Great Western Trail

Welcome to Replayable, where we go to depth on our favorite tabletop games that keep us coming back again and again. I'm Start Player Todd, and today I'm joined by Dave and Paul. For our ninth episode, we gather our herds and hit the Great Western Trail. It is designed by Alexander Pfister and published by Egertspiele. The first version was released in 2016 with artwork by Andreas Rush. The second edition was published in 2021 with artwork by Chris Williams.

How are you two city slickers feeling today? Let's ride. Yippee-ki-yay! Let's go! In Great Western Trail, players are ranchers delivering their herds of cattle from Texas to the rail yards in Kansas City. Along the way, you will construct buildings to help you during your trip and buy more valuable cattle. You will also hire capable assistants, cowboys to improve your herd, craftsmen to aid with construction and engineers to speed you along the railroad line.

Balance all of these factors well and win. Where did the magic come from in this game? What makes this one so enjoyable for us? Paul? That's a big question.

I think the magic that I discovered was after a few plays when I realized that instead of this gargantuan game of throw all the mechanics you can and try to confuse players and have them build their own game out of it, it's actually a tightly interwoven dance of mechanisms that if you remove any part, it would make the whole thing much worse. I think it's a beautiful design. That's actually really close to what I was thinking as an answer to that.

I don't want to jump the gun too much, but it's the path dependency that I really like, but not just that there are certain strategy avenues that you're going to go on, but you can't just jump on one of those and put your head down and 100% go in that direction. You have to blend all three to some extent. Maybe I'm wrong on that. Maybe that's why I don't win as much. You can't just do engineers and that's it. You still are going to have to build a couple of buildings.

You still might have to buy a couple of cows. The interplay of those three strategies, it's not multiplayer solitaire. Once I choose I'm going cows, I can ignore what you guys are doing. There's still tons of interplay while still having that path dependency that I really like. Yeah. You mentioned one of those three strategies, so let's touch on them real quick. There's the idea of going builders.

If you're going to go builders, you're going to be putting your buildings out there and then upgrading them to get all the points of the higher end buildings. You got to do something else. You can go cowboys, which allow you to buy more cows or give you a discount on the higher value cows, the more cowboys you have. Then you usually have to do one other thing. Then engineers, at least in the base game, it seems like going engineers, it doesn't matter what you build alongside of them.

It's a really hard win. I almost feel like engineers is a lesser strategy or less viable strategy. It's really two, although you can then decide how much more engineers you want to throw in as a secondary option to get you down the track. We can talk about what that means later. What are your thoughts on the strategy? Are they equal or are they unbalanced? I don't agree about the strategies you've picked out. I think cowboys, that's all you have to do.

If you envision the ideal trail that a player would take if they had six cowboys, they would just want infinite move so they could go straight to the cattle market, buy as much as they possibly could, spend all their money, and then go straight to Kansas City and deliver to New York. It would just be a two-stop trail every time through. I think you could easily win the game that way. The cowboy strategy is extremely straightforward. I think that's why most players gravitate towards it.

I do agree that the builder strategy and the engineer strategy have a lot more going on. The engineer strategy is counterintuitive because you don't want to deliver to Kansas City as the engineer. Your ideal trail is stopping several times. You're stopping at the actions to move your engine. You are probably, as you move that engine, buying station master tiles, which can give you points.

You want to also stop at the places on the trails that increase the points you get from your station master tile. The engineer is the antithesis of the cowboy. He's trying to make as few deliveries as possible. I think the builder strategy is the strongest, but it's also the most difficult because as a builder, you're trying to build this chain of buildings where in a single turn, you can take actions on two or three of them or even four before you have to pass the turn again.

For seeing where other people are going to put buildings and how you're going to be moving through the trail at the very end of the game is something that takes dozens and dozens of plays to do well. Also I think there's a fourth strategy. I think the fourth strategy is just chasing points instead of focusing on maximizing a single actions efficiency, which is what we're talking about with the first three strategies, right?

Maximizing the efficiency of the cattle market or the build or the engine moves. Instead of doing that, you could just focus on chasing points and take objective cards, station master tiles and hazards. And I think you can still win, especially in a four player game. I agree with engineers, you want to deliver as infrequently as possible, but even on cowboys, you do want to be able to earn points.

So if you're not using engineer as your secondary emphasis, then sure, you're going to be delivering herds and getting farther down, but you're going to pay so much in the track costs between your delivery point and your herd value, or excuse me, your delivery point and which is determined by herd value and where your engine is, that you're not going to have enough money to be hiring a couple of cowboys to make it cheaper or to buy those cattle. So it's not exclusively cowboys.

I don't think there's any strategy that you can just do just the one thing and expect to win. At least that hasn't been the case in our games. Yeah, I think if the other players are doing their jobs, they're going to get in the way of the herder. It's making that track longer where they just want to hit KC over and over and over.

Well, we're going to drop some buildings and taxi along the way so you can't afford your cows and it takes you four turns to get to Kansas City instead of the two that you want to do. That's very important.

Yeah. Let's take another look at it because there's an underlying implication here that I don't think we've addressed and that is the randomized position of the starting buildings because some of these strategies get easier if the key building you need, like the cattle market, is closer to the start of the trail when you still have all the money you have from your last delivery and can be harder if it's at the end of the trail and as far as the variable

buildings you don't have the personal cattle market that you're able to play. So do you want to talk about how the randomized nature of the buildings have an effect on the strategies that can be effective? Oh, for sure. And it also even affects the speed of the game.

Like if the higher workers building is in slot A first stop, I think the game's going to be a lot faster because people are going to have an easier time hiring workers and making their actions more efficient and just getting higher scores overall in a faster time versus if that higher workers building is the very last stop on the trail, it's going to be extremely difficult to build up your employee base and take those stronger actions. And game speed is going to favor one strategy over another.

When we were talking about like the engineer strategy, I feel like the points top out on that strategy. I'm not sure what it is, but engineer strategy is going to score you between X and Y points. And I've done that before. Like great, I hit like a very good engineer strategy point. Oh, but the cowboy guy got two extra deliveries to KC, so got more points than I got.

So doing the engineer, it's nice if you can control it or at least see in that starting setup that it's going to be a shorter game. But engineer is not as viable, I think, in a longer game because you're not making as many deliveries and everybody else is just delivering over and over. Good point. Right. What were some of your key learning moments? How would you say that your understanding of the game has progressed and what things have stood out and improved your game along the way?

