Machi Koro - 02

30th March 2019

Gaming night continues at Matakishi's.
Our RPG had finished early so we played Machi Koro as a finisher for the evening.

I've reposted my original blog about it below (it was originally part of another blog).

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Machi Koro is another game we play a lot and is popular with everyone.

Currently there is the base game and 2 expansions. 'The Harbour' and 'Millionaire's Row'. Generally we only play with the first expansion. The base game is average, if I'm being honest. But The Harbour expansion makes it a much, much better game. None of us have been sold on the Millionaire's Row expansion and were not certain it adds enough to the game to warrant its inclusion.

Anyway enough of that and on to describing the game.

In Machi Koro, each player is the mayor of a blossoming city on the cusp of rapid expansion. The game is won by being the first player to build all of their city's landmarks.

Landmarks and city establishments are represented by cards.

​The first thing to do is to create a marketplace, this involves turning over 10 different city cards and placing them in a central area. If you draw a double of a card you simply stack on the other one. You keep doing this until you have ten different cards available.

Each player then takes a set of landmark cards and put them in their own playing area face down. Each player then receives their starting cards, a wheat field and a bakery. These too are placed in their own playing area, but face up. Finally each player takes 3 coins from the bank.

Next I need to explain the anatomy of the cards before writing more about the rules.

Each city card contains 3 pieces of vital information:

• Activation Number: At the start of a player's turn, they roll a six sided die. Every card in their city that has the matching activation number become activated. Thus if you roll a 1, any card with 1 as an activation number will become activated.
• Action: When a card becomes activated, the controlling player must carry out the action listed on the card. Some cards only become activated in other player's turns (more on this later). When a card becomes activated, generally it generates coins, sometimes it steals them from other players. Often cards work in combination with other cards.
• Cost: This is the cost of buying the card from the marketplace.

Cards also have different colours which affects when they are activated.

• ​Blue Cards: Blue cards are activated when any player rolls the activating number. The actions on blue cards are carried out before any other action.
• Green Cards: Green card only activate during the active player's turn (your own turn). The actions are executed at the same time as blue cards.
• Red Cards: Red cards only activate in other player's turns. Normally they affect the active player. The actions on red cards are carried out after blue/green cards.
• Purple Cards: Purple cards are generally considered very powerful, a player may only own 1 of each type of purple card (you can have up to 4 of each type of blue/green/red card). Purple cards are activated last of all.

Right - so this is how play goes.

First the active player rolls the die or dice, then cards may be become activated according to the rules above. Once this has been dealt with, the player has the choice of buying a card from the marketplace or building a landmark in a turn (or passing). Both of which cost coins.
Acquiring establishments increases the chances to earn more money, the more cards with different activation numbers the more chance that a card of some sort will be activated.
When a landmark is built, it grants the player a special ability.
First player to build all their landmarks, wins!

And that's it for the basic rules.

What I like about this game, is that there is no single winning strategy (Other than the Tuna Boats - we all know about the Tuna Boats!!!). The cards that appear in the marketplace are random and you have to adapt to what it available to buy. It keeps the game fresh.
Machi Koro blends quick set up and play-time with replay-value and enough strategy and depth to keep us interested.

This is a game that we've played a lot, probably more than any other single game in the last few years.