use two, then, at the start of your next turn, re-assign Mimic to another card or even to Smoke Cloud again. You'd basically be getting up to extra two rerolls per turn for 1E per turn, until the original Smoke Cloud is depleted. That card combo is twice as efficient as Telepath, and you don't even really have to own the Smoke Cloud card yourself. It may be better to mimic Giant Brain if you are low on Energy, though, since that only costs the initial investment.
If you control both Smoke Cloud and Mimic though, you could keep this up forever. You could also get three rerolls per turn two times, or four rerolls per turn once, and still keep getting the two-rerolls per turn in future turns. You could also get six rerolls in a single turn at the cost of both cards, or five rerolls in one turn and keep Mimic. However, if all of your Mimic Cloud tokens are removed, Mimic still gets discarded.
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Friday 14th March 2014
by Sharon Khan
We were a grand total of 8 this Friday. We started with 5 players, and a quick Take it Easy!. It was a slightly odd game, as firstly I drew a ridiculous amount of 8 tiles, often 2-8 tiles, and in general drew tiles with lots of high numbers, so only two players scored anything for numbers 1,2 or 3 at the end, and no-one scored more than 6 points for them! At the other end, Marion and Colin scored two lines of 9s, and both Hannah and I scored two lines of 7s, with Hannah also scoring two lines of 4s, and an impressive amount of 6s (given how few I drew!), which gave her the win, with a high score of 196.James had arrived while we were playing, and we had about half an hour before the two remaining players were expected so we chose 7 Wonders, the first time Charlotte had played it. Charlotte went very military early on, and so her neighbours left her to it, which also gave Colin and I some nice military points - although James in the third round made sure we didn't get the third round bonus! Hannah and Marion also both went into science, both building all three science resources - which meant everyone round the table, except James, had good access to science when we needed it. There was a distinct lack of clay at one end of the table which was hurting a couple of players though. At end game scores were pretty close, with me winning with Pyramids A, and Charlotte managed to just get second place, thanks to a good military and blue score.
Barry and Sami arrived by now, and Marion suggested her current favourite, Takenoko, for one table, while Barry suggested Power Grid or Puerto Rico for the other table, which James made sure was Power Grid, by the simple method of getting it off the shelf. I joined the Power Grid game, and we rolled the Central Europe board. It started with a pretty poor selection of plants, with lots of garbage plants coming up, and garbage costs high. Sami on third turn had a choice of a 3 garbage for 6 power plant, but with garbage costs at 5 or 6 pretty much unpowerable, or taking a third power plant that overpowered one! Neither a good choice. Meanwhile I got lucky on playing the deck and got a very early recycling plant for 4, which made my early game costs very good. I then bought the garbage plant Sami had passed up, even though I could rarely afford to power it. I also picked up a coal power plant powering 4, and at that point was powering 14 already, and could concentrate on house building. I was two houses ahead of everyone else early on, and powering more than everyone else, and then picked up a 7 power plant, and was powering 17, and then it was just a case of building the houses. Everyone else scampered to try and power 15 or 16 houses, but then struggled to build them, so I could build to 17 and power them easily.
After that Barry asked to play King of Tokyo. I got an early Jets, which meant I was pretty much invulnerable, and was concentrating on claws and more energy for more power ups. I picked up Burrowing too, and then the damage started to become painful. James and Sami started to concentrate on VPs instead, and then a card turned up that took 5 VPs off each player - which was a bit of a setback for them. Barry and James were low on health by now, so an attack on Barry, coupled with a card that did 2 damage to all other monsters took them both out. Then Sami posed a problem, as he bought the card that meant he could pay energy to stop him losing life each turn, and moved into Tokyo and sat there - I was no longer invulnerable. Luckily for me, Complete Destruction turned up at that point, and I was on 11 points. Sami could reroll one of my dice, but it was worth buying - the next card after it was the "Turn a dice to the face of your choice" option - defence against Sami. On my very next turn I managed to roll Complete Destruction, and Sami couldn't undo it, as I just changed the dice to the face I wanted - for the win!
