by TScott
After trying KoT at a friend's house and liking it, I've been hitting the local B&N to try and burn a couple of Christmas gift cards to buy the game. They've stated they have it "on order" but it still hasn't come in yet. Urgh.Still itching to play the game with my wife and kids, last night I decided to come up with a variant that doesn't require the boxed set. We tried it out and it was still fairly fun despite the fact that we lacked the power-up cards to play. It's kind of a no-brainer, but I figured I'd share it anyway.
Components
- 6x six-sided die
- Energy markers (micro-dice from PotSM worked really well here)
- 1 sheet of paper to represent Tokyo, list the the dice face meanings and define energy trades (see below)
- 1 sheet of paper per player for recording victory points and health points
- 1 counter/marker per player to represent their monster (we used some spare d20s)
Rules
- Dice faces 1-3 follow the three-of-a-kind (+ bonus) for victory points
- Dice face 4 grants you +1 energy
- Dice face 5 grants you +1 health
- Dice face 6 grants you +1 attack
- All play follows normal KoT rules
- Instead of using accumulated energy for purchasing cards, you can trade it in for the following:
* 2 energy grants +1 health (cannot be used in Tokyo)
* 3 energy grants you one reroll (this must be utilized after your third reroll and only if you decide not to "stand" on that third reroll. In other words, you are't granted the 'awards' of your final reroll until you decide to stand and not use this trade.)
* 4 energy grants you +1 attack
All other rules to KoT apply. Effectively, the main trick of this variant was really just coming up with rules for doing something with your energy points.
We tried this in a 3-player game that included myself, my youngest son and my wife. It was the first time playing for both of them. The game lasted about the same length as a standard KoT game. After several rounds in, my son was grinning from ear-to-ear from having stored up 12 energy points and getting a lucky roll of 4x 6's while I was camped out in Tokyo and low on health. He used his rolls and energy points to claw me to death so I was toast. A few turns later, he killed off his mother with another lucky roll. She was pretty close to winning on the VP path (one more turn would have sealed it). Needless to say, he was jumping up and down in the end.
One alteration I might make will be to add a trade of 4 energy granting you +1 VP.
Cheers,
--tim