Great Western Trail

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Great Western Trail
Game data
author Alexander Pfister
graphic Andreas Resch
publishing company Eggert games
Publishing year 2016
Art Board game
Teammates 2 to 4
Duration 75-150 minutes
Age from 12 years

Awards

Great Western Trail is a board game by the Austrian game designer Alexander Pfister , which was published by Eggertspiele in 2016 . Thematically, the game is set in the Wild West , the players as cattle breeders drive herds of cattle on the Great Western Trail for sale to Kansas City and try to earn as much money as possible and gain power, which is reflected in victory points. The game uses components of a racing game as well as various other game mechanisms such as deck building , the individual choice of actions during the trail and the option to open up further actions and possibilities.

The game took third place in the Swiss Gamers Award in 2016 and was included on the recommendation list for Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2017 . The game was also recognized as one of three game hits for experts at the 2017 Austrian Game of Games and won second place in the 2017 German Games Prize after Terraforming Mars . When International Gamers Award 2017, the game as the best multi-player strategy game won. It was also awarded the Beeple Award in 2017 .

Style of play

The game Great Western Trail builds on the great cattle drives of the ranchers and cowboys in the Wild West , in which the players with their cowboys in Texas have to round up large herds of cattle and bring them to Kansas City . With the herds they earn money by sending them to other cities by rail, which they in turn can invest in the construction of towns, the recruitment of personnel, the construction of railway lines and stations or in new herds with more valuable cattle the players receive victory points. The end of the game is triggered when a player, by delivering a herd in Kansas City, places a worker tile on the last space of the job market. The winner of the game is the player who has the most victory points in the subsequent final settlement of the game.

In addition to the game instructions, the game material consists of:

  • a game plan
  • 54 worker tiles, of which 18 each are cowboys, craftsmen and engineers
  • 18 danger tiles, six of which are floods, droughts and rockfalls
  • 22 teepee tiles, 11 blue and 11 green tiles each
  • four player boards in the player colors white, yellow, blue and red
  • four cover plates for the player boards
  • four drovers in player colors
  • four locomotives in player colors
  • four certificate markers in the player colors
  • 56 player markers, 14 of them in the player colors
  • 92 cattle cards, including
    • 56 player cattle cards, 14 per player, with values ​​1, 2 and 3
    • 36 market cattle cards in values ​​3, 4 and 5
  • 24 mission cards, 4 of which are start mission cards
  • 47 building tiles, of which
    • 10 building tiles per player in the player colors
    • seven neutral building tiles
  • five stationmaster tiles
  • 55 coins (35 × $ 1, 20 × $ 5)
  • a labor market scoreboard
  • a scoring block

Game preparation

At the beginning of the game, the game board is placed in the middle of the table and set up according to the game instructions. All neutral building tiles and the stationmaster tiles are placed in the designated positions and the cattle market is prepared. The worker tiles, the teepee tiles and the danger tiles are sorted with the back side up according to the numbers on the back and placed ready. Seven of the tiles marked with a one are turned over and placed on the tipi or danger fields according to the illustration. Then, depending on the number of players, as many tokens are placed on the job market as indicated in the game instructions. The preview fields are then each covered with two plates labeled 1 to 3. The cattle market is formed from the 36 market cattle cards with up to 13 face-up cattle cards depending on the number of players, the order stacks are formed from the order cards and the four starting order cards are distributed to the players and laid out face up.

Each player also chooses a color and accordingly receives a player board, the various markers, the cattle cards and the building tiles of his color. The player markers and the certificate marker are placed on the player board and the locomotive comes to the starting position of the railroad. Each player shuffles his cattle cards and draws four of them as hand cards, the remaining cards form the herd deck.

As soon as the entire game board and the player boards have been prepared, a starting player is determined. This player receives 6 dollars from the bank, the next player in the clockwise direction receives 7 dollars, the eventual third player and each additional player receives one additional dollar each as starting capital.

Game flow

Beginning with the starting player, the players move their figure in at least in each turn and at the beginning a maximum of four spaces of the trail on the game board, whereby only place tiles and danger tiles that are on display count as spaces. Depending on the location tile on which their turn ends, the players can then take various actions. In the course of the game, players set up more locations, increasing the number of steps to Kansas City and the number of possible actions. Further actions can be used to change the current herd by selling cattle, to buy new cattle for the herd deck, to hire workers from the labor market, to expand the railway line or to remove dangers and Indian villages and thus earn money. Once in Kansas City, players must then bring new dangers and Indians onto the field, replenish the job market, sell their flocks, and ship them by rail.