Barry left at that point, and the other game had just triggered the last round, so we played a quick round of Love Letter. Sami had a disaster, not getting a single heart!
We then reshuffled tables, with one table playing Knowing me, Knowing You, while I went downstairs for game of Ticket to Ride: Europe with Hannah and Marion. It was new to Hannah but she quickly picked it up. I had a two almost identical tickets from Madrid to Paris and Dieppe - and then Hannah bought the single 1 train line between Paris and Dieppe - so I had to build round. Then both the others build into Vienna and game me a bit of a panic that I'd be blocked from that too! Then I took ticket and picked up London to Vienna, took a wild and build the ferry to London - much to Marion's disgust, as she was also trying to build to London and was now blocked out of it - luckily there are stations in the Europe map! Then Marion went on a long track building spree, and I panicked, as my next ticket needed me to build to Athens, and she was rapidly running out of trains. I built a quick shortcut using a station, and then tried to continue to Athens, but Marion triggered game-end before I had a chance. Hannah had the same problem though, and it cost her the ticket, which was 16 points, a lot less than my 4 point station!! Marion won comfortably, thanks a lovely ticket selection and the longest route bonus. I apparently had way less in track points than the others, so was miles behind, and Hannah's lost ticket cost her rather too, ending up just behind me (if she'd done it the 32 point swing might have won her the game!).
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Reply: King of Tokyo:: Variants:: Re: Two player variant : super simple
by pdrseuss
Thank you for this. Going to try this very soon. TTFN.↧
Reply: King of Tokyo:: Variants:: Re: 2-player Tag Team Variant
by pdrseuss
Thank you for this. Going to try this out very soon. TTFN.↧
Reply: King of Tokyo:: Rules:: Re: Turn order of yielding when two players are in Tokyo
I have no idea how so many people missed this in the rules, but I guess the wording threw them off?
What this means is that if you attack two Tokyo monsters, and they both want to leave, then they both get to flee. In such a case, the attacker takes the City and the Bay becomes empty. The next attacker would hit the City monster and automatically move into the Bay as long as it's still a valid space and the City is still occupied.
Rulebook wrote:
If the Monster in Tokyo
Bay is attacked it can choose
to abandon Tokyo Bay
(still taking any damage
dealt, just like Tokyo City).
In this case the Monster
that attacked must move
in unless it is moving
into Tokyo City, in which
case Tokyo Bay becomes
temporarily unoccupied.
Bay is attacked it can choose
to abandon Tokyo Bay
(still taking any damage
dealt, just like Tokyo City).
In this case the Monster
that attacked must move
in unless it is moving
into Tokyo City, in which
case Tokyo Bay becomes
temporarily unoccupied.
What this means is that if you attack two Tokyo monsters, and they both want to leave, then they both get to flee. In such a case, the attacker takes the City and the Bay becomes empty. The next attacker would hit the City monster and automatically move into the Bay as long as it's still a valid space and the City is still occupied.
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Reply: King of Tokyo:: Variants:: Re: Two player variant : super simple
by nerman8r
pdrseuss wrote:
Thank you for this. Going to try this very soon. TTFN.
Let us know how it goes.
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Reply: King of Tokyo:: Rules:: Re: Turn order of yielding when two players are in Tokyo
by Eggrocket
zizek wrote:
We house-rule this one.
We think that the person who has been in Tokyo City gets to decide. If this player yields, the monster in Tokyo Bay enters the city, with the new player entering the bay. If the monster in the City wants to remain, then the monster in Tokyo Bay has the option to flee. In effect, it is "if you have been there the longest, you get to flee first".
