Stats:
No. of players: 2-4
Amount of time to play: 90 min
Age requirements: 13+
Set-up time: 10-15 minutes

Godzilla: Kaiju World Wars Rules Description:

Godzilla: Kaiju World Wars is a simulation of those classic monster slugfest movies. Destruction and annihilation should follow. Does this miniatures combat game deliver?

In Godzilla: Kaiju World Wars you are one of four monsters (kaiju) from the movies: Godzilla, Rodan, Gigan, or King Ghidorah. There are four scenarios in the rules. These scenarios give you the win conditions and which kaiju available in them.

Usually you’ll be fighting other kaiju or trying to destroy buildings to reach your goals. All this mayhem does not go unnoticed by the humans and there are tanks and APCs to deal with.

Each turn you get 10 Energy Points to spend. The points are spent on movement, attacks, recovery or purchasing event cards.

Destroying buildings and military is easy. You’re a humongous monster, so you just walk right through them. To level a building you must spend more Energy Points, depending on the height of the building. Tanks and APCS go down easy too, but will attack you as you crush them. You can even throw rubble or tanks at opponents.

All this destruction scores you Destruction Points. Sometimes these are needed to win a scenario. And they are used to determine player order after the first turn.

You attack other kaiju by playing attack cards (if you have enough Energy Points) and your opponent plays a defense card. These cards are revealed simultaneously and laid next to each other. The attacker rolls a six-sided die and compares the number roll to the icons on his attack card.

The icons tell you the results of the attack. You can stun, knock-down slash and even grapple your opponent. If they have an icon on the number you rolled you might have these same effects applied to your kaiju.

After each player has used their Energy Points or passed, a die is rolled and the subsequent event card is resolved. Event cards run along the side of the board and some power up your kaiju granting better attacks and sometimes other powers. To get power ups you must spend the required Energy Points.

You check for victory conditions and if they are not met play continues. The player with the most Destruction Points goes first then the player with next lowest total of Destruction Points goes until all players have had a turn.

A Quick Review of Godzilla: Kaiju World Wars:

Godzilla: Kaiju World Wars is getting very mixed reviews. And I can understand why. There are many good things about the game, but there are also some flaws.

Let’s start with the good. First the miniatures look amazing. The artwork on the player cards is great too. The theme is also very strong and since buildings are represented by stacked plastic pieces the board does look like a city waiting to be leveled. The attack and defense cards also follow the theme and add the atmosphere.

Unfortunately there are some tough things you’ll have to deal with if you get this game. First and foremost is the rulebook. It is really bad. The production quality is horrible and it almost looks photocopied. Setting up the maps with only a black and white image is tough.

If that were the only issue it would be ok, but the rules are poorly written and hard to understand. Not only that they counteract what is on some of the info cards. The game designer has come out with some updated rules, but even these refer to the old rules so you’ll have to switch back and forth between the two versions to get all of them.

The info cards mentioned above are useful but not as useful as player aids would have been with all the necessary info on one sheet.

The cardboard components are also fairly thin. It isn’t horrible, but worth mentioning. My group also felt there needed to be more power up cards in the event deck for more carnage and more powerful attacks.

Lastly there is still a good bit of ambiguity in the rules. Adjacency for example is sometimes determined orthogonally only while at other times it is unclear how to determine it. Military movement has been cleared up pretty well in the new rules but is still not intuitive. Lastly since some cards can be used for attack or defense not all result make sense. For example if someone throws rubble and my kaiju gets a grapple result is that ok or just ignored?

Thankfully many of the above the items can be fixed. I really hope Toy Vault will put out a color PDF of updated rules all in one place. Player aids can be created pretty easily too. I also hope they release more scenarios.

If you are a big Godzilla fan you should enjoy this game even with its flaws. I am hopeful Toy Vault will clarify the issues with the rules. If they do then this game will appeal to even more boardgamers.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 2 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 5 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 4 out of 6
Overall 3 out of 6