Boardgame Review: King of Tokyo

So here is a completely off kilter post from me today. And it will be a bit shorter as well.

But after the last few conventions, and discussions with my son about gaming, I have begun to look at kid friendly games that he could be involved in.

So enter King of Tokyo! No miniatures, just cardboard cut outs. Some easy to read cards, bright colored dice, and a very simple board to play on.

Received this in the mail the other day, and last night I broke it out to give it a spin. It says it is for 2-6 players, 8+, and should take about 30 minutes. Gave it a go with the Mrs last night, and can say it can be played quite quickly with only 2 players, but with more players it can get quite a bit of fun!

To see more on the game, let's turn to Wil Weaton, as it seems he has a good video on it to show it off further.

My thoughts on the game are pretty much the same ( though I still need to watch the video fully! ).

However after playing it a few times ( we needed to play 3 to see best of with the game ), and I can see it can get quite tricky to manage when should you stay as the King of Tokyo City ( or Bay if more than 4 players ) and when to step down.

Winning comes in different ways though which is cool. We had one game where we won by staying in Tokyo City and going for stars as much as possible. Another was just to kill off the opponent as fast as possible, and aim for the attack results. And the last being a combination of them, whereby sitting on the city for a bit to gather some stars, before switching off to recover and make more stars through dice.

Sounds simple, and honestly it can be at the basic level. So junior will enjoy that. But I can see it getting quite interesting once you begin to gather up some energy tokens, and buying up some of the power cards! Things like gain extra stars for being in the city, or taking down the stars of all players except yourself. Or laying a massive smack down to all players outside of the city ( where you normally cannot attack ) etc..

Am looking forward to having a few people over and giving it a go with more than 2 people playing. I believe friendships will be tested with it, but not to the extent of Monopoly thankfully!

Expect more of these as more such games wing their way to me over the coming months.. I seem to have been bitten by the quick board game bug, so it could be interesting to see how this develops :)