King of Tokyo

A feisty little game called King of Tokyo demanded our attention this week. Brought along by Andy, it served as an excellent way to end the evening after the main courses of Chaos in the Old World (a rare defeat for Khorne and victory for Slaanesh) and Olympos.

Serving up to six players, King of Tokyo is a dice game designed by Richard Garfield (of Magic the Gathering fame) about giant monsters ravaging Toyko and of course beating the crap out of each other. Each player is assigned one of the six monsters - ranging from the classic Gigazaur (Godzilla) and The King (Kong) to the more exotic Alienoid or the bizarre Cyber Bunny. Each turn, the player rolls the six custom dice up to three times, either keeping or discarding each die in turn. The outcome allows your monster to regain health, store energy, inflict destruction points, or whack the other monsters and possibly occupy Tokyo, allowing you to create more destruction. Once a player has inflicted 20 destruction points they win. Alternatively, a player can win if they are the last one standing having beaten all the other monster to death. Oh, and energy can be spent to buy extra powers/attributes for you monster, such as a spiked tail, regeneration, nova breath or the awesome extra head, which provides you with a seventh dice to roll.

The game is fast, fun and pretty silly. The push your luck element is nice, not just with the dice rolling, but also choosing when to occupy Tokyo - as the sole occupant of Tokyo bears the brunt of all damage inflicted and cannot heal, but also earns extra destruction points. We all had great fun. There was only one death - Tom's Child Friendly Alienoid got clobbered by my Kraken's spiked tail. Ultimately, Andy's Two-headed Meka Dragon won, by destroying the National Guard. Good times.

A brief mention for the new offering from Ystari: Olympos is another game from Jimmy's Essen haul. I didn't get a good look at it, but there were favourable murmurs from those that played it, especially Nicky who claimed victory.

Beer: After quaffing Naylor's Rudolph's Rocket Fuel, which was surprisingly light and pleasant, yet devoid of any seasonal merit (6/10), I had a pint of Elves Bells from the Wooden Hand Brewery. This was much more seasonal: a ruddy amber beer with toffee, biscuits, a hint of orange and spice. Tasted like Rolos. 8/10.