Great Western Trail, a Review

               The box art isn’t very appealing. Three stoic men staring at you. A train, some teepees, cows, a cowboy. Something tells you that this game is about the wild west, that you’ll be shooting some bad guys and going on an adventure.

Or you probably moved on to the other games with more attractive box art.

But wait! You decided to examine the box further. Your curiosity is piqued. What’s so “great” about this trail, anyway? So you turn to the back of the box and find an image of the board and little wooden discs and what the heck is all this?

A game about cows. And trains. And buildings. And money.

Great Western Trail, designed by Alexander Pfister and published by Eggerspiele and Stronghold Games, puts you in the role of a rancher, ready to set forth on the trail to get the best value for your cows, increase your standing on the railways, and set down buildings along the trail.

The game uses several mechanics: deck building, building placement, engine building and hand management. You move your rancher along the, you guessed it, great western trail, using different buildings to perform different actions, such as constructing your own buildings, buying cows, hiring workers to make your actions more efficient, or moving your train along the track to save you on shipping costs. You’ll eventually arrive at Kansas City, sell your cows, claim a station, pay any shipping costs, and start all over again.

Yeah, there’s a lot to keep track of. You might feel overwhelmed in your first game. You’ll want to do everything.

“Okay, I gotta get all these workers but then I need to move the train down the track and get those stations but this building is really good I need to put this down and wait that cow is worth five points I need it oh there’s an objective I can use but”

There’s a lot going on. But it’s so much fun.

You also have a player board that has only a few options, but as you continue to unlock your disks and gather workers (engineers, cowboys, and craftsmen), the more abilities you have. There’s a great sense of progression with your player board, where you feel as though you’re “leveling up” and able to do more.

The theme of the game, in which you’re a rancher herding cows across the trail, feels connected to the way you play the game. While the game is a euro-style board game, the theme is prevalent throughout the art, board, and cards. I mean, look at the box art. This is the West, with a capital W. When you reach Kansas City you feel like you’ve really been through a trail, and there’s a sense of satisfaction when you sell your cows (your hand of cows where the value is added) and start the trail again for more.

Endgame is a “point salad,” where you earn points by the cows you’ve bought, the stations you’ve claimed, the objectives you’ve completed, the workers you’ve bought… you get the point. And points aren’t counted during the game (even though you could if you’re good at keeping track of everything everyone else is doing), but at the end, and it’s always a surprise to see where people got a lot of their points.

I’ve played the game twice, once with four players and the other with two, and I enjoyed both experiences, even though I must say that it feels that playing with three players is the sweet number for this game. Two players make the game feel rushed and you don’t have enough time (due to the round marker mechanic of the game) and four players feels long, especially if you’re playing with new players.

Which leads me to my next point: new players may find the game intimidating. There’s a lot of iconography that may turn new players away. Luckily, once a player gets the gist of what they mean, it’s easy to digest. The rulebook does an excellent job explaining what everything in the games does, complete with examples. That’s something I can appreciate.

Great Western Trail is a great game for people that just want to kick back, move around a board, take some actions, buy some cows, and have fun. It’s a lot to soak in at first, but once you understand the flow of the game, it’s a smooth ride towards the sunset.