Game 36: Machi Koro - Bright Lights, Big City

We played the original Machi Koro a few days ago as a "bonus game" - a borrowed game and not one on our shelves.  Caleb likes it so much that he went out and bought this expansion - I should probably actually say combination of expansions, with the original game included.  I have to admit it is a pretty fun and addicting game.  There's a lot of luck, often coming down to die rolls; there is strategy too, but I've played the original once and this one once, and both times I was under time pressure.  This is a game I/we will definitely be coming back to, and we'll see how it goes as we become more familiar with it.
 As the game progresses you purchase cards that give you different rewards (money from the bank, money from other players, etc.) based on various die rolls.  The game starts rather slowly, but once you've purchased a lot of cards you've got more options and more than can happen on your turn.  To win the game you need to "construct" all of your landmark cards (seen in bottom row in above picture).  Some of these are quite costly, so you need to build up your resources in order to accomplish this.  This game is incredibly simple to learn but seems nuanced enough to keep us coming back to it.

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