Great Western Trail: El Paso
- Board's Eye View
- Aug 8
- 2 min read
It's five years since we reviewed Great Western Trail (Stronghold / eggertspiele) on Board's Eye View. It's a popular and award-winning game that first appeared in 2016 and for which there have been several expansions. Great Western Trail: El Paso isn't an expansion. Rather it's a standalone game that's a cut-down lighter version of the original Great Western Trail. It's easier to learn and it plays in a very manageable 45-60 minutes - so probably half the time of Alexander Pfister's original game.
Johannes Krenner has joined Alexander Pfister for the design of GWT: El Paso. The theme is unchanged: the 1-4 players are cattle ranchers taking their cattle to market. Your cattle are cards but the market in El Paso will only pay you for unique cards. There are cards too for the cowboys and other workers you'll need, including to buy more cattle. This is a deckbuilding game, so cards you acquire go to your discard pile along with those you use; you won't see them again until your discard pile is recycled for you to draw from. The cattle trail is essentially a rondel, and one on which players will add buildings to improve the actions they can take en route.
We've no complaints about Chris Quilliams artwork but Lookout Games have made some odd production choices, particularly in using cardboard representations of cubes in place of the wooden cubes you find routinely in most other games. If you find these irritating, it's no great stretch to substitute wooden cubes from other games. GWT: El Paso uses a cloth playing board. We're rather fond of cloth boards - tho' you may find you need to iron this one before you use it. It's just a pity it's not a tad larger, especially given the size of the cowboy meeples. Our biggest gripe tho' is that the icons, for example on the buildings tiles, are small and can be hard to make out. In our plays at Board's Eye View we were frequently craning to 'read' the board. These minor annoyances aside tho', this game has gone down well. Tho' it doesn't pretend to have the depth of the original Great Western Trail there's still scope for strategy and tactics, and players' buildings on the trail provide ample opportunity for interaction. And GWT: El Paso could well function as a