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Oh No! There Goes Tokyo!: ‘King of Tokyo’ Reviewed

Elliott Miller

Jun 30, 2012

Game Name: King of Tokyo

Publisher: iello Games

Designer: Richard Garfield

Year: 2011

Players: 2 – 6

Ages: 8+

Playing Time: 30 Minutes

Retail Price: $39.99

Category: King of the Hill Giant Monster Board/Card Game

Components:

Rules
1 Tokyo Board
66 Cards
28 Counters
8 Dice
6 Monster Boards
6 Monster Stand Ups
Bunch of Energy Cubes

From iello Games:

King of Tokyo is a game from Richard Garfield for 2 to 6 players in which you will be able to play mutant monsters, gigantic robots and other aliens, all of whom are happily whacking each other in a joyous atmosphere in order to become the one and only King of Tokyo.

When it is your turn to play, you throw six dice. Each die bears the following six symbols: 1, 2 or 3 Points of Destruction, Energy, Healing and Whack. In three successive throws, you are going to choose whether to keep or discard each die in order to come up with combinations that will enable you to win destruction points, hoard energy, restore your health or whack other players into understanding Tokyo is YOUR territory.

The fiercest player will be crowned King of Tokyo… and will end up facing all the other monsters alone!

Top this off with special cards that you can purchase with energy and that have a permanent or temporary effect, such as the growing of a second head which grants you an additional die, body armor, nova death ray, and more…. and you hold one of the most explosive games of the year!

In order to win the game, one must either destroy Tokyo by accumulating 20 destruction points, or be the only surviving monster once the fighting has ended.

I really didn’t know what to expect when I broke out King of Tokyo for the first time. I knew it was about monsters trashing Tokyo, as in all of the movies that I used to watch during monster week after school on our local ABC affiliate.

This is a game developed by Richard Garfield, who aside from creating one of the most popular card games of all time, I believe he is also known for sleeping a lot and eating lasagna. I’m not positive on that last part though.

Upon opening the box you will discover a fairly small board with two spaces on it: Tokyo, and Tokyo Bay. There are six monster stand ups of very thick stock, each about 4” tall with plastic stands for them to fit into. One thing that did bug me is that they don’t stay in the stands very well. The plus side of this is that you don’t need to worry about the stands tearing up the bottoms of the tokens, as in a lot of other games.

Eight oversized custom dice, six black and two green, are included. These are etched dice of great quality. The monsters have their own small boards with dials to track their health and victory points. These are pre-assembled, so you don’t need to worry about snapping those dials on yourself. Fifty or so tiny green plastic cubes will be your monster’s energy pool. Please note that these are maybe a centimeter square, or about a quarter of an inch to us silly Americans, so keep these away from little kids as they are a choking hazard.

Finally a bunch of cards and some tokens make up the rest of the components. Everything fits nicely in its own space in the included plastic insert, that includes finger holes so you can get it back out again easily.

The artwork of Benjamin Raynal is great. It is whimsical and cartoonish and reminds me of the artwork in Small World. You’ll find it on the cards, board, tokens, monsters, rules basically throughout the game. Speaking of the rules, they are short and fairly understandable. The many examples help as it did take a rereading or two to get the points across. There are really only three pages with examples and illustrations, so we were up and running in 10 – 15 minutes after opening the box.

The object of the game is to score 20 victory points, or be the last monster alive on the board. What wasn’t readily apparent to me is that this is a king of the hill type game. All of the players start with their monsters off of the board, outside Tokyo. Only one monster at a time can be in Tokyo. Actually in a five or six player game, two monsters can be on the board, one in Tokyo and one in Tokyo Bay. When a monster on the board does damage, all of the monsters not on the board receive that damage, and if a monster off of the board does damage the monsters on the board receive it.

If you take damage while in Tokyo, you can choose to leave the board and the monster who chased you out gets to move in becoming the King of Tokyo. You earn victory points for being King of Tokyo each turn you are there, but you can’t heal yourself so it gets tough to stay there for more that a couple of turns without being eliminated.

Each player starts with zero victory points on their dial and 10 health points. The cards are shuffled and three are laid out on the table face up. You can purchase a card using energy cubes that you earn during the game. Some of the cards are pretty powerful, but of course they are more expensive to get. Some cards are kept the entire game while some are discarded after one use.

To begin, no monster is in Tokyo. The first monster to roll an attack result on their dice moves into Tokyo and the battle for supremacy is on. On their turn, players roll the six black dice. The two green dice are bonus dice that you can earn from certain cards. All of the dice have a 1, 2, or 3 on them, a heart symbol, a big claw representing an attack, and a lightning bolt representing energy.

You get two re-rolls of any number of dice after your first roll, even re-rolling some that you saved from the previous roll. This is a bit like Yahtzee. If you roll a number result, you want to get at least three of a kind and then you earn that many victory points. For example, if you roll three 3’s, you earn three victory points. Each additional 3 rolled will earn you one more victory point. So if you rolled 3’s on all of the dice you would earn six victory points.

Each claw you roll is one point of damage that is dealt to the monsters either inside or outside Tokyo, depending on where you are. Each heart you roll will heal you one point of damage, as long as you are not in Tokyo as hearts don’t work in Tokyo. Finally for each lightning bolt you keep you get to pull one energy cube from the supply.

After you resolve your dice, you can spend energy cubes to buy cards. Each time a card is bought, another is drawn form the deck and replaces the one just bought. The cards are all pretty self-explanatory, and tell you when they can be used. The cards can do many different things, like healing you for a certain number of points or even giving you an extra die to roll.

If you have 20 victory points at the end of your turn, you win! If all of the other monsters are dead, you win!

As you can see, there is player elimination. If your monster is killed, you are out. So far the games I’ve played only lasted a few more minutes once monsters started dying, so it isn’t a big problem. The games are short, usually about a half-hour.

Overall, King of Tokyo is a fun game. It is quick, easy to learn, and nicely thematic. I think it would appeal as both a family game and to gamers too as a fun filler. The components are top notch and the artwork is great. It can play up to six players, although if you are the sixth player to take a turn you might already be hurting by the time the dice get to you.