Machi Koro - Tips & Strategies

To avoid being slammed by red and purple cards, which force you to give away your hard earned money to other players, spend it all or as much as you can in a single purchase so that you’re left with only a few coins at the end of your turn. By doing this, you minimize the damage done by the cafes, restaurants and major establishments, as you won’t have much money to hand over to another player. At the same time, what you’re doing for yourself is building up your town in such a way that when it comes around to your turn to roll, you’re likely to receive a huge payout. This will allow you to once again spend as much money as you can to build your expensive landmarks without needing to save up, and avoid making yourself vulnerable for others to steal from you.

I do not know if your english edition comes with or without, but the spanish one comes with an added expansion called ‘The harbor’
This adds 10 more different buildings and 2 new lanmarks (so the new target to win is to build the 6)

Most interesting, the rule about conveniences at dispossal is changed in the way @pookie said, it works like this:

You make a deck with all the convenience cards, with the total of 25 different buildings. Then you start to draw and leave face up on the table until you have 10 diferent buildings (if repeated buildings are drawn they stack up; the total number of buildings is not limited, the number of different buildings is)

You will only draw more cards in the moment, and inmediately, whenever there are onlu 9 differente buildings. Again if repeated with already available you stck them and continue drawing until having 10 different on the table.

This comes to a very different game every time, more if you have this ‘the harbor’ cards which add up to 25 different buildings, and avoid 9/10 times win strategies most of the time.

I guess playing like this without ‘the harbor’ cards should be made with a lower number of different buildings, like 8 at minimum.

The German variation of the game when playing with the expansions added is as follows: set up 6 different blue and/or green locations and 2 purple and 2 red. This gives you 10 locations as recommended and some variety.

Machi Koro has only a limited number of strategies, often built around Ranches and Cheese Factories; Mines and Forests with Furniture Factories; and Fruit Orchards and Wheat Fields with Fruit and Vegetable Markets. So players will usually pick one of these strategies and work towards them…

To counter this and mix the game up a little, Machi Koro should be played with just ten card types. Two of these should be the standard Wheat Fields and Bakeries, but the remaining eight should be selected at random.

Stay with Bakery and Convenience Store so the chance of making money on your turn will be 50%. as Convenience store cost 2 and Bakery only cost 1, you don’t need to save your money for the next turn. in this case and I know that it might be boring but you don’t need to roll 2 dice that activate Mine and Family Restaurant.

After rolling the dice, if we must give coins to several players but don’t have enough, we don’t use the rule that says you give coins counterclockwise. Instead, we choose to which player we give, and it is much funnier.
Only be careful that no one is getting “forgotten”.
With younger players we usually give the coins to the poorest player so he doesn’t get “stuck”.

This is a very simple strategy that I have beat the cheese factory with more than half the time.

Step 1. Buy bakerys until you have 5 or 6
Step 2. Construct Shopping Mall to make each bakery worth 2 coins
Step 3. Construct the Radio Tower
Step 4. Construct the Amusement Park
Step 5. Construct the Station

I have played with buying convenience stores every turn between steps 2-5 that you cannot afford to finish a landmark but found it to be a bit slower and the cheese factory usually finished faster.

Has anyone else used this strategy, what was your experience with it?

If you can get a good headstart in income, build the expensive landmarks first. If your last landmark is cheaper, it’s easier to skate in with a lower payout for the victory!

This might sounds pretty elementary, if we want a faster game we simply reduce the amount of landmarks that must be purchased, or increase the cards that everyone starts with. Instead of a just a wheat field and bakery we add a forest and convenience store so that we can buy the train station faster and get to rolling 2 dice if that is your strategy.

In every game we played with the basic edition the winner got RANCH and CHEESE factory and blew up the money.

Solution: Get the expansions. For 2 reasons, more varied ways to win, and the added cards and drafting method making the odds of getting RANCH and CHEESE factory together much lower. Plus there are other cards which blow up.

Basically we also found the first person to get the RADIO TOWER would win. Getting to re-rolls is basically a game breaker.