In King of the Beasts, the designer Reiner Knizia, has used mythological creatures for the theme. The game is visually appealing as the playing cards and board use vibrant colours to depict the beasts. The beasts include the dragon, fire salamander, kraken, manticore, and unicorn. The game uses a small board and this displays each of the five mythological beasts. Each player is dealt 5 cards and a further 5 cards are turned face up from the draw deck and act as the supply. On a players turn they can name any of the beasts currently in the supply and take those creatures into their hand. They can then reveal a meld of beasts (3 or more of the same beast) if they have one from their hand. Once revealed the player must decide how many cards from the meld will go into his score pile and how many they will add to the board. Creatures added to the board are placed alongside the matching picture on the board and show how strong a beast has become. This then ends the current players turn. New cards are flipped over to return the supply to 5 and the next player then follows the same procedure. The game comes to an end when a player adds a 6th card to one of the beasts on the board. The beast with 6 cards is declared the King and the 2nd and 3rd strongest creatures also survive. The top 3 will be the only creatures that offer points. All of the other beasts are removed from the board and will earn the players nothing. Each player now looks to their score piles to see which creatures they kept and how many points they will earn. All beast cards in the top 3 will earn 1 point. However every card that was declared the King will allow a player to draw an extra card of that type from the remaining cards in the middle of the table. In effect each King card is worth 2 points. For example if the dragon was declared King and a player had 3 dragons and 1 kraken in their score pile they would earn 7 points (1 for the kraken, 3 for the dragons and they could draw another 3 dragons from the middle as a reward for backing the King - also worth 1 point each).

This is quite a good game but it should be noted that unlike Poison (see review), which adults can also find enjoyable, King of the Beasts is really targeting children. The artwork, use of colour and choice of theme have all been selected to target children and the game succeeds in this endeavour. The game play is also spot on for its audience. The choices are not too overwhelming but there are still plenty of things to consider. Keep too many of 1 beast and they will have trouble getting into the top 3, making them worthless. Offering too many of 1 beast to the board will probably see them in the top 3 but you may have only 1 or 2 of them left in your score pile to earn points. This is spot on for children aged between 8 and 14. Parents should note that this is an excellent game to build strategy skills in children and build their knowledge of how to make melds. In this way King of the Beasts can be used as a stepping stone game to more challenging trick taking or meld games in the years ahead.