Back in 2018 after I was dipping my toes into the trendy board recreation pool, primarily taking part in lighter video games similar to Splendor and King of Tokyo, a bit of recreation known as Great Western Trail melted my mind in the easiest way doable. I had to purchase it. I had to determine it out. I finally made some board recreation associates and we performed it each week for just a few months. Spoiler alert, in 2022, I nonetheless have not figured it out, however I am unable to assist however find it irresistible a lot.

I used to be stoked to obtain an advance copy of Great Western Trail: Argentina, a standalone sequel to Great Western Trail (Second Edition) from Alexander Pfister and eggertspiele, which is releasing at SPIEL ’22. With a handful of video games below my belt, I’m desperate to share what it is all about and why I feel it is price testing whether or not you are already a Great Western Trail fan or not.

Great Western Trail: Argentina is a medium-heavy eurogame that units you in Argentina on the finish of the nineteenth century, the place you and as much as three different gamers tackle the position of estancia (cattle ranch) house owners within the countless plains of the Pampas, the place you will need to ship your cattle to Buenos Aires to be shipped overseas. As you make your means up the trail to Buenos Aires, you may preserve your cattle herds, use useful buildings, and earn cash to rent various kinds of staff to turn out to be extra environment friendly.

Each participant begins the sport with a herd deck of cattle playing cards and a participant board with a number of picket discs overlaying talents you’ll be able to unlock all through the sport. In addition, you may have 10 non-public constructing tiles which you’ll construct on the trail to Buenos Aires through the recreation. The constructing tiles are double-sided and you’ll play with them on their A aspect, B aspect, or a random combine, just like Great Western Trail. Whatever you resolve applies to all gamers, so every constructing is on the identical aspect for every participant.

Private buildings and participant board

Cattle playing cards in your starter herd deck

The recreation board seems very busy-looking upon first sight if you happen to’ve by no means performed Great Western Trail, however when you’ve got, you may really feel proper at house. Well, barely at house. The path path and practice path are reversed which is a visit initially for skilled Great Western Trail gamers. The Great Western Trail: Argentina board additionally has a shiny end. I’d’ve most well-liked the identical matte end they used for Great Western Trail (Second Edition), particularly since that is a part of a trilogy, however on the finish of the day, the gameplay is the place it is at, so it is a very minor criticism.

During setup, the board is populated with impartial constructing and granjero (farmer) tiles alongside the trail, station grasp tiles on the practice stations, and the job market is randomly stuffed with gaucho (herder), carpintero (carpenter), and maquinista (machinist) employee tiles. There are additionally ship tiles positioned on the aspect of the board, and three double-sided metropolis map boards for Le Havre, Rotterdam, and Liverpool deliveries.

Board setup for a 4-player recreation

Great Western Trail: Argentina is performed over a collection of turns in clockwise order till the tip of the sport is triggered. All victory factors are scored on the finish of the sport from quite a lot of parts and goals within the recreation. Then on the finish of the sport, whoever has probably the most factors wins.

On your flip, you progress your estanciero (cattle farmer) ahead quite a few areas to a different location alongside the path, noting in your very first flip of the sport, you can begin on any location tile. If a location you land on or cross has a inexperienced or black hand icon, it’s important to pay quite a few pesos to both your opponent(s) within the case of personal buildings, or on the sport board above farmer tiles. Then you carry out actions on the location you reached, and draw as much as your hand restrict. If you are not aware of Great Western Trail, it is also price mentioning that deck-building and hand administration are key to the gameplay. Throughout the sport, you’ll be able to add higher cattle playing cards to your deck on the cattle market, and there are many methods to govern your deck by biking via your deck or completely eradicating playing cards to arrange for delivering cattle to Buenos Aires.

