Great Western Trail, the great route of the West
By Daniel Marco
I'll start at the end: This game drives me crazy! I had
the opportunity to try it for the first time a few months ago, recently arrived
from the Essen fair and it was love at first sight. Great Western Trail mixes
several mechanics very well interlinked that will take us to travel through the
United States to sell our cattle.
Great Western Trail is a game by Alexander Pfister (Isle
of Skye, Mombasa, Oh my Goods! ...) that has recently been published in Spanish
by MasQue Oca Editions. The game is illustrated by Andreas Resch who already
worked with Pfister in Mombasa. We are facing a game for 2 to 4 players with a
duration that will be around 2 hours in which we will squeeze our brains to
optimize our movements to the maximum.
The Great Western
Trail board
The first time you see the game unfold it may seem a bit
messy but it really is not that bad. The board is divided into 4 main parts:
Texas-Kansas
The route that we will take as authentic cowboys on the
back of our horse driving the cattle. It occupies the entire central part of
the board. We have several possible ways to go. We will go through different
areas. We will face many dangers (no one said it was easy). We can go through
different places and stop at buildings that even we ourselves will order to
build.
When we stop to rest in a neutral building or some of
ours we will have different actions to do: trade with the Indians, buy cattle,
expand the reach of our rail line ... If we finish our movement in a building
of another player we can only perform some auxiliary action available on our
individual board. In addition, in some we will have to pay a "toll"
to be able to cross over them.
Kansas City
It occupies the left side of the board. Every time we
arrive in Kansas City, the first thing we will do is add new hazards to the
route and new workers to the labor market. This will make us approach one step
at the end of the game. Each time we fill in the labor market a file will go
down the board. When we reach the end the final is shot and we will play the
last round.
Then we will convert our cattle into money. One of the
main mechanics of the game is to build decks (deck building). We are cowboys
and we will handle a hand of cattle cards. Our mission is to take advantage of
the trip between Texas and Kansas to exchange certain cows from our hand for
others from our deck. In our destiny they will not pay us anything for the
repeated heads of cattle. So the ideal is to arrive with as many unduplicated
cows as possible.
Railway line
Corresponds to the top and right of the board. Finally,
we will use our rail line (represented by our locomotive) and the money we have
just won to send the cattle to any of the available cities. We can only send
cattle once to each city in the game (except Kansas City and San Francisco).
When sending the cattle to a city we will place one of the disks of our
individual board in that city. This will cause us to unlock certain auxiliary
actions or improve certain skills such as moving more squares per turn, being
able to transport more heads of cattle ...
Cattle market
In the lower part of the board we have the Cattle Market.
Through actions of certain buildings we can go to the cattle market to acquire
new cattle.
The individual
board
In the individual board shows us on the one hand all the
actions we can perform and the various improvements (covered by wooden discs).
On the other hand, in the central part of it we have room
to place our workers. These can be of 3 types:
Cowboys
The cowboys will be useful to us to be able to acquire
better cows and at a better price.
Builders
The builders will help us to build better and better
buildings.
Engineers
The engineers will use them to be able to advance our
rail line and save money when sending our cattle to faraway places.
End of the game
When the round tab of the Labor Market leaves the board
at the bottom, the last round will be held. Afterwards, the points will be
counted. We are facing one of those games in which you score for everything. We
will obtain points for money, buildings, cows, cities visited ...
The game of the year (for me)
I know I have left many aspects of the game in the
inkwell (such as goal cards, for example). I do not pretend to explain the game
with hairs and signals. For that, I always recommend reading the regulation. I
hope that someone who is not clear that the game is going to have an idea
above.
As I said at the beginning, I'm excited about this game.
I enjoy every game from the first moment until the last round.
In Great Western Trail it is advisable not to neglect any
of the fronts since it can become complicated to try to recover later. We must
build buildings, placing them strategically to optimize our trips. We have to
expand the variety of our cattle as well as removing the least valuable ones.
We must hire workers from the 3 classes. And we must try to squeeze every
objective to add all the possible points.
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