The herd deck is set up like a deck building game, comparable to Dominion and similar games. Since duplicate cattle are not purchased in Kansas City, it is important for the player to add value to the herds on the trails. For this purpose, at the beginning of the game, the players' available cattle cards are shuffled and placed face down and four cards from hand (later optionally more) are taken from this draw pile. Cattle sold in the course of the trail as well as newly purchased, more valuable cattle are placed on the shelf, together with order cards received, and the cards in hand are repeatedly refilled from the draw pile. When the draw pile is used up, the filing is shuffled and the more valuable cattle get into the new draw pile and the cards in hand together with the cattle that have been thrown away. In the course of the game, more and more valuable cattle are added to the deck, and cheaper cattle can be removed from the deck using special actions.

End of game and scoring

The game ends after the round, after which a player, by delivering a herd in Kansas City, places a worker tile on the last space of the labor market, thereby removing the labor market marker from the game. In the final scoring, players receive victory points for various successes in a total of eleven scoring categories, which are noted on the scoring pad and added up:

  • One point is awarded for every $ 5.
  • the sum of the victory points printed on your own building tiles on the game board
  • the sum of the victory points that were unlocked on the city coat of arms through herd deliveries
  • the sum of the victory points shown next to the train stations on which a player has one of his markers
  • the sum of the victory points that are shown next to the train stations that are shown on the hazard tiles that a player has collected
  • the sum of the victory points on the cattle cards in the herd deck
  • the sum of the victory points on the completed mission cards, from which the negative victory points of not completed but activated mission cards are deducted
  • the sum of the victory points on the stationmaster tiles
  • 4 victory points per worker tile located on the fifth or sixth space of the respective worker row
  • 3 victory points if the player has cleared the circle of his player board
  • 2 victory points for the player who ends the game and has the labor market indicator in front of him.

The player with the most victory points wins the game. If several players are tied, there are multiple winners.

Expenses and reception

Great Western Trail was developed by the Austrian game designer Alexander Pfister and was published by Eggertspiele in 2016, distributed by Pegasus Spiele . Andreas Resch took care of the illustrations and the cover design . Further editions were published in 2016 by Stronghold Games in English and by 999 Games in Dutch and in 2017 in Spanish, Romanian, Polish, Hungarian, French and Portuguese (mainly for the Brazilian market).

The game won third place in the Swiss Gamers Award in 2016 and was included on the recommendation list for Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2017 . In the latter case, the game was described as follows:

“As drovers in the Wild West, the players keep moving with herds of cattle from Texas to Kansas City. The branched paths on the “Great Western Trail” allow many strategic orientations - and with every ride there are more options. Craftsmen, for example, help with the construction of buildings, which in turn enable new activities. Cowboys buy animals at the market to improve the breeding value of the cattle in the deck of cards. The better the cards in hand when loading in Kansas City, the greater the proceeds, the more lucrative the onward transport by rail. So don't neglect the expansion of the train route and stations! Indians also play along. And there are still orders. A noble western: thematically implemented in style, mechanically interwoven in a masterly way. "

In addition, Great Western Trail was recognized as one of three game hits for experts at the Austrian Spiel der Spiele 2017 and won second place in the German Games Prize 2017 after Terraforming Mars . When International Gamers Award 2017, the game as the best multi-player strategy game won. In September 2017 it was also nominated for the Dutch Game Award.

reviews
Meta page rating
BoardGameGeek 8.3 out of 10 points
game box 8 out of 10 points
H @ LL9000 5.2 out of 6 points

In his review in the spielbox, Lars Schiele places the game in connection with various potential role models that stand for individual parts of the game mechanism. He named Dominion as godfather for the deck building, Terra Mystica for unlocking new options during the game and Monopoly for the increasingly dangerous and expensive trail to Kansas City. He describes Great Western Trail as a versatile and at the beginning a bit confusing and confusing game in which every player has to adapt his decisions to the circumstances and develop a strategy himself to win the game as the richest cattle baron in the end. In his evaluation he awards 8 out of 10 possible points, other colleagues award 9 points.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Official Game Rules for Great Western Trail ; accessed on June 15, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b Versions of Great Western Trail in the BoardGameGeek database; accessed on June 15, 2017.
  3. ↑ Results 2016 of the Swiss Gamers Award ; accessed on June 15, 2017.
  4. ↑ a b Great Western Trail on the website of the Spiel des Jahres eV; accessed on June 15, 2017.
  5. ^ The winning games 2017 at the Austrian Games Prize, June 25, 2017; Retrieved June 29, 2017.
  6. ↑ Expertprijs 2017: nominaties , nomination for the Dutch Game Prize 2017, 23 September 2017; accessed on October 21, 2017.
  7. ↑ Ratings & Comments for Great Western Trail in the board game database BoardGameGeek (English); accessed on June 16, 2017.
  8. ^ A b Lars Schiele: Great Western Trail: No smoking guns. spielbox 6/2017, pp. 18-20.
  9. ↑ Great Western Trail , reviewed by H @ LL9000; accessed on June 16, 2017.

Web links