Game Spotlight – King of Tokyo – U-Con Gaming Convention

Let me introduce you to one of my favorite games: King of Tokyo from Iello. Iello also does Bunny Kingdom, Steam Park, and the sister game to this one; King of New York plus many other games-go take a peek at their inventory if you are curious. I’m not going anywhere in particular and I’ve got plenty of things to do if you want to pause and scroll through the catalogue.

Ahhhhh Kaiju. I love me some stompy monster games and I think this is perhaps the simplest and most fun of the giant stompy monster games (of which I can easily come up with 4 and not break a sweat). The pic above shows both the older edition from the Games Library on the left and my copy which is the new edition on the right. There are not a lot of big sweeping changes between editions, just some monster face lifts and maybe some cleaning up of cards and rules.

First edition rules on the right or top, Second edition rules on the left or bottom. First edition rules are definitely more succinct in layout but also a bit busy. Second edition doesn’t add more to the game but takes those crammed 4 pages and spreads them out into 6 much less busy pages. The first page of Second Edition is pretty much a KoT overview while the last page is reserved for expansion and King of New York promotions.

The rules are fairly straight forward (check out the pdf for the new edition here); it’s pretty much gain fame points by taking or holding Tokyo City (or Tokyo Bay in a 5-6 player game) or beating the ever loving beejeebus outta the monsters that are currently trying to hold Tokyo City and Tokyo Bay.

On the left, the King of Tokyo board in all its glory, on the right MechaDragon is in Tokyo while Anubis is not. Really you could put Anubis anywhere as long as it wasn’t in Tokyo if Anubis actually isn’t in Tokyo.

In the beginning, the old rules have you roll the 6 black dice and whomever rolls the most attack die faces takes Tokyo (City or Bay, depending on how many players and what is occupied). The new rules simplify that down and whomever is the first player automatically starts in Tokyo City (second player will start in Tokyo Bay for the 5 and 6 player game). First player is determined by whomever rolls the highest value on the 6 black dice (adding just the numbers that come up).

Let me talk about the dice for a minute. King of Tokyo comes with a set of specialty black dice which have a 1,2,3, heart, lightning bolt, and an attack claw on the faces. There are also a pair of green dice with the same configuration which are used in specific situations where you are allowed to roll more than the standard 6 dice for your action. But primarily you are going to be rolling the 6 black dice to determine your actions for your turn (or if you have the Halloween expansion, you can roll Pumpkin Jack’s 6 orange dice).

Once you establish who is in Tokyo (City or Bay, I’ll just be using Tokyo from here on out and you can assume it will reference both or City, depending on the number of people in play), the current player gets 3 rolls of the dice to build a “hand”. The player can keep or reroll any of the dice they please until that third roll. The 1s, 2s, and 3s will give you fame points once you get 3 or more of them. The hearts will heal you up if you are not in Tokyo (fame costs I guess). The lightning bolts are your currency to buy power cards, which are either instant one shot effects or sustained effects that carry on from round to round. Lastly, the claws are attacks against monsters that are in the other area you are not inhabiting (those monsters not in Tokyo direct their attacks at those that are and vice versa).

After resolving the dice, the current player has the chance to enter Tokyo if they aren’t already the monster holding Tokyo (if they are the monster holding Tokyo, they get to beat the everloving beejeebus out of all other monsters not currently in Tokyo). The monster holding Tokyo can yield if they take damage from the current player, at which point the current player must take the vacated Tokyo. If the current player is the monster holding Tokyo they are stuck there until someone does some damage to them, at which point they can choose to yield to that player. If the monster holding Tokyo refuses to yield, they can be displaced by knocking their health to zero hearts, after which whatever player killed off the monster in Tokyo enters the vacated Tokyo. After the status of who is in Tokyo is resolved, the current player can choose to buy power cards or not. Play then passes to the next player.

This is King of Tokyo set up to play over conference software during COVID. In person you will be playing your monsters standing up and everyone can keep track of their own energy cubes.

The monster who reaches 20 fame points first or the last monster left wins the game.

Things I liked:

I super love the dice – they are a good size to rattle around in your hands, although they are a bit big to comfortably roll all 6 one handed unless you have giant hands of doom. I also love that the Halloween expansion comes with an entirely superfluous set of orange dice THAT ARE JUST AS AWESOME! Plus the Yahtzee dynamic of rerolling is kinda fun.
The Power Cards add a nice dimension to a game that would otherwise be pretty much gain fame points, smack the other monsters, try to die last. Power Cards give you some cool new elements to contend with and broaden the scope of the game.

First edition on the left, Second edition on the right.

I like the artwork; especially in the older version. MechaDragon is way more boss in the first edition but second edition Alienoid got a good facelift. I do like the second edition change out of CyberKitty for CyberBunny but I think that might be because I lost so badly to April playing CyberBunny that Iello put me on notice.

Things I didn’t like:

You can lose all your health really fast if you aren’t careful or have exceedingly bad luck and then you get to sit around and watch all the other players play until one wins. Not a big fan of that aspect of this game.

Expansions From Left to Right: Top row – Panda Power Up, Halloween Expansion (with both Pumpkin Jack and Boogie Oogie). Bottom Row – Cthulhu, Anubis. Not shown: King Kong, Shark Power Up,

I like the expansions, although I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with the Anubis Curse die or the little Eiffel/Empire State building pieces that comes with the King Kong expansion. None of the expansions are really necessary as they don’t add a lot new to the game other than different characters to choose and maybe a gimmick unique to the expansion (see: Anubis’s Curse Die). Also, the original game box can hold about 1 expansion before it starts to get unwieldy and there are 6 expansions and 6 promo monsters out there. Fortunately Broken Token makes a really excellent insert organizer but that’s gonna cost you half of what you paid for the base game (it’s the same organizer that is sold on the Iello site in case you were curious. I’d highly recommend getting this insert if you are at all going to get any expansions).

Here’s a pic of the Organizer holding Games Library’s base set plus 3 expansions and my original packaging trying to hold 2 expansions. My box doesn’t close flush anymore and all the monster boards have to live under the insert whereas the Games Library copy can easily hold 2 maybe 3 more expansions.

You almost don’t really need the game board. I don’t think I dislike this aspect but that game board really does nothing other than tell you who is in and who is out. You could easily do this with a piece of paper and a circle or two, or a table and 1 or 2 upturned coffee mugs (which would be kinda awesome, honestly. A real King of the Mountain feel).