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ejt73's King of Tokyo (Other)
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| [February 9, 2016 09:38:02 PM]
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King of Tokyo is multiplayer game meant to reenact the Godzilla type monster movies with each of the players being a different kind of monster fighting for control of Tokyo. The game play is best described as a mix between a deck building card game and Yahtzee.
Players: Each player controls one of the six monsters. Though they all look different there's no difference between them functionally. Each monster starts with 10 hit points and if their hit points are reduced to 0 they are removed from the game.
Objectives: In order to win the game you either have to be the last monster standing or be the first to accumulate 20 victory points.
Dice rolling: As mentioned earlier King of Tokyo plays a lot like Yahtzee. The main action a player can take on their turn is rolling 5 dice. The dice have the numbers 1 - 3, an energy symbol, an attack symbol, and a heal symbol. The players roll the dice three times each time they roll they can choose to to keep any number of dice and roll with the remaining dice. For example if they wanted to heal and they rolled two health symbols they would choose to keep those and roll with the rest. Each symbol of the dice does something different. The numbers are ways to earn victory points. If the player rolls three of any number then they get that number of victory points. Each additional number after that is one extra victory point. So if a player rolled 4 2's then they would get 3 victory points, but 2 2's wouldn't get them anything. The energy symbol grants the player an energy token for each dice that lands on it, energy tokens are used in purchasing cards. The attack symbol lets players attack other monsters. Finally the health symbol heals 1 hit point for each dice that lands on it.
Cards: Cards are the other major component of the game. When the game starts the deck of cards is shuffled and three cards are revealed from the top. Each card has an associated energy cost and after any player is done rolling dice they can choose to purchase a card if they have enough energy, that card is then replaced with another card from the top of the deck. Alternatively they can choose to spend two energy to discard the three cards out and replace them from the top of the deck. Players can choose to play a game of asset denial by removing cards that combo with cards other players have. The cards all have varying effects and most of them combo well with other cards. For example one card (solar powered) allows you to gain 1 energy a turn if you have none and another (friend of children) lets you gain 1 extra energy each time you gain energy.
Tokyo: The sub goal of the game is to try and occupy the city of Tokyo, represented by placing your monster's token on the game board. If more than 4 people are playing the game recommends you use the additional Tokyo bay space, but I am going to focusing on the typical style of play that doesn't use this space. At the end of a player's turn if Tokyo is currently unoccupied they can spend a victory point to occupy it. If they remain in Tokyo until the start of their next turn they gain 2 victory points. While in Tokyo the monster can't heal from dice rolls and when they attack they hit all monsters not in Tokyo. Likewise monsters outside of Tokyo have the ability to heal from dice rolls and when they attack they hit only the monster currently in Tokyo. Whenever a monster in Tokyo is attacked they can choose to flee Tokyo leaving it empty for other monsters, typically the one that just attacked them, to take it for themselves. On a side note I typically play with a house rule the Tokyo can't be occupied until turn 3. I do this because one of the major flaws of the game lies in the ability to fairly quickly win the game by entering Tokyo on turn 1 and racking up victory points while the other players don't have a solid method to stop you other than lucky dice rolls. While being in Tokyo is very dangerous it's the quickest way to earn victory points without the aid of cards. It's important to note, however, that you can win the game without ever entering Tokyo.
Game Play: I played two games back to back with my room mates. I've played it several times while they have all played it once before. I played Cyber Bunny in both games.
