King of Tokyo - finally!

In the summer, we finally got around to playing King of Tokyo, the board game our son received for Christmas. Once we understood the game mechanics, it was a lot of fun - but surprisingly intense for our younger players!

The game consists of monster figures used on the game board, special dice, and the accompanying score card that keeps track of your hit points and victory points. Your goal is to eliminate the other monsters by reducing their hit points to zero or by increasing your victory points to twenty, whichever comes first. The game has a very "us vs. them" vibe, similar to Fortress America, because the monster who controls Tokyo fights all other monsters. Staying in Tokyo is the only way for your monster to rack up victory points, but it also makes you the target of other monster attacks. This made both the Boy and the Girl very hesitant about spending any time at all in the creature capital of the world. (You can choose to withdraw if someone else launches an assault.) We've played several times since our first forays into the game and different people have won using different strategies. It's not the most popular game in our closet, but at least we finally got around to playing it!