How to Play King of Tokyo, a game of rolling dice and monster fights.
Watch the Video
Read the Rules
The aim of the game
To win, you’ll need to be the last monster standing, by claiming Tokyo and picking fights when the time is right.
To set up
- Lay out the board
- Shuffle the deck, place it face down and turn 3 power up cards face up.
- Place the energy cubes, tokens and black dice within easy reach, set the green dice aside.
- Each player picks a monster and the corresponding board, setting their life points to 10 and victory points to 0
- Finally everyone rolls the dice, whoever gets the most smash icons goes first.
To play the game
On your turn you’ll roll all 6 black dice, set aside any you are happy with and then reroll the others. If you’re still not happy, you can reroll any number of dice one final time, including those you just set aside.
After rolling and re-rolling dice, resolve them.
- If you roll 3 of a matching number, score that many points. If you roll more than 3, score 1 additional point for any extra. For example if I rolled five 2’s Id score 4 points - 2 for the set of 3 and 1 additional point for each of the others.
- For each lightning icon you roll, take the corresponding number of energy tokens from the supply.
- For every smash icon, deal that amount of damage. If you are outside Tokyo, all players inside Tokyo take the damage you roll, if you are inside Tokyo, all players outside take the damage, adjusting their life points as necessary.
If you are inside Tokyo and take damage, after doing so you can choose to yield and exit the central board.
On the first player's turn, no one will be in Tokyo, so no one can take any damage.
- For every heart you roll, recover 1 life point. You can only use dice to heal if you’re outside Tokyo. Healing cards can be used anywhere. Unless you have an upgrade that states so, you can only have a maximum of 10 life. If ever your life runs to zero - marked by the skull, you’re out!
After you’ve resolved your dice, if a space in Tokyo is empty, you MUST enter it. For a 2-4 player game there’s just one space - Tokyo city. For 5-6 players, use Tokyo bay too.
When you enter Tokyo, you gain 1 victory point and every time you begin your turn in Tokyo, you’ll score 2 more points.
You can only leave Tokyo after you’ve taken damage from an attack, by yielding.
Finally, before you end your turn, spend as much energy as you wish, to buy 1 or more power cards and upgrade your monster. A card’s cost is marked at the top. Replace any card you buy with a new one immediately. Some cards will give you extra dice or tokens, some are single use and some may be permanent. Choose them wisely!
Game end & scoring
Take it in turns rolling dice, resolving their actions, entering or yielding Tokyo and upgrading your monster until either, a player reaches 20 Victory points or is the last monster standing - they win!
That’s King of Tokyo - push your luck and smash stuff up to win!
Enjoy
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Buy a copy of King of Tokyo at Happy Piranha!