Dave, why don't you kick us off? So I definitely did have some key learning points here. Now, I don't know if you guys remember as much, but this is one of those games that the first two or three times we played, I didn't think I liked it. And most of it, I think, is just I couldn't see the deeper layers in the game. It felt like a game that had a lot going on and I wasn't seeing the payoff yet.

But it was a game where I trusted you guys, where you guys said, no, this is great, let's keep playing. And then after three plays or so, I really started to see the payoff. This game is a lot of work and we played a lot of games that are a ton of work and the payoff isn't there. So once I started to see how satisfying it is to pull off a strategy, how hotly contested certain things are, then it really started to blossom as a game that I wanted to play over and over again.

Seeing those the deeper layers of the onion as far as the complexity and the satisfaction in the game was definitely a light bulb point in the game for me. Paul, what would you have? Well, to tie back to the previous question about building variability, one of the things that greatly improved how I play a builder strategy is focusing on building 10. And whether it's A or B doesn't really matter. However, if it's A or B, that determines what else the builder should be doing.

So as a builder, as soon as you get, let's say your third construction or building worker, I think the next step is to figure out how to get that 10 building out as soon as possible. And along the way, if it's the 10 building that gives you max certs, or if it's the 10 building that moves your train and gives you a bunch of money, you need to plan out what that secondary thing you're going to be doing is. Like with the cert building, collect some cows so you can eventually deliver to New York.

With the train building, maybe hire some engineers or stop at some other places to make sure you can take advantage of station master tiles and possibly even ring the bell, as they say, when you make it all the way around the track. You know, thinking back to when we really started playing, I think what made me turn the corner on this game was finding Scott Sechente's video commentary of the 2018 World Board Game Championships. He put that on YouTube.

He linked it on Board Game Geek, and watching that, I just I learned so much from their commentary, far more than I could have from just watching the gameplay. Things like how unbelievably important it is to make money early. Things like how important and nuanced building placement is, especially taking risk spaces. And then just a timing and tempo game, especially only stopping at the highest value locations.

I think when we first started playing this game, it would take a lot longer because we would make many, many stops along the trail versus recognizing, hey, I only really want to stop at these two or three buildings and then start back at the beginning of the trail again so I can do it all over. Well, that leads right into Todd, one of your key learning moments, cutthroat taxation. What do you got about that? You know, Paul was talking about key placement of buildings.

And I remember when we started out, we were playing pretty, pretty kind to each other. And then I forget which play number it was. Paul goes to the building space right off the get go and he plants a taxation building early on the track that we're all going to end up hitting. And it just started stalling our strategies before they ever got started. And so the natural response was, well, fine, you're going to do that.

I'm either going to tax the other branch if it's a path that branched or I'm going to put my taxation building right behind yours and then populate the other branch with a bunch of hazards so that people are forced to go this way. So at least I go tax neutral. It was vicious. It was something we had to accommodate for. And then it became amazing because it was like, OK, this is just one more thing that we're going to have to do or at least take into consideration if we're going to be successful.

But if that hiring tile or the cattle market tile is the first random tile, you can't get a taxation building in between the start point and that first tile. So there are just so many different ways that this game develops. It's fantastic. Yeah. How many times have I come into the cowboy spot where I can buy some cows and I just paid so much taxation to get there? I'm a dollar short or whatever it is. And that can get so frustrating.

Or like we were talking about going with the engineering strategy where I'm just moving my choo-choo as quickly as I can while you guys are taxing me, but I'm not taxing you because I'm not making a lot of buildings. That starts to get tough. And then you get into a position where I need a couple of coins to move my train or to exchange my cow cards or whatever I'm trying to do.

And not being a part of that taxation game, it's just more money you got to pay and you're just fueling the other people's engines. Again, the interplay of the strategies. I love it. It really is an economic game. And that's why stopping at Kansas City with your herd to collect extra money is so important early game. I think the designer recognized that and that's why the second edition lowered the payout for the Kansas City delivery. Instead of collecting six extra dollars, you only get four.

Yeah, to the detriment of the game in my opinion. But hey, I'm looking forward to that discussion later here. What do you say, Paul? You disagree? Yeah, I think it's a great correction to the game. Okay. We'll get there. We'll get there. You know, the other thing that really kind of blew my mind as a strategy that could be exploited is the idea of straddling the hiring bonuses.

Each of the three types of assistance that you can purchase will offer bonuses at some point along the way, especially the builder, which allows you to build buildings for the cost of only $1 per builder point that's used as opposed to two. So it has to cost. And then the engineer has incremental bonuses along the way. You can hire somebody to cross that threshold and receive the bonus.

But then if you move your train along and pull into a station and you put one of your workers into the station as a station master, you can then recapture that bonus a second time the next time you hire for that spot. And it is a great little mechanism that's just waiting to be exploited. And when we started doing that and some of our plays, and again, particularly for the builder strategy, since it halves the cost of the buildings that you're placing, it turns out to be super powerful.

And it was another one of those moments when my mind just woke up to additional possibilities that needed to be considered. Well, that sort of interplay, my provocative statement that I was going to make at the beginning of the podcast here is, are we sure this game is not Odin's Ravens, Cartagena, and Dominion standing on each other's shoulders wearing a trench coat?

And with those three path dependencies, that am I playing just an Odin's Ravens game where I'm trying to get in the way of your Rondel, which we haven't even mentioned yet, or make your Rondel longer or Cartagena by jumping over each other's trains as we go down the bank. But it is that interplay between those strategies that as you put buildings on the board, I think a great design point in this game is that I don't get much when I land on your building.

I can take that default gear action, but it's not like Kayliss where you put a building down and I go get something good from it and you get a little scratch from it as well. When you drop a building down, you're just nothing but in my way and I got to find a way to get around it because now it's six jumps to get to my next good building. So I'm going to have to find a building in between, a building that's going to move me along and that's where I think it takes all of those elements.

And I don't think we talked about the mechanics yet, but the track movement mechanic, the hand management mechanic, it expands on those mechanics so well by how they interact with the other mechanisms in the game. I agree. Me too. Let's talk about track movement versus rondel. So I've heard it called a rondel and it is a category that can be applied to games on board Game Geek, but it's not applied to this one. So is there really a difference between track movement and a rondel?

You mean moving along the trail? Correct. Yeah, I think the only reason it's not a rondel is because there are forks in the trail. Good point. Good point. But otherwise, I mean, it is a rondel because you're just making a circle. Yeah. So it's not going to move forward. I agree. Well, I'll also say that when I think about rondel games, I think about Matt Gertz's games, right? We're talking NTK, we're talking about Imperial and there the rondel is a closed system, right?

The actions that you can take don't change and you are going around and selecting them and you can pay for extra movement, whatever. But what's interesting about Great Western Trail, if we say it's a rondel of the sort that at least has branching paths, it's changeable. It's malleable. You're getting actions to the board by building. In a way, it's like a variable rondel, which is probably why it's more path movement instead of getting the actual rondel classification.

It is also an interesting aspect of the game, something that we don't see again, or at least a creative take on it until maybe Woodcraft. I feel like rondel is kind of popular right now. I feel like there's a few games that I played with rondels and Woodcraft is just one more of them, although I can't think of any off the top of my head. But in the last year, it feels like people are excited about rondels.

Well, Pfister's made several games with this trail-like only move forward type of action selection. Yeah, that's true. What about the other mechanisms? If you look at the other mechanisms, it says set collection. I don't get it. That's why I wanted to bring them up. How is this a set collection? It's more like runs if we're talking about rummy as opposed to sets. You're not wanting to collect cows that are all the same value. In fact, a set of cows here is going to be unique values. Right.

Sets are bad. For the delivery, there's also the bandits, formerly known as TPs, and the hazards and objective cards force you to collect sets of those. Oh, okay. Yeah, I didn't think about that. That's a good point. That is a good point. But usually going to KC, sets are bad for you. I just think of that as just hand management. I want unique cards. It doesn't have to be a run. It doesn't have to be a set. I just want them to be unique from each other. So to me, that's just hand management.

I didn't really see the set collection. But the end game cards, that's a good point, Paul. I see that. Yeah, I agree. In fact, that probably is what it meant. And then ownership, I'm assuming that that's just the building portion of it. Yeah, I think that's where I own a section of the commonly shared board that you can use, or it gets in your way, or whatever it is. When I looked at other games that use that mechanism ownership, that's the way I understood it. So it means the private buildings?

Yeah. That's interesting, because I just looked it up. And according to the description, it's players own entities and perform actions for those entities. So check, check, or collect benefits if others use them. Well, that one doesn't really apply. But no, not at all. Well, I mean, you collect taxes, I guess, when you pass over it. The green and black hands. Yeah. Is this an engine builder? Kind of.

Because of those three major actions, the cattle market, the building action, and the engine movement action, you have to create an engine of employees to be able to take those. And then also, if you're the builder, you need to be very deliberate in your building placement to chain actions. Right. Right. I don't think it's possible to play a game and not build at least one or two buildings. It would be foolish. Yeah, it would be foolish. Right. And buy at least one or two cows.

That's exactly what I'm saying is you can't just put your head down and go engineer or put your head down and go cows. That you need buildings to support those. And when you're engineer, I need to take some of your cowboy workers and dump them into train depots along the way. Things like that. So very true.

Yes. I'm definitely going to no matter what strategy I'm doing, like I might not even know what strategy I'm doing until a turn or two into the game, we'll see how it develops, you know, how the workers come out, which buildings I'm able to get in what location. I might have a general idea based on that variable setup that we talked about. But in the beginning of the game, I might be just be doing my GE before I get into my major requirements.

Yeah, I mean, that worker row, the worker market, it can have a huge determination on how everybody plays and not just which workers come out, but even what the price of the different workers are. Because there's a row where they each cost nine and then a row where they each cost five. That is a huge difference. It's huge.

And I understand what you're saying, Dave, about my strategy may be on hold, but I think when we've seen the most successful play, it's when you at least have an idea of where you're going to try to go based on that randomly determined start, where the buildings are, the first starting buildings, and then what your selection is.

Like if you decide, okay, based on where I'm going to go in turn order, I'm going to be able to get, let's say cowboys because builders are going to go fast, then it's like, okay, now I need to look and does it make sense? Do I have my private cattle market tile? And if I do, I need to get that earlier on the trail. So you have some milestone that you're going to be able to execute upon. Then you just start sticking to it.

And I liked your reference to feast for Odin because when I play that game, and I'm talking about feast for Odin now, I try to do too much. Like I haven't yet figured out how to edit my wants to be able to play that one effectively. And I think that was a key learning step to Great Western Trail was understanding, like Paul said, I only want to hit three or four buildings, if that along the trail. And otherwise, I'm just going to try to do this over and over again, as fast as I can.

Well, and with that, I agree. We're going to evaluate the setup and decide what path you want to go on. But the first few turns, we have to do a little dance to decide. We all start going buildings or if we all start going cowboys, that's going to be a very different game than if you two go cowboys and I go buildings or something like that. So I'm looking to fall into the strategy that's supported by the variable setup and is something that you guys aren't doing.

So I'm not as in as much competition with it. In a three player game, we can all three pick a different strategy, but usually one's going to be a little bit weaker based on the variable setup. But you don't want to get into two of us beat each other up while the third guy runs away with it. Yeah, three player. I was going to say, so we might be might be telegraphing a little bit as to player count preferences later on.

But I agree with what you're saying, Dave, when there are three strategies and three players, everyone can play nice, nice. Moving on to the prompts. So the first one is weight and complexity on BG scale of one to five, of course, without decimals. How would you guys rate this game as far as its weight or complexity? Dave, what do you have it as? Well, this is another one that I think I've mentioned before. I think the rules overhead is not bad.

Like that might sit it at a three or something like that. But because I play with you guys, to me, it feels like a five. This is a hard fought game that I feel like it's tooth and claw like the whole way there. So I put the complexity at a four because the rules are fine. I got the rules down every time we play no big deal.

But having that strategy and then constantly juking left and right because of what you guys are throwing in front of me and trying to control the speed of the game and all of that kind of stuff, that makes it a very heavier and more complex game in my eyes. So I'm going to put it at a four. Yeah, I agree with that. For me, there are so many things to balance.

And if you do it right and you're chaining your combos and your buildings, it's pure magic, but it takes a while to really understand how to do that. And perhaps if your group isn't pushing themselves as fast or as hard to learn those things like the straddling the hiring bonus line and being able to take advantage of that multiple times, or if you're not being as aggressive with your taxation buildings, it could be a lighter game. But I agree for me, this one's a four. Paul, would you have?

Yeah, you guys took all the words out of my mouth. Well, then how about you lead us off on strategy? Same scale one to five. Okay, I rate this a four in strategy. I think hiring two of each worker type would be a disaster. Also, building your building in a suboptimal place. I mean, we've done this before. You're just kicking yourself for the rest of the game. You're like, why did I put that building there? Oh, again, why did I do that?

So this game to play well and to win requires a great deal of planning and foresight. So I rated a four. Yeah, and that's a four for me too. Again, the strategy might be closer to a three, the tactics closer to a five because there's usually I know what I want to do. So I've got my strategy in place, but executing it can be getting very difficult. And sometimes you just got to accept, I'm not going to get this thing that I wanted.

And so I'm going to change a little bit, kind of shift tact a little bit and then move on. So between the two of that settles in at a four for me. So far, we are all unanimous. I also have it as a four. For me, the strategy is a relatively high score because it demands that you plan from the get go based on the random building selection. And then you have to stay laser focused. It's easy to get distracted or to think, okay, well, maybe I need to do something else.

But like Paul said, if you buy two of every worker, it doesn't matter how if you felt at the time that was a good idea, it ultimately is going to be a poor outcome for you just because you aren't going to be doing well enough in any one area to get to where the points start pouring in. I think in order to understand that and plan for that strategy and stay focused, you have to have a broad understanding of the game in general. And that makes it a four.

How much do you think luck plays a factor in this game and sticking to the same scale one to five? I rated a two. The deck can give you all five great cows in a single hand. It doesn't get much worse than that. But that drawing luck can be mitigated by making more stops on the trail to pitch your cards or several other things that allow you to draw extras and just plan for a delivery or even take a bad delivery sometimes. It's not the end of the game.

I also had it as a two and I totally agree with what you said about, you know, you can get a bum draw on the hand and be getting all your great cows. But then it even goes beyond that pulling the workers out of the bag after you deliver to Kansas City. It's like if you're trying to do cowboys and people just keep pulling engineers, your strategy is going to suffer and you'll invest in your auxiliary strategy until you get those opportunities. But then there's the whole idea of the hazard.

So if you have one of those risk action spaces and it's in the swamps and we keep drawing swamp hazard tiles, or at least we keep placing swamp hazard tiles, now that building is lost to you. So there are some things that you just aren't going to be able to completely mitigate. So that makes luck a strength of two in my book. And for me, it's just the right amount. Yeah, because of that, I'm settling in at a two. So I'll say that upfront.

I almost want to go three though, because I feel like there's times where my hand is junk and I've mitigated it four times throughout the route and I get to the end and I'm still holding junk. And probably maybe that's because I built my deck like junk. But the reason that I would never put this at a three though is because I think at the end of the day, the person who won is the person who played the better game.

I don't think we've ever got to the end and said, you know, I won, but that's because I lucked out and I drew this card or I just happened to pull the perfect hand or you guys never got the swamp tiles to block off my route to that building I put over there. I don't think I've ever got to the end of the game and feel like luck swayed it one way or the other. I think skill is really where it settles in. So and two is a great place for a good heavy game to be.

It doesn't have to be chess with no luck at all. I'm happy with two for luck. It just gives you something to have to deal with along the way. I agree. All right. Theme. So I'm really interested to hear your guys' thoughts on how you think the theme has been applied to this game. Dave, start us off. Well, hopefully we can have some controversy here finally after just constantly agreeing on everything. Look, I enjoy the theme. I like the theme.

Actually, and there's two different themes if we talk about bandits versus teepees, but the theme, I think it's a two. This theme could be anything. We could put it in space. We could put it in trading tee. We could put it anywhere. It integrates well, but as far as just being fun, like if I'm actually taking cattle to Kansas City, I want a bunch of good cattle. I don't want one good cattle, one medium cattle, and some Jersey cows. Like the theme does not inform the mechanics at all.

Like it works well for the game, but I don't see the theme informing the mechanics or enlightening them in any way. Tell me I'm wrong. Fight me on that. All right. Well, I feel like, I mean, I don't know how the game was designed, but I feel like it started with taking a delivery along a trail and a cattle herder just fits that very snugly. And so to me, the theme around the cattle herder, the cowboys, the trail, it's solid.

The rest of the game, I don't know, it might be tacked on and it doesn't really grab me. So overall I rated it a three. All right. So I actually had it down as a four. There we go. We have three different values. I really liked the theme. It made sense to me the first time I played this, which was at Board Game GeekCon the year it got released.

And it was so novel to sit down and the idea of, okay, I'm taking this long journey with my herd and we're avoiding the hazards and yeah, there are going to be stops along the way. And I guess if there was any part that felt kind of tacked on, it's like, why would I have to build out my railroad infrastructure if I'm the cowboy that's delivering the herd? But it definitely seemed in alignment with the era that they were targeting. So I was like, okay, we'll go ahead and allow that one.

And that's why it's not a five in my book. For me, I really enjoy the theme and I think it fits well. So I had it down as a four. Nice. All right. So here we are at player count. So favorite player count. Paul, why don't you go ahead and start since I think you have the strongest opinion on it. Yeah, I don't like three player. Well, this is your favorite.

I mean, I enjoy playing TWT with three players, but to me, two and four players is a better playthrough and I think four players is the best because this is a heavy game with lots of friendly interaction. And when I say friendly, I mean, you're not forcing other players to lose things or remove things from the board like other interactive games. This is a heavy interactive Euro style game, I guess. So that's why I love it at four players. All right.

Would you have it down as favorite player count? I agree. Four players, I think, is where it shines the best. I actually haven't played it at two. I'm sure it's good. Three players is the problem, like we're saying, is everybody takes their own path and then we all hold hands off into the sunset. But the problem with that is, though, is I don't think anybody else in our game group loves this game as much as the three of us. That's our problem with that.

Though we do have a lot of four players, we make other people play it with us. This is one of those games like Dune Imperium that if the three of us are there on game night, we're going to play one of those games, if not both. Dune Imperium, Great Western Trail or double header of one or one of each. So you're getting ahead of yourself on the prompts. But you're saying we're forlorn because we both prefer those games at four but have to play them at three. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So I'll agree that four players is my favorite. I love the battle and the board becomes almost claustrophobic. And I think this is for me, this is the big difference. And if we are putting our least favorite and most favorite together in the same response, for me, two players is my least favorite. If you're saying that everybody has their own lane in three players, it's that much more so in two players, because now you have three lanes for two people.

So there's plenty of room and there's plenty of room on the board. So at least with three players, things start getting a little tighter on building placement. And then at four, it's like I said, it's cramped. So four is my favorite, two would be my least favorite, and it's still a good game at two, but three is somewhere in the middle. I like two players because the tactical elements of the game really shine through in two players.

Just it becomes more of a tempo game, like fighting over who's going to go to Kansas City first, because the first person to go to Kansas City is going to be the last person to get cheap hires at the worker hiring building. So there's far more tactical play at two players. But for me, I mean, I don't really care for the solo game at all. I just played it to learn the game and not this GWT, but GW Argentina. The solo game was a great teaching tool, but I would never play it again.

So kicking that out, three player would be my least favorite. Right. Maybe we should skip over playing time and then come back to it. So which edition of the game is the best? They did release the second edition. Ha ha ha. Right. Five years later after the first one, and it added promo tiles and exchange tokens, which were not present in the original version of the game.

It revised the artwork in a much needed way to be rid of TPs in the Indian Trader section and changed them to outlaws in the outlaws section. And then it added a one player automata that wasn't present in the original game. So Paul, you said it's a great learning mechanism in Argentina. It was also provided in Great Western Trail, the second edition of the original game. So which version do you like the best and why? I am second edition all the way.

The first few times I played it, it was very rough. I felt like I was a stranger to this game that I had once considered to be my favorite game of all time. And second edition was, it was just very difficult for me to get used to, but I now love it and prefer it because I feel strongly that it fixed all of the balance issues in the first edition.

It has some unstoppable combos that players either race for or have to fall on their sword to prevent like the double risk spaces in the swamp at the beginning of the trail. If one person gets two buildings on those, it's their game to lose. How has that changed in second edition? In the original, both swamp risk spaces give you a certificate and two bucks if you turn in a gray cow.

But in the new one, they made it the same as all the other hazard spaces, which is one gives you a certificate and two bucks for a gray cow. The other gives you a certificate for any cow card. So it's a little weaker that way. But I really enjoy the fact that Kansas City, delivering to Kansas City for negative six points only pays four now. I think when it paid six, it was almost mandatory for everybody to deliver there twice just because it was so much money.

Even your second delivery making six bucks, you could more than make up the six points you lose. At four, that's not true anymore. Your first delivery, you probably still want to go there, but second delivery, probably not because four bucks isn't potentially going to make up the six points.

There was some small changes like the position of building D. It used to be that you could put a tax building right in front of building D and there was no way anybody could get to building D unless they went over your building. Now it's been moved up. So every neutral building has a fork in the road leading up to it. So every player has an option of how to get to it. I like that the auxiliary action has been buffed up to remove cards from your deck.

Nobody ever used that to my knowledge when we played. Making hamburgers. And now, yeah, making hamburgers. Now though, if you make hamburgers, you get money for it. So it's a little better, it's a little enticing now. And I also really enjoy the initial turn order balance that they added to the game where if you're not first, second, third and fourth player, not only do they get more money, but they get to draw more cards from their deck to start their game. Interesting. How about you, Dave?

Yeah, I agree with all of those. All of those feel like very thoughtful corrections to points of the game that were feeling like Casey being six points, that was so strong that everybody had to do it. But otherwise just balancing out all of these little kind of little points in the game. And I also really like the exchange tokens that we get now. I know that was introduced in the expansion.

But again, because I'm so tired of just getting a crappy hand of cards, mitigating it all the way there and still having a bunch of jerseys in my hand. So that was a nice thing. Yeah. You know, that's one of the things I actually dislike about the second edition of the game. I felt that doing the best you can, mitigating it however you could, but you didn't need the extra mechanic of having exchange tokens, much less starting with one to try to make your hand better.

That part I'm not a real fan of. But you know, I should favor the second edition of the game because I just checked the stats. I'm undefeated at second edition. Nice. I don't know, for whatever reason, it just, it really gels with the way my brain works. And first edition was a harder puzzle. So I actually favor first edition a little bit more, but I didn't know that about the path branching and in front of the neutral building.

So I should probably give second edition a closer look and appreciate all of the things that it does differently before saying that it worsened things. There is one thing I dislike about the second edition and that is the player piece. Oh my gosh, the cowboy hats are the worst. Once you put the hat on top of it, it will always fall down. Yeah. I just 3D printed my own pieces that are the color of the other pieces. Right. You're absolutely right. The diameter of the brims is too big, too wide.

So you get like two people trying to be on the same tile and they barely fit and a third forget about it. Yeah. It's cute and I get it, but how did it make it to production? They played the game, right? They played the prototype, didn't they? The prototype, let's not have had those. I got my cowboys are constantly lying in the field with like a little straw sticking out of their mouth. Probably. I can't get them to stand up anywhere. They're just drunk every time they pull into town.

They're drunk. Let's not even get started on the insert. The second edition of the game has one of the I threw it away immediately. Yeah. All time worst inserts. You can tell that they handed it to somebody who doesn't play the game and put together an insert that mechanically fits everything, but is terrible organizationally. And so it's worthless. Drop it around back to the one we skipped over. So actual playing time, the box says 75 to 150. So an hour and 15 to two and a half hours.

How do you guys feel or have you done the data mining to know if that's an accurate assessment? I have not mined the data. I have not logged the data, but I believe that when we play quickly, it's about 30 minutes per player. But when we're, when we're trying to play perfectly air quotes, it's more like 45 minutes per player. Well, yeah, I think it's been taking us. I haven't been logging the times, but I think it's been taking us 90 to just over 90 would be my guess.

But it does it scale with player count because the game timer is based on just the workers coming out. And so three players, four players, two players, I mean, isn't Kansas City being hit more frequently in a four player? So is it 30 minutes per player? That's a good question, but the the worker market expands and contracts based on player count. I think you still get on average the same number of deliveries. Correct.

It doesn't really contract though, because you can only hire workers behind the line. It's still always marching forward. But the width of it, the number of columns in the market gets smaller. So you have four columns of workers in a four player game and then three and you only have two columns of workers in a two player game. So even though each time you go, you're putting out three workers. So you're you're racing down that track even in a two player game.

It's one of the things this game does really well is that it scales for player count pretty darn well with the exception of and remember, my problem with two player was that the board as far as the number of spaces was expansive. It would be interesting maybe to go back and say designate certain spaces as only open along the trail for three or four players. Oh, wow. I could see a two sided board, two player side and three and four player side. Right. Maybe the next GWT will have that.

Maybe third edition, right? No, I mean, I mean, whatever is coming out after Argentina. Yeah. New Zealand is next. Well, this is a good place to talk about that, right? Because you want to talk about expansions. Can we talk about Argentina here as well? I mean, it's a separate game, but we can touch upon it lightly. It may get its own pod someday. Oh, OK. Oh, we're going to be playing it some more. Yeah, I enjoy it.

The only comment I'll make is Argentina seems like a longer game, but maybe it just needs more plays. I think I've only played it once. It's a friendlier game, isn't it? Isn't it a little I don't know if I would say family friendly, but I remember it being a little we're able to not get into others way as much. We're able to kind of do our own thing a little bit more. So it's a little it feels a little more modern in that way.

And adding the shipping strategies and trying to align for when the boats depart, it gives you some extra things to do. So it can be less contentious as far as action selection, much like Rails to the North. So let's talk about it. Rails to the North originally added an expansion board as well as expansions for the player board. So there were houses, they were wooden houses, they were called branchlets that could be cleared to reveal bonuses. And it included previous promo station master tiles.

And that's where exchange tokens were originally introduced was in the first edition of Rails to the North. It since has been reissued to be compatible with the second edition of Great Western Trail. Paul, what are your thoughts on that? I know we've played that one before with Al. I felt like Rails to the North was very friendly to the builder strategy. And basically, I felt like what we determined in our several plays was everybody has to fight over builders versus the base game.

We used to think everybody has to fight over cowboys. And honestly, I think Great Western Trail is such a finely tuned masterpiece of design that I don't like adding the Rails to the North expansion to it because it takes away a lot of interaction and just makes it less contentious like we were talking about. It's interesting that you say that it enhanced the importance of builders because my opinion was that it enhanced the importance of engineers.

And it was trying to correct what to me felt like an imbalance on engineers. Because you're adding more places to deliver and more branchlets that you can open up in different ways that you can deliver, only if you move your train far enough to activate them, it really started putting more point earning if you were advancing your train, which meant you had to invest in engineers and train movement than you were previously.

But it also gave you a bunch of ways to advance your engine without hiring engineers. Yeah, that's true. So I think it's fine. I think it adds a little extra for the game. I mean, it's interesting for two or three players. But due to the added playing time that its complexity introduces, there's no way I would want to tackle it with four. Yeah. It's just it's a lot of expansions, it gives you more without really giving you more. Right, right. All right. Most recognizable comparison.

What's the highest ranking game that reminds you of Great Western Trail? And this one turned out to be difficult for me just because this game is almost unique in the way it brings its various mechanisms together. But I'm really interested to hear what you guys have. Yeah, I had a lot of trouble too. So I just had to go with another fister game, Maracaibo. Yep. It has the same trail instead of hiring workers, you're improving your ship.

And instead of collecting cows, you're building up the city. But there's a lot of similarity there. Sorry, I didn't have more. No, I mean, I actually had that one down too. You are hiring different people. The cards that you're adding, right, tend to be more diverse than the types of cows that are in Great Western Trail. Very true. The thing that I just didn't like about Maracaibo is that the first person to get to the end of the trail resets the progress for everybody.

And you all start again at the starting line for the next turn. And I love the fact that in Great Western Trail, you can go as many times as you can speed through it, or you can go as slowly as you like, but you can map out your progress. Whereas Maracaibo is just a race to do what you can. And hopefully you can do the things you want before someone else ends it for you, or you're able to end it for someone else. But every round, someone should be pushing that tempo. Dave, what do you have?

I don't have the fister experience that you guys have. I haven't played Maracaibo. I played Boon Lake. So I figured you guys would hit on those other being fister files or whatever we called that before that you guys would hit on the sim. Because I knew there would be similarities over there in those games. I think time and again, this topic is proving a lot harder than I expect. When I go into this topic thing, oh yeah, what is Great Western Trail like?

I'll narrow it down to the 10 choices that I come up with. And then I start looking over and go, I can't think of one game that's like this. I was thinking Trajan. And I'm like, no, Trajan's not like this at all. It has a Rondelle. It's not even close, as I got closer, because it had been a while since I played. So I figure I'm going to say Heaven and Ale, because it does have that Rondelle track that you move around, that kind of changes as you move around. And a game that I don't play enough.

I love that game. That felt like a sleeper. They kind of came and went pretty quickly. But I would say this is such a fun topic. But also I wouldn't say if you like Great Western Trail, you're going to love Heaven and Ale because they're not alike. But I don't know, there's some DNA in there that might be shared. That's a great pick, Dave. So what do you have for your less recognizable comparison? Wait, wait, wait. What about you, Todd? Well, I mentioned Maricaibo. I had that down as my primary.

I did have a backup of Concordia. Okay. Because it also feels similar as far as moving around the path, although you can move in more than one direction. You are building up the cards in your hand, which are going to influence your future actions. So Concordia would be my backup, since you also mentioned Maricaibo. Got it. So less recognizable comparison. Do either of you want to take a stab at this one? I'll go because I don't feel strong about my answer.

I'm going mostly based on theme and I'm going to say, well, I'm going to get entirely based on theme and I'm going to say Homesteaders because Homesteaders is an auction game. It's not a Rondell movement game, but it has a little tableau building, engine building kind of thing. Thematically, it's right in that wheelhouse. Maybe Homesteaders, this is one of the towns along the way to Kansas City. So that's the closest I could get. I like it. What did you have, Paul?

I went way back in the memory banks and pulled out Merchant of Venus. Oh, wow. Yeah. So you're following pre-drawn paths, but in Merchant of Venus, the game setup determines what the routes are going to be on those pre-drawn paths and they're going to be different every game. And then you can also upgrade or replace your ship for better carrying capacity movement or weapons if you're playing that. And then you can build factories and spaceports to enhance your deliveries. There's no points.

This is old school. So it's money you spend during the game and then money is what determines the winner as well. I like that. I went with a game that didn't get a lot of publicity, I don't think. It was another one of those new games or hot games at Board Game GeekCon. It's called Super Motherlode. I don't know if you guys have heard of this one. I've not. It's like playing Dig Dug, the board game.

So instead of adding nodes to the existing track, what you're doing is you are drilling down into this planet. It's got this 50s sci-fi. It's got that style of artwork that's been popular of late. And as you're drilling these shafts and tunnels, the players that come up behind you can leverage the work you've already done to find other veins or other artifacts that they're capturing. And as you're doing this, you're buying cards.

So the resources that you're gathering allow you to buy cards that allow you to do things better, but they're also worth points at the end, like the cows in Great Western Trail. So it was a fun game that in some ways reminded me of it, but obviously theme wise, it's completely different. What's the name again? Super Motherlode and it's M-O-T-H-E-R-L-O-A-D, not Mother Space L-O-D-E. Got it. All right. House Rules. Do you guys have any house rules that you would suggest to improve this game?

