King of Tokyo is dangerously close to being on my “will never play again” list. Which is a pretty short list right now. On your turn, you roll your dice and if you get a good roll, you get close to winning. If you get a bad roll, somebody else will probably win. Give me Monopoly before this game again.
Received my copy of Villains of the Multiverse today, with preorder bonuses.
Opened. Sorted cards into decks. Knocked over my glass of water onto every single fucking one. :P
Yeah, I’m boggled why people like this game. But people do like it. People! Whaddryagonnado.
Boy, I don’t expect everyone to love a dice-driven game like King of Tokyo, but that’s a pretty extreme opinion on a game I consider pretty hard to dislike. That’s cool, I’m just taken aback.
Well, I’ll turn that around on you. I find it to be a game with no redeeming features at all. There’s almost no strategy. There’s nothing to do when it isn’t your turn (you certainly can’t plan ahead!). Three of the die faces are somewhat thematic (claw, heart, energy), and the other three have 1s, 2s, and 3s, which you collect to get victory points. So basically 50% of the game is completely divorced from the theme and, for me at least, actively breaks any immersion in the idea that you are giant monsters destroying Tokyo.
So… why do you like it?
Yeah, well, the heart wants what the heart wants. Or something like that.
It’s not like I’m above playing simple, silly games. I just dropped the money for Cash 'N Guns. I’ve enjoyed some Skull lately, gameplay can’t get much more basic than that.The random winds of fate? Not only do I own Eldritch Horror, I bought expansions. Its just that gameplay is that dice roll… with 2 rerolls. That is it. Good rolls lead to wins. Bad rolls lead to defeat. I suppose what you want to roll changes as the game goes on, but the first game I ever played was won by someone who never entered Tokyo. She just got lucky with dice and hit the 3 VP combo multiple times.
So, if the only thing that matters is the dice roll… then what the heck am I doing to add to the game?
In Soviet Tokyo, King plays you!
Oh that’s so sad! I get all tense when one of my game boxes shows up dented or someone tries to touch my card with their potato chip fingers. I would be rather upset about that.
Oh, wow, I just read this one. My sympathy goes out to you.
This is also why all my glasses now have lids.
I don’t drink out of anything else now… though this was spurred less by board games and more by shirts and electronics.
I make boxes at work, so dented corners are no big deal to me. I’ll either repair or replace easily enough. Hell, I just finished creating custom boxes for all the X-wing components, so I can condense my collection.
But greasy fingers? Out, out, OUT!
Liking Monopoly more than anything that’s <30 minutes is insane! But I share the dislike. At this point, I’ll abstain from playing KoT when it comes up. I’d rather socialize with people who aren’t playing or waste time on my phone till it’s over. Personally, I find Yahtzee mechanics incredibly frustrating and have trouble being in a good mood while playing. I love the sort of dice games where you roll first and then act (La Granja, Troyes and Bora Bora are my most played games at the moment) but the only Yahtzee mechanic I’ve enjoyed is actually playing Yahtzee on my phone. I think it works there because no one’s watching me roll and I don’t have to wait for my turn.
If the thematic part is a big deal for you, there’s King of New York, which pretty much explicitly addresses that issue (which, yeah, I agree is an issue) by replacing those sides with sides that wreck buildings, activate the military, and do… a… star… thingee.
One thing I like about dice games with rerolls is the inherent drama of watching people decide what to keep and what to reroll… and how they get rewarded or punished for their choices. So when it’s not my turn, I’m usually watching someone else’s roll! Especially if I might be a target of their attack. I also could be eyeing a special ability or wondering if so-and-so is going to ditch out of Tokyo next time they’re hit.
Speaking of which, there’s a decision that’s not purely random or brainless: Will I risk another round in Tokyo? Which of my friends are the aggressive type who just have to maximize their claws? And which might be aiming for a different way to win?
I have a principle with randomness in games–and it’s just my sense of things, but I think it has some logic to it: If the game isn’t very long, then I don’t mind too much if randomness is a big factor. Yeah, I might totally get screwed by a roll or two, or someone else might have tremendous luck (three 3-pointers in a row is an example). But what have I sacrificed? 30 minutes? Razzing my friend about her stupid-good luck for the rest of the night is probably worth that!
King of Tokyo has a fun theme, the clatter of dice, a smattering of interesting little choices, and the drama of risk rewarded or punished. And a bunny in a mecha-suit.
I was very upset with the world for an hour or so. Fortunately only the new cards were damaged. They’re probably even more or less playable now that they’ve dried, but I’m still going to buy a replacement copy because playable is not the same as “not obviously damaged in ways that potentially identify the card from the side or back”. Also luckily, the promos did not get very wet and the oversized villain cards and mini-expansions were on the other side of the table from the spill at the time. So it’s just the expansion proper I need to replace. And it’s $19 on CSI, whenever they actually get it into stock, which is not the end of the world.
Yikes, I’m bummed to hear about some of you guys’ opinions of King of Tokyo. I just bought King of New York, and our friend Alexandra got a copy of King of Tokyo for Christmas. Now I’m worried I’m going to hate it.
By the way, if you like silly dice games where other players’ turns are relevant, I recommend Run Fight or Die. There’s some very clever stuff in there about endgame conditions and screwing your neighbors.
