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http://storyboardwebseries.tumblr.com/post/154134147092/king...
Synopsis: You are a kaiju, a giant monster, with designs on destroying the legendary city of Tokyo. However, you are not the only monster with this goal and so you must duke it out in a battle royal to become the King of Tokyo.
To win you must either be the last monster standing, or the first to achieve 20 points. To eliminate your rivals and garner points, you will try to dominate the central district of Tokyo, from where you can reign destruction upon the other monsters.
On your turn, you will take a set of five dice, and you will be able to roll any number of them up to three times. The symbols you finish with can be applied to particular actions: attack, heal, gather energy, or potentially score points. You effectively, have a Yahtzee mechanism to drive your actions each turn. Energy can be spent on buying unique power ups, while sets of numbers (e.g. triple 3s) can give you points directly.
A key feature of the game is that there is usually only one spot available in downtown Tokyo (two if there are five or more players in play). Damage through the attack moves are assigned to the monsters where you are not: if you’re in Tokyo, all monsters outside of Tokyo take damage, and the opposite is also true. This means that while you’re in Tokyo, you can dish out lots of damage, but you are also on the punishing end of several sequential attacks.
Commentary: This is really Yahtzee with giant monsters. It’s a game that is fickle in nature, as the way that the dice fall will ultimately determine your play and your game. There is a limited amount of strategy available within these choices, but this is mostly a game where you allow the weirdness of the game to catch you up.
Because of the above, this game falls more within the casual and family side of the spectrum. So much changes by the time it gets back to your turn that being able to plan a longer game is not really possible. However, the pace of the game is brisk and this means the game ends faster than not. This is fortunate because this is inherently a game with player elimination, and so anything that drags the game out will leave several people out for a while.
Verdict: Grab King of Tokyo if you want a family fun game, or King of New York if you want something with a bit more strategy. Either way, the Power Up! expansion for each edition is an essential addition, and the rest is mostly redundant.
Expansions: King of Tokyo has one main expansion in Power Up!. It also has a variety of promo cards, and another formal expansion in Halloween. The various promos are entirely optional, but they are game functional. They can be seamlessly added to your game without problem.
Power Up! introduces the concept of evolution cards, which gives each monster an asymmetrical play style. You can trigger the effects of these cards to give your monster unique game effects reflecting the theme of your monster. I consider this a must have expansion for the game, as it adds more flavour to the types of monsters you can choose.
Halloween introduces two more Halloween themed monsters, with their own unique evolution cards, along with additional costumes within the energy cards. However, unless you have a particular interest in either pumpkin jack or the bogey man as monsters, you can pretty much skip this. The costumes are too gimmicky, and the flavour of this expansion jars with that of the game itself.
There is also a stand-alone spin off in King of New York, also with a Power Up! expansion for its unique set of monsters. The main difference between the two games is that New York includes a more involved city board with several districts. These districts have buildings and military units within and in this way, they add more options for scoring points and how to play. You can use the monsters from either edition in the other, but they are otherwise not compatible games.
http://storyboardwebseries.tumblr.com/post/154134147092/king...
Synopsis: You are a kaiju, a giant monster, with designs on destroying the legendary city of Tokyo. However, you are not the only monster with this goal and so you must duke it out in a battle royal to become the King of Tokyo.
To win you must either be the last monster standing, or the first to achieve 20 points. To eliminate your rivals and garner points, you will try to dominate the central district of Tokyo, from where you can reign destruction upon the other monsters.
On your turn, you will take a set of five dice, and you will be able to roll any number of them up to three times. The symbols you finish with can be applied to particular actions: attack, heal, gather energy, or potentially score points. You effectively, have a Yahtzee mechanism to drive your actions each turn. Energy can be spent on buying unique power ups, while sets of numbers (e.g. triple 3s) can give you points directly.
A key feature of the game is that there is usually only one spot available in downtown Tokyo (two if there are five or more players in play). Damage through the attack moves are assigned to the monsters where you are not: if you’re in Tokyo, all monsters outside of Tokyo take damage, and the opposite is also true. This means that while you’re in Tokyo, you can dish out lots of damage, but you are also on the punishing end of several sequential attacks.
Commentary: This is really Yahtzee with giant monsters. It’s a game that is fickle in nature, as the way that the dice fall will ultimately determine your play and your game. There is a limited amount of strategy available within these choices, but this is mostly a game where you allow the weirdness of the game to catch you up.
Because of the above, this game falls more within the casual and family side of the spectrum. So much changes by the time it gets back to your turn that being able to plan a longer game is not really possible. However, the pace of the game is brisk and this means the game ends faster than not. This is fortunate because this is inherently a game with player elimination, and so anything that drags the game out will leave several people out for a while.
Verdict: Grab King of Tokyo if you want a family fun game, or King of New York if you want something with a bit more strategy. Either way, the Power Up! expansion for each edition is an essential addition, and the rest is mostly redundant.
Expansions: King of Tokyo has one main expansion in Power Up!. It also has a variety of promo cards, and another formal expansion in Halloween. The various promos are entirely optional, but they are game functional. They can be seamlessly added to your game without problem.
Power Up! introduces the concept of evolution cards, which gives each monster an asymmetrical play style. You can trigger the effects of these cards to give your monster unique game effects reflecting the theme of your monster. I consider this a must have expansion for the game, as it adds more flavour to the types of monsters you can choose.
Halloween introduces two more Halloween themed monsters, with their own unique evolution cards, along with additional costumes within the energy cards. However, unless you have a particular interest in either pumpkin jack or the bogey man as monsters, you can pretty much skip this. The costumes are too gimmicky, and the flavour of this expansion jars with that of the game itself.
There is also a stand-alone spin off in King of New York, also with a Power Up! expansion for its unique set of monsters. The main difference between the two games is that New York includes a more involved city board with several districts. These districts have buildings and military units within and in this way, they add more options for scoring points and how to play. You can use the monsters from either edition in the other, but they are otherwise not compatible games.