How to play King of Tokyo

King of Tokyo is a press-your-luck dice game by Richard Garfield in which two to six players each control a giant monster battling for dominance of the city. Every turn you roll six custom dice up to three times, keeping the faces that best serve your strategy — claws to wound rivals, hearts to heal, energy to buy power cards, and numbers to build toward Victory Point bonuses.

The pivotal tension is Tokyo itself: moving in scores extra points and lets you strike every opponent at once, but you cannot heal while you hold the city, and a single bad round can send you scrambling to yield your throne. Games are fast, the swings are dramatic, and no two turns ever feel quite the same.

Never played a press-your-luck dice game? Think Yahtzee with monsters: roll all six dice, set aside the faces you like, and reroll the rest — up to twice. The gamble is that every reroll can improve or ruin what you're chasing, so the real skill is knowing when a good-enough result beats hunting for a great one. Everything else in the game — points, attacks, healing, money — flows from those six dice, one roll at a time.

What's in the box, and what each piece does at the table:

• 1 Tokyo board — a small board with two zones, Tokyo City and Tokyo Bay: whoever stands in one hits every monster outside with each claw, scores bonus points every turn — and cannot heal. The Bay is only used with 5–6 players.
• 6 monster boards — one per monster (Gigazaur, Cyber Kitty, The King, Meka Dragon, Space Penguin, Alienoid), each with two rotating dials: Victory Points ★ and Life Points ♥. The dials are the scoreboard — the whole game state lives on them.
• 6 cardboard monster figures with plastic stands — your monster on the table; the figure standing on the Tokyo board marks who is currently taking punches from the entire room.
• 6 black dice — the heart of the game, shared by everyone. Each die shows 1, 2, 3 (points), a claw (smash), a heart (heal), and an energy bolt (earn cubes); you roll them up to three times per turn.
• 2 green dice — extra dice set aside at the start; they join your rolls only when a power card says so.
• 66 power cards — the shop: mutations, weapons, and dirty tricks bought with energy. KEEP cards stay in front of you with permanent effects; DISCARD cards fire once and are gone.
• Energy cubes — the green currency: gain one per energy face rolled, spend them in the card shop; unspent cubes carry over between turns.
• 28 tokens (12 Shrink, 12 Poison, 3 Smoke, 1 Mimic) — markers used only alongside the specific power cards that shrink, poison, hide, or copy; you can ignore them until one of those cards hits the table.

Play passes clockwise. Your turn always follows the same five steps:

1. Roll the dice. Roll all six, up to three times: between rolls, set aside any faces you want to keep — and you may even pick set-aside dice back up on the last roll. You can stop early whenever you're satisfied.
2. Resolve every kept die, in any order you like: - Numbers (1, 2, 3) — three of a kind scores that number in Victory Points; each extra matching die adds 1 more VP. - Claws — 1 damage each to every monster not in your zone-group: from inside Tokyo you hit everyone outside; from outside you hit whoever holds Tokyo City and Tokyo Bay. When a monster in Tokyo takes claw damage, it may yield — it steps out (keeping its wounds) and you must take its place in the next step. - Hearts — heal 1 each, never above 10 — and never while you are in Tokyo (only power cards can heal you there). - Energy — take 1 green cube each; cubes bank between turns.
3. Enter Tokyo. If Tokyo is empty, you must enter Tokyo City — claws or no claws (with 5–6 players, if the City is taken but the Bay is free, you must enter the Bay). Entering scores 1 VP; starting your turn in Tokyo scores 2 VP. Once the game is down to 4 or fewer monsters, whoever is in the Bay leaves it immediately — moving into Tokyo City instead if the City happens to be empty.
4. Buy power cards. Spend energy on any number of face-up cards; each purchase is replaced from the deck at once. For 2 energy you may sweep all three cards away and reveal fresh ones. KEEP cards work forever; DISCARD cards fire once.
5. End of turn. Some card effects trigger now; then pass the dice left.

A monster whose life dial hits 0 is eliminated, discarding its cards and cubes.

A quick rampage. Beto sits in Tokyo with 4♥. Ana, outside, ends her three rolls on 2-2-2-claw-claw-energy: she dials up 2 VP, takes 1 cube, and her two claws drop Beto to 2♥. Beto yields, so Ana must march in and scores 1 VP for entering. Carla rolls three hearts and a claw — the claw stings Ana (now in Tokyo, unable to heal), while Carla heals 3. Diego keeps three energy bolts, banks the cubes, and buys a KEEP card from the shop. Ana's next turn starts with 2 bonus VP — if she survives to see it.

You win by reaching 20 Victory Points — you must survive to the end of that turn to claim the crown; a card effect that takes you to 20★ and 0♥ simultaneously eliminates you instead — or by being the last monster standing after every rival has been knocked to 0 life. Both paths are live throughout the game: a player in Tokyo can sprint to 20 VP while others race to kill them before they get there. There are no tiebreakers, because the game ends the moment either condition is met.

Strategically, treat Tokyo as a calculated risk: the bonus VP and area-wide damage are powerful, but your inability to heal makes every claw rolled against you more dangerous. Yield the city when your health drops low enough that one bad roll from your opponents could eliminate you — living to fight another round is worth more than the throne. When rolling, weigh whether finishing a three-of-a-kind number run outweighs the claws that would soften a dangerous rival; sometimes the right play is to pivot mid-reroll entirely.