Machi Koro: Millionaire’s Row – Expanision Review – More of a good thing

The Machi Koro: Harbour expansion fixed most of my issues with the core game. So when I saw that another expansion looked in the same vein as Harbour, I was intrigued and unsure of what to expect. What you get in Machi Koro: Millionaire’s Row is more. More mechanics, more buildings, more more. In that way, it’s a very traditional board game expansion as it doesn’t revolutionise the way you play the game like the Harbour expansion. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth picking up if you are a fan.

I’m not going to go through how to play the game if you want then check out my review of Machi Koro and the Harbour expansion. Instead, I’ll dive straight into what you get in Millionaire’s Row. Outside of a whole load of new establishments to purchase from the various tiers, you also get some renovation tokens. These tokens are this expansion’s main mechanical change and are placed on an established to show that they are being renovated. This means that the next time you would activate that card, you remove the token instead of doing what the establishment says. I don’t generally like ‘miss a turn’ mechanics as they more often remove fun rather than add it, these are infrequent enough that they don’t become overly annoying.

Outside of these extra tokens, this expansion gives you new establishments of all of the colours and number ranges. If you’re like me, then you’ll shuffle them into your existing decks of cards and they’ll further bolster the range of options available to players. And that is the main attraction of this expansion. All of the new cards add something new and integrate with the existing supply organically and you’ll soon forget which cards are from which expansion (except for the fish ones being clearly from the Harbour expansion). Once you’ve added them to your game, you won’t want to go back to playing without them.

And while this is all nice, you don’t necessarily need Millionaire’s Row to enjoy playing Machi Koro. They have done a great job to balance everything and make sure that this new expansion fits snugly with the current game, there isn’t a world where you would buy it over the Harbour expansion. And if you never played with Millionaire’s Row, you could go on with your board game life just as happy as before. And there lies the problem because while this expansion is nice, you could save that money to go towards another game.

However, if you are in love with Machi Koro then Millionaire’s Row will give you more variety and choice when playing. This means that players will have a more varied number of establishments and strategies will need to be continually changed. The new mechanics make the game a little bit more complicated but never to the point where it becomes overly complex. The new rules nicely layer over the current rules and fill niches left by old establishments. So if you are mad for Machi Koro get Millionaire’s Row after the Harbour, and if you are a little less hot for it then the Harbour is plenty to get the most out of the game.

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Thanks for reading. If you’ve not already, go read my review of Machi Koro and The Harbour expansion. Alternatively, for a city building board game with an almost opposite theme check out my London review.

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