Pegasus Spiele Great Western Trail *Empfohlen Kennerspiel 2017* Board Game for 2-4 Players, Ages 12+

I believe I must have ordered the German addition instead of the American one. Just need the directions for the American one.

I really enjoy this game. It has defence and offence attributes to frustrate your opponent. The manual language was not in English as described. I had to search online, and print out my own. It take about 4 times playing through to fully understand the mechanics of this game. It is very fun game, and gives you several options to choose how you want to build your herd of cattle and add bonus poits getting them to market. Each game plays out differently from the last, however there are ways to give you an advantage over newer players. I don't recommend for kids under 14, unless they are really into board games. Game time can be up to 2 hours.

The previous reviewer is right. I was sent the German version too as opposed to it being advertised in both languages. However, if you have had a hard time finding it like I did here in the States, you can just download the English instructions from the manufacturer's website. The Board, cards and game tokens don't matter what language they are in because they all use symbols. Some people I'm sure still won't like not having the back of the box in English, or having an original English instruction booklet. For me, it is ok.

El producto llego en tiempo record, sin embargo, la caja llegó en malas condiciones, al parecer un golpe la rompió.

Our game came in May and it’s the English version both the box and game instructions. It’s in perfect condition. Such a fun game for the family! Fairly quick shipping as well.

Great Game!IMPORTANT NOTE: Instruction manual is in GERMAN.I was able to purchase the ENGLISH instruction manual by contacting the publisher: info at eggertspiele dot com

Yes, came relatively quickly, but it was the German version and no English instructions.

A great game which has received great reviews I've the last year. Highly recommended

You’d be forgiven for thinking that a game set in the old west would involve shoot-outs, poker, prospecting and bounty hunters. Well, not this time! While technically we do see ourselves placed into the boots of a cowboy, this is meant in the most literal sense of the term as Great Western Trail is all about marching cows across America. Yes. Cows.The primary aim of the game is to march yourself and your herd from Texas to Kansas City where you will deposit your cattle onto a train bound for other cities. You herd is made up of cards representing different breeds of cows. Each breed has a different value. As you move across the board you have the ability to buy and sell cows from the cattle market. This market is represented by a shared pool of available cows.This is where we start getting into the deck building and hand management aspects of GWT. You would assume that replacing all of those lowly 1 cost cows with 4 cost cows is going to net you more money when you eventually sell them. Wrong! Only one of each breed can be sold at Kansas City. Any duplicates are worthless. This means you need to carefully manage your hand of cows as progress along the trail.So there you have it. It’s a glorified deck-building game about cows.Well…no. The cows and the deck building is only one method of scoring victory points. There are buildings you can build along the trail that can generate you money or hinder your opponents. You can also focus on improving your railroad so that your cows reach destinations further afield (and thus net you more points).Then there are the people you can hire along the way. All three varieties of them. Cowboys, Workers, and Engineers. Each of these specialises in helping you progress in whichever path you decide to take. Cowboys let you get access to the higher quality cows at a cheaper price. Workers open up the more advanced building options while Engineers assist you in moving your train further on down the line.It’s not all plain sailing in the old west either. There’s a multitude of hazards along your route that come in the forms of drought, landslides, and floods. Sometimes you may even be steered off your route and be forced to trade with Indians to progress further.You can start to see now that there’s a lot going on in this game. Yet, each turn all you do is move your cowboy, perform the action(s) of the building you end up on and draw cards back up to your hand limit. Other than a few more actions once you reach Kansas City, that’s it!It’s in this respect that I find Great Western Trail similar to games like Terraforming Mars or even The Castles of Burgundy. Initially, they look overly complex and technical, yet the simplicity of the steps you perform on your turn makes the game far easier to play and understand than it would first seem.This, along with the fantastic iconography present on the boards (that you will have memorised within 2 or 3 turns) means you won’t find yourself diving for the rulebook after every action.Even with the limited options you have each turn, there’s no shortage of strategy to be found here. There are multiple paths that can be taken along the route, personal buildings that can grant you more actions and also hinder your opponents as well as upgrades available to you via your player board in the form of increases to hand limit and movement range.As with the majority of “Euro” games, all of these different features award victory points in varying amounts at the end of the game. In fact, there are 11 different methods of scoring that need to be taken into account. Thankfully, at no point in the game do you ever feel overwhelmed with trying to keep track of what you’re scoring.Thematics are never the strongest point of any Euro game, yet in GWT they do work quite well. Each time you deliver your cattle to Kansas and start the journey over again, you do get the sense that over the last year the once desolate journey is slowly becoming more and more built-up. Hazards have been cleared away making room for more buildings to be developed, your cowboy is becoming more skilled at what they do and your railroad infrastructure is able to carry your cows further than ever. There really is a sense of development which creates quite the engrossing experience.The game tends to last between 1-2 hours depending on the number of players. Once everyone is used to the rules and has learnt the symbols, play starts to progress a lot faster.Each game I’ve played has felt like if I’d just had 1 or two more turns I’d have been perfectly set up. However, this isn’t a detriment to the game as generall this means that it’s balanced very well. Ending the game before players are fully set up allows for improvement in your technique as well as the ability to force the game to end before your opponents catch up.For the first few games, you’ll be playing with 7 neutral buildings placed in set locations throughout the trail along with 10 personal buildings. After you are used to the game, the neutral buildings locations can vary and the personal buildings can be switched to use their alternative version. This adds a good amount of variation to the game that keeps it from getting stale.There’s no getting around the fact that there’s a lot to take in here, in terms of scope this is a huge game. Yet it manages to bring all of these parts together and offer an experience that is one of the best I’ve ever played. The gameplay is sleek, the theme solid, and it has yet to disappoint when it’s made it to the table.Highly recommended!

There are some very well written reviews here that describe how the game is played, so I won't go into the precise mechanics, because someone else has already done it better. But I'll share a few thoughts that might help someone.This is a modern 'Eurogame', which means no dice rolling, or fighting. Instead, everybody starts off the same: one cowboy, one builder, one rail engineer, and a deck of cards; the top four are drawn for a starting hand, which represents a small herd of cows being driven to market. Each player then takes it in turn to move along the trail, choosing a place to stop off which allows various actions, which could be to recruit another worker, buy more and better cows, sell some cows, haggle with the native indigenous people, clear hazards off the trail, buy additional buildings, develop railway stations, and so on. When the herd arrives at Kansas, it is sold for a price that refelects how much work has been done to improve the hand of cards, and the player starts again at the beginning of the trail with a new hand and a choice of improvement such as the ability to move more spaces along the trail, or to have an extra card in the hand.What makes the game so good, is the perfect combination of theme, speed of play, and individual satisfaction. The theme is very strong, and players will find themselves immersed in a world where every turn requires decisions to be made, whether to go the long way round and lose money negotiating hazards, or take the short cut that puts money into the pocket of a rival. Or whether to recruit more cowboys that will make buying cows easier and cheaper, or take the opportunity to put a new building on the trail. There are many different options across the whole game but each player's turn will present them with a straightforward decision, so turns are over very quickly and play comes around again soon. A player can have a clear strategy in mind, but then find the best option is to switch to a different plan, and maybe change again later.This game is not difficult to play, but there is a definite learning curve for beginners. There are quite a few important ideas that need to be understood before you can start playing, so you need to have a group of players who enjoy playing games and don't mind spending ten minutes getting their head around it before starting. For that reason this probably isn't a gateway game. The first time will take a bit longer, up to two hours, but when everyone knows the mechanics it speeds up and 90 minutes is typical. The game creates interest, delivers more, and then sustains through to the end, by which time most players have built a game engine they are proud of, and are enjoying developing and running. The winner will be the one who has got a bit further along than the others, but no one feels left behind, because the scoring system is hidden; you count up points to see who has won at the end, and the outcome isn't always easy to predict.If you were looking for an example of a board game to show just how much better games are nowadays, compared with the overlong and tantrum inducing monsters of the past, (Monopoly, I'm looking at you), then this would be the one. Not a gateway game; start with Ticket to Ride.And don't worry if your copy is in German, it won't affect play at all. None of the components has any text, you just need to download the English version of the rules from Boardgamegeek.com. The reason you can't get it in English is it sold the entire English language print run, which probably gives you an idea of how well this game has been received.