We think that the person who has been in Tokyo City gets to decide. If this player yields, the monster in Tokyo Bay enters the city, with the new player entering the bay. If the monster in the City wants to remain, then the monster in Tokyo Bay has the option to flee. In effect, it is "if you have been there the longest, you get to flee first".
This is how we play as well.
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Reply: King of Tokyo:: Rules:: Re: Turn order of yielding when two players are in Tokyo
by nerman8r
zizek wrote:
We house-rule this one.
We think that the person who has been in Tokyo City gets to decide. If this player yields, the monster in Tokyo Bay enters the city, with the new player entering the bay. If the monster in the City wants to remain, then the monster in Tokyo Bay has the option to flee. In effect, it is "if you have been there the longest, you get to flee first".
We think that the person who has been in Tokyo City gets to decide. If this player yields, the monster in Tokyo Bay enters the city, with the new player entering the bay. If the monster in the City wants to remain, then the monster in Tokyo Bay has the option to flee. In effect, it is "if you have been there the longest, you get to flee first".
What? That's brutal. No one would ever want to go to Tokyo Bay.
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Reply: King of Tokyo:: Rules:: Re: Turn order of yielding when two players are in Tokyo
by dcrowell
nerman8r wrote:
zizek wrote:
We house-rule this one.
We think that the person who has been in Tokyo City gets to decide. If this player yields, the monster in Tokyo Bay enters the city, with the new player entering the bay. If the monster in the City wants to remain, then the monster in Tokyo Bay has the option to flee. In effect, it is "if you have been there the longest, you get to flee first".
We think that the person who has been in Tokyo City gets to decide. If this player yields, the monster in Tokyo Bay enters the city, with the new player entering the bay. If the monster in the City wants to remain, then the monster in Tokyo Bay has the option to flee. In effect, it is "if you have been there the longest, you get to flee first".
What? That's brutal. No one would ever want to go to Tokyo Bay.
We've been playing this way as well. As to never wanting to go to Tokyo Bay, you don't really get a choice. If you keep a claw and someone is in Tokyo City, then you're going into the Bay.
On a whim we actually played a more brutal version last night. We decided that only the Monster in the City could yield, the one in the Bay didn't get an option. If they did yield, the Bay Monster moved into the City and the attacker takes over the Bay. While I wouldn't recommend it completely, it did make for a much more action-filled initial round or two in a 6-player game. Since nobody wanted to be in the Bay (as they are then basically held hostage by the other Monster), players actually tried to get into Tokyo early instead of spending the first couple rounds getting points and energy.
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Reply: King of Tokyo:: Rules:: Re: Turn order of yielding when two players are in Tokyo
by StrykerJ
sojasonk wrote:
We give the person in Tokyo City the advantage as well since they've held Tokyo the longest....so Tokyo Bay has to choose if they yield first.
For Strategic reasons, The Tokyo City Monster might make their decision based on what The Tokyo Bay Monster decides to do.
For Strategic reasons, The Tokyo City Monster might make their decision based on what The Tokyo Bay Monster decides to do.
If you are playing without house rules, there is no guarantee that the monster in Tokyo City has been there the longest. It could be that monsters in Tokyo City repeatedly yield while the Monster in Tokyo Bay stays put.
We play that the monster that is next in turn order needs to decide first if both monsters have a decision to yield.
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New Video for King of Tokyo
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New Video for King of Tokyo
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March 15, 2014
by Stephen S
This week we had a full group. Tom and Kate invited over Peter and Sydney, Marley and her friend Tabbi, and Angie and me. We tried out their new game Game of Thrones as well as pulling out Police Precinct and King of Tokyo again.Game of Thrones (6 Player)
We started by trying GoT with 6 players. The houses were given out randomly by each team picking a power token from the pool without looking. Kate got the Tyrells (green), Peter the Lannisters (red), Sydney the Greyjoys (Black), Marley and Tabbi house Stark (white), I the Baratheons (yellow), and Tom the Martells (orange).
