The Great Western Trail is a German Euro game about an American tradition, the old west cattle drive and as strange of a combination as that might sound to be, the fascination with the old west actually tends to be quite strong in Europe.  In Great Western Trail however players don’t take on the roles of traditional “movie” cowboys, having shootouts in the OK coral but rather they take the more historically accurate role of cowboys moving cattle across the landscape of the old American west.

I have to admit when I first started hearing buzz about this game I was immediately intrigued, and it was quite specifically because of this more real cowboy theme.  The idea of a western based euro game about the economics of the cattle drive, as unusual of a theme as it is got my attention but even more than that was the fact that someone made a Euro game that wasn’t about Mediterranean trading or worker placement really sounded like someone finally realized that both of those elements are seriously played out at this point in game design.

Overview

Final Score:  (3.1 out 5 Stars)

In Great Western Trail players traverse a series of trails with a wide range of stops where they can perform a variety of activities including resource and hand management.  Like most heavy German Euros, the game pits players against each other in a very non-confrontational environment, but one rich in strategic decisions and tough choices.

With many routes to victory using a combination of some classic designs and some very new ones, Great Western Trail is an intriguing puzzle to be unraveled.

Components

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Pros:  Components made to last, very nice colorful art style.

Cons:  Lots of Iconography to learn and remember, player sheets are a bit thin.

Component quality coming out of European publishers has really improved dramatically over the last few years and while there is still a lot of reliance on wooden tokens, Great Western Trail boasts very high quality board, card and card board components.  There is very little to complain about here, this is a game built to last.  I would argue that the player boards are a bit thin and they are easy to damage thanks to combination of thin cardboard paper and hard corners, but of all the components in the box these sheets are the only thing that comes out a bit weak.

Its a very colorful game with a clean, cartoony look capturing the western feeling/theme quite nicely.  Their is a brick ton of Iconography which adds a fair amount of time to learning how to play, contrary to first impressions the iconography is extremely logical and after a play of the game becomes second nature and easy to understand and remember.  By the time I was in my third game the manual stayed in the box despite the fact that even in a third game we were still discovering new elements with new iconography on them.  This clarity is needed and you’ll be glad that its there as it makes this rather complex game a lot easier to grasp in the long run.

For a Euro game or otherwise, Great Western Trail looks great on the table and while there are a lot of moving parts all of the mechanics and components mesh well in a logical easy to understand manner.  Initial learning curve aside, I think its thanks to the art style, iconography and logical combination of art and mechanics that makes this complex game a lot easier to learn and to play.

Theme

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Pros: A good choice of theme for the mechanics in place, the art helps a lot to give it a bit of extra energy.

Cons:  The theme is largely irrelevant and pretty feather light, there are some missed opportunities.

While I love the selection of the theme and certainly the art styles helps a great deal to bring it to the table, like most Euro game the theme is a thin layer added largely to facilitate artistic choices.  I would argue that they picked a very good theme when comparing them to the mechanics, it certainly works but if you are looking to experience the old west in a board game, this one does it just on the surface at best.

This is a game about mechanics and while there are some interesting abstraction mechanics added to the game like the hand of cards being your cattle, buildings being stops along the trail that also has various hazards and such, you aren’t exactly going to feel like you are in a role of a cowboy here.

Given the very minimal interaction between players as well, you can’t help but wonder if they missed an opportunity in this game to create some take that mechanics.  You can’t help but feel the absence of certain elements in a  western theme game like some six shooters, sheriffs or bad guys but I suppose since those things didn’t drive me to the game it feels weird to judge it negatively for not having them.  Still its a game about cowboys in the old west given the minimal interaction, the game ends up feeling less thematic as a result.

All that said, like most Euro games it becomes very easy to overlook and dismiss the theme as you focus your energy on the mechanics and Great Western Trail is really no different.  The theme in short is really not that important here.

Gameplay

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Pros: Dynamic setup, non-traditional euro mechanics and thinky gameplay make for a great combination.  Very good victory point smorgasbord.

Cons: No real catch up mechanics in place, pretty limited player interaction.

All games generally live and die by their mechanics but its in particular true about Euro games because they often share so many of the same mechanics and aren’t focused on theme, but thankfully in the case of The Great Western trail, there is sufficient deviation from the standard fare of role selection and worker placement that it allows the game to stand out.

There are a number of things to really like about Great Western Trail, I think the most notable however is that while its a pretty weighty Euro with a lot of strategic juice, turns are very quick and the activities of a turn are pretty straightforward and easy to understand.  The choices might be tough, but what you actually do on your turn is very simple.  Move your cowboy and perform the action on the space you land.  Conceptually it falls into the easy to learn impossible to master category and I think above all else this is the zone in which Euro games find the most comfort and simultaneously excel at.  Great Western Trail is a wonderful example of this.

Personally I been exhausted by many of the traditional euro mechanics like Worker placement, action or role selection mechanics and I think the the real strength of Great Western Trail is that its a very strategic and thinky game that does not fall back on these tried and true cores.  Instead it ventures out into some new territory which I found to be a breath of fresh air.  Its nothing I would call revolutionary, but its a new dynamic puzzle and that can be a lot of fun with the right group.

The combination of movement, hand management and resource management along the way works really well to create some really tough choices.  You sort of build up a route that works to the strength of your selected strategy for scoring points and while Great Western Trail is very much a Victory Point Smorgasbord, you do have quite a few variations on what you can go for and the initial setup is dynamic as is the way the games tokens that can affect strategy are so you end up with a wide range of variation between plays.  This of course helps with re-playability a great deal but what it really means for the game is that you can’t sit down with a strategy planned in advance, a problem a lot of Euros suffer from.  You really have to look at the board, see what buildings are available, where neutral buildings are initially placed, what workers are available, what cards are in the market place and then you can think about how you are going to do strategy wise.

While the interaction is quite thin, one point of interaction is the placement of buildings which can tax players, create stalling points and with hazards can add additional hurdles for players who put their buildings in riskier, but more profitable spots.    This really helps a lot to make the game feel like your playing with others, though the impact of their decisions still has pretty minimal impact on you.   In a lot of ways Great Western Trail can feel a bit solitaire, in particular in two player games but in 3 and 4 player games I think the games interaction makes deeper cuts and I definitely recommend to play it this way.

The personal player board is also very important in the game, what actions you unlock here and where you place your tokens on the train track are critical for getting good positioning of future runs through the trails.  There is a lot to think about and plan here.  There is a lot of investment in strategies as well so you have to make good choices throughout if you hope to win, there really are no “big moves” but rather slow and steady build up of smart choices that pays out in the long run.  For better or for worse, in Great Western Trail it can be pretty hard to catch up if you fall too far behind as players who make wise choices will get momentum that is difficult to halt.  In a lot of ways Great Western Trail is very much about building a functioning engine which acts as a sort of race and its in this that the competition and tension of the game really exists.

I think the inability for players to do much to slow down a player with a lot of momentum kind of hurts the game.  You can find yourself about halfway through the game falling hopelessly behind or watching one player get far ahead and effectively have to play a game to its conclusion knowing who will win since mid game.  Its hard to say how often this would happen in a game of experienced players, I would venture to say not very often, but given that the game takes about 30-45 minutes per player in a four player game, if you are 1.5 hours into a 3 hour game and you already know who is going to win with no way to stop them it kind of spoils the tension built up at the start of the game.

With all that in mind I have to say that I really enjoyed the thinky elements of the game mechanics.  For a victory point focused Euro, this is a really good one and I have played quite a few at this point.  Given options like Russian Railroads, Voyage of Marco Polo, Terra Mystica or the always popular Caverna, I think I prefer Great Western Trail, if for no other reason than the fact that its not driven by rather stale and over cooked worker placement mechanics.

In Great Western Trail what you are going to do isn’t just a question of this turn but this and perhaps even the next run.  You have to be able to see your actions many moves in advance and there is a bit of luck and risk vs. reward elements here so you can take some chances.  There is a lot of satisfaction and reward for good decisions and I think Euro gamers in particular will find a lot to love in Great Western Trail.

Replay-ability and Longevity

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Pros: Dynamic starts and dynamic draws of tiles and cards create a fairly wide range of unique games that will drive strategies, creating plenty of longevity and replay potential.

Cons:  Victory Point Smorgasbords generally have a fixed shelf like getting boring after X amount of plays.

I think the most important element of a game with limited interaction is to find a way to make itself re-playable.   In my experience, the less player interaction there is in a game the less likely it is that people will find any real longevity in the game.  That said Great Western Trail does a lot to curtail this problem with its dynamic variations in setup and general “draw” elements, with its card management and tile reveals.

I’m not sure how long this game will stay in my collection, but I do believe that a game like this will wind up being someones favorite just because it really does have that spark of strategic depth and thinkiness I think a lot gamers enjoy.  I always say that I don’t really understand why people are so captivated with victory point smorgasbord games, but they are and games like Russian Railroads for example see a lot of play and are beloved by a lot of people.  I think Great Western Trail does very well in this genre/style of gaming, so much so that I actually like it a great deal more then most of the games of this type I have tried.

I have to admit part of the reason why I like this game is that I like the theme and while strictly speaking the connection between theme and mechanics is not particularly strong here, I’m still drawn to it.  I think Great Western Trail is one of those, right people, right occasion type games where if you bring it out with the right group they will love it and want to play it repeatedly while other less Euro centric gamers are likely to find it difficult to get through even the first play.  Great Western Trail won’t have that wide, for all gamers, appeal.  Its a niche product, but one I think people like this genre of games will want to play repeatedly as there is a ton to discover and unravel here.  There are many challenges and interesting puzzles to solve and its going to take a great many games to truly master this one.

I think the biggest boon to this game is the fact that it has a higher level of complexity but relatively simple round structure and I found that after my first couple of plays I still wanted to go back to try out the many other possible strategies and approaches to the game so I definitely believe there is plenty of longevity here.

I would also argue however that Victory Point Smorgasbords in general play themselves out and I would imagine at some point this game will make an exit from my collection, but I don’t think its going to be any time soon.

Conclusion

Great Western Trail is simultaneously a traditional Euro style victory point mash up and a uniquely styled game with fresh mechanics and interesting approach.  Like many Euro games I find its a bit short on player interaction and I see that as a problem with many of my gaming friends who want to have mechanics that interfere and obstruct each other as part of a gaming experience.  To me however you don’t buy and play a Euro game if you have issues with limited interaction and to be fair there are plenty of games that I like that have virtually no interaction like Race for the Galaxy for example.  This in its own right is only a negative for people who have issue with it and I really don’t.

That said I do believe there was some missed opportunities in Great Western Trail as a “cowboy” themed game for more direct interaction.  Its a Euro through and through and if you love Euro’s you will likely enjoy this game.  I think its component quality, art style, clever mechanics, dynamic nature and fresh approach work together draw just enough interest to squeak into my personal collection.  I’m drawn to it, I want to play it again and I think that’s a good sign as this is rarely the case for me with Victory Point Mash up Euros in this style.

Great Western Trail is a fun game, its unique within its own genre and while I would rate it as a heavy euro, its considerably easier to teach within its class among games like Terra Mystica, Russian Railroads and Caverna.

I recommend this game for Euro fans for certain, but I think unless you already have an affection for Victory Point Mash ups you should probably skip this one.