King of Tokyo is a game from Richard Garfield for 2 to 6 players in which you will be able to play mutant monsters gigantic robots and other aliens all of whom are happily whacking each other in a joyous atmosphere in order to become the one and only King of Tokyo. When it is your turn to play you throw six dice. Each die bears the following six symbols: 1 2 or 3 Points of Destruction Energy Healing and Whack. In three successive throws you are going to choose whether to keep or discard each die in order to come up with combinations that will enable you to win destruction points hoard energy restore your health or whack other players into understanding Tokyo is your territory. The fiercest player will be crowned King of Tokyo and will end up facing all the other monsters alone! Top this off with special cards that you can purchase with energy and that have a permanent or temporary effect such as the growing of a second head which grants you an additional die body armor nova death ray and more and you hold one of the most explosive games of the year! In order to win the game one must either destroy Tokyo by accumulating 20 destruction points or be the only surviving monster once the fighting has ended.
While Farmer Henry is enjoying red wine in his newly-built colossal basement, the piggies in the barn are also partying for fun! Impish as they are, they’re really organized when it comes to forming groups for games. Recruit your team carefully, but not too slowly!
Pick-a-Dog (first published as Formissimo) features the same gameplay as Pick-a-Pig, with the only difference being that dog noses in one game are replaced with piggie snouts in the other. An individual game supports 2-5 players, while combined they support up to eight players.
To set up the game, lay out 30 cards in a grid (49 cards with 6-8 players) and give one card face down to each player. Each card has five attributes, with each attribute having two states: large/small, light/dark, one/two arms, with/without sunglasses, and with/without popcorn. (As noted above, combining the two games adds a sixth attribute: pig/dog nose.) Someone shouts “Go!”, then everyone looks at their card in hand. Players then start grabbing cards from the grid and stacking them in hand. The card grabbed must be identical to the top card in hand or differ from that top card in only one way. Thus, as you grab cards, the attributes of that top card will keep changing, forcing you to look for matches in new ways.
Once a player thinks he can’t grab any more cards, he yells “Stop!”. The round ends, and all players check their card stacks. If someone made a mistake when grabbing cards, that player keeps none of the cards gathered that round. If the player who stopped the round made no mistakes, he earns an extra card (two cards when playing with 6-8). If, however, he stopped the round when he could have collected more cards, then he loses all the cards he’s collected during this round.
Whoever has collected the most cards when the game ends wins!
Come by on Monday, August 12 at 7:30pm.
Here is our schedule for the coming weeks:
- August 12 – King of Tokyo, Pick-a-Pig and Pick-a-Dog
- August 19 – Settlers of Catan
- August 26 – Lords of Waterdeep
We will still have our regular Wednesday Open Gaming nights! See you over the summer!