Works well with just 2: Yes!
Solo quality: Good
Age: 12+
Playtime: 75-150 min
Complexity: 8/10
Just a few weeks ago, I wrote a flash review of the excellent second edition of Great Western Trail, the original version of which had earned first prize in my Top 10 for 2016.
Now comes a new setting with slightly modified mechanics, and I’m falling in love all over again.
This time around, you’re driving cattle in Argentina, intent on getting those cows aboard ships bound for Europe. Once again, the board depicts the land players need to traverse on their way to Buenos Aires, with buildings that offer new actions as well as some familiar ones, and farmers instead of bandits. Incidentally, players can help those farmers if they have sufficient strength (a new resource) on their cattle cards and player boards; in return, farmers can be enlisted as workers to help supply the players with grain.
Grain is also a new resource: whereas in GWT you pay money to ship cattle to faraway cities, now you need to pay grain to load them onto ships (placing one of your discs on the ship you selected). At regular intervals, groups of ships depart for Europe, carrying with them player discs they’ll drop in three major ports. From that point on, whenever you’re shipping cows, you can also perform an “extra delivery”—provided you can pay for it in grain—that reuses one of your discs now in Europe, for a juicy bonus in points or pesos.
GWT Argentina is certainly different from its older sibling, but not different enough to warrant owning both versions of the game, unless you’re a GWT maniac. But if you enjoy the original, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t like this new spin on the same robust system. (I just wish the enclosed plastic tray was usable; as it stands you can’t even keep it if you aspire to put everything back in the box at the end of the game.)
The solo module introduces Pedro, a bot with its own cards and little player board who plays against you. Pedro can operate according to three different difficulty settings; either way, you'll soon learn to hate him (in a good way!).
After a few plays, I think Argentina is superior to the classic version, but I’m not ready to get rid of my beloved GWT just yet. What I am ready for, though, is the final title in the trilogy, coming out sometime in 2023—Great Western Trail: New Zealand.
Can’t wait to start herding those wild kiwis. Hee haw!
Most easily forgotten rule: If you have exhaustion cards in your hand when you reach Buenos Aires, you remove them entirely from your deck—you don’t just discard them.
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