Players: 2-5
Age: 7+
Duration: +- 40 minutes
Distributor: White Goblin Games
Machi Koro: Harbor & Millionaire’s Row – Card Game Expansion(s) Review
As our thirst for building cities was not completely quenched after our review of the base set of Machi Koro, we decided to put on our hard hats one more time for some more building frenzy. Of course, by now we are already experienced project managers and thanks to both the Harbor and Millionaire’s Row expansion we are able to build even bigger cities. Be ready to turn your already obsolete city into a true metropolis, at least if you can outsmart your competitors.
Note: Seeing Machi Koro: Harbor and Machi Koro: Millionaire’s Row are expansion sets for the original Machi Koro game, it’s best to read through our original review of the base game first, as the general mechanics are explained there. In this review we’ll mainly talk about the additions and changes.
Contents (Harbor)
- Rules
- 73 Cards (Starting buildings + resources)
Contents (Millionaire’s Row)
- Rules
- 75 Cards (Supplies)
Mechanics
Both expansions stick to the basics of the core game, and thus you will once again have to be the first player to finish all of your landmarks to win the game. How this is done, still remains the same, as you will purchase new buildings, in order to receive more and more coins and purchase the highly desired landmarks.
Machi Koro: Harbor, the first expansion, starts with boosting the game, allowing you to play with five players, instead of four. This means some extra starting buildings from the base set are included in the Harbor expansion. Other than that, the game also adds two new landmarks, thus you will have to finish six landmarks in order to beat your opponents. While this might simply sound as a way to stretch out the average match, it’s actually more than that. The Harbor landmark will only cost two coins and has the effect that you can add a value of ‘2’ to a dice throw of ‘10’ or higher. This will become an important feature of this expansion.
As the name already states, the Harbor expansion is all about the ‘Harbor’ landmark. Some of your resource cards will only start working when you have already purchased the Harbor, thus making it important both early game, to get extra income, as well as close to the end, due to its value raising effect.
Machi Koro: Millionaire’s Row, the newly released expansion, shifts its focus to a different direction, namely, making one big whole out of the base set and both expansions. This set will not add any new landmarks to the equation, but will solely focus on adding resource buildings and some new special effects.
New to this set is the ability to close down buildings. Whilst this effect is not permanent, it can still help you stop the income of a stronger player. When a building is closed, it will be reopened, if the right value is thrown (during his/her turn), but it will not give the active player any coins during that turn. Other than that there are more buildings that will charge other players higher fees, which counters players who like to hoard, to buy more expensive landmarks before the cheaper ones. Last but not least, some resource cards will only activate when you have a specific number of landmarks active or inactive. This grants bonuses early game or end game, depending on the requirements and effect of the card.
The expansions also remove the mechanic where all unsold resource cards are laid face up, showing which cards are still up for sale. Now you will have a draw pile and ten face up resource cards which can be purchased during a player’s turn (only 1 per turn, if no landmark is purchased during that turn, after the dice has been thrown). Double resource cards can be stacked, thus leaving you with the option of choosing between ten different cards. This mixes the original mechanics, where you always had an oversight of what you could purchase.
Truth be told, the Harbor expansion feels a bit more unbalanced compared to Millionaire’s row, or when combining both expansions together. It feels as if Millionaire’s Row was created to even out the dents in the Harbor add-on.
Luck or Strategy?
While the original Machi Koro was a healthy mix of luck and strategy, making both elements equally important, it feels as if both expansions shifted the balance even more to luck, rather than strategy. When playing both expansions, separately, as well as combined, it was clear that it became a lot harder to plan coming moves. This had to do with the somewhat ‘overpowered’ effects of some of the cards, the implementation of the ‘Harbor’ which had the ability to activate high income resource cards, and the draw pile.
Due to the draw pile and the random face up cards, it becomes harder to plan several turns ahead. If certain cards are sold, it’s possible that the next card is utter rubbish for your ideal city, or if you have bad luck, you always purchase a ‘less important’ card, while the draw pile provides your opponents with the ideal card after each of your purchases. That being said, it’s not a bad implementation, but it changes the game quite drastically.
Conclusion
Machi Koro: Harbor and Machi Koro: Millionaire’s Row are welcome additions to the Machi Koro universe. Even though both sets are called expansions, they aren’t really ‘normal’ expansions, as they happen to change the game quite a lot, especially with the draw pile mechanic. Nonetheless be sure to give these ‘expansions’ a go, as they might add some extra spices to an already well seasoned base game. Hopefully we won’t run out of building plots.
Machi Koro: Harbor & Millionaire's Row - Card Game Expansion(s) Review,
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