LogFAQs > #935817852

incredibly, that is exactly what is next on this list! it's a bit heavier than castles of burgundy, but very much in the same vein:

12. Great Western Trail (2016)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Action-selection, tableau-building, hand-building, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 6
Game length: 60-120 minutes
Experience: 7-10 plays with 2-4 players (2018-19)
Previous ranks: NR/100 (2016), NR/100 (2018)

Summary - In the old American West, each player traverses a trail to Kansas City, shipping cattle each time. On your turn, you move at least one building on the trail and take either the action of the building (if it belongs to you, or is neutral), or take a generic auxiliary action printed on your player mat. Actions can include hiring workers to improve your capabilities, managing a personal deck/hand of cows, pushing a train along a track, purchasing cows for your deck, and building buildings along the trail that only you can stop at. If your last move takes you to Kansas City, you instead cash your hand of cows for money and place a token on one of the cities on the track. Victory points are awarded at endgame for cows in deck, buildings built, player board upgrades, train stations visited, cities shipped to, and more.

Design - Great Western Trail feels like one of the culmination of its age of eurogames - the type of games that are essentially taking a giant bag of mechanics and throwing them into a stew. Virtually none of its mechanics is particularly intertwined with the other. Money drives pretty much everything, and everyone has to walk the walk and go to Kansas City. But starting with the employees available for hire, they all seem to be playing their own game. There are many buildings available to build, it's actually possible to win novice-level games without building anything at all, and definitely not hiring a Builder. Cowboys seem most intimately tied to the general flow of the game - you will need to ship to different cow locations. And the Engineer's ability feels completely separate from anything else, a weird little minigame that allows you to push a little train along a track, picking up point-salad-y bonuses. You've got a board with random obstacles, an involved overhead for reaching Kansas City, important rules about distinction in the hand you build...

Yet the haphazard mish-mash, while not clicking into place seamlessly, has a bunch of fun stuff you can do in it. The game winds up feeling almost sandbox-y, allowing you different options in how you want to specialize. There's some minor interaction in terms of denying people spots to build, cows, and/or dudes to hire, but in general the game leans much more heavily to strategy. GWT winds up being one of those games where it's just fun to play with all its options and loosely connected systems. To me the most satisfying feeling is landing a fantastic set of cows to deliver all the way down the line to San Jose or San Francisco. That said, I've also had fun just watching my friends push their trains past San Francisco and around the bend for whatever reason.

What's interesting about this mishmash of mechanics is that GWT still feels pretty tight. That's due to the economy of the game - you always have something useful to spend your limited dollars on, so you're always low. Additionally, you always need to pay attention to your cows, since you can't ship to the same location multiple times without hemorraging points in KC or sprinting off to San Francisco, which is pretty unlikely. It results in a very pleasant sort of tension, keeping you on your proverbial toes throughout the game.

Experience - This was one of my favorite games I learned at the game cafe - possibly my single favorite. I brought my friend to it, and he wound up loving it too. I actually felt almost sad when I bought it used "on his behalf" and wound up giving him the copy. It's become my favorite (deep breath) heavyish, non-confrontational euro. One thing I like about it is being able to control the pace without necessarily having to control who's winning - by zipping down the trail you can force an endgame, while if you want to meander to try to squeeze points at a more measured pace, that's fine too. I'm traditionally pretty big on rushing games to their conclusion, but GWT provides you so many places where you can micro-optimize before going to KC that I'm actually happy to explore its space at a more measured pace.

Future - When the friend who owns it inevitably moves away, buying it is a strong consideration. Gaming pal #1 has yet to play it because of its rather long teach and a theme/art that isn't particularly exciting. But I think it has a chance to dethrone Castles of Burgundy as a game we play together.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness