LogFAQs > #978343337

How about a twofer today?

21. King of Tokyo
20. King of New York
Expansions Played: None

I've seen some people have really strong opinions on which of these games is better, but they're similar enough to me to feel like basically the same game, even if I would have to say I have a slight preference for New York if you forced me to choose.

Though I didn't play it myself until much later in life, I remember seeing a YouTube playthrough of King of Tokyo yeeeeeears ago that was almost definitely my first exposure of any kind to modern board games. I don't think I'm alone there, either - at one point, at least, this seemed to be among the most well-known games that you couldn't find in Grandma's closet. Maybe it even still is, but I think I'm too deep in the hobby now to make that determination.

Anyway, I think everyone's familiar enough that I don't have to do much of a breakdown, but I will anyway. These games are Battle Yahtzee. Everyone plays as a monster, and you roll six dice up to three times on your turn and do what they say. You can attack, heal, score points, or gain energy that can then be spent on power-up cards. King of New York redesigns the point-scoring system and adds in a couple new die faces with the extra spaces that allow you to destroy buildings for various benefits and potentially provoke a military attack in response. If you're the last monster standing or first to score 20 points, you win. In all but the very first turn of the game, there will always be one monster (two at higher player counts) in Tokyo (or Manhattan, depending on the version). While there, you score points and energy at the beginning of every turn, and your attacks hurt everyone else, but you can't heal. Attacks from outside the central area can only hurt the monster(s) inside it.

It's silly, it's quick, it's a reliably great time. Who doesn't want to play a game that lets you be a kaiju every once in a while? These games pull a lot of fun out of a very straightforward set of rules and limited decisions. Your choices never amount to much more than which of a few dice to reroll or which card to buy or, most critically, when to get out of the central area, but you'll agonize over them every time anyway. The greatest moments here come when someone tries to push their luck by staying in the central area for one more round because they've got plenty of health and one other player needs to heal, only for a different bloodthirsty monster to commit completely to rolling attacks and killing them with a lucky result. There's an elegance to the lunacy here, and you can switch up your strategies frequently between games without ever getting bored.

Nobody tends to like player elimination in games, but it's about as far from being a problem here as it could possibly be. You can easily fit 3 or 4 games into an hour, so if someone dies early, you can bet they're going to be back quickly anyway and with a literal vengeance. The more grudges that develop between players, the more chances you have for moments like that one I described. These are rare games that not only don't lose anything from immediate runbacks, but actually benefit from them.

Prevailing opinion seems to be that Tokyo is the superior version of the two games because of its snappiness - New York lets you move around the city's boroughs at the end of every turn if you so desire, and with every one having randomized buildings and army responders with different rewards, it adds a little more brain overhead. I can certainly understand how that can feel like it gets in the way of the mindless dice chucker spot that these games are trying to fill on the shelf. I really like that slight uptick in complexity, though, and it inarguably makes you feel more like a kaiju rampaging through the streets. Isn't that what we're going for here?

My only real complaint about the games is that the deck of cards for power-ups is quite big, but only three are ever dealt out at a time and it costs a valuable 2 energy to wipe and replace. These powers are a big part of the game's fun, but there's probably some in there that we've never even seen just because you only cycle through a few of them every game. Fortunately, there's no real need to wring your hands about balance here, so you can easily come up with some house rules for that if you feel the need.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: New York is owned by my best friends and we pull it out frequently. They don't ever make for the kind of memorable, lasting experience that would ever make me move them up a tier, but they've had impressive staying power in a hobby with few examples of that for good reason.