King of New York Board Game Review

First, a little bit of backstory to how I ended...

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With Josh working on "The Kaiju Project" and Al and yourself yourself providing feedback to that project, I think you could write off a few plays of King Of New York as research.

I’ve only played it a couple times, but I prefer it to King of Tokyo. Yeah, it’s more complicated but it’s still a light, dumb game and feels way more like a Kaiju game (but still not enough, making The Kaiju Project still a necessity).

I played King of Tokyo once and was kinda "Meh." New York sounds like it has a bit more depth to it, which is always more interesting to me, even with a "light, dumb game."

It's easy for me to forget how the base game of King of Tokyo is a "Light, Dumb Game" simply because I haven't played JUST the base game in literal years. I always play KOT with Power-up, Halloween Expansion, and Cthulhu Expansion every single time. The key really is Power-up, which gives each character a "personality" and let's you try to set up combos or skew toward damage or victory points. Even King of New York is that way, since I had KONY Power-up before I had the base game, we have never played it without Power-up.
I've probably introduced the game to a couple dozen people of the years and never have even considered taking out any of the expansions, even for my daughters friends who have never played a single "board game" outside of DnD.
tl;dr = Play both "King of" titles with Power-up. It's the way it should be.

I hate to sound like the retarded kid in the room, who likes simplicity for it's own sake.

But I can't stand the power ups. When a four player game of KoT sometimes lasts for over an hour, adding the power ups makes the game usually take longer to resolve.

For me and my patience level, I like base KoT just fine and even that overstays it's welcome more often than not.

I wish I liked KoNY more. Everything about it is better than KoT on paper. The replacement of numbers with symbols, moving into new areas, human military antagonists for take that action, etc. But each time I manage to play it, it lasts longer than I personally think it should. It makes the child in me sad that it doesn't scratch the itch.

I'm with you, Colorcrayons

I've never had either game take an hour, even with 6 players which I don't think you're even supposed to do.

We only ever play KoT with the power up cards. They add a whole one additional rule and so much personality to the monsters. KoNY just didn't take off the same way. We ended up combining everything into the KoT box, then as that got closer and closer to exploding we chucked the KoNY parts that weren't compatible with KoT. Not a bad game, just didn't hit the highs of KoT.

King of Tokyo is one of my all-time favorite games, and I hate the Power Up cards with a passion. My group played with them twice and all collectively agreed to never use them again. It encourages you to roll for hearts...which serves to SLOW THE GAME DOWN. That's the last thing you want. Plus, we want to play with the monster we want to play with. Our long standing joke is tell new players the most important decision is which monster you want to play, and then follow up with it doesn't make a damn bit of difference. But it is objectively true that the Kracken rolls more claws then other monsters.

As for King of New York, I like it but no one else in my group really does. I rarely play KoT these days, so getting KoNY on the table is a rare event. The bigger problem is people want it to play like KoT, which means people start being reckless and killing themselves via military instead of being killed by others.

cdennett wrote: Our long standing joke is tell new players the most important decision is which monster you want to play, and then follow up with it doesn't make a damn bit of difference..

I just picture The Rock at your game night. "Who do you want to play as?"



And, yes, you do roll hearts for evolutions but I think it balances out time wise since each evolution enhances a victory condition and can lead to some epic combo turns where all hell breaks loose... or someone focusing on them to exclusion allowing someone else to sneak to a win.