Introduction
Machi Koro, designed by Masao Suganuma and published by Pandasaurus Games, is a chaotic, light-hearted city-building game with luck and cards. And I mean a lot of luck. Players construct their own cities by purchasing establishments to grow their income, whether by innocently farming wheat or stealing from opponents with a sushi bar. While it’s accessible and fun for casual gamers, is there anything here for a hobby gamer?
Components
Machi Koro 2′s aesthetics perfectly machi (get it?) the game’s gameplay. The simple cartoony art really makes it feel like you are making your own, customizable city. The text on the cards is easy to understand and clear, yet the cards themselves feel a bit less durable than I would have liked, especially considering the amazing clacky plastic coins (the sprue marks are a bit annoying though). This really makes the trading of coins feel meaningful every time you gain them (and painful when you lose them), which improves the feel of the game as this is what you will be doing most of the time. The box is way too big though, this game is essentially some cards, coins and a couple of dice, while the box is around the size of Catan. The insert inside doesn’t even allow for sleeves, which you will definitely want for the cards.
Gameplay & Mechanics
The beating heart of Machi Koro 2 is the dice, fuelling aspects of card drafting and resource management. The turn starts with rolling one or two dice (your choice) and resolving cards matching the dice result. Some will give money from the bank, some will steal coins from the active player, and some will give you special abilities. Most cards activate on other players turns as well as yours, so the game is always engaging. After the cards have been resolved, you can buy new money-making opportunities in the form of cards, or, if you have saved up enough, buy a game winning landmark with special powers that may alter the rules of the game. The landmarks also offer a nice catchup mechanism, with the loan office designed to help players falling behind, which didn’t happen very much; it feels like a closely matched game right up until the final dice roll. Which reminds me, this is a luck-based game. Machi Koro 2‘s resource collection is most similar to Catan, minus the settling and path building. Because of this, while rolling a 3 and having to pay everyone two coins can be frustrating, the dice mechanic feels frictionless and, in a game of this weight, not overly influential on the game’s winner. Picking and customising your own city feels fun and rewarding, especially when you get a huge payout. For more strategic players, there are cards that let you combo with certain suits, rewarding players for specialising. This makes the game one of the most satisfying dice games and engine building games I have played in a while. It being a light game just means you’ll get more opportunities to play with non-gamers and introduce them to the hobby. Machi Koro 2 is one of the best gateway games out there. There are some negatives though; some cards feel unbalanced and too swingy, and you could just always roll bad results. The way the cards are laid out means some numbers only trigger bad cards and vice versa. Overall, though, the gameplay is great.
Introduction
Machi Koro, designed by Masao Suganuma and published by Pandasaurus Games, is a chaotic, light-hearted city-building game with luck and cards. And I mean a lot of luck. Players construct their own cities by purchasing establishments to grow their income, whether by innocently farming wheat or stealing from opponents with a sushi bar. While it’s accessible and fun for casual gamers, is there anything here for a hobby gamer?
Components
Machi Koro 2′s aesthetics perfectly machi (get it?) the game’s gameplay. The simple cartoony art really makes it feel like you are making your own, customizable city. The text on the cards is easy to understand and clear, yet the cards themselves feel a bit less durable than I would have liked, especially considering the amazing clacky plastic coins (the sprue marks are a bit annoying though). This really makes the trading of coins feel meaningful every time you gain them (and painful when you lose them), which improves the feel of the game as this is what you will be doing most of the time. The box is way too big though, this game is essentially some cards, coins and a couple of dice, while the box is around the size of Catan. The insert inside doesn’t even allow for sleeves, which you will definitely want for the cards.
Gameplay & Mechanics
The beating heart of Machi Koro 2 is the dice, fuelling aspects of card drafting and resource management. The turn starts with rolling one or two dice (your choice) and resolving cards matching the dice result. Some will give money from the bank, some will steal coins from the active player, and some will give you special abilities. Most cards activate on other players turns as well as yours, so the game is always engaging. After the cards have been resolved, you can buy new money-making opportunities in the form of cards, or, if you have saved up enough, buy a game winning landmark with special powers that may alter the rules of the game. The landmarks also offer a nice catchup mechanism, with the loan office designed to help players falling behind, which didn’t happen very much; it feels like a closely matched game right up until the final dice roll. Which reminds me, this is a luck-based game. Machi Koro 2‘s resource collection is most similar to Catan, minus the settling and path building. Because of this, while rolling a 3 and having to pay everyone two coins can be frustrating, the dice mechanic feels frictionless and, in a game of this weight, not overly influential on the game’s winner. Picking and customising your own city feels fun and rewarding, especially when you get a huge payout. For more strategic players, there are cards that let you combo with certain suits, rewarding players for specialising. This makes the game one of the most satisfying dice games and engine building games I have played in a while. It being a light game just means you’ll get more opportunities to play with non-gamers and introduce them to the hobby. Machi Koro 2 is one of the best gateway games out there. There are some negatives though; some cards feel unbalanced and too swingy, and you could just always roll bad results. The way the cards are laid out means some numbers only trigger bad cards and vice versa. Overall, though, the gameplay is great.
Theme
While the gameplay may be satisfying, it doesn’t feel like you are building a city. This feeling is created by the art alone, which pictures a square with a different building on top, which feels straight out of a video game. The mechanics of each one also reflect the building type, fields give you consistent income, bakeries give you income based on how many fields you have and cafes let you take from opponents, which reflects them coming to your business. If you are looking for a thematic engine builder though, I wouldn’t look here. The scale of Terraforming Mars or Seti allows them to build worlds through the crunchy layers of mechanics and hundreds of cards, but in Machi Koro 2 the game is too simple to allow for the deep theme of the games previously mentioned but still does a lot with the little it has.
Final Thoughts
Quoting the Dragon’s Tomb’s Jeff Kornburg, Machi Koro 2 is a blast to play. The simple yet satisfying gameplay feels frictionless and can be very rewarding when your city gives you a huge payout of plastic coins. The cartoony art on the cards does very well in portraying the slightly silly city building setting, appealing to people who are new to the hobby. The luck of the dice roll is mainly mitigated by cards, but there are some numbers that are only attached to bad cards for the active player. While this luck may be fine for people used to Monopoly, heavier gamers may find this aspect negative. Most of the cards are balanced, some solving the runaway leader problem many games of this weight have, yet some do feel a bit overpowered, especially in a first playthrough. The insert is also sub-optimal, making a box that could have been a card game size a Catan size, while not even allowing for sleeves, considering the below average quality of the cards. There are also a limited number of cards, which, with the amount you see during a playthrough, could make the game become stale very quickly. This could be easily fixed by expansions, but there are none at the moment. That said, this is one of the best of the dice game genre and is a must have if you are looking for a gateway game. This also makes it a great gift to lure non gamers into the hobby, giving you more people to play games with! Overall, this game is simple, satisfying, light and as strategic as you want it to be. I would recommend for non-gamers and gamers alike; this is a game for everyone.
Zatu Review Summary
Zatu Score
90%