And I feel like this is almost blasphemy. Well, there is one that is widely used. Oh, let me hear it. That is bidding points for the initial player order after you see what the random setup is. So everybody sees their hand of cards. Everybody sees the market and the hazards. And then you start bidding on end game points for which place you want in turn order. So it goes even beyond seating order at the table, although of course you could get up and reseat yourselves after the bidding is done.

Exactly. Wow, that's cool. I have to give that one a try. Yeah, it's implemented on Board Game Arena. Wow. Okay. So you just get something to mark that at the end of the game I have negative five points or something like that based on what I did. Exactly. And how if I bid one and you all outbid me, do I still pay one to get last place? So the way Board Game Arena does it, and I think that's the way everybody should probably do it, is it uses a spreadsheet.

And so you randomly determine initial player order and then that's the order that you bid in. So if you bid one ongoing first, nobody else can bid one to go first, but somebody else can bid one to go second or they can bid two to go first. And so it's a four by four grid of bids. And then the highest bid for each position determines what seat you get. Okay. Well, I'm willing to give it a try on Board Game Arena, that's for sure.

Okay. And the only thing that I would potentially add would be the spaces as I talked about. So if by player count, if you're going to throttle it down to two players, also limit certain spaces on the board that are now inactive because you don't have three or four players playing. Never build on. Yeah. I like starting with an exchange token. So if you're not playing with the expansion or the second edition, I think it'd be easy to everybody starts with the cube and that's their exchange token.

I think it really helps out the players using a strategy that doesn't involve buying a bunch of cows where you've got very few cows in your deck to form that unique hand. Having that exchange token just really helps out where you can get pigeonholed in there. So that's one of the things I would think to add. Yeah. I think it is most beneficial for the engineer strategy because they usually have the weakest deliveries. Right.

Yeah. And I think it's also there to just help mitigate the luck of that first delivery because if someone gets the perfect hand, which I think delivers for seven gold and you wind up and you can only deliver for three because you've got so many of your grades, that difference in the first delivery can make a huge difference. The way it snowballs by the end of the game, just delivered to Kansas City anyway. Well, now you got to deliver again. Right.

Isn't that one of the great points of the game though is how many times have you come out of Kansas City, you draw up your hand and you draw a perfect hand, but I still got to go down the trail. I wanted to trade two Jersey cows for three bucks or whatever that one is. I wanted to trade two black cows for this one. I want to use these cows to make money along the way. But when I pull up. Say a decision to make.

Yep. Yeah. So when I draw a perfect hand at the beginning, I thought, what am I going to just tiptoe my way to Kansas City or am I going to start messing with a perfect hand to get the most out of a can out of this trip? Yeah. No, that's a great decision point. I love that. Yeah. What's the best double feature game to go along with this one? If you're playing this at game night, what do you want to play after it? I prefer an auction game. Okay. I think they called out homesteaders.

I didn't even think of that. That would be perfect. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just going to go with that. Any other auction game? Like we've talked about, you know, before maybe QE if you want a really lighthearted game to close up. Yeah. An auction game. This is one of the few games I erroneously said this on our dune Imperium podcast, but this is the game that we played and we played twice in a row. It was our last game before the pandemic settled in and we didn't get together and play again for a year.

So this is one of the few games that we have scrapped the board, reset and played again back to back. And it's funny because it's right up our alley to do that because we like deep diving into games. We prefer depth over breadth, but we don't actually do that as much as it seems like we would. But we've done this a few times on Great Western Trail where we get to the end, even though it's been two hours or whatever, we got some more time. Let's do it again.

So I'm going to double feature it with itself. Awesome. So the role of Paul is going to be played by Dave on this pod. And the answer is more of the original game. I love it. That's right. It's funny because I had something that you actually said, Dave, which is I can tell you the last couple of times that we've played Great Western Trail and it was the second edition. The game we played after it was dune Imperium. I mean, it was like us three. So we were like, all right, let's do that.

And we're clocking in and I forgot to mention this. Our games are clocking in like two and a half hours. Oh, really? So we're over two hours for our playing time of this one. For three player? For three players, we're right around two. For four player, we're at two and a half. Even so, I guess we're so engaged. It does not feel that long. Yes. But we bang out a game of dune Imperium now in 60 to 70 minutes.

So I normally wouldn't think of dune Imperium as being the lighter game to end an evening with in this case. It is. And that's an amazing evening with these two games back to back. It is. It's awesome. All right. If you like fill in the blank, it can be a game, it can be a mechanism, then you're going to like Great Western Trail. What do you guys have for this one? If you like Fister. So I feel like this is the quintessence of Fister.

The games that you played before he designed this one have elements of it. And it's like he's growing into this design where it all finally comes perfectly together here. So if you like Maracaibo and those earlier designs, you're going to like this. Now that logic doesn't flow. You might not like Boon Lake. We'll see. I need to play it some more to give my opinion on it. But if you like what Fister's been doing to this point, you're definitely going to love this game.

So I put down deck building as a supporting mechanic. So we talked about this on the dune Imperium episode. And it's also there in Lost Ruins of Arnak. I mean, if you like that style of managing your deck, so the hand of cards you're holding have effects other than just a traditional dominion style of drawing and then buying more cards. If you like deck building as a supporting mechanic, then you might like Great Western Trail. My answer is a bit of a paradox.

I said if you like brain burning, strategy heavy, point salad, then you will like this game. Okay. Now, whether or not strategy heavy and point salad can describe the same thing, that's another discussion. Right. I did see somewhere somebody described this as point salad. And the first thing I did was clutch my pearls. I'm like, no. And then I thought, well, okay, yeah, I can see what you're saying. At first blush, it really is. I think the first few times we played, that's how we thought of it.

Yeah. But I mean, you do have to get out a score sheet at the end and how many points did you score here? How many did you score here? And there's what? Seven, eight different categories where you're collecting points from. Correct. Yeah. But those are more strategy path dependent than they are. When I think of a salad, I think of like, well, you blocked me here, so I'll just go get the same amount of points somewhere else. It's not the case here.

The reason you got a bunch of points in buildings and not engineer stations is because that was the path you chose from the beginning, not what you scrapped together at the end based on lucky draws or tactical movements. Right. Agreed. Yeah. It takes several plays to see the light. Yeah. That's true. So if you don't like fill in the blank, then you might not like Great Western Trail. Did you guys have some interesting ideas here? I did not. I just went with the mechanism taxation.