After doing the setups and getting the rules read, we began our first planning phase. Most everyone took a new territory and also gained power points. It took two turns of that before real fights broke out. Tom and I fought over King's Landing, which I lost massively. Peter and Sydney began warring over the area near Pyke and Lannisport, but Peter eventually lost out due to Kate attacking him from the South and taking Lannisport. Sydney lost some fights to the Starks in the North, but she did gain ground on them also.
The game ended in Round 5, because we needed to eat, but Tom and Kate were going to be the winners. Tom won that first game by one or two castles. The wildlings weren't a factor in this game. I had held the Iron Throne the whole game, Sydney the Valyrian Sword, and Peter the King's Court.
King of Tokyo
After dinner, we played a filler while we waited for the time for me to get Angie from work. This game went by quickly with much slaughter. Peter and Sydney didn't have much luck, though Sydney did gain quite a few VPs. Kate was taken out by being in Tokyo at the wrong time, and a 4 hit being dropped on her. Tom and I were able to survive Tokyo and be the last two survivors. He rolled 4 hits to knock me down to 1 hit point, and I backed out of the city. I healed back to 4, but was forced to give Tom a hit. He stayed in Tokyo, but hit another 4 to kill me and claim his first victory since buying the game.
Police Precinct
When Angie got there we pulled out PP. Peter and I had the cops good with arrests, Angie and Sydney were our emergency experts, and Tom and the Hive Mind (Marley & Tabbi) took our investigations. Kate sat this one out. Tom also added the dirty cop for this game.
The game started out with Angie. She took off after the nearest emergency and quickly handled it. The Hive Mind went to the witness investigations and began pulling cards. Tom followed suit by going to another investigations and pulling a card. I went after that and moved to Hood 1 to take care of the 3 thugs from being a gang. I got some help and got them sent to Commonville jail. Peter and Sydney finished round 1 by taking more thugs and emergencies down.
Round 2 got interesting after my turn when Peter borrowed some of our donuts to accuse Tom of being the dirty cop. Of course he was, and was pissed about it, but he made sure our lives were hell after. Peter said that he knew it was Tom because he didn't ask for help both times he used the investigations. Tom had to take care of an emergency the second turn, so it wasn't that obvious, but he was found out now.
We slowly worked towards the evidence pile being full, and during that time we let the emergencies pile up too much. They got more than Angie and Sydney could handle, so we lost 4 to the crime tracker. Peter and I began helping some, while helping to get the investigations done too.
As the game neared the end, the murderer was closing on freedom and we needed pure luck to find the last evidence piece. Tom tried to make us fail it, but with only 4 cards left, there was nothing he could do. Peter and I were able to roll the dice high enough to take out the thugs and murderer to win the game.
Game of Thrones (4 Player)
After Peter, Sydney and the Hive Mind had to leave we pulled out GoT to try with Angie. Tom took the Starks, and I the Lannisters. Angie got the Greyjoys when she sat in front of them, leaving Kate the Baratheons. This game went by pretty fast.
Kate and I moved south to take out the Tyrells and Martells to gain some castles. Angie tried to take Lannisport but failed. Tom and her fought to the Eyrie. Neither claimed it, but they got close to it. Angie had the early lead on castles getting to 6, but we took care of it and dropped her to 3. Tom made it to 5, but Angie fought him back for her lost territory. I couldn't make it to Kate in time and she snuck 7 castles from the board. I only had 4 castles, and little power points, but I maxed out my supply with Tom.
This game went much better than the first with everyone being involved in the game. We each played very well, and Angie played the Greyjoys aggressively like they should be. I don't like the 4 player variant as much due to the empty territories in the south. You must try to defend from the guys up north, but you need to gain control of more territories at the same time. I gained up a pretty good sized army, but it was spent keeping the Greyjoys in the sea. Since we were all stretched thin, Kate was able to guard her borders a little bit, and killed off Dornish areas with ease to take the game.
