Have you ever watched those old school Kaiju films and thought “Man I could take control of a giant Mechanoid Bunny and lay the smack down on their candy asses!”
King of Tokyo is a board game for 2 – 6 players, where you take control of your favourite Kaiju from Giga Lizards to The King (a giant Cybernetic Gorilla) and even a carrot smoking bunny in a giant pink death machine. (I think you can all guess who I picked)
The objective of this mutagenic smack down is to either pound you friend’s faces into the floor or survive long enough to claim 20 victory points from dice rolls and remaining inside Tokyo.
The dice have several actions in game:
Numbers 1,2,3
Netting 3 of a matching number will bag you that number of victory points i.e. 3+3+3 will give you 3 victory points
Claws
Each claw will deal 1HP of Damage either to the Player inside Tokyo or to each player outside (if you are the one inside the city at the time)
Hearts
Hearts will heal you 1 damage up to 10HP (probably the most useful Die you could get) but if you are inside the city NO HEALS FOR YOU!!! You sit there and suffer
Lightning Bolts/Energy
This will give you 1 energy cube, these cubes are essentially currency you can use to buy cards and use your abilities
So before we talk about these cards, let’s find out why this game is called the king of Tokyo, there are two battle positions in the game Tokyo and the outskirts. Creatures in Tokyo can’t heal whilst inside but they do attack every creature outside the city meaning you can deal massive damage with each turn. And if you hold Tokyo for an entire round you gain an extra 2 victory points so it’s a very high risk reward position.
The creatures outside the city can only attack the occupant of Tokyo and can heal up ready to take the hill. So how do you take control of the city? Well it’s not up to you, whenever the player inside Tokyo becomes too butthurt to stay they can swap with the last creature to attack them, conversely if you take out the creature in the city you have to take his place.
This leaves an interesting tasty in your mouth as a player where you are torn between dealing the big hits in the city and hoarding heals and energy outside. You’re never sure whether or not to take the hill, but it gives the game a real think on your GIGANTIC feet feeling it’s a strategy game where it’s good to live in the moment.
One last area that I should cover is the ability cards, these cards can be purchased with energy cubes allowing the player to change up how they play the game. Now I play every game like a Glass Cannon I always look to deal massive damage as quickly as possible so when a Spiked tail or Extra head card turned up allowing my creature to add an extra damage or die to each roll, my game turns completely to hoarding Cubes to purchase these boosts. So imagine my brain exploding after I purchased these and a new card showed up, the Nuclear Blast that allowed me to hit everyone inside or outside Tokyo.
But it’s not all damage cards, in one game I purchased the heal ray that allowed me to sell one of my hearts to other players in exchange for cubes, which made me start acting like the mafia commenting on other players lack of health in order to solicit more energy.
Overall King of Tokyo is a quick game to get your friends in the gaming mood. Now it’s not going to hold an entire evening unless you are playing with a full roster of friends, but it’s definitely a great game to break the ice between new people, People that say meet up every Tuesday evening at Copa in Cheltenham at 7pm GMT. (If you’re local come along). It’s fun and if you’re with a good group of people can test your wits quite considerably.
Needless to say we’re all looking forward to testing out some of the games expansions.
King of Tokyo gets a: GOOODZILLAAAAAAAA!!!/10
