Flash Review — Great Western Trail (2nd edition)

Players: 1-4
Works well with just 2: Yes!
Solo quality: Good
Age: 12+
Playtime: 75-150 min
Complexity: 8/10

You’re a cowboy driving cattle through the old west, hoping to reach Kansas City with a great herd you can turn into a tidy profit. But the road to riches is rife with hazards, bandits, and difficult decisions at every turn.

The main board depicts the territory players need to cross in order to deliver their cattle; different paths offer different options and challenges, ultimately all leading to Kansas City. Players also have their own boards, used to track their evolving capabilities throughout the game. As for the herd itself, it’s represented by a deck of cards – one cow to a card – that players will manipulate and refine to yield the most bucks come delivery time.

Great Western Trail is both a deck-building game (where you add to and tweak your stack of cow cards) and a worker placement game, albeit with only one worker per player: that worker moves forward along the chosen path and activates one or more of the actions available on the spot it reaches. You can purchase more cattle, hire helpers, move your train forward (to deliver to cities that are further away and more lucrative), build buildings (that help you and/or hinder your opponents), upgrade train stations to earn precious bonuses, and more.
When time runs out, the player who’s amassed the most points – through a variety of means – is declared winner.

Great Western Trail was my game of the year back in 2016, and it’s still one of my favorites. The new edition rebalances a few things that are almost enough to make me want to buy it a second time, but the original remains excellent, and should serve my wrangling needs for another good long while.
The two main changes introduced here are the orange cows (cards you can upgrade to a higher value each time you deliver them to Kansas City) and the solo module, driven by a deck of cards that let Sam the bot go about its business and get in your way.

Whatever edition you decide to play, the game is great (it’s in the title!) and fun, it moves at a brisk pace and never feels quite the same from one session to the next. Saddle up!

Most easily forgotten rule: While purchasing cattle, you can use one of your cowboys to add two new cattle cards to the market.