King Of Tokyo

This game is so much fun!

If you love the old Godzilla movies or ever played Rampage at the arcades then this is for you. The game is simplicity you play a monster and you have to either kill all your opponents or get 20 victory points.

How you achieve this is by rolling dice. Nice big chunky dice.

Each turn you get 3 rolls of your dice choosing to hold back any that you want to keep for each successive roll. They each have symbols on them.

• Claw – This is used to attack with.
• Heart – Used to heal.
• Bolt – Gives you energy.
• 1-3 – Collecting up to 3 of these in a completed roll give you that number of victory points.

If your’e in Tokyo you can’t heal and all your attacks hurt everyone outside but you gain valuable points for being there, and if your outside all your attacks hit whoever is currently King Of Tokyo. The energy is used to buy power cards that will give you either new abilities, more turns, victory points or damage your opponents.

And a word quick on the components, everything is this game is beautiful, the cards all have wonderful colorful fun illustrations the playing pieces are big and cool looking. The Dice are really nice and hefty and a joy to roll. Its just a great looking and feeling game.

And that’s the game – it takes a minute to explain and anyone can quickly pick it up and be off and playing.

Once you’ve played this a few times it then becomes clear even though the mechanics are simple there is a strategy to winning, its all on when you choose to go into Tokyo and what cards you have collected waiting for your opponents health to get low. But whether you win or lose you will have fun, this is all about trash talking your friends and then rolling those dice only for an epic fail.

This game was designed by Richard Garfield the guy who came up with Magic The Gathering and the brilliant Android:Netrunner and has garnered heaps of awards and praise. If you’ve taken the kids to see Pacific Rim yet then this is something you want on the table when you get back. This is a fantastic entry level game that has everything that is great about well made and designed board games, a real sense of fun, cool components and easy to learn. Its also a reasonably priced game and you should be able to pick it up for under £30.

But wait there is more.

Yes there is an add-on. Power Up gives you a new monster Pandakai and his player board and a new deck of cards. These are the evolution deck. If I had to level one criticism against the original game was that all the monsters played the same, well not anymore.

The evolution deck contains a set of cards specific to each of the monsters that only they can use giving all sorts of really powerful and cool new abilities. You keep this deck nearby and whenever you roll 3 hearts you get to take a card off your deck and keep it in your hand. You keep these secret until played, some work once and then are discarded but a few stay on the board giving you massive advantages and it turns the game into an arms race as everyone desperately struggles to hit those rolls that will unlock a new skill.

For me this is an essential buy. First its cheap at around £12 and adds a huge chunk more variety and tactics to the game, you can now tailor you monster and it simply adds a new layer of tactics to the game without complicating the original game. Now that’s some great game design.

Most exciting of all this is expansion 1 with more promised.