Great Western Trail (GWT)
Description
Become a 19th century rancher, driving your best cattle from Texas to Kansas City! Great Western Trail is Alexander Pfister's acclaimed Eurogame that masterfully blends card engine building with worker placement and path navigation. On each ride, you move your cowboy along an action-packed trail, where you'll optimize your path and build new buildings to improve your stops. The strategic key lies in managing your hand of cattle cards. When you arrive in Kansas City, the quality of your flock (the card sets without duplicates) determines the selling price and the bonuses you get. This forces you to manage a cycle: move, upgrade your card engine (by purchasing higher value livestock), and then sell in Kansas City. The asymmetry of the strategy is notable: you can focus on the construction of buildings, the hiring of personnel (engineers, cowboys or craftsmen) or on locomotion. If you are looking for a deep strategy Eurogame, with enormous replayability and that fluidly combines multiple mechanics, GWT is a modern classic that cannot be missed. Load your herd, hire your team and dominate the West.
As Amazon affiliates, we earn from qualifying purchases.
How to play
The game takes place in a series of journeys from your initial ranch to Kansas City. On your turn, you perform 3 actions: 1. Move: You move your cowboy along the trail. 2. Actions: You stop at a building and perform the action (e.g. build, hire, buy livestock). 3. Draw: You draw cards from your deck up to 4 into your hand. Upon arriving in Kansas City, you turn in your livestock (selling cards of different colors), get money, and send your train to a distant city. The game ends when the most advanced player's train reaches the last station. Victory points are awarded for the quality of livestock, buildings constructed, stations occupied, objective tokens, and remaining money.
Why you might like it
Fluid combination of multiple mechanics (deck building, worker placement, movement). Great replayability thanks to the different strategic paths (train, buildings, employees). The feeling of optimization of the move and sell cycle is very satisfying. If you like deep eurogames with multiple strategic paths and a strong sense of progressive growth, Great Western Trail offers very satisfying and highly replayable games.
What to keep in mind
The game time is long and there may be downtime due to route options. The Western theme is more of an atmosphere than an immersion. The final score is a bit abstract and dense.