Don't Play iPad Lah! Be "King of Tokyo"...

Date:  May 7, 2015

I introduced board games to my kids.

We played various of board games before sleep.

We played every single night.

The kids now seldom ask and use the iPad.

It put less strains on their eyes. 

And as a result, the kids get better chance to have perfect eyesights.

The kids is more happy.

The kids is more socialise as they not playing their iPad individually.

The family gain more interactions.

When my kids grow up, they will become a social geek!

And I believe the board games has done a good job!

Today, let’s introduce you to one of the most interesting board games me and the kids loves.

King of Tokyo

It has won a lot a lot of awards.  So the world also think it is a cool game.

It is good for 2 to 6 people playing.

If you have 5-6 people playing this game, basically, there will be 2 cities - Tokyo city and Tokyo bay where the monsters can occupied.

It is good for 8 years old and above.

And the rough time is about 20-30 minutes per round of game.  Just nice for a before bed gaming.

How to Play

1.  Every player choose a Monster.  Reset the Live (hearts) to 10.  Reset the Star to zero.  There is no special different power for each monster.  It is just a avatar for your game play.

2.  At the center lies the City of Tokyo.

3.  Players than throw 6 dices to see how many ATTACK they have gotten.  The player who has the most ATTACK dice will go first, follow by the player to his LEFT.  Now, you will always want to get the first shot to occupy the City of Tokyo.

4.  If you are the player who start the game, and throws ATTACK dice.  You get to go into the City of Tokyo.

5.  Every time you get into Tokyo, you gain 1x STAR.  Every time you STAY inside Tokyo (not the first time occupying it), you gain 2x STARs.

6.  When you are in Tokyo, you want to throw as many ATTACK as possible, as you gets to damage ALL other monsters (all the rest of the players) who is not in Tokyo.  

7.  Because every time you turn, you will add 2x STARs, the monsters who is in Tokyo will gain STARs more quickly this way.

8.  Whoever reach 20x STARs win!

9.  And if the Monster who occupies or eventually occupies Tokyo is the only Monster left will win too!

10.  The only downside of staying in Tokyo is YOU CANNOT HEAL yourself using the hearts.  And other monster will attack only you when is their turns.

11.  So, when you are low in life (HEARTS), you better ROAR (SHOUT OUT) to whoever monster that attacked you.  Once you do that, you STEP OUT of tokyo, take the damage and then, let the monster you roar to come in to take over the City of Tokyo.  When he first entered Tokyo, don’t forget to add 1x STAR.

12.  So, when you are outside of the Tokyo, and you are low in lives, and if you do not want to risk to be called in (by the Monster in Tokyo roaring at you),  you do not ATTACK the Monster in Tokyo.  

13.  When you are outside of Tokyo and low in lives, you basically wants to HEAL as many as possible by throwing more HEART dices.

14.  So, you keep doing so, enter tokyo when you are strong, heal yourself when you are not in Tokyo.

15.  While playing each turn, you get to throw ENERGIES dices too.  If you get energies, you can buy the power card.

16.  The deck of power cards are simply awesome.  You can do a lot of stuffs with it.

17.  So, also watch out for players who has many STARs.  As once he/she reached 20, he/she gets to win the game to become the Kind of Tokyo.

The Manual

It is very easy to play.

It is a game that need to use your brain.

It is a game that need strategies, and some time, you need to have collaboration in order to win.

The fun part is all those special power cards.  You can really rely on them to do some damage or savings.

 

The Monsters

The Giga Zaur...

The King...

The Kraken...

Cyber Bunny...

Alienoid...

Meka Dragon!

 

The Dices

There are six faces, you have 1, 2, 3, power, health and attack faces.

You get no STARs if you have lesser than 3x 1s or 2s or 3s.

If you get 3x 1s then, you can add 1x STAR.

If you get 4x 1s then, you can add 2x STARs.

If you get 5x 1s then, you can add 3x STARs.

If you get 6x 1s then, you can add 4x STARs.

If you get 3x 2s then, you can add 2x STARs.

If you get 4x 2s then, you can add 3x STARs.

If you get 5x 2s then, you can add 4x STARs.

If you get 6x 2s then, you can add 5x STARs.

If you get 3x 3s then, you can add 3x STARs.

If you get 4x 3s then, you can add 4x STARs.

If you get 5x 3s then, you can add 5x STARs.

If you get 6x 3s then, you can add 6x STARs.

There are special cards that can let you roll 1 more dice in addition to the six dices.

 

Energy Cubes

If you roll the lightning symbol dice, then you can add ENERGY CUBE.  The more you roll the lightning symbols the more you can get the ENERGY CUBES.

