by andylatto
I'm surprised at how much of this discussion is about the issue of "who won this game under the Official Rules, as specified in the Official Rulebook, as clarified and/or modified by an Official Representative of the Publisher and/or Game Designer", and how little of the discussion is about the (to me, much more interesting) issue of which rule makes it a better game.I mean, sure if there had been a $1000 bet riding on the outcome of the original game, and I was part of the arbitration committee in charge of resolving the dispute, then it might be worth devoting this amount of attention to who won the game. Otherwise, who cares? It's a game of King of Tokyo. Once it's over, who cares who won?
As to which makes a better game, I think that it's better if you don't need to have a lot of house rules and judgement calls of interpretation during a game. I think the rules that say "evaluate winning only at the end of a turn, and a turn only ends after no-one wants to take any more actions during that turn" produces rules that are simple and unambiguous to follow.
If you play by the rules that say "the instant someone's score reaches 20, the game is over and they have won", you will need a host of additional house rules to answer a bunch of other questions that suddenly matter, because you have to decide which of two actions by different players happens first, such as:
When is an evolution card played? Is it enough to say you are playing a card, or does it have to be physically played?
If the former, how much do you have to say before the card is officially played?
If the latter, does the card just have to touch the table, or must it be flat on the table?
When buying a card, when is the card officially bought? Do you just have to point at the card and say "I'm buying this", or do you have to physically put the card in front of you? Or do you have to pay for the card, by physically moving the energy cubes away from your pile of cubes? If so, do they have to be moved all the way to the "bank" of cubes (which may be out of your reach)?
Buying of cards happens only after processing your die roll. So do you have to take the points for the 3 3's you rolled, by physically moving your dial, before you can state that you are buying the card? If you did damage, do you have to wait until all players have taken damage have moved their dials, because that's part of the "dealing with the die roll" phase, which comes before the "buying cards" phase, before you can buy the card?
Imagine the scenario where I buy one card, and then another card is revealed. If the revealed card is one that I can buy to get 20 points, you want to play your evolution card before I can buy it, but you want to buy the second card before the evolution card is played. You need to have house rules about revealing the new card in a fair way, so that everyone becomes aware of what the card is at the same time.
I don't know about you, but when I roll 3 lightning bolts, and want to buy a card that costs 4, I don't bother to take the 3 energy cubes. I just pay one cube, and say "I buy this card with this cube and the 3 I earn this turn". If it matters crucially whether I buy the card first or someone else takes some other action first, and it's a race, then I have to actually take the 3 cubes and pay the four cubes. And since I don't know whether the card in your hand is one you'll want to play, I have to do this every time.
One could make house rules about all of these details; sports, which are intrinsically real time, do have rules that fill in all this sort of detail. But I'd much rather avoid having to worry about all of this sort of detail, and house rules that say "everyone plays things until no-one wants to play any more, and then then you see what happens" seem simpler and easier to resolve. So that's how I prefer to play games, regardless of how clear this is in the rules (and most game rules don't clearly specify this level of detail anyway). The exception is the occasional real-time game like Pit or Space Cadets: Dice Duel,where thinking and acting quickly is a primary component of the game, and the game is intrinsically a real-time race. But I don't think of King of Tokyo as that sort of real-time race game, and would rather not play it as one, regardless of whether a literal interpretation of a statement by the duly designated representative of the publisher indicates that this is the Official Way To Play.