At the start of the sport there are solely impartial buildings and farmer tiles on the board, however as the sport develops gamers might construct their very own non-public buildings increasing the rondel path. Each constructing tile usually has an choice to discard a specific sort of cattle card to realize a pair pesos (cash), along with actions similar to hiring staff, inserting non-public buildings, transferring your practice ahead, performing auxiliary actions unlocked in your participant board, or grabbing an goal card. Most of the actions and iconography are the identical as Great Western Trail, so I’ll primarily give attention to the adjustments as I delve into particulars.

Job market with anchor icons (left) & ship tiles (proper)

When you get to Buenos Aires on the finish of the trail, you ship cattle primarily based on the playing cards in your hand. Depending on how far alongside your practice has superior, there are additionally quite a few shortcuts that let you get to Buenos Aires quicker, which is a brand new idea in Great Western Trail: Argentina. When you make deliveries, you calculate the whole breeding worth of every completely different sort of cattle card in your hand, acquire the corresponding quantity of pesos from the financial institution. Then, you load the cattle you simply delivered onto one of many out there ships the place your breeding worth meets or exceeds its loading worth, and that does not have already got one among your discs.

Off to the aspect of the board you may have quite a few ship tiles with a variety of loading values from 0 to 18. Some of the ships have grain prices, and a few have fast advantages or endgame victory factors. The 0-value and 18-value ships can have any variety of discs from the identical participant, whereas most areas can solely have one disc per participant. After you ship cattle, you may choose farmer and employee tiles from the foresights space above the job market so as to add them to the job market or to the board if it is a farmer.

As you you add extra employee tiles to the job market, the job market marker will often be pushed all the way down to the subsequent row which is able to set off you to refill the cattle market, depart ships, and ultimately finish the sport. Some of the ship tiles have anchor icons with both a yellow, inexperienced, or purple background. As the job market marker drops previous an anchor icon, the corresponding ships instantly depart to ship the cattle you delivered (picket participant discs) overseas. The timing of the ship tiles departing provides a spicy timing crunch to Great Western Trail: Argentina, as gamers need to have as a lot of their discs on ship tiles earlier than they depart.

Each ship has an anchor icon akin to one among areas (quays) on the three metropolis map boards. When a specific shade anchor departs, all three ships with an identical shade depart and head to the corresponding metropolis map in accordance with the anchor shade and roman numeral. Le Havre and Liverpool have two completely different drop areas, whereas Rotterdam solely has one.

Le Havre metropolis map

After the assorted participant discs are dropped on the completely different metropolis areas, they’re out there for gamers to make additional deliveries after they arrive in Buenos Aires. I did not point out this above, however the very first step whenever you arrive in Buenos Aires is to optionally make an additional supply by transferring one among your participant discs from a quay on a metropolis board to an empty area on the identical metropolis map by spending grain and gaining the bonus that you simply cowl. These areas all have juicy bonuses — cash, victory factors, and extra. There are even goal playing cards primarily based on having your discs particularly metropolis quarters which may issue into your placement choice. It all the time seems like a race to get to one of the best metropolis bonus areas, however it’s important to have grain.

Grain is a brand new useful resource launched in Great Western Trail: Argentina, and whereas it appears minor, it really provides an entire new dimension to Great Western Trail. It’s a type of issues you’ll be able to’t ignore if you wish to achieve success within the recreation, however you’ll be able to freely resolve how robust you need your grain recreation to be. You want grain to ship to the town maps’ bonus areas, in addition to whenever you ship to majority of the ships. When you ship to the ships, you’ll be able to spend 2 pesos per grain that you do not have, however you will need to have grain to say bonus areas on the town maps.

Grain is just not simple to come back by. There are station grasp tiles and personal constructing tiles that hook you up with entry to grain, in addition to a impartial constructing tile that lets you acquire one grain per farmer that you’ve employed in your participant board. By default, you begin with one farmer printed in your participant board, and you’ll rent extra farmers through a brand new “assist granjero(s)” motion, and by paying the hiring price on the corresponding spot of your participant board. Hiring farmers is essential to producing grain. Thankfully, Great Western Trail: Argentina presents gamers loads of completely different choices for crafting quite a lot of methods. Thus, whereas it is useful to create a wholesome grain engine, you’ll be able to give attention to farmers and grain as a lot or as little as you need.

