by Keith
September 19, 2013Today I completed my 20th game of King of Tokyo with my family and overall I'm impressed with this game, but I remain unsure of its staying power at my house.
King of Tokyo can be played with 2 - 6 players and combines elements of Yahtzee and B Monster Movies of the 50's and 60's. It's a pairing that was just screaming to be made. After all, both Yahtzee and movies like Godzilla grew up at roughly the same time in cinema and on kitchen tables. I have fond memories of playing a vintage copy of Yahtzee with my grandma and watching B Monster Movies on Channel 20 in Detroit on Saturday afternoons as a kid.
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Each player has a monster under their care that begins the game with 10 health and 0 victory points. Players can win the game by amassing 20 victory points or by reducing all other players to zero health.
What would a game of King of Tokyo be without Tokyo? Your monster is either in Tokyo or out of Tokyo. There is a king of the hill mechanic within the game in that once you're in Tokyo you earn victory points very quickly, but you become the target of everyone's attacks because you cannot heal yourself while in Tokyo.
Players take turns rolling 6 dice that have the numbers one through three on them and three symbols which earn players energy cubes (used to pay for things), attacks (the damage mechanic), or hearts (the healing mechanic). If you get three of any single number (3x ones or 3x twos) you get that many victory points. So three twos would yield two victory points. For each additional number of the set you get an additional single victory point. The best roll possible is six threes which gets you six points. My son has managed to do this twice and it's a thrill every time.
The attack icon allows you to move into Tokyo as the King of Tokyo if it's not occupied or to attack another player. Each attack icon, which looks like Godzilla's hand print, deals once damage to another monster's health.
The energy icon, a lightning bolt, provides you with one energy cube. Energy cubes are used to buy special power-up cards that come in two flavors: discardable one time special abilities that usually score you victory points at the cost to health and keepers which give you a permanent bonus like being able to heal one more point on a heart.
The health icon, a heart, provides you with one point of healing. When in Tokyo you cannot collect and convert these hearts into health. When you leave Tokyo, you suffer one damage.
The special ability cards are where this game really shines. They are A LOT of fun and mix up the rules enough that the dice rolling gets more strategic. The cards are a great mix of B Monster Movie tropes like It Has a Child! allowing you to essentially ignore your death by healing yourself and dropping all your victory points if you die.
So ... why doesn't this game have staying power for me?
The problem, for me, is that games tend to be overly aggressive or not aggressive enough. I favor the overly aggressive gameplay because it keeps things moving. With 3 or more players that aggressive keeps the table talk lively and exciting. It keeps you focused on all aspects of the game like rolling hearts to stay alive while balancing out VP runs on matching sets of numbers while steadily saving up for that special ability.
In the "lazy" games where everyone is trying to vie for special abilities things just get bogged down until someone gets a killer roll. I've seen games like this last an hour or more with 3 people and I've seen my son with an aggressive game in 5 turns ... it was breathtaking how perfect the dice fell for him that game along with a special ability card that rewarded a Yahtzee "Straight" with 7 VPs.
My second concern about the game is that the monsters and their conflicts feel too generic. I want to see more lower priced cards with smaller abilities and discard effects. It's fun to fight around Tokyo, but the destruction of random matchbox cars was always a highlight of those movies. I can certainly appreciate the killer abilities that cost 7 energy. Some of them are truly amazing. However ... I'm someone who wants the cards to be a bigger part of the game. They add an extra element of strategy that doesn't rely solely on good energy rolls.
Likewise, I'd love to see those special abilities capped. Perhaps making players choose which 3 or 4 special abilities they want. Maybe I'm just missing this in the rules because things get REALLY out of hand in those longer games making the card that allows you buy other player's cards for face value more precious than diamonds dunked in endangered species blood.
King of Tokyo is a lot of fun. It's quick to teach, easily accessible for even 4 or 5 year old kids. The game is random and trash talk compatible. You can play it sober or drunk and have an awesome time either way. Repeated plays definitely diminish the fun, but if you can keep it aggressive you'll really get a lot out of this short sweet game in the spirit of Toho Studios...enjoy playing out the classic King Kong vs. Godzilla!
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