City-smashing monster battler Kaiju Crush stomps into King of Tokyo territory

What’s that coming over the hill? Is it another monster-battling board game tussling for King of Tokyo’s city-destroying crown? Why, yes it is!

Okay, okay: Kaiju Crush isn’t quite the clone of King of Tokyo and King of New York it might appear to be at first glance.

Tim Armstrong and Justin De Witt (of Castle Panic fame) have dropped the dice-rolling combat of Richard Garfield’s crowd-pleaser in favour of a card-driven system that hinges on the choice to play your own movement card or use a shared movement card that all players can opt to use.

The cards dictate a particular action taken by each monster as they manoeuvre around a grid, crushing any city tiles they land on and claiming the territory, which in turn helps them to earn points based on a number of objective cards.

Using a personal movement card means swapping it with the shared movement, allowing any other player to then execute that move themselves and resulting in a constant flow of different decisions.

Fighting is resolved by drawing territory markers when a monster lands on a rival or sends a building next to them tumbling to the ground. The five symbols on the bottom of the tiles act in a rock-paper-scissors manner, with each beating one choice and losing to another (apart from firebreath, which beats claws, tail and kick (but not spikes), and spikes, which lose to everything but firebreath).

Each of the four monsters also has a unique ability and random special abilities that can be used to gain the upper hand (or, er, claw), with the winner gaining a victory token with a random amount of bonus points.

The game ends when no monster can move, with points determining a winner after around 45 minutes.

So, in short, it sounds like there should be plenty to differentiate Kaiju Crush from King of Tokyo/New York – we’ll know for sure when the game comes out in November.