If you’ve ever been walking the game aisles at Target, you might have seen a happy, cheerful, blue box looking at your from the shelves.
Machi Koro is a hit game that has been delighting players, young and old for years and was even nominated for the Spiel des Jahres Game of the Year award!
It’s full of city building, money earning, dice rolling run, and we’re breaking down why we think it’s a great game for those looking to add a light hearted and fun game to their collection!
How Do You Play Machi Koro?
In Machi Koro, each player will be aiming to develop their city in their own way to complete all four of their landmarks faster than their opponents. While each player has the same landmarks that must be built, how you choose to build your city is entirely up to you. Players build their cities by purchasing new buildings to add to their personal tableau.
On your turn, you’ll roll one or two dice. If the sum of the dice matches the number of a building that you own, you get to activate that building’s effect. Some buildings activate only on your turn, while others activate during an opponent’s turn, so you’ll want to pay attention!
After you’ve rolled and activated any building effects, its time to go shopping! If you have the funds, you can build one of your landmarks or select a building card from the center of the table to build in your city.
If your city planning skills are sound, as your city grows, so too will your cash flow, giving you the ability to build the ever important landmarks.
Players will go around and around the table, rolling dice, activating, and building buildings until a player builds all four of their landmarks first. That player is then declared the winner.
What Do We Think?
Machi Koro combines a lot of fun game elements together to make a really solid family game. It’s a fast paced city builder that you can learn in just a couple of minutes. You get to roll dice — who does’t love rolling dice? There’s the tableau building aspect to it where you are constructing buildings in the hopes that their probability of activating and earning you coins is greater. And then of course the fun little race to build all four of your landmarks first!
I love that this is a game you can play together with your kids that’s also fun for you the adult. While the game recommends ages 10 and up, this can easily be played with kids as young as 8. Our daughter loves the game and learning through trial and error about which buildings are best to build and when it’s best to save your money is a great game skill for kids to master.
It is possible to play it with kids younger than 8. We let our boys (6 and 5) give it a try! They had a good time, but the strategy of knowing how to build a successful tableau is a bit beyond this age group. Pretty much every time they got money it burned a hole in their pocket and they were ready to SPEND! While they had fun, we think Machi Koro is best played once your kids are closer to that 8 or 9 age range.
A lot about Machi Koro is learning how to be patient while also setting yourself up for success. Sometimes your buildings won’t hit when you roll. However, if you make sure to build a smart tableau of buildings in a variety of numbers, you’ll make sure that your probability of activating a building on your turn is higher as the game progresses.
I love Machi Koro as a game to play with folks who come over and might not have a lot of gaming experience. It’s so easy to teach and learn that you’ll be playing in no time! Plus its adorable in its art and design and the right amount of silly that makes it a great choice for a casual game night — especially with both young and older players.
Replayability
The biggest drawback of Machi Koro is there is relatively low replayability from the base game. It doesn’t give you a lot of cards to choose from to customize the buildings available in the center. After about 6-8 plays we found ourselves really wanting some different building options to switch things up. Everyone just kind of kept purchasing the same buildings and creating the same tableau to get their landmarks built.
This is a game that is designed to be added to, as you’ll see from the fairly large yet relatively empty game box. As such, there are plenty of expansions for those that find the base game clicks with their family and decide they want to add to it.
For our family we’ve recently been playing through the Legacy version of the game. This not only gives us the replayability we’ve been looking for, as you unlock new elements for the game with each play, but it’s also a fun experience to take part in together.
We’re a few games into the 10 game campaign, so check back here for our review once we finish it!
Better with Friends
One thing we’ve found with Machi Koro is that while it can be played with just two players, this is a game that really shines at a full player count.
Playing with a full four players gives everyone that much more of a chance to activate their buildings between turns and red buildings (those that require the active player to pay inactive players) hit far more frequently.
In short, we found our two player games to be pleasant, but our four player games to be a hoot. Nothing more satisfying than your opponent being a roll away from winning only to roll and suddenly find themselves activating everyone’s cafe!
If you are primarily playing at the two player count, we recommend skipping Machi Koro as it just doesn’t work as well.
Luck of the Roll
Players who don’t like a lot of luck in their games will most likely take issue with Machi Koro. We do wish that there was a better way built into the game to mitigate the luck, but unfortunately there is none. If you don’t have a good dice roll on your turn, you’ve just got to deal with a bad turn. Sometimes the dice will roll your way, sometimes they won’t.
Truly the only way to mitigate the luck in the game is to make sure that one player isn’t allowed to stock pile all of a particular card that either gives them a lot of money or forces you to pay them a lot of money. That way if the card hits, the benefits are spread out amongst multiple players rather than one.
Overall, this is a casual family game. It’s meant to be fun and not taken too seriously, so lean into the luck element and you should have a good time.
Summary
Machi Koro is a fun, casual game. Perfect for families and groups that enjoy a game with a bit of luck and a dash of strategy. While the base game doesn’t come with a huge variety of cards, there is still plenty here to keep your family engaged, and even more to discover in expansions later on!
This is a game best played with the full four players, giving your group the best chance at activating each other’s buildings and enjoying watching the game swing from player to player based on how kind the dice are being.
Because your buildings can activate on anyone’s turn, players stay engaged throughout the whole game, watching the rolls of each player to see if they’ll earn some coin as well. This helps keep the game moving and players interested throughout the relatively quick play time and is a shining feature of Machi Koro.
If you are interested in picking up a copy of Machi Koro for your home, click here!
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A special thank you to our friends at Pandasaurus Games for sending us a copy of Machi Koro for review. As always, our thoughts and opinions are our own.
Game Info:
Title: Machi Koro
2-4 Players Ages 10+
Designer: Masao Saganuma
Artist: Noboru Hotta, Jason D. Kingsley, Ian Parovel, Mirko Suzuki, Taro Hino
Publisher: Pandasaurus Games
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