I am sorry to have to tell you...

I would very readily try King of Tokyo again, but my very first impressions were that 

• It was a hilarious party game
• It would prove VERY stimulating

Then, I played it. I'm glad I did, but I'm also glad I didn't buy into any hype yet. Why, though?

It's very simple. I would say that my two main gripes with the game are:

• When a player gets eliminated, a common occurrence, he has NO further part in the game
• Instead of feeling like a powerful monster, I felt like a very weak praying mantis.

You can literally die in one or two turns. Sure, I suppose you could in Richard Garfield's other big property, but it's EXTREMELY unlikely, whereas in King of Tokyo, you could die very easily. I literally went from the starting 10 health once, down to 9, and felt like "OMG. I'm gonna die again." It's hard to describe, but you really just don't feel like something stomping on Tokyo. You feel like a fragile glass cannon. 

The first thing I mentioned, I feel is a part of inferior game design. No player wants to sit out while 3 guys take half an hour to finish up the game, surely? German-style board-games almost eschew player elimination completely, and I personally feel IT IS a mark of good design for the eliminated players to be involved somehow. NO-ONE, ever wants to feel useless.

It is with that in mind, the fact that a great like Garfield could also get something VERY wrong, that I thought "I could do that." And for my very first effort, I'm not taking any material anywhere else, but I'm basing the entire game on an existing property, Dota 2. I find professional commentated games to be fascinating, both the draft and the play, simply the fantastic range of strategic choices, and I want to bring that to the game board.

Therefore, the current plan is to follow the iterative design methodology mentioned and recommended in Rules of Play. It, among other things, mentions the fantastic importance of PROTOTYPING the gameplay experience as early as possible, no later than 20% into the project's time-frame. It doesn't have to be pretty at all, but it's important to get into the act of PLAYING the game, since there are ALWAYS surprises.

One of the best ways to understand iterative design is to study the processes of other game designers. Obviously, a game design course or exploration of knowledge cannot just be a theoretical experience. It has to involve the practical. Now, the aim of Thursday night's game night is to:

• Prototype the game
• Find out whether there's sufficient scope for strategy in the draft and starting gameplay of the match
• Play around 3-4 starting experiences for the aforementioned reasons

Since the draft portion, especially, should be exactly similar to the real-life draft, and that's highly strategical, I expect the board-game version to be VERY MUCH THE SAME. How am I going to find out? I don't plan to start with the entire pool of roughly 75 heroes. It would be too confusing, I anticipate. I plan to instead go with roughly 20 heroes. I want to see how things like there only being a certain number of, for example, carries left, affects the draft. I also want to see what goes through a player's mind when we have to draft our heroes. I can anticipate it, roughly, but the actual play experience would never be the same.

Let's see how it goes. Wednesday, I will let you in on how exactly I'm preparing for Thursday night. Finally, I'd say that I'd love to be proven wrong about King of Tokyo. I want to love it. As it is, I'd give it about 12/21 as a board game. For reference, I'd give Settlers of Catan around 18 or 19/21. Having said that, I'd very happily try it again.