F@#$ Machi Koro

Machi Koro

Review Summary:

quick, fun, light game.  Absolutely perfect to start off the night while waiting for late arrivals or end of night when you only have half an hour of game time left.

Not too terribly deep, and very dependent on luck.  Not something I want to spend the entire night doing but fun for what it is.

Plot:  

Build a great city!

Ok doesn't matter.  'Theme Integration' is poor.

Game play:

Game play is three phases

phase 1 - roll dice.  Starts at 1D6, can upgrade to your choice of 1D6 or 2D6.
phase 2 - resolve roll.  depending on the players' tableau, you might get money, other players might get money, you might pay money to other players, or other players might pay you money.
phase 3 - buy something that gets you money, forces other player to pay you money, or an end game goal.

So you roll a die or two, and depending on what you rolled, maybe you get money, maybe other people do, or a bunch of that at once.

The cards are labeled 1-12, and are color coded.

I'm not going to list what each and every card does, although that's a great way to get the word count up.  But in general...

Blue cards earn coins whenever anyone rolls their number.
Green cards earn coins whenever the active player rolls their number.
Red cards force the active player to pay coins when he rolls its number.
Purple cards force your opponents to pay coins, or trade buildings when you roll their number.

The end game goal cards give you some neat power.  You can roll 2d6 instead of 1d6, some of your buildings are better, doubles grant you an extra turn and once a turn you can re-roll your result.

The end game cards total price is 52 coins; you start with 3 coins and two buildings.

So that's the game!

Tactics:

A lot of what makes this game interesting is the red cards.  Getting hit by them early game is just a punch to the gut.  The early game red card is a "3", so if you're getting hammered with 3's, you should totally buy the first end goal.  It costs 4 and drops the chance of paying money from 1 in 6 to 1 in 18 (at least until the bad guys buy next level red card)

Usually you need a big score to win.  There's lots and lots of way to get that big score, but windfall's are typically better than a steady income.  Because the bad guys will just take your savings.

My go to strategy is try and get a steady income early, then work towards a big score.

But the absolute 100% way to win is have your cards hit and your opponents don't.