Rolling the ATTACK DICE in King of Tokyo There's something a little bit magical about dice. Yes, physically they are plain six-sided plastic cubes but it's not about their physical form; it's what they represent. The result of throwing dice is an unknown, representing all the possibilities just by how they land. A simple game like Yatzee, using five plain dice and a …
King of Tokyo is currently my son's favourite player vs player game. But then he's a 9-year old Godzilla fan.
As an alternative to Munchkin - I've looked over the worked examples - I'm considering Gauntlet of Fools (by Indie Cards and Games)
You have to fight through umpteen rounds of enemies, and you will die at some point. But dying with the most gold is what makes a hero (and the winner of the game). Although the number of cards is limited , the number of permutations (or is combinations?), and the speed of the game ought to mean that you wouldn't get bored by it before it was time to move onto other things.
Thumbs up from me too - one of my favourite things about the game is the way the power up cards can combine and create paths to victory you've not seen before, even after months of play, e.g. the monster that has so many dice tweaks he can roll whatever he wants, the monster that can heal so fast he can't be killed and so on.
King of Tokyo is ok, provided you're only playing with a few people, say a maximum of four.
The problem comes when you start adding more monsters/ players because, almost inevitably as with such games, someone is going to get knocked out early on and then spends the next twenty minutes or half an hour as a spectator whilst everyone else is having fun.
There are plenty of "Euro" style games out there where you all get to play until the end, some suggestions are Carcassonne, Stone Age, Fresco, Discworld: Ankh Morpork and Ticket to Ride.
Agree, that's why I said best with 4 players, and really emphasise you've got to be careful not to die.
Although games like Carcassonne let you play to the end, if you're that far behind it's rather hard to catch up as there's no mechanic to give you a chance, apart from the random draw of tiles. If you're better at the game, it's hard to lose and it's can be 'unfun' to play through to the end for a beginner who has no chance to win.
Ticket to Ride has a decent hidden score element, so you may be a long way behind but you don't realise it which helps.
Ticket to Ride has a decent hidden score element, so you may be a long way behind but you don't realise it which helps.
I'd never considered that as a game design element. Rather than the hidden score to be to introduce some uncertainty, and to make it hard to gang up on the leader, it's actually there to fool the crap players into thinking they're not doing to badly, so they don't storm off in a huff...
I've quite enjoyed Ticket to Ride. But you can be a long way behind by mid-game, with almost no way to catch up. And that seems to be true of quite a lot of the Euro-Games I've played. A lot of them also seem to require almost obsessive amounts of counting in order to do well. If I'd wanted to be an accountant I could have been one. I'd also want to get paid for it...
We've never had problems with a player going out early in KOT or KONY - really the only way to get beaten quickly is to stay in Tokyo too long, and that is fixed in KONY by being able to heal from destroying military units. Most games have a steady decline for all players, with nobody going out until most players are at 3-5 health. It's usually only 10 minutes to the game end after that, maybe less.
Agree and agree. Once you know you like King of Tokyo and want a little more, get the Level Up expansion which adds a bit extra (more cards via a different mechanic). Then you won't want to play without it, because it just gives more options on what you can do with your dice.
Thought the name Richard Garfield was vaguely familiar. Seems he's that Richard Garfield.
Quick scan of his blog, and that prompted me to look up http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/113294/escape-curse-temple Escape:Curse of the Temple by Kristen Østby - a (European) cooperative game where play is simultaneous, through custome dice, and to a 10 minute soundtrack/countdown.
Sounds bonkers, and possibly leads to fisticuffs.
I have that one also :) It is chaotic and fun, but due to being a full on 10 minutes you can't play it many times in a row! Fisticuffs is usually avoided because you can go and help someone worst case, and it's mostly luck anyway. This is what I'm torn between, reviewing something released in the last year, or the last several years as board games age well?
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