Game 1: Before going into Tokyo Cyber Bunny bought total devastation (if you roll one of each symbol gain 9 victory points in addition to other effects) and nova breath (your attacks damage all other monsters). Meka Dragon bought extra head (use one extra dice in all rolls). The Kraken bought urbavore (gain one extra victory point per turn and one extra attack while in Tokyo). Finally, Giga Zaur bought friend of children (whenever you gain energy gain one extra energy). Because of urbavore Kraken went for an agressive strategy where they stayed in Tokyo for as long as possible. They supplemented this quickly by buying camouflage (for every point of damage roll a dice if it's health you don't take that damage). Unfortunately for them they didn't do well on their camo rolls so they had to leave Tokyo quickly. Giga Zaur took tokyo after them but because of strong attacks from everyone else they also had to leave quickly. On leaving Giga Zaur bought monster battery (put as many energy from your reserve on to this card as you want, match this amount from the bank. At the start of your turn take two energy from this card. When no energy is left on the card discard it). Because of friend of children Giga Zaur had a lot of energy and each time he drew from monster battery friend of children meant he would get even more energy from it. Because Cyber Bunny had nova breath though they could attack every monster even when they weren't in Tokyo. Because Kraken and Giga Zaur were at low health Cyber Bunny was able to kill them with nova breath. Seeing that Cyber Bunny had the upper hand Meka Lizard took Tokyo and bought alpha monster (gain one victory point each time you attack) hoping to win through victory points. Cyber Bunny attempted beat Meka Lizard to 20 victory points by using total devastation. Cyber Bunny never got the right roll and Meka Lizard won through victory points.
Game 2: Early into the second game Kraken bought one of the best cards in the game shrink ray (when you deal damage to a monster place a shrink token on that monster, that monster rolls with one less dice for each shrink token on them. A monster can use a heal to remove a token). Because of this early purchase everyone else bought cards specifically to counter shrink ray. Meka Dragon bought wings (spend 2 energy to negate damage) and smoke screen (put 4 smoke tokens on to this card. You may spend a token to perform an extra re roll. When this card has no more tokens on it discard it.) Giga Zaur bought stretchy (spend 2 energy to change one of your dice to any result). Cyber Bunny opted to go for a more aggressive strategy and occupied Tokyo as fast as possible and used cheap one use cards to heal and attack. Due to heavy attack rolls by everyone else they were quickly killed. Meka Lizard was the next to take Tokyo and was trying a similar strategy to the first game, stay in as long as possible and get victory points as fast as possible. Because of the effects of shrink ray however they never had enough energy to use wings damage negation consistently even with the added re rolls of smoke screen so they were killed. Since Kraken believed they had the upper hand with shrink ray they took Tokyo and tried to kill Giga Zaur from inside. Some good rolls from Giga Zaur in combination with stretchy meant they healed enough to remove the shrink tokens and still managed to deal damage. When Kraken left Tokyo to heal themselves Giga Zaur bought fire blast (discard: deal 2 damage to all other monsters) and then followed it up with an attack from Tokyo to kill Kraken and win.
Conclusion: It's very easy for even the newest player to build up a successful set of cards and develop a unique strategy around those cards to win. The length of the game could stand to be a little longer. At the end of any given game it doesn't feel like you got the most out of your group of cards like you were only one card away from having a good combo going. It's also fairly easy to win by just refusing to move out of Tokyo and healing with cheap one use cards. You can get a lot of victory points this way before everyone else has the chance to buy cards good enough to stop you so it feels a little unfair. Despite these downsides though the game is very entertaining. Save for a few exceptions all of cards are fairly balanced the cost of the card generally is proportional to how good it is. In addition to the cards being balanced I have yet to find a strategy that is consistently more reliable than other strategies aside from the one mentioned above, and if one exists the small amount of cards you use means it's unlikely that you'll be able to duplicate it perfectly in the next game. Additionally there are enough cheap one use cards that players can remain competitive in the game even if they don't have any particularly good cards that work well with each other. With the right group of people King of Tokyo can be a quick and easy to learn game with enough strategy to keep it competitive and interesting.
The makers of King of Tokyo have recently released both a general and Halloween themed expansion and I have yet to play either of them. They may have fixed some of the issues I had with it or made them even worse. This review only applies to the original release of the game with no expansions.
This entry has been edited 5 times. It was last edited on Feb 9th, 2016 at 22:30:19.
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ejt73's King of Tokyo (Other)
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Current Status: Played occasionally
GameLog started on: Tuesday 9 February, 2016
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