I can't wait to bring this out with the 6 normal game night people and see how the game goes that time.
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Reply: King of Tokyo:: Reviews:: Re: King of Tokyo review: Yahtzee meets Magic The Gathering
by TheImp
Geosphere wrote:
championstyle wrote:
Not sure I agree with the magic the gathering association, yahtzee is a definite.
yeah, I'm not sure there's anything I would draw parallel between the two.
I find there are some parallels: designer, big creatures, counters with some upgrades, 20 victory points substituted for 20 life, fun, just to name a few.
I was debating the title and I may be drawing at straws but I find this game has more in common with magic than say a game such as Dominion which people sometimes compare to magic. So I felt the title was justified.
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Length actually matters
Hi everyone,
this is my first ever blog post in English, originally published on my company's official Polish blog Kości zostały rzucone (which is of course a translation of the famous "Alea iacta est" sentence and the title of this BGG blog). I'm a bit nervous publishing it finally, but hope you will like it! So here it goes - what the founder of Historical Games Factory thinks of some other games.
This post has been inspired by one particular game that been causing ambivalent emotions in me for a really long time. This game is King of Tokyo. Just a regular game, nothing extraordinary, some would say. Short, pretty random, with a great theme and art that certainly contribute a lot to its popularity. But I am not talking about the kind of popularity Monopoly enjoys. It’s not that. This game is very popular among casual players and at the same time widely appreciated by geeks. After all, the 84th place in the BGG ranking proves that many hardcore gamers actually love it. So what intrigues me in this game so much that I decided to devote a whole blog post to it? Well, in my opinion it’s simply broken…
[Here you can hate on me freely for a while]
Okay, I’m aware that I may be alone with my opinion here and that it seems pretty controversial. The game has only 24 people on BGG who rated it 1, while nearly 14 000 player rated it in total. Besides, it was designed by Richard Garfield. The guy responsible for such “unknown” titles as the continuously (for about 20 years) most popular collectible card game in the world, and Netrunner, which shows that even after these 20 years the author still has something to say when it comes to this type of games. So why do I get at this particular game and keep saying it’s broken?
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Alright, maybe I go a bit over the top saying that it’s broken – it’s quite playable, after all. But this doesn’t alter the fact that Garfield managed to include a few features there, which many gamers usually point to as cardinal mistakes. These things could easily disqualify any other game for a King of Tokyo fan. So let’s see what a game about joyful city destruction has inside when it comes to the mechanics.
Player elimination
One of the worst things in board games, which most designers try to avoid at all costs. Imagine such a situation - you’re sitting happily around the table and having fun. Actually, only 2 players are having fun. The rest are just eating crisps and staring at the board. Their life counter reached zero a few rounds ago. The first player was eliminated in the first round. Now it’s something around fifteenth and for at least four rounds only the two remaining players actually do anything. The rest are eating crisps. Fun, isn’t it? Well, not really. Just think how many times player elimination was believed to be a major flaw in a game. What’s more, in King of Tokyo this happens very often. It’s not Eclipse, where, unless you play for the first time or you’re badly hung-over, it’s almost impossible to make your race go bankrupt. Here players will be subsequently eliminated each time. One after another, they will turn into passive observers, left only with these damn crisps.
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Randomness
Yes, I know – claiming that it’s a huge drawback of KoT is rather unsurprising. What may be surprising is that I do not want to write about the dice here. This aspect does not introduce so much randomness in fact, for a few reasons. There is a lot of dice and a lot of rolling, so statistics successfully flattens the differences that may be a result of pure luck. Moreover, each die gives us something – there is actually no bad result in rolling. The dice randomness is more limited than one could expect and not very annoying, apart from few extreme examples. Unfortunately, the situation is worse when it comes to the cards. It’s a total festival of luck! The cards are completely unbalanced – there are some that are most attractive for all players, and some that nobody would ever like to take to their hand. Additionally, the very possibility of choice is often a matter of luck. You change the cards so that your opponent cannot take a powerful effect and suddenly an even more powerful card appears in this place. And on top of it all there are combos that happen to appear when a good set of cards is available. Sometimes these combos break the game and make one person the winner as soon as this player buys just 2 or 3 appropriate cards. Obviously, this does not happen very often, as the number of cards is quite high, but when it finally happens – the game is actually over.
