Great Western Trail Second Edition reinvigorates a modern board game classic
great Western Trail is my favourite complex tabletop game. It’s a two-hour game with a 20-page rulebook. This game manages to hit all the right notes for a game this long and heavy. The Old West is populated by ranchers who build cattle herds and create a network of buildings that allow them to deliver more cows to Kansas City. The Eggertspiele imprint of Plan B Games has been hard at work on a new edition. It will be the first in a trilogy.
I have tested the new edition. While there aren’t enough improvements to persuade owners of the original edition to buy a new one, it is a better version for those new to the game or who want to play a heavier title for tabletop gaming.
Great Western Trail ( GT) combines multiple ideas that you may have seen in modern board games. As the game progresses, you will purchase better cards to improve your deck. To make your actions even more powerful, you can also hire three kinds of workers. Your locomotive will also be moved along the track at the outer edge of your mainboard. This earns you points and may give you bonus actions that allow you to transport cows further along the track. It’s a fun but heavy game with lots of options for decision-making.
You’ll be moving your herder (or meeple) along different paths on the map each turn, taking actions based upon the buildings you stop. You will get money depending on how many cows you have in your hand. This is the heart of the game. Then, you will add all the values of the cards together to deliver — although one assumes it would be beef — to the furthest possible city along the railroad track, ending in New York City. (It’s the greatest city in all of America, natch.
You have many more options to improve your actions and your card-based economic engine than what you can achieve in one playthrough. This is GWT‘s greatest strength. This encourages you to pick a strategy from the beginning. Do you want to grab the best cows and hire cowboys so you can buy even more cows? Are you hiring more engineers so your locomotive can be moved faster to more powerful upgrade stations? Or, will you choose a construction strategy and hire builders to get as many private buildings as possible on the board?
The second edition features all-new artwork. Some of the changes are both functional and aesthetic. The boards have two layers that allow tiles and discs to be seated without sliding. This is a big advantage for boards that get very busy towards the end. Some tiles and cards now have light backgrounds, making it easier to identify their icons. The colours on the board are brighter, more appealing and have a greater appeal than the tiles for private buildings. However, there is no obvious benefit to the muted colours in the tiles.
The most significant change in art is, however, the removal of the white men. The Native American subtheme is taken from the original. The hazards have changed from teepees and bandits (who are clearly black), and the workers you hire to help during the game have gone through a change from all white men to a White man, a White woman and a Black man. It is important to represent, and even this little bit of visual diversity combined with the elimination of the idea of Native Americans being the invisible enemy is a welcome improvement.
The second edition brings three major improvements to the mechanics of the first version. The second edition adds two private buildings to each player’s collection (each player now has 12 options), a solo mode, and a mini-expansion that rewards you for holding the cows mature. You can also get $4 for delivering to Kansas City instead of $6 as the original. However, this is a smaller trade-off, making it less attractive to make some quick cash…
