Great Western Trail (54590G) - Reviews

(3.4)

7 reviews

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2.12.2016

As I write this review I've only played Great Western Trail twice, but I'm pretty confident, already, that this is going to be one of my favourite games.Great Western Trail sees you, and up to three other cowboys/cowgirls, herding your cattle across the United States along the Great Western Trail to Kansas City, where you can sell your cows for cash. Along the route are a number of buildings you can frequent in order to take important actions such as selling off a cow for cash or hiring additional workers. Once you reach Kansas, you sell off your cows, ride (read teleport) back to the start of the trail and do it all over again.This game has a lot of stuff going on but it's all been very well designed and integrated.At its heart is your cow heard which takes the form of your personal deck of cards. From this deck you draw four cards and these form the herd you are taking along the trail. There is an element of deck-building, if you wish, where you can visit the cattle market to add more valuable cows to your discard pile (which will eventually come around into your hand) and various buildings allow you to burn through your draw pile more quickly. Once you get to Kansas, you get scored for the cards in your hand with any duplicate cards not scoring anything, so it's important to use the buildings en route to try to adjust your hand.Another aspect is the building tiles. At the start of the game there are a set of neutral building tiles, which can be used for their actions by any of the players. One of these tiles lets you build additional buildings along the route. Each player has a set of identical building tiles that they can build on any vacant space. Interestingly, when moving, you get to move up to four spaces but only the spaces with buildings count, so at the start of the game movement along the trail is very quick but, as additional buildings get placed, progress is slowed. There are many forks and hazardous short-cuts that let you circumvent the buildings but any tile, be it hazard or building, with a hand icon requires you pay a cost: hazards to the bank and buildings to their owners. So choosing your route is a careful choice of minimising the cost in terms of move actions, paying the bank rather than other players and ensuring you can land on the buildings you need to.In terms of scoring there is a train track running around the edge of the board. When your herd is valued at Kansas, you get points for each unique cow type. As well as receiving money, you get to place a token on city up to this many points along the train track. Many of these give you victory points if you are able to place a token on neighbouring cities but some of the lower point ones actually deduct points. There is also a transport cost associated with these and ensuring your train token is far enough along the track to minimise this cost becomes essential as the higher valued cows are revealed. In addition, the first players to visit some of the stations along the route can optionally become the station master, which rewards them with both an instant reward and end-game victory points, so there's often a battle for these stations.The biggest downside to this game is explaining it to other players: it can take a long time going through all the different aspects of the game but it's all very simple once you actually start playing the game, which is a testament to the clarity of the game's iconography and design I think.There are many different strategies for getting points in this game: you could go for stronger cows, better buildings, the stations along the train route or a balance of all of this. Most of all, the game is good fun. Definitely one of the better releases of 2016.