King of Tokyo - Tips & Strategies

Everyone wants to build up energy and VP early, but inevitably someone will pop into Tokyo inadvertently by rolling a spare claw, and start the damage chain. While the dice are random and preclude any particular strategy, the key to winning is being flexible based on results.

If you’re in Tokyo, look for power cards which will give you health back as part of a Discard effect — this healing is not prevented. Don’t be afraid to drop out even if you take a little damage, just to make sure the next guy gets stomped on instead.

Mind your opponents’ scores; don’t let someone with high VP into Tokyo. It may be risky to stay, but if you let them in with high HP, they could edge closer to victory and then only have to survive a turn or two to win. Better to stay as king of the hill and rack up points yourself.

If you’re playing for last man standing, combine a multi-claw roll with an energy buy of a Discard for damage, even if it will also cause damage to you. The one-two punch can rock an enemy back on his heels.

If you’re in Tokyo and somehow avoiding being damaged heavily, watch your opponents’ energy totals. If you can’t buy the best power yourself, sweep the power row if they’re close to being able to buy something which will ruin your day.

When you start your turn, you will always be hoping for something. If you are close to 0 hit points, you will want hearts. If you are close to 20 victory points, you’ll want numbers.

These are “special occasions” and do need to be dealt with.

But when you are starting out? Or you notice everybody is OK for health, and nobody has a huge VP lead? Then go big with your 2nd roll.

Basically, pick the path you like the best and go for it. Often people will be tempted to keep a variety of items from the first roll. All this does is lower the odds of you getting what you need. If you want the 3 VPs for three 3s, make sure you have every chance possible to get that 3rd one.

The worse thing to do is to limit your dice and be left with a mixed bag of dice.

The game says it plays two…but it doesn’t work that well. That being said, there is a way to make this a monster vs monster game…just don’t use the board. This eliminates one player racking up points by camping in Tokyo, but also increases the odds that players will seek out cards and victory points.

Why?

Because everybody can heal themselves.

If a power card comes up that mentions Tokyo, simply discard it and draw another.

Sure this make a light game even lighter…but for a two player dice chucking game, heavy isn’t required.

This strategy tip is of course for all monsters and not merely the Kraken but “unleash the cyber-bunny” just doesn’t have the same ring.

It is not really advisable to stay in Tokyo very long but sometimes you will make it around and get to roll while in Tokyo. When this happens there is only one thing to do…that’s right…unleash the Kraken! This means roll for as many claws as you possibly can get. This is your one opportunity to damage every opponent and you can win the game by the massive damage and deaths you can cause here. After doing so you may have to duck out of Tokyo at your first opportunity to heal up but what you frequently find is that a massive attack launched from Tokyo may well allow you to stay and do it again as other players will now become desperate to heal rather than hit you and will give up their claws in an attempt to roll more hearts.

One strategy that we often employ is when someone is low on health (maybe they just yielded Tokyo after getting beaten on) is to suck them right back in. If they hit the player in Tokyo you should yield Tokyo to prevent them from being able to heal further and to focus all the damage of other players on them until they die.

So then the counter to this strategy should be straight forward, when you exit Tokyo because your health is low make sure you don’t accidentally attack the player in Tokyo until your health is restored. This might mean passing on a 3rd roll if you have already rolled a bunch of hearts to prevent that random claw from pulling you back in.

An issue I’ve seen from a number of players in King of Tokyo is a need to use all of their rolls, even if there are times where it could be detrimental to do so.

This will most often come up after two rolls where a player is relatively low on health, and are going after hearts and energy. They’ll have one or two extra dice (non-claws)that aren’t giving them anything, and they’ll re-roll them. Unfortunately, one of these non-claw dice becomes a claw, and suddenly they find themselves entering Tokyo when they weren’t wanting to.

Don’t fall into the trap of automatically using all three rolls, especially when you’re low on life. Often times, you’re better off getting nothing from a die as opposed to risking a claw roll.

This may only come up once or twice a game, but I’ve seen it end in the death of a character many times. Take a moment and think, is this re-roll worth risking my character’s life?

Hello fellow Monster. Are you tired of being alone?
No friends to cover your back or to make you smile when you are feeling depressed because you rolled 2 ones, 2 two’s and 2 threes on your final re-roll? Well, enough of that..Time to team up!

This is a coöp mode I invented and I hope you’ll enjoy.

First of all make 2 teams, then locate yourself so your between 2 enemy players.
The first team who has 50 VP wins the game. Another option to win is to knock out all of the opposing monsters. This game mode is only for 3 vs 3 purposes.

