By IDW Games. Designed by Masao Suganuma.
If you haven't played Machi Koro then what have you been doing? haha. It is the game that everyone told me I must try when starting out in the board game hobby. So what was all the fuss about?
If you wanted to know the name in Japanese literally means Town Builder (pretty much anyway using slight alliteration). Surprisingly, in this game you build your own town. Turns are very simple; roll the dice, collect coins related to these rolls, buy something for your town to improve your tableau and then move on to the next player in clockwise order. This makes the game great for all players; new, veterans, old, young, anybody can play Machi Koro and enjoy it. Once you have enough coins you can buy one of 4 'main' buildings and the player who buys all of these first wins OR if you have the expansions, which I highly recommend getting, then there are up to 6 buildings you need to complete in order to achieve victory.
My only negative for this game is that in the edition I have the card coins feel a little flimsy and due to the number of times we have played the coins are becoming visibly damaged. This however it not an issue in the recent editions (5th Anniversary Edition) where the coins are replaced with plastic tokens.
Machi Koro is simple but brilliant. Always best with both expansions as the main game on it's own is quite short and the expansions change the rules to make each game different and therefore add replayability. My fiancé has now refused to play Machi Koro unless we use both expansions (maybe as I crush her at the base game) and I have to 100% agree with her on this as the expansions add so much. The base game is good but, the expansions improve the game significantly! If you don't have this game, go buy it - it comes highly recommended by DB Games!
Score (MAIN GAME ONLY) - 7.5/10
Score (with both Expansions) - 9.5/10
Overview - "An awesome game that is over too quickly before it gets going fully. When you add in both expansions Machi Koro is a must have that all serious board gamers should have in their collection. It gets regular play even though we have played many, many times. The 5th Edition comes with plastic coins too which greatly helps to improve the feel of the components. Stop reading this and add Machi Koro to your collection if you don't already own it. And if you do own it, challenge me to a game any time"
Thanks for reading this review. All the best Dan, DB Games.