Kingmaking
As much as randomness can sometimes be defended (I know people who enjoy it so much that they will defend even Ludo), kingmaking is an example of a classical mechanical blunder. Especially kingmaking at such a high level as displayed in KoT. I will not discuss particular examples here, I believe that anyone who played at least a few times and is able to put their blind love for this game aside will easily find loads of instances of kingmaking in KoT. What’s more important is that to many players kingmaking is such a big flaw that it can completely disqualify even a very good game. At the same time it is also a flaw that is very hard for a designer to cope with. Some say that only games designed for one player can avoid it – and still not all of them. But the truth is that most authors try to limit this effect in their games. They try many different ways to make it infrequent and not annoying. In my opinion, in KoT nobody has even given it a try. No, it’s a game that doesn’t cover this problem in any way. Quite the contrary, it screams kingmaking, as if it was some marketing gimmick.
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Secret behind success
To be honest, the list of drawbacks does not end with these described above. And they are really “Drawbacks” with capital D. Even the fact that the three I have mentioned earlier are there should be enough for the game to sink into board gaming oblivion. To push it out from the BGG top 100 or even top 1000. This is what happened to numerous other games. Why didn’t it happen to King of Tokyo? I’m not naïve – I know that many people are perfectly aware of the problems with KoT and still love this game. Well, check my own rating for it. It’s not a rate you could expect after reading this text, right? Why is that? What protects this game from negative notes and lets the advantages it undoubtedly has shine? I believe that it is one of the things you see when looking at the box. But it’s not the awesome cover artwork. It’s not the name of the author either – after all, he also designed games that are not so well-rated by players. No, the thing that saves KoT is the gameplay time. The magical 30 minutes per one game, as the box states (and in 90% cases it is true). This usually makes players wave aside all the drawbacks mentioned before. Just imagine a game of KoT lasting 2 hours. Or imagine any other, much longer game with at least one of KoT’s flaws in such a pure form. Fun? Rather not.
That’s why I think that the time was the key to the success of this game. Even if you lost because you weren’t lucky enough, due to an incautious decision made by another player or a great card combo an opponent had – it doesn’t take long. Player elimination is not so annoying either – you will not eat all the crisps in 10 minutes, will you? And when the game ends, you can always suggest playing again. A quick re-match that will allow you to win this time, in an equally random and accidental way. All this thanks to the fact that this game does not pretend to be something it’s not. It doesn’t try to convince you that the decisions you make will be crucial for the final result. It doesn’t deceive you saying that now you are about to participate in a great duel of minds, where the winner will really feel that they have earned their victory. No. KoT is honest with players – it doesn’t hide its flaws, doesn’t cover randomness or kingmaking. It tells you: You were unlucky and you lost. So what? Play again! Maybe this time your monster will destroy Tokyo in the most spectacular way. Damn, it’s only 30 minutes… recently I realized that this appeals to me very, very often.
Post scriptum
I would like to believe that the secret of the success of KoT lies only in the playing time. That only thanks to this all the disadvantages of the game can be ignored and a new positive comment appears on BGG almost every day. But I’m afraid the time is just one of the reasons for the popularity of this game. A very important one, but for sure not the only one. I don’t know how Garfield managed to achieve it. He designed a game filled with flaws that gamers hate, but gamers love it anyway. It certainly is another proof that the whole is something more than just a sum of parts. Somewhere in this box filled with drawbacks the author hid a flash of his genius. And even though I cannot discover it fully right now, I hope that someday I will be able to create a game like this. A really brilliant game, still full of mistakes.
this is my first ever blog post in English, originally published on my company's official Polish blog Kości zostały rzucone (which is of course a translation of the famous "Alea iacta est" sentence and the title of this BGG blog). I'm a bit nervous publishing it finally, but hope you will like it! So here it goes - what the founder of Historical Games Factory thinks of some other games.