That was one of the first turn offs to me in the game is I finally figure out here's what I need to do. Here's what I want to do. And you drop it, even a $1 building in front of me. And that just, it screws up everything. And I mean, I like interplay, but as a new player to this game, I found it very difficult to get beyond that. Like you guys are just drinking my milkshake this whole time.

And then once I learned how to deal with that, but if you don't like that sort of needling, then this might be a problem. Yeah. Good answer. That is. That is a strategy. So exactly feast for Odin, right? I had it down as that thing that Uwe Rosenberg does so well, where you have a variety of paths you can pursue, but you can't do them all. And since you can't do all of the things, you have to understand the game well enough to know which ones you're going to focus on this time through.

For many people, that's a puzzle that's interesting to solve. And for many others, it's a turn off because there's too many things to balance and juggle and try to figure out how you're going to execute on that strategy, depending on which side of the line you fall on that is going to have an effect as to whether or not you like Great Western Trail.

That's a great point because you have to understand this game three different ways and then four different ways to see the balance between those three different ways. Like, you know, it's not just here's how the game works and here's what you go out and try to do. All three of those paths have so much nuance that it's like learning a different game. Yep, exactly. Did this game replace a previous one for you? And I'll just say, not that I recall. I cannot think of one. Yeah, same here.

It like created a new space in my gaming needs. Has it since been replaced? And if so, by what? Well, we talked about playing this before the pandemic. And before the pandemic, Great Western Trail was my favorite game. Nowadays, though, Dune Imperium is my favorite game. So in that way, it was replaced as a favorite. But I still love to play both in the same night. I was going to say hard to beat that doubleheader, right?

Yeah, I think that's that's my answer to Argentina tried to stand on the corner here. And we'll have to play it more and we'll see. But Dune Imperium, no, it hasn't replaced it at all. But there's room in my life for both of them. I don't make me choose. Right. But the Dune Imperium kind of would be the answer in that point. You love all your kids equally, right? Yeah, I agree. There's nothing that has replaced it yet. I want to give Great Western Trail Argentina some more plays.

I've enjoyed the few that we've had. But if I had to choose between Great Western Trail Argentina or just playing Great Western Trail, I would choose Great Western Trail each time. So far, we'll see what New Zealand has to offer. For sure. There's other examples of this, too. And it's I think that's always going to be the pattern. Like you get this one. Let's play Argentina for a little while and then let's go back to the good stuff.

People would probably disagree with us, but Brass does the same thing. There's Lancashire, which we didn't even call Lancashire back then. Played Birmingham a bunch. But next time we pull out Brass, I think I want to go back and play more Lancashire. It's just I think it's such a better game. We'll see. Soundtrack, what music would you want to listen to while playing this game? I went with Enyo Morikone. Oh, nice.

You know, the composer of The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and many other spaghetti westerns. That's just that's what a western movie soundtrack is for me. All right. Well, for me, though, this is it's a western, but it's not a shootout at the Saloon kind of western, you know, black hats and white hats. So for me, it's more especially growing up a California Angels fan. I got to go with my boy, Gene Autry, the singing cowboy.

I want that like giddy up kind of cowboy poetry, old, you know, Arlo Guthrie, that kind of stuff. Nice. I like it. So this is becoming an interesting category for us to have added to the pod, because I'm now doing research into the music and we got to remember to actually do this when we're playing. I have some thoughts for tonight's game night, depending on what we bring to the table. But for Great Western Trail, I found a compilation out there called The Wild West.

And this was on Spotify by Brandon Fichter and his, I presume, his brother, Derek Fichter. And it hits all the right notes, but it is all instrumental. Part of what I'm looking for in a soundtrack to be played is something that can be on in the background that's going to enhance the feel, but not be distracting. And so that one I felt was really cool. Awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Good choice. So, reading on a scale of one to 10, what do you guys have Great Western Trail down as?

Well, I have it as a nine. I can see the second edition achieving a score of 10 for me eventually. Right now it's still a nine. I need more plays. Okay. Wait, you need more plays of Great Western Trail? Yes. I mean, obviously we do. Because you mentioned a few times already that this has held the spot of your favorite game. Yeah. First edition was my favorite, but I think. Now it's complicated.

I mean, it was a 10. And as I played it more and I realized some of the things that were too powerful, I downgraded my score a little bit. Like the combo of building 10 with the copy building right next to it. I mean, that was just a game ending, unbreakable winning move in the first edition. They fixed that in the second edition. If you copy a building, you're not allowed to use both in the same turn anymore. That's the new rule in second edition.

So I think eventually second edition could reach a score of 10 again, but I just haven't played it enough yet. That is a very thorough and honest and self-aware answer to that question. It is. That you downgraded it because of its flaws and perhaps those flaws have been fixed and you're really having the dark night of the soul with this game. I love it. That's a, it's not me, it's you answer right there. What'd you have Dave? I have a rate.

It is a nine, but I think I maybe need to get over myself and it could be a 10. I'm up for more plays and we'll see how it grows. But I mean, it's solid nine possible 10. Yeah. And for me, it is a 10. I love this game. I've loved it since the first time I played it and I would never turn down an opportunity to play it. It's fantastic. So is it replayable and how soon would I want to, or how soon would you want to revisit the game? But I'll jump in here since I rated it the highest.

Clearly my answer is yes, it's replayable. I could play this one every week. It would not be the only game, but you know, we could pair it up with Dune Imperium. That would be amazing for me. It's the highly replayable game. Dave, what'd you have? Yeah, I agree. Highly replayable and frequently replayable. It's not a replayable once a year or once every six months.

I feel like there's still a lot of depth in there and I have quite a few plays, but especially with a new edition that we want to explore. The games don't feel samey at all. And that's even after quite a few plays. So this is often every day and twice on Sunday right now still. Yeah, if I don't play it at least once a month, they start to get an itch. They can't scratch. So yeah, I definitely want to play it often.

For next week's game, we're going to be looking at some trains and some network building. So I'm looking forward to that one. All right, guys. Thanks for being part of the pod today. That was a lot of fun. Thanks, everyone. I'll see you on the trail. Thank you for listening to Replayable. Support for our podcast comes from listeners like you. Thank you for your support. You can find us online at replayable.fm, on Twitter as replayablefm, and on Instagram as replayablefm. We're all new to this.

We're only going to get better with your help and your feedback. You can get in touch with us via email at Todd at replayable.fm.