Orange granjero/farmer tiles

Farmers are a brand new, fourth sort of employee out there in Great Western Trail: Argentina. At the start of the sport, 5 farmer tiles are randomly chosen and positioned on the suitable areas on the sport board, just like the hazard and teepee/outlaw tiles in Great Western Trail. The farmer tiles are double-sided. One aspect exhibits the required energy to assist them with a background shade of inexperienced, blue, orange, or yellow, whereas the opposite aspect is used whenever you rent them and place them in your participant board.

Cattle card with a breeding worth of just one, however energy of seven!

When you are taking an motion to assist a number of granjeros/farmers, you want a complete energy that meets or exceeds the mixed required energy. You decide your whole energy by including the energy icons in your participant board from employee tiles and clearing disc areas. Additionally, you might reveal and discard as much as 4 cattle playing cards out of your hand so as to add their energy to your whole energy. However, utilizing your cattle for energy exhausts them so it’s important to take 1 or 2 exhaustion playing cards into your discard pile for utilizing 1 to 2, or 3 to 4 cattle playing cards, respectively.

Exhaustion playing cards are one other new ingredient in Great Western Trail: Argentina. They are deck cloggers and every one is minus 2 factors on the finish of the sport. There are methods to cull them just like cattle playing cards, however you can even do away with them when you’ve got any in your hand whenever you make a supply in Buenos Aires.

After taking part in Great Western Trail: Argentina 5 instances, I simply need to play it extra. It seems like Great Western Trail, which I already adore, but it surely additionally feels new and really refreshing on account of the entire adjustments. There’s a lot recreation to be explored right here. In the previous, you had methods primarily based on the three various kinds of staff. Now you may have a 4th sort of employee, a further useful resource to handle, ship tiles, shortcuts for delivering, and metropolis maps. These new components solely add a small quantity of latest guidelines in comparison with their influence on making the sport really feel completely different and attention-grabbing.

The replay worth is off the charts when you think about randomly inserting the impartial buildings, double-sided non-public buildings and metropolis map boards, along with quite a lot of station grasp tiles which can be positioned to start with of the sport. Randomizing the location of the impartial buildings alone presents an entire completely different problem from recreation to recreation.

There’s extra to steadiness and take into consideration, and like many nice video games, it has nice participant interplay so your opponents’ choices will typically influence your choices. You may use the identical constructing tile setup for a number of video games and play with completely different gamers and it will not really feel the identical. Then, after all, relying on how deep you go along with farmers, or herders/cowboys, or carpenters/builders, or machinists/engineers, you’ll be able to push and pull so many various methods out of this recreation. I discover it fairly magical.

While I have never had an opportunity to take a look at the solo mode but for Great Western Trail: Argentina, I’m blissful that they’ve included one as they did for Great Western Trail (Second Edition). I get pleasure from taking part in with 3 gamers most, however I feel it is superior in any respect participant counts, other than solo, which I am unable to converse to. At 2 gamers, it felt particularly tense from the timing of creating deliveries and the ships departing, and in addition performs shortly, which is one other side I discover interesting in Great Western Trail. It actually strikes when gamers know what they’re doing. With skilled gamers, you’ll be able to play 3 and 4-player video games in about 2 hours or much less, and a 2-player recreation in 60-75 minutes.

If you have by no means performed Great Western Trail, you is likely to be higher off beginning with Great Western Trail (Second Edition), until you are used to taking part in heavier video games; Argentina boosts the complexity stage a tad in comparison with Great Western Trail (Second Edition). If you already get pleasure from Great Western Trail, then Great Western Trail: Argentina is unquestionably price testing. If you are on my stage, then it is a no-brainer. After taking part in Great Western Trail: Argentina, I can not wait to see what Mr. Pfister cooks up for us with Great Western Trail: New Zealand, which is focused to debut in 2023.