Dude. That. Sucks. My condolences.
The only house rule at our house is very simple: drinks and food are not allowed on the table when we’re got a boardgame going. And I’m super anal about it. We’ve got little side tables folks can use for whatever they’re eating and drinking. But even cups with a lid or bottles with caps can’t be put on the table.
And in years and years of boardgaming, I’ve never lost anything to a food or drink mishap.
-Tom
If you have the Power Up! expansion you have things to do on other people’s turns once you get evolution cards. One of the reasons we like the game so much is our parents who aren’t gamers can play it and do fine without having to be too heavy strategy about it. It’s a light game for sure, but saying there is no strategy and it’s all luck is simply wrong imo.
That seems to me a pretty gross over-simplification of the game. I get that King of Tokyo isn’t for everyone. Luck does play a role, but there are definitely decisions to be made with each roll and a few strategies. Am I going to try to tough it out in Tokyo? Do I want to get a few upgrades first? If I’m close on points, do I risk not trying to heal to go for a VP roll? The PowerUp expansion helps a lot as well, and gives players asymmetric abilities to work with.
That said, I’m not in love with the game as much as I once was, especially at higher player counts (>4), where you can end up sitting around for a good while waiting for your turn to come around. It’s somewhat fun to watch other people roll their dice, especially if you’re hovering on low health, but if you’ve got a few people that don’t move through their turns quickly, it can really drag out.
In the end, it works for what it is, a light, 30 minute, slightly meatier than filler, quick to teach, ameritrashy dice chucking game that can appeal to a fairly broad audience.
That’s where I fall too. On Saturday, before we hit the real meat, we played 3 games of KoT with 3 players in under an hour. One game took all of 15 minutes! At that level of time investment good and bad luck don’t phase me in the least. Sure it sucks that time you are in Tokyo with 5 health, 1 player before your turn, and with a narrow VP lead, only for the person before you to roll 5 claws. But then I just stared at my wife in disbelief for a minute, laughed, then watched the next 3 minutes while they wrapped up the game.
Then you play the next game, and when something similar happens you have jetpacks this time so its no big thing.
I do get the fact some people hate randomness. I do too, at a certain level of investment. One of my favorite games of all time is Railroad Tycoon/ Railways of the World. There is almost no randomness there. At a 2-3 hour game having the level of randomness of a King of Tokyo, or even a Ticket to Ride, I would hate it. There is nothing worse than to get screwed by bad luck with dice or cards, but still have 2 hours to slog out on your own personal march to defeat. It is why I don’t like Catan. Too much randomness in too long of a time investment. But KoT is quick and entertaining enough to support the high level of randomness for me.
The other problem is that very few games without randomness will ever see play. Some games are solitaire math with graphics, which is fine, but I’d never get my wife to play more than once. 7 Wonders is at the absolute limits of that my groups would support. So the games need some level of randomness to level the play field, as a pure math game they would feel is unfairly tilted in my favor. So KoT is great for us. Pure deterministic games fans may chafe, but I’m sure we’d hate some of their favorites too. Good luck getting me to play Worlds Most Mediocre Dirt Farmer Sim* again.
*Agricola
How does Power Up impact play time? One thing that would ruin the charm of the game for me is an increase in play time. 5 minutes would probably be ok, but 10-15 minutes would almost certainly be a no go.
I teased Tom on twitter that every time he reviews a board game that looks like I might be interested in it, I have to buy it immediately because they all go in and out of print so fast. I don’t really know how big an issue this is though, my only data points are that I had to wait a couple months for a backordered copy of Dead of Winter, and that Marco Polo is currently sold out and would cost me $80 from Amazon. So I don’t know how often these things are out of print for good, and how often it’s just a matter of being patient and waiting for another round of production or whatever.
So I was thinking about Pandemic Legacy, and I see it’s already sold out from Z-Man games, but it’s still $55 from Amazon (listed as “in stock Jan 10”). Do I need to snatch up a copy (or two) RIGHT AWAY, or can I still expect to find it six months from now at a normal price?
(my latest OH NO BUY IT QUICK! game was rewarding though, just got Onirim last night and really digging it)
(p.p.s.: Tom, do I need to buy Castellion and Sylvion too?)
The core part of Power Up is that when you roll three hearts you get to draw a monster-specific mutation card that gives you a new ability (some permanent, some one-shot). So I would say that its impact on playtime is negligible inasmuch as there are regular mutations or combinations of mutations that could come up in a game that could cause it to draw out and Power Up doesn’t really make that much more likely. You’re still just as likely to have a 15 minute game as a 45 minute game, I would say.
Play time aside, I absolutely love Power Up because it gives every monster a different flavor.
There’s no chance that Pandemic Legacy actually goes out-of-print (as in, no copies and none being made) for many years - it is #1 of all time at BoardGameGeek at the moment, you know - but I think they ran low on the initial runs over Christmas. Board games are almost always dependent on foreign publishing and then large vessel shipping (so port issues sometimes massively screw up delivery), but availability is actually a really interesting question to apply to Legacy because:
- Pandemic Legacy will have far fewer used market copies available due to the permanent defacing of the materials
- The Red and Blue box are apparently selling at different rates for different stores/regions (according to some things Tom Vasel said on the Dice Tower) so you may be able to get one color box from a retailer while the other is sold out