King of Monster Island | Board Game | Ages 10+ | 1 to 5 Players | 45-60 mins Minutes Playing Time

King of New York is effectively King of Tokyo version 2.0. It's as if the creator of the game, Richard Garfield, sat down after the success of King of Tokyo and relfected on what he would have done differently had he made the game again. The result is King of New York - a game which keeps all the positives from Tokyo and looks to add some new additions to hopefully improve the game. What's the same? - You're still fighting over Tokyo (only this time it's Manhattan) and monsters inside the area attack all others, while those outside the area attack only Manhattan. - The energy and cards work exactly the same and the game comes with some cool new cards as you'd expect - Hearts (heal) and claws (attack) are exactly the same - You still have 6 monsters fighting to be king! Although they're different and new monsters to Tokyo What's new? - The board now has boroughs (areas) for monsters to hang out in while they're not in Manhattan, so you're not just off the board while not in Tokyo anymore - The numbers on the dice (1, 2 and 3) are all gone - They've been replaced with a star, a building destruction and ouch symbol - Roll three stars and you become the star of NY allowing you to score victory points by rolling more stars on future turns - There are now buildings on the board in each borough. These buildings can be destroyed by rolling destruction icons. Each building gives you a reward (health, energy and victory points) for destroying it. Fun! - Once buildings are destroyed you turn them over and they become a military unit in the borough where the building was. Military units can hurt the monsters! If you roll 1, 2 or 3 ouch symbols you will cause the military to fight back either only on you (1), you and the other monster in your borough (2) or all monsters (3). This can be a great way to cause damage to other monsters no matter where they are. Military units can also be destroyed using the destruction icons - you get rewards for doing this too. If you roll 3 ouches you will also get a statue of liberty card which gives you 3 points so long as you have it - You can now move around the boroughs - You now have increased reward for staying in Manhattan - the longer you're in there the more points and energy you will get. How's it play? It plays better than Tokyo in my opinion. Tokyo was one of my favourite games but New York has improved upon and overtaken it for me. There are more options in the game to cause chaos and have plenty of fun while doing so. The buildings and military units add a lot. If you enjoy Tokyo you will really enjoy New York. Do you need it if you have Tokyo already Well, Tokyo is still a great game but I don't see myself going back to it now I've played New York. For me, it's either one or the other - there's not a huge reason to keep both in your collection.

When I have friends over, there are 2 board games I bust out, because I know they are easy to explain, are fun, have a short running time, very little downtime between turns, encourage having fun. First of these is King of Tokyo. The rules are simple, and there's enough spectacle that "super casual" players can enjoy it (ameritrash as it is sometimes called) but enough depth that one can reliably strategise and implement one's plans, and also anticipate and foil other players' plans. It's also quite quick to set up and take down, and occupies a small footprint. Other games I really like fail in this criteria, even though they may be "better" games overall. For example merchants and Marauders is probably my favourite game overall, but the set up is lengthy, turn times are long (meaning downtime is long too.) I think perhaps the only way to relaly improve KoNY would be to have the individual monsters have different strengths. As it stands, they are totally cosmetic. Oh, by the way, the artwork is wonderful. The other game is Dixit by the way, easy to set up, easy to understand, much amusement. Very little strategy or counterplay though!

Very simple to understand, has good complexity if you care, very dependent on luck, very easy to learn and teach to people. Has several other expansions that can be added to it. The box is large enough to fit even more content in it. Would recommend, excellent as a gift. You win by either destroying all others monsters 2-6 players, or getting 20 points first. Each monster has unique cards that fundamentally changes how you play as them, these are gained by rolling 3 health dies, this gives an advantage to more defensive players, as without these cards the game favours playing ultra aggressive and is rather mundane and boring. You roll up to three times per turn. Something of an engine builder gamer too, where to can really create a unique strategy based on circumstance. Highley recommend.