Rules: (cards)
– remove “It Has A Child” and “Evacuation Orders”
– When a card says “add x VP and deal y damage to all other monsters” (ex. the “Gas Refinery” card), it will only deal damage to all opposing monsters.
– When a cards says “Deal x damage to all monsters”, like in the rule above, it only applies to enemy monsters.
– When a card says “add x VP and take y damage” (ex. the “Tanks” card), you may choose to take the damage, or let one of teammates take the hit.

Other rules:
– When a monsters VP-indicator hits 20, he gains 3 energy and regenerates 2 health, even if he/she is in Tokyo.
– When a monsters has 20 VP and earns VP, he must increase a teammates monsters amount of VP.
– A monster can buy cards for himself OR for a teammates monster.
– When a monster is inside of Tokyo and throws one or more punches, he doesn’t attack his allies.
– When a monster dies, he is out of play, but the VP he/she has still counts toward the teams total.
– When an allied monster is inside Tokyo, and you roll a punch, you have 2 options:
# Ignore the punch (your ally doesn’t get hit)
# Hit your ally but takes over his place in Tokyo. This means he takes the amount of damage that you rolled and he moves his/her monster to Tokyo Bay. (your monster takes over Tokyo City) When it’s that players turn, he/she take his/her monster away from the board. This means that in the time the monster is in Tokyo Bay, he/she still can be hit by enemy monsters.
– When you roll one or more punches and there are 2 enemy monsters on the board, you may choose which monster you hit. (You can only choose one, so if you role 5 punches, you can only deal 5 damage to a single monster. It’s not possible to split the damage)

The fun thing about these rules is that every member of your team can focus on something. For example: 1 monster focuses on getting energy, another one is going to keep Tokyo for as long as possible why the third member is focusing on rolling some VP and Regenerating so he can switch places with the monster inside Tokyo.
Some tips: Cards like “Healing Ray” and “Psychic Probe” can now be used to help your allies. The fact that you can buy items for allies also is a nice thing because it can help out the one who’s defending Tokyo. One last tip: If your ally is in Tokyo, don’t wait for to long to take over his place, because he needs to survive minimum one more dice roll from an enemy before he totally “retreats” from the game-board.

That’s it, no more reading for you. Now go mighty Monster, team-up and conquer Tokyo together!

My gaming group plays this game a lot and occasionally my friends and I get a little bored so we thought we would change things up slightly. So we invented this house rule…

All monsters start with a base power (i.e. one KEEP card). First we go through the deck and separate out all the 2 (or sometimes 3) cost KEEP cards. We shuffle the cards together and each player draws one card. After all players have one KEEP card, we shuffle the remaining back into the deck and start the game.

This adds some interesting elements to the game, and often adds more depth to the game overall.

Important Note – The upcoming expansion to this game involves a very similar system in its rule set.

I get into Tokyo as quickly as possible, and start rolling for punches. If I can get the health down far enough of the other player, they will let me stay in Tokyo for a few rotations. This racks up the victory points. To keep from getting too low on health, I also keep all Energy cubes and try to buy HEALING cards.

I will only drop out of Tokyo if the player attacking me is low on health (4 or lower) or my health is less that 6. I also will avoid attacking people who didn’t attack me (tit-for-tat) whenever given the choice.

For me, this strategy causes me to either win it all or lose first in groups of 4-6. Strategy changes a little as the total players drop under 3 if I am low on health.

I have found that when playing 2-3 player games, it’s not so enjoyable because it’s more of a damage fest (Roll for claws) and healing. There isn’t much time to try rolling for energy or VP’s in these cases, as there are more limited people playing and it seems that in those cases cards are ignored.

What I have done, is the following:
(AGAIN, NOTE: THIS IS FOR 2-3 PLAYERS ONLY)

1) Start everyone at 12 health. Allow to heal to 14 (we used glass counters/beads to represent the extra 2). This adds at least another turn to the game, giving more time to even THINK about doing something other than damage or heal.

2) reduce card costs by 2 energy cubes each, to make purchase of cards more viable.

I’ve seen that with my groups, this has improved the overall experience. In 5-6 player games, there are more opportunities for various strategies, but in smaller games it seems to not be the case so much. These adjustments have allowed for more viable card use, and have helped to keep the game interesting for our plays. Hopefully anyone else who has the same impression of the game as I do with 2-3 players, can find improvement with this as well!