This post has been inspired by one particular game that been causing ambivalent emotions in me for a really long time. This game is King of Tokyo. Just a regular game, nothing extraordinary, some would say. Short, pretty random, with a great theme and art that certainly contribute a lot to its popularity. But I am not talking about the kind of popularity Monopoly enjoys. It’s not that. This game is very popular among casual players and at the same time widely appreciated by geeks. After all, the 84th place in the BGG ranking proves that many hardcore gamers actually love it. So what intrigues me in this game so much that I decided to devote a whole blog post to it? Well, in my opinion it’s simply broken…
Okay, I’m aware that I may be alone with my opinion here and that it seems pretty controversial. The game has only 24 people on BGG who rated it 1, while nearly 14 000 player rated it in total. Besides, it was designed by Richard Garfield. The guy responsible for such “unknown” titles as the continuously (for about 20 years) most popular collectible card game in the world, and Netrunner, which shows that even after these 20 years the author still has something to say when it comes to this type of games. So why do I get at this particular game and keep saying it’s broken?
Alright, maybe I go a bit over the top saying that it’s broken – it’s quite playable, after all. But this doesn’t alter the fact that Garfield managed to include a few features there, which many gamers usually point to as cardinal mistakes. These things could easily disqualify any other game for a King of Tokyo fan. So let’s see what a game about joyful city destruction has inside when it comes to the mechanics.
One of the worst things in board games, which most designers try to avoid at all costs. Imagine such a situation - you’re sitting happily around the table and having fun. Actually, only 2 players are having fun. The rest are just eating crisps and staring at the board. Their life counter reached zero a few rounds ago. The first player was eliminated in the first round. Now it’s something around fifteenth and for at least four rounds only the two remaining players actually do anything. The rest are eating crisps. Fun, isn’t it? Well, not really. Just think how many times player elimination was believed to be a major flaw in a game. What’s more, in King of Tokyo this happens very often. It’s not Eclipse, where, unless you play for the first time or you’re badly hung-over, it’s almost impossible to make your race go bankrupt. Here players will be subsequently eliminated each time. One after another, they will turn into passive observers, left only with these damn crisps.
Yes, I know – claiming that it’s a huge drawback of KoT is rather unsurprising. What may be surprising is that I do not want to write about the dice here. This aspect does not introduce so much randomness in fact, for a few reasons. There is a lot of dice and a lot of rolling, so statistics successfully flattens the differences that may be a result of pure luck. Moreover, each die gives us something – there is actually no bad result in rolling. The dice randomness is more limited than one could expect and not very annoying, apart from few extreme examples. Unfortunately, the situation is worse when it comes to the cards. It’s a total festival of luck! The cards are completely unbalanced – there are some that are most attractive for all players, and some that nobody would ever like to take to their hand. Additionally, the very possibility of choice is often a matter of luck. You change the cards so that your opponent cannot take a powerful effect and suddenly an even more powerful card appears in this place. And on top of it all there are combos that happen to appear when a good set of cards is available. Sometimes these combos break the game and make one person the winner as soon as this player buys just 2 or 3 appropriate cards. Obviously, this does not happen very often, as the number of cards is quite high, but when it finally happens – the game is actually over.