You can use these ENERGY CUBES to buy special cards.

The strategies is you will need to balance out the LIFE, ATTACK and ENERGY CUBES and STARS.  

1) Try to stay alive.

2) Try to kill ALL other monsters to win.

3) Or try to score as many STARS as possible to win.  (i.e. 20 STARS)

But without energy cubes to get the special power cards, it will be harder and slower to try to achieve 3 objectives.

 

Counters

These are the counter tokens.

You use it along with special cards.

For example, if you buy the MIMIC card for 8 energy cubes.

You can get one of these MIMIC token.

Then, you can sort of “COPY” the power of other cards by placing your token onto other player’s special power.

For example, I placed one MIMIC token onto the Extra Head card.  So, every time I throw the dices, I get an extra die.

 

The Monster’s Board

There are two counters on each Monster’s Board.

The STAR counter reset to zero, and start counting the STARs for you.  If you get 20x STARs, you win the game.

The LIVES counter.  You start with 10x LIVES.  if your LIVES counter drop to zero which is represented by a skeleton head, then, your monster is dead, and you are out of the game.

 

The Special Power Cards

There are a whole decks of cards here.

And you will soon find out why the kids love this board game.

Because all these special power cards are so special and fun.

They make the kids feel like super hero with super power.

Although they are monsters.

Let’s give some examples...

This is a very common card.  You use 4x energy cubes to buy this card.  And when you use it, you get 2x STARs.  And after you use it, you discard it.

There are a lot of such cards here.  Either add STARs, add LIVES, or add ENERGY CUBEs or even punch or ATTACK other people.

The Shrink Ray.  You use 6 energy cubes to buy this one.  And you can keep this card forever during the game.

When you use this card to attack the monsters, you basically give one SHRINK COUNTER to the other monster when you throw ATTACK and deal damage to the monster at the same time.

When it comes to the monster who as the SHRINK counter on his/her turn, he or she will have one less die to throw.  (i..e throw only 5 dices if you have a shrink counter.  throw 4 dices if you have 2x shrink counters)

The only way to save yourself by giving back full power (i.e. throw 6 dices) is to throw hearts.  Not to heal yourself but to get rid of the shrink counter.

This is a very powerful card.  

This is also a power card.  JETS.

Means, whenever you are in Tokyo, NO ONE CAN HARM YOU.

If no one can harm you, or damage you while you are in Tokyo, means, you will be there to collect STARs and win the game.

The only way to stop him is to kick him out from Tokyo by using special cards.

He (monster in Tokyo) has no reason to roar at any monsters.  Because there is no reason to.

So, when this happen, it is the race of reaching 20x STARs.  So, each monsters will have to throw dices to get as many stars as possible.

Don’t forget, when he is in Tokyo, he will get 2x STARs extra each turn.

This is also a good card.  If you throw a 1-1-1.  That means whatever you harvest from the rest of the remaining dices you get another turn immediately with 5 dices.

That is effectively equal to 8 dices.  Very fun to have this card.

If you want monsters to lose STARs.  This is the card you must get.

This is the card where you basically attack all monster even you are not in Tokyo.  Very power card if you want to play the kill-the-monsters strategies.

This is the great healing card.  When you heal, you heal x2.

If you have this card, and when you throw 6 difference dice faces.  Then, you get 9x STARs.

This is bad card.  Totally useless.  If you have this card, all monsters take 3 damages.  Including yourself.

From time to time, you will get these not so useful cards display on the selling area.

Each time, you can only reveal 3 cards.  

So, since all these are pretty useless, you might want to get rid of these three cards and reveal the next three cards.

You do so by paying 2x energy cubes.

If you got Smoke Cloud, you get three counters.  Each counter gives you an extra roll. 

Pretty handy to have this card.

This card give you two maximum lives.  Your maximum lives is 12 instead of 10.

You can reborn yourself if you die.

Some cards give you ability to throw 1-2-3 and earn 2x STARs.

This is an attacking card.  If you got this, whoever takes tokyo will have to receive one damage or one more damage.

If you have this card, if other monster deal damage to you, instead of lose life, you get the chance to decide whether your life is lost.  Still 1 against 6 chance, but at least you get a chance.

Again, nice card to have.  Throw 1-1-1 to get 2x STARs.

Attacking card.  Extra 1 damage when attack.

Another card that uses the counter.  The poison counters.  Give counters to monster so that they take extra damages to reduce the poison counter.

This is useless.  You take damages to earn STARs.

I love this card.  You basically can change other monster die throw.  So, that they don’t get what they want.

It is a nice neat little board game.

Kids love to throw dices.

Kids loves to grow their monster to have different power each time.

My boys love it so much.