I kept hearing good things about King of Tokyo in online board game forums, so when I found out about the sequel, King of New York, I decided to take the plunge. I have never played KoT before, so didn't really know what to expect. For your money you get a deep box containing a number of large character standees (double-side cardboard characters with plastic bases); a score/health board for each player; some power-up cards; eight large, chunky dice; numerous transparent energy cubes and a number of cardboard tokens. The game takes place on a simple board that features a map of New York divided up into districts. Taking the place of Tokyo in the earlier game is Manhattan: your character has to move here if it's vacant at the end of your turn and by being in Manhattan you are both at an advantage in terms of earning the power cubes and attack but at a disadvantage with respect to health. You see, to win the game your monster must try to get 20 stars or be the last monster standing. You start your turn by rolling six custom dice: you can reroll some or all of them up to two times more in order to get what you want. The dice feature building icons, stars, skulls, hearts, lightning bolts and claws. The claw icon is for attack: if you're in Manhattan, an attack takes a health from every player outside Manhattan but if you're in another district an attack is targeted only at the player in Manhattan. The building icon lets you attack the buildings in your district: these give rewards of health or stars but are then flipped into military 'units' such as tanks and jets which will attack you, taking a health, for every skull you throw in that district. Heart dice restore your health (unless you're in Manhattan, where they do nothing). Lightning bolts earn you energy cubes. After you have resolved the dice, you can choose to buy a power-up card, using the energy cubes you have earnt, which give you special powers such as the ability to throw an extra die (there are two special green ones included for this purpose) or regain health at the start of your turn, &c. Finally, you can choose to move district: by doing so you can avoid the units or move out Manhattan to recouperate, for example. Manhattan is special, in that when you're there you cannot heal using the heart dice, you attack every player outside that district and you earn energy cube and star rewards for being there. You are also obliged to move to Manhattan if it is vacant during the 'move' part of your turn. KoNY is a pretty chaotic, silly game...but it is fun. The first few plays of this I didn't really enjoy it but it has definitely grown on me over the last six months. I'm now starting to appreciate it for what it is: this is no 'euro' game (there's no engine building and players can be eliminated) but for a crazy romp it's good fun: throw the chunky dice and stick it to your fellow monsters! My kids get a bit upset when they're eliminated but to solve this I've just said they can play on with a different monster when it dies. The card power-ups are really good fun but they vary wildly in their power and so the game is a bit unpredictable and there's very little strategy involved: it's like a Hollywood action movie rather than a complicated drama.

King of Tokyo is such a good and easy to pick up game. And this monster box not only includes two of the big expansions, as well as space for all four monster expansions and the mini wickedness expansion. If you're going to go for this game, go big. I have had so much fun playing with and without the expansions. A great party game for both serious and casual gamers.

Starting from where King of Tokyo left off King of New York has a very familiar feel. Choosing monsters, rolling dice, trying to hold on to Manhattan (Tokyo). However, there are some quite significant differences that mostly lead to an improvement over the original. Pros - The board is now necessary, this may seem like an odd thing to say about a board game but players of it's predecessor will know what I mean. The board of Tokyo only had 1/2 players on at any one time and the majority of players character's would be sat off of it. Now the boroughs of New York beyond Manhattan offer an interesting array of additional actions that I shall come on to later. They have removed the 1s, 2s, and 3s from the dice! I found this one of the most unsatisfying elements of the original and the least interactive. These options have been replaced by stars, destruction and ouchs. The latter two involve the addition of buildings in all boroughs, even Manhattan. By rolling the destruction icons monsters can now destroy buildings, doing so will reveal a military unit. On later turns these too can be destryoed. The ouchs can cause you and/or other player to take damage from these units. The stars are my least favourite as they essentially have the direct result of victory points but nowhere near as easily as rolling 3 3s does in the original. Cons - Set up time is now increased due to having to setup these piles of buildings, a minor point but worth mentioning as these games are often used as fillers between longer games and you would therefore not want a lengthy setup. That being said the setup is still minimal. Due to the slightly increased complexity I have found individual turns now take slightly longer as people have to spend more time thinking about what their next action will be, this is obviously more subjective a criticism and depends greatly on the group of people. Summary - I struggled to pull out any negatives and there are many more positives I did not discuss, If you enjoy King of Tokyo I can see no reason why you wouldn't love this game, that being said I wouldn't describe it as an essential 'upgrade' as personally I do not own a copy of King of Tokyo and if I had probably would not have purchased this, at least not right away. For those that have played neither I would recommend this game over King of Tokyo as the main issues I had with Tokyo have been fixed which in turn leads to more player interaction that in my opinion is where the fun lies!

This sequel to King of Tokyo adds some extra options which mean it becomes more than just a Kaiju smack down. You can gain victory points by gaining fame, becoming Defender of New York. You can also rampage across the five boroughs trashing buildings for points, health or power. Though this does bring the Army into play. You can also destroy famous landmarks like Yankee Stadium or climb the Empire State building. Games are short and crazy.

My 9 year old, game mad, son loves this game. Lots of pieces and rules to get you head around, but once you've played it a couple of times it a great cooperative game that has different variations and levels to keep it interesting.