As much as randomness can sometimes be defended (I know people who enjoy it so much that they will defend even Ludo), kingmaking is an example of a classical mechanical blunder. Especially kingmaking at such a high level as displayed in KoT. I will not discuss particular examples here, I believe that anyone who played at least a few times and is able to put their blind love for this game aside will easily find loads of instances of kingmaking in KoT. What’s more important is that to many players kingmaking is such a big flaw that it can completely disqualify even a very good game. At the same time it is also a flaw that is very hard for a designer to cope with. Some say that only games designed for one player can avoid it – and still not all of them. But the truth is that most authors try to limit this effect in their games. They try many different ways to make it infrequent and not annoying. In my opinion, in KoT nobody has even given it a try. No, it’s a game that doesn’t cover this problem in any way. Quite the contrary, it screams kingmaking, as if it was some marketing gimmick.
To be honest, the list of drawbacks does not end with these described above. And they are really “Drawbacks” with capital D. Even the fact that the three I have mentioned earlier are there should be enough for the game to sink into board gaming oblivion. To push it out from the BGG top 100 or even top 1000. This is what happened to numerous other games. Why didn’t it happen to King of Tokyo? I’m not naïve – I know that many people are perfectly aware of the problems with KoT and still love this game. Well, check my own rating for it. It’s not a rate you could expect after reading this text, right? Why is that? What protects this game from negative notes and lets the advantages it undoubtedly has shine? I believe that it is one of the things you see when looking at the box. But it’s not the awesome cover artwork. It’s not the name of the author either – after all, he also designed games that are not so well-rated by players. No, the thing that saves KoT is the gameplay time. The magical 30 minutes per one game, as the box states (and in 90% cases it is true). This usually makes players wave aside all the drawbacks mentioned before. Just imagine a game of KoT lasting 2 hours. Or imagine any other, much longer game with at least one of KoT’s flaws in such a pure form. Fun? Rather not.
That’s why I think that the time was the key to the success of this game. Even if you lost because you weren’t lucky enough, due to an incautious decision made by another player or a great card combo an opponent had – it doesn’t take long. Player elimination is not so annoying either – you will not eat all the crisps in 10 minutes, will you? And when the game ends, you can always suggest playing again. A quick re-match that will allow you to win this time, in an equally random and accidental way. All this thanks to the fact that this game does not pretend to be something it’s not. It doesn’t try to convince you that the decisions you make will be crucial for the final result. It doesn’t deceive you saying that now you are about to participate in a great duel of minds, where the winner will really feel that they have earned their victory. No. KoT is honest with players – it doesn’t hide its flaws, doesn’t cover randomness or kingmaking. It tells you: You were unlucky and you lost. So what? Play again! Maybe this time your monster will destroy Tokyo in the most spectacular way. Damn, it’s only 30 minutes… recently I realized that this appeals to me very, very often.
I would like to believe that the secret of the success of KoT lies only in the playing time. That only thanks to this all the disadvantages of the game can be ignored and a new positive comment appears on BGG almost every day. But I’m afraid the time is just one of the reasons for the popularity of this game. A very important one, but for sure not the only one. I don’t know how Garfield managed to achieve it. He designed a game filled with flaws that gamers hate, but gamers love it anyway. It certainly is another proof that the whole is something more than just a sum of parts. Somewhere in this box filled with drawbacks the author hid a flash of his genius. And even though I cannot discover it fully right now, I hope that someday I will be able to create a game like this. A really brilliant game, still full of mistakes.
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Thread: King of Tokyo:: Rules:: Occupying Tokyo: Gain 2pts at beginning of EVERY turn or YOUR turn?
by Skadar
The rules are actually unclear on this as they simply state "the turn".We just played our first 4 player game and it went way too quickly. Only 1 person was able to buy a card and they didn't even get to use it and the game was over.
If the rule is that you gain 2pts at the beginning of EVERY turn, then we will probably have to play up to 40 points in order to have any fun.
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Reply: King of Tokyo:: Rules:: Re: Occupying Tokyo: Gain 2pts at beginning of EVERY turn or YOUR turn?
by Scorpion0x17
Your turn.↧