King of Tokyo

Does anyone remember the old computer game Rampage? Ever wanted to play that on a board?

King of Tokyo is a more recent purchase for me that has been seeing a lot of table time.  It is a fast and fairly simple dice game.  As the name suggests it is basically a King of The Hill style combat game.

How does it work?

 The object is to either be the last monster standing or the first to reach 20 victory points.

Each player will start by taking one of the monsters and take their monster stand and scoreboard.  The monsters are all the same with no special powers to start with.

Next each player takes it in turns to roll the dice "Yahtzee style".  The dice can either give you energy, victory points, health points or attacks.  The numbered faces give you points, but only if you roll three of the same number.

The energy faces give you an energy cube, as the game goes on and you get more you can use them to buy upgrade cards.  These can either be a special power you can use all the time, or a one time advantage when you buy it.  The cards are good and do add some fun abilities to the game.  I don't think the cards are completely balanced. They aren't so unbalanced they break the game, but some do seem a little cheap for the advantages you get, or very situational for an expensive card.

The attack faces are how you are going to damage your opponents.  There are two places you can be in the game, either you are in Tokyo or you are outside Tokyo, only one player can be in Tokyo in 2-4 player games and two in 5-6 player games.  When you are in Tokyo and you attack you will hit everyone outside, when you are outside you will attack the person who is in Tokyo.  When the person inside Tokyo is attacked, they can choose to leave, they will still take the damage but get to leave Tokyo and the person who attacks them moves in.

The health faces give you a life point back, lose all your life and you die and you're out. If you are in Tokyo you can't uses health faces.  This makes staying in there too long hard, you are being attacked by every other player and can't heal yourself.

The reason to go into Tokyo and to take the beating there is the extra points you can get.  When you enter Tokyo you get 1 point, if you start your turn there you get 2 points.  It works as a sort of push you luck mechanic for the game, should I leave now or try and hold out and get those points on my next turn?

What do I think?
I like the game for what it is.  It is a party game that is easy to teach people and fun to play.  It isn't without it's problems but they aren't enough to stop me wanting to play it.  The game does boil down to rolling some dice and seeing what you get, the re-rolls can give you some choice as well as the cards you buy and choosing when you leave Tokyo.  There are plenty of dice games out there that use the same style of rolling that King of Tokyo does.

I really like the push your luck aspect of trying to stay king of the hill.  It adds something to what would otherwise be a dull dice game.  Much like Bang!'s hidden rolls I think that a dice game this simple needs a little something extra that would turn it from a "roll and see what you get" game to something that I will actually enjoy playing.

There is player elimination and you can end up getting killed off early and then have the game run for quite a while without you.  The game isn't that long, but can last long enough that players who get killed early might start to get bored.  Game length can vary massively, it is possible to get a win done in a few minutes if you get good rolls or it can last up to about 45mins if people are not scoring points and playing defensively, but the average is probably about 20-30mins.

The theme of the game is really makes the game more fun, The direct conflict can put people off some games but it is not to bad here.  The idea of a Cyberbunny fighting an Alien, Giant Ape and a Mecha Dragon is enough to lighten the mood and get everyone enjoying themselves.  Plus because you don't pick who you hit, you don't have the issue where one player can get ganged up on.

There are expansions available for King of Tokyo and another version, King of New York which is slightly more complex and more of a gamers game.  At the moment I haven't played with the expansions so I can't comment on them.  I haven't played King of New York either but I did look into it when I made the choice to buy King of Tokyo.  While King of New York still looks like a really good game I choose Tokyo because I think for what they are simpler and less gamey is better, for a game that does come down to rolling a few dice I think simpler is better.  I gives me a game I can pull out with any group and have a quick and easy game that everyone will enjoy.  If I had got the more complex game, we might have enjoyed it more with gamers, but it might not have got as much table time and I couldn't use it with non-gamers as much.

Overall this is quickly becoming a very popular game with my group.  It is simple and very luck based but it is fun and very accessible to people.  It works well as a warm up game we've found and we often use it at the start of the night while we are waiting for people to turn up since it isn't too long that they wont have to wait for ages before we are done and is fast to set up and pack away.