LogFAQs > #932893736

89. King of Toyko (2011)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Player combat, dice-rerolling
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 20 to 30 minutes
Experience: 4-5 plays over 4-5 sessions with 5-6 players (2015-2016)
Previous ranks: 73/100 (2016), 63/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player controls a kaiju monster in or around the city of Tokyo, represented by a single zone for inside and a single zone for outside. On your turn, you roll a set of mammoth dice and get to reroll subsets of them up to two times. The results are attacks, victory points, healing, and/or currency to purchase cards that buff your abilities. Monsters that get attacked in Tokyo can choose to vacate Tokyo, allowing the attacker to move in. The winner is the first player to reach a VP threshold or the last kaiju standing after attacks have reduced everyone else to zero.

Design - King of Tokyo has a fantastic aesthetic and can be grasped by anyone. The oversized dice look fantastic, the monsters are large and fun, and simplifying the "map" to "in Tokyo" and "not in Tokyo" is a great decision. Punching your enemies feels really good, and it's not exactly a skill game - the barrier for entry is super-low. Like Cosmic Encounter, King of Tokyo also eases the confrontation level by forcing any attack to strike everyone in not-your-zone equally, which can help the "I'm so unpopular" types.

Experience - So, why is it never "that" satisfying? Like Qwirkle, King of Tokyo is perhaps a little too simplistic and not game-y enough. And the elements that make it game-y (i.e. the best ways to win) are a bit anti-fun: avoid attacking (and making enemies/putting yourself into the more frequently attacked Tokyo) and focus on defending yourself, buying techs, and accumulating victory points. While some people might find this a nice way to allow alternate routes to victory (and something less confrontational), it feels a little bit weird if no one can really be counted on to beat that strategy.

Maybe what it comes down to is, I've never played King of Tokyo in the ideal setting. It's always been a mixed group - of both experienced players and relative newbies that I know but am not directly friends with. Friends of friends actually sometimes kind of make for an awkward co-gamers. Or maybe it's just me.

Future - I'm suspicious of King of Tokyo, which a more carefully examined list would probably place lower. I think I'd like to play it with people who don't really play games but I'd like to play something silly with, and with maybe my core-est of groups. I feel there are more laughs to be had in this game, but like Settlers of Catan, it requires the right set of people to bring that out.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness