- Game Title: King of New York
- Release Date: 2014
- Number of Players: 2-6
- Average Game Time: 30-40 minutes
- Game Publisher: IELLO
- Website: http://www.iellogames.com/KingOfNewYork.html
- Game Designer: Richard Garfield
- Expansions/Alternates: Yes
- Available in Stores: Yes
Back in December of 2015 I wrote an article about the board game King of Tokyo and described a dice-rolling game with a fun and adventurous theme. Board game publisher Iello took the success of their original game and ran with it, creating the alternate version King of New York. King of New York takes the same gameplay mechanics as King of Tokyo and adds to them/enhances them, creating a game that is similar to the original but with a different feel to it. Since the gameplay is so similar, I am not going to go into a description of how the game works in this article (for details on that, check out my King of Tokyo article above). Instead, I am going to go through a list of the changes/adds Iello made to this game compared to the original:
- Expanded Board with additional locations (boroughs) – In King of Tokyo, you were either in the city or outside of the city and that was it. There were no other locations available, so if you weren’t in Tokyo your monster was off of the board completely. King of New York altered this idea so that every monster is in the city during the whole game. Instead of having “in or out” you have 5 boroughs of New York that you can occupy. The largest one, Manhattan, acts as the Tokyo-esque area in this situation, where you gain points but take massive damage from being there. You can also move from lower Manhattan to Middle and Upper Manhattan, which provide you with additional benefits.
- Different Dice Options- While the dice in King of New York have three identical sides
to King of Tokyo (energy, heal, and attack) they added new sides to the dice for different effects. Instead of numbers 1-3, the dice now have destruction, celebrity, and Ouch! sides which provide different effects.
- Destruction allows you to get rid of buildings
- Celebrity allows you to gather more points if you have roll at least three of them
- Ouch! causes damage based on the number of enemy units located in your borough
- Superstar and Statue of Liberty Cards- King of New York added two special cards to the game,
the Superstar card and the Statue of Liberty card.
- The Superstar Card transfers to any player that rolls 3 celebrity symbols in a turn, and provides added victory points to the player whenever they roll the celebrity symbol
- The Statue of liberty happens whenever someone rolls 3 Ouch! symbols in a turn, and gives the player a victory point boost if they survived all the damage
- Buildings and Enemy Units- At the beginning of the game, each borough gets 3 stacks of building units which can be destroyed by any monster in that borough. When you roll enough destruction symbols to overcome the unit’s durability, you can destroy it and take whatever reward is listed on the building (energy, health, or
victory points). Once the building is destroyed, that building tile is flipped over to become an enemy unit. Enemy units attack you when you roll an Ouch! symbol, and can also be destroyed by destruction symbols for varying effects. - New monsters/cards- The new monsters are only for aesthetics, but the new artwork is nonetheless a nice improvement. The 6 monsters you can choose at the beginning of the game are completely different than the ones from Tokyo. The cards that you can buy in the game have also been changed- I can’t confirm that they are all different, but a number of cards have been created based on all of the new rules listed above.
I think that because this game is so similar to King of Tokyo, it isn’t really possible for me to separately rate it because it is so similar to the other game. What I’ve found is that both of these games are fun for different reasons and both can be used in different situations. King of Tokyo is a more straightforward game, which works well when 
someone is new to board gaming and better for more casual game nights. King of New York’s additions make the game more complex, which makes the game better for high-strategy groups and a more intense gaming experience. King of New York should not replace King of Tokyo in your collection, and in fact they both complement each other quite well. Because of this, I feel that King of New York deserves the same rating as King of Tokyo did: a fun, challenging, and engaging game with beautiful artwork that is great for your collection.
Jack’s Rating: 4.5/5 stars
dedicate your troops to an invasion is a crucial part of the game. You gain troops each turn, but after every turn the enemy has a chance at improving their ultimate weapon, so you can’t sit around and stockpile troops for too long. Sans Allies is also similar to the game 
trying to play the game. This meant that by the time I actually started playing the Limited War version of the game, I only had to check the rules a few times for my first play through. When I upgraded to Total War for my second play-through, I felt comfortable enough with the Limited War rules that I only checked the rules for Total War additions. Ultimately I’ve played through the game four times in total, and feel like I know pretty much everything I need to play the game moving forward.
This game focuses more than any I know on pre-game setup. How you choose where to put your pieces effects the game almost more than your strategy for the game itself. Whether you put your flag as far away from the enemy troops as possible, try some form of misdirection, place the bombs near or far away from the flag, place your high powered players up front or use your weaker troops as shields, all of these ideas and more effect the game experience. Not only your choices, but your opponent’s choices and figuring out their strategy is crucial to success in this game. This doesn’t mean that the strategy stops when the game starts- memorizing your opponent’s pieces, understanding when sacrifices must be made, and adapting to new scenarios all become crucial as the game goes on. Being able to shift strategies and compensate for losses is one of the hardest things to do in a game, and Stratego takes this idea and runs with it.
That’s why when my girlfriend got me The Resistance (The Dystopian Universe) for my birthday, I was immediately drawn to it. While the same level of story detail isn’t the same as in books, movies, or games, the theme adds a lot of character to a cool collaborative card-b
eveal themselves to each other. This means that the spies know each other, but nobody from the resistance knows who is a spy and who’s not. The leader of the round then chooses a team of people from the whole group to go on the first mission (they can interrogate them beforehand) and the entire group votes on if they approve the choices. Once a team has been chosen or approved, they secretly play either a Success or Fail card. If anyone chooses a fail option, the mission fails and the spies get closer to victory. However, if nobody sabotages the mission, then it is a success and the Resistance moves closer to winning. A new leader is chosen, and the following rounds follow the same pattern until one team has three victories.
without even going to the fifth round. Because the spies know each other, they can try and signal each other to choose if they are going to pass or fail for a mission, as well as supporting the other spies when they are chosen for a mission. You have to be much more attentive when you are not a spy because if you miss something you will most lik
Cooperative board/card games have been becoming more popular over the past few years, with games such as Pandemic becoming more common for mass consumption. Cooperative games can have varying types and nuances to how they’re played, but the major theme is that rather than playing against each other, you play together against the game as a common enemy. Usually this involves completing some type of objective in order to win, while not meeting the objective will cause you to lose. Hanabi is a cooperative card game that actually goes by a different objective- work together to earn as many points as possible, with a point scale giving your group a grade at the end of the game. There aren’t any official winners or losers, but the competitive nature of the game is still tough to beat as you attempt to get a perfect score.
olors of fireworks, all with numbered cards of 1-5, and the objective is to play all five of each color before the time runs out. The big catch in this game is that instead of players looking at their own cards, they face the cards outwards so that all players can see the cards except for the person holding them. Rather than simply telling a player which card to play, the other players have to provide hints about how many of a certain color or number is in the player’s hand. A player can also choose to play one of the cards in his/her hand; if they chose a card that chronologically matches what’s already been played, the card is added to the stack of the card’s color. Otherwise, the card is discarded. You also have a certain number of clues that you can give, which can be increased by a player intentionally discarding a card. The game ends when there are no more cards to use, and then points are tallied based on what cards were played by the end of the game.
ct a player’s choice to play or discard cards. Memorization is also a key factor in the game, because you need to remember where each card is based on the clues you are given. The game is a lot of fun right off the bat as you are gathering information about your hand, and as more cards are played it is more difficult to play the cards in the correct order. There are also fewer of the higher value cards in the deck, so if you accidentally discard a 5 you can’t get a perfect score because there is only 5 card for each color available. All of this combines strategy combines into a game of subtle hints, careful decision making, and surprising amounts of tension whenever a card is played.
they have extra foods or “contraband”. The added twist to this is that every round someone acts as “sheriff” who then can choose to inspect each person’s bag. If you were truthful about your goods then the Sheriff has to pay you, but if not the extra goods get confiscated and you have to pay the Sheriff. This means that you can try and smuggle contraband in for big point totals, or you can tell the truth and hope that the Sheriff tries to catch you. A number of other nuances in how you draw cards and what goods you choose to play add up to a very inventive and interesting game.
an improv show where everyone put on different accents and asked silly questions to try and get a reaction from the group. This caused everyone to be more engaged in the game and the enthusiasm built up as we went. I feel like if you were in a group of more straight-laced people that wanted to play it normally it could be less exciting, though the strategy and gameplay still appeal to the average player. The game tends to drag at times if the Sheriff takes a long time to ask questions, so 5 players can take a while. Playing with 3 players, on the other hand, adds an extra round to the game so it doesn’t exactly shorten things. I recommend the game with 4 players if possible as the best middle ground option.
get less and less until you lose all of your ships. If on any of your shots you hit a ship, your opponent must tell you where you hit and what ship it was. This speeds up the game significantly and also provides an added layer of strategy for when you’ve hit someone. Ultimately it’s a simple change, but it provides better results in my opinion compared to the traditional version. There is an element of luck to it because if you lose a ship early and have less shots to work with you are at a big disadvantage, but from the times I have played salvo I found that it stayed pretty even no matter how the first few games started solely due to the volume of opportunities to get a hit on your opponent.
pencil available because you will need to write down as much information as possible each turn to help figure out which of your shots was a hit. For example, if on your first turn you choose A2, B7, H5, G9, and A10 as your five shots and your opponent tells you that you hit twice, that’s not a lot of information to go on. If you don’t keep a record of the hits and do some experimenting to figure out where those hits came from, it will be impossible for you to keep track of everything as the game progresses. This type of game can be a lot of fun if you play it right, but can also be very frustrating if you don’t keep organized and use your shots wisely.
any of the rooms he/she wants and pays the Master Builder for the cost, then plays the rooms in his/her castle area. Each room has a different effect after it is played, which can get you more money, points, or bonus cards that have different effects. Play continues to the next player on the left, until it is the Master Builder’s turn. The Master Builder then can buy whatever rooms are left (if there are any) by paying the bank. Once the Master Builder finishes his/her turn, the person to the left becomes Master Builder for the next round. Once all of the Room Deck cards have been used up, the game is over and points are calculated.
ch act as the starting point to your rooms. The first time you play the game, expect to take a very long time organizing and setting everything up (once you’ve played the game a few times it gets a lot faster). Because of how many pieces are involved, make sure that you have a lot of space available to play, especially if you have four players.
tense amounts of strategy and some power-up cards sprinkled in for extra fun. The game starts off with everyone at 0 victory points and 10 health. The object of the game is to gain 20 victory points all while keeping your health from dropping to 0. You can victory points by rolling the dice, paying for victory point cards, and surviving inside Tokyo where you’re more likely to be attacked.
t two additional dice rolls where you can choose to pick up and roll any of the dice you had thrown previously. After you’re done with your three rolls, you immediately “resolve the dice” by taking any necessary actions that come about from the dice you’v
ou are a target for opponents to attack you. You can only stay in Tokyo when you have 5 health, so stockpiling health and energy is important. The cards bring an additional layer to it, and while the game can take some time getting the hang of it’s a lot less complicated than it originally looks. I particularly like the strategy of the dice roll, where you have to decide what to focus on during a particular turn. Choosing between victory points, health, energy, and hurting your opponents can be the difference between progress and defeat. Artistically the game is also very appealing, with six individual monsters that all look really cool (they somehow find a way to make mecha-bunny particularly impressive) and the cards each have a unique cartoon picture that makes the game engaging to the eye. I would have liked to see each monster have their own special ability to make your choice of character more important to the overall strategy, but even without that there are plenty of different paths you can take to claim the title of King.
The Boardwalk Games 