I bought this game after watching several reviews on you tube and it being up high on the Boardgamegeek.com hot list.On the whole it’s an awesome strategy game where 2-4 players make the great western trail to Kansas City to sell cows represented by cards in your hand. Each player starts with their own deck of 14 cards containing 4 different coloured / type of cows worth 1 or 2 points each. As you move through the board you will sell these cards in your hand to make coin to try and get a unique hand of diferent cows before you get to the train station to sell them. Duplicates will not earn you any money so the idea is to land on buildings to get rid of them to draft through your deck. Your final hand will determine where you can ship the cows to allowing you to place a coloured disc off your player board thus upgrading your abilities and available options.There are so many ways to win this game and there is very little player confrontation (other than the occasional toll or buying prized cows first). The random placement of the neutral buildings and that players can add their own buildings to the board creates much replay ability. That with the multiple approaches you can take with the strategy (cowboys or labourers or engineers?! Various dual actions! Or a mix!) this is a firm favourite at my gaming table.Only downside to this edition is the rule book is in German. I found a pdf online and printed it in colour using that instead. Problem solved. Fortunately the only text in the game itself are the name of the cows on the cards which is in English. I thought I wouldn’t like the theme of selling cows but it’s actually good fun and the mechanics work very well!!!I definitely recommend this game as a mid complex strategy game where the only luck involved is in drafting the cards of cows from your hand that can be easily managed. A game normally lasts between 60-90 minutes so is much faster than some of the other big strategy games out there like Terraforming Mars. The components are of great quality (you get a little meeple train and cowboy!!) and the art is good too! The final scoring is similar to 7 wonders which is determined over about 12 diferent factors and you get a cool little pad to work it out on!Buy it now and get rustling those cows!!! :-D

Great Western Trail (GWT) ist ein unglaublich polarisierendes Spiel. Lange habe ich einen großen Bogen um darum gemacht, weil ich das Thema so uninteressant fand. GWT handelt davon als Cowboy seine Viehzucht aus Rindern so ertragreich wie möglich in Kansas City zu verkaufen und von dort aus mit dem Zug zu möglichst vielen Städten zu transportieren. Die Rinder sind unser Kartendeck (Deckbau) und bilden mit Nachziehen unsere Kartenhand. Doch nicht eine handvoll teurer Rinder bringt das meiste Geld beim Verkauf. Denn es zählt die Vielfalt an Rindern. Jede Art von Rind wird nur einmal gewertet. Aber bis nach Kansas erwartet uns ein beschwerlicher Weg auf dem wir auf Gefahren wie Dürre, Überschwemmung, Steinschlag und Indianer achten müssen. Diese können uns das hart verdiente Geld kosten. Auf dem Weg macht man Halt in neutralen Gebäuden, um Aktionen auszuführen, wie eigene Gebäude zu errichten, Arbeiter anzuheuern, unsere Zuglinie auszubauen uvm. Das machen natürlich auch unsere Mitspieler und bauen ihre Gebäude mitten in unseren Pfad, um sich an unseren Dollars zu ergötzen. Dadurch entsteht eine schöne Spielerinteraktion und man spielt nicht nur nebeneinander her. Aber der anfänglich schnelle und einfache Weg nach Kansas wird von Runde zu Runde beschwerlicher und teurer. Der Spielplan gleicht somit einem Rondell, das man nach eigenem Wunsch schneller oder langsamer durchlaufen möchte. Dabei versucht man nebenher Aufträge zu erledigen und am Spielende die meisten Siegpunkte zu haben.FAZIT:Das Spiel hat uns thematisch wie auch spielerisch von Anfang bis Ende voll überzeugt. Die anfängliche Skepsis gegenüber dem "langweilig wirkenden" Thema ist schnell verflogen. Man muss auch betonen, dass das Thema sehr realitätsnah ist, denn das übliche Cowboy-Thema das uns aufgetischt wird mit Schießereien, Schlägereien und wilden Kerlen im Saloon, lässt einen vergessen womit viele Cowboys ihr Geld verdienten und noch heute verdienen. Die Regeln sind keineswegs einfach zu lesen oder zu verstehen. Auch wenn das Spiel an sich sehr einfach zu spielen ist. Die einzelnen Mikro-Regeln machen am Ende den Unterschied, ob man das Spiel richtig oder falsch spielt. Deshalb sollte man sich seine Zeit nehmen und die Anleitung in Ruhe durchstudieren. Beim Spielen dann noch die eine oder andere Symbolik nachgeschlagen, lässt sich GWT sehr flüssig spielen. In unserer Erstpartie haben zu viert etwa 3,5 Std mit Regelerklärung und Nachschlagen gebraucht. Ich würde das Spiel keiner reinen Anfängergruppe empfehlen, es sollte schon einer dabei sein, der das Spiel verstanden und leiten kann. GWT ist ein Brettspiel mit überzeugendem Thema, perfekt verzahnten Mechanismen und durch doppelseitige Plättchen und zufälligem Spielaufbau in seiner Varianz und Wiederspielbarkeit gefühlt unbegrenzt. Für den Preis den man hier zahlt erhält man durchschnittliches Material, aber jede Menge Spiel! Um es nun abschließend zu bewerten, "eines der besten Eurogames die ich je gespielt habe".

Great mix of hand manipulation, card collection and worker placement! Many ways to score points and many ways to win. complex to start but easier as you learn where the rule book doesn't need to be glued to your hand! great fun steering cattle!