Great Western Trail + Rails to the North Expansion- PPI Series

 

Great Western Trail + Rails of the North Expansion

PINK POST-IT Series (games from my shelf of shame)

 

About game:

Great Western Trail (and the expansion, Rails of the North, which I'll also be discussing here) is a game by Alexander Pfister.  In it, you are a running a cattle ranch and transporting your "goods" to Kansas City.  From there, the cattle will be loaded on a train and delivered throughout the United States (and in the expansion, Canada).  The main mechanism is deck building, as the deck is filled with a wide selection of cattle worth varying amounts.  But, a bit of the game is rather like worker placement games, as your rancher stops in various locations along the trail and takes actions on upgrade-able building tiles.  There are several different strategies to take in this game, so no two games will look alike.

Review:

We played the base game in early February, and WOO YEE Doggies!!  It was hard.  I watched videos and read the rule book back in February.  Finally, I decided I would learn better by just plopping this game down on the table and giving it a try.  It was a long process to learn and get going, but once we were about halfway through the game, it was no problem.  

 

Fast forward to the end of March- I thought we would be able to just pull it out and play.  Wrong.  It was easier to remember, as the iconography made sense now, but it was a long play because we had to look up all the rules again.  But!  Once we got back into it, it was so much fun and I remembered why this game stuck with me as a really enjoyable experience. 

 

Now, we add in the ACTUAL PPI game, which is the expansion, Rails of the North.  The box is smaller and the rulebook was not as scary as the original rule book.  I thought the expansion integrated REALLY easily into the base game.  Score: A/A (base game/expansion)

Deep Thoughts:

As promised, deep thoughts are at the END of the post.  

This one might be one of Tim's favorites.  He hasn't committed to that statement yet (I just asked and he said, "I dunno. They are all fun!"), but he actually asked to play this game this weekend.  Tim had complicated eye surgery on the 18th, and requested easy games because he had a headache almost every day.  He had positioning requirements that meant he had to hang off the bed and play with me sitting on the floor.  The first couple of games, he fell asleep during the game a couple of times and we had to take a little break.  It was a really rough week for him.

I knew he was feeling a lot better this weekend when he suggested playing Great Western Trail.  That game is about the top of the complexity level of games we have played so far. It's a big game and it's a rather long game, but it goes so very fast.  There were lots of groans and laughs- and Tim beat me by 20 points both days.

Would definitely recommend this game to others!  But be prepared for a steep learning curve, referencing several how-to-play videos, and a lot of time spent looking up rules in the rule book.  Tim did mention that he thinks that this game might get old with a lot of repetition, but it's still really good!

Cocktail:

The cocktail in the photo above is NOT recommended!!  Zero stars out of infinite stars.  I bought a $4 bottle of grapefruit+lime mixer at Walmart in the clearance section.  Hmmm.... and the bottle was sticky.  Double hmmmm..... 

It was so gross.  I wasted good vodka and just dumped it all down the drain.  Yuck.  It takes a LOT for me to dump anything down the drain.  So, that definitely says something about how I felt about this cocktail.  I drank water after my sip of that vile potion for the rest of the night.  Yuck.

Be looking for more of my PPI games.  I have a large number that sit on my shelf of shame that are begging to get played!