King of Tokyo

'Run! Save yourselves! It's coming this way!' 'Grrraaaargh!'

Type: Board / Strategy / Combat / Dice
Players: 1 to about 4

Time to explain to others: 15 minutes

Time to play: About 20 minutes

Difficulty: To play 3/10, Game difficulty 4/10
Portability: Medium (some small tokes but not many)

Overall: 9/10

The scene: The Rising Sun capital 

The extras: The unfortunate inhabitants. 

The players: A succession of Daikaiju's (Big monsters) battling it out to see which one can become the titular King Of Tokyo.

The game is fairly simple: you control a giant monster and your opponents do the same. Your monsters (The usual, giant iguanas, giant apes, small bunnies in Mecha suits, cyber dragons, same old, same old....) battle it out, to try and reach 20 victory points as fast as possible.

Only one monster can be in the centre of Tokyo at any given time. Here, you earn more victory points per turn, but you don't regenerate. Also, you just became the bullseye for all other monsters. So you need to balance victory points and health.

Also, your regeneration and attacks are dice based, introducing a huge ammount of randomness to the proceedings. You can also gain energy cubes via the dice, with which you can buy enhancement cards and become more powerful, etc.

Rui's conclusion: A good, fast, fun game. Another good party one, but some guidance to newbies will be needed.