REVIEW: King of Tokyo (Board Game)

One of the best games released over the last few years is a "simple dice game" called King of Tokyo. Now, I've already mentioned in the War of the Ring review how I'm a sucker for theme, and 'kaiju-eiga' (Japanese monster movies) is one that immediately appeals to me, although in the past there haven't been that many decent games that used it. This has all changed now, and King of Tokyo has proven so popular that giant monster games seem to be popping up all over the place, which can only be a good thing.In this game you play as a huge mutated lizard ( ala Godzilla), gorilla (ala King Kong), octopus (ala Cthulhu), robot-lizard (ala Mechagodzilla), alien robot (often in cheezy 60s/70s kaiju-eiga) and a rabbit piloting a huge robo-bunny (!?!?) with the intention to smash Tokyo to tiny bits or become the last monster standing. Basically you win either by accumulating enough victory points through taking and holding Tokyo and rolling VPs on your dice, more on that later, or you concentrate on dealing out damage to other monsters with the express wish to kill them off. Either way, it's a lot of fun!

The core gameplay of King of Tokyo is a yahtzee-esque  dice game, where you roll a number of unique specially designed (and chunky!) dice. After a couple of allowed re-rolls, you should hopefully have a few different actions available to you depending on what you got. The most basic dice result is simply to accumulate victory points, either in groups of 1, 2, or 3 and you need to reach 20 to win, so often it makes sense to simply try and take as many as you can in a turn. Another basic result is the attack symbol, and for each of these you damage either the monster currently occupying Tokyo, or if you're the monster in Tokyo then you damage every other player in the game!! After being smacked about a bit, the monster inside Tokyo can choose to retreat and let you occupy it, for which you get victory points, and this is how the flow the game goes - with monsters battering each other out of Tokyo turn after turn. Other things that you can do with your dice are heal damage (as long as you're outside Tokyo) and accumulate power cubes.

Power cubes let you purchase special cards each turn and these are what really spice up the game, as each one is either a one-off thematic event, such as eating a building full of people for victory points, or a permanent mutation to your giant monster. There is also an expansion for King of Tokyo called Power Up, which has another unique deck of cards for each monster (an well as another monster to play as - a giant kung-fu panda!?) which is accessed through rolling multiple heal results on the dice. While the expansion is not essential, the base game is great fun on it's own, the increased theme and differentiation between each kaiju really adds to the theme of the game. King of Tokyo is very quick to pick-up, teach to other players, and quick to play - usually leading to multiple games each session as people have so much fun they want to play again. and again. and again. The production value of the game is also fantastic, with bright vibrant artwork, high quality cardboard components and fantastic chunky custom dice. While the complete opposite in terms of game length and complexity to other games thus far reviewed, this game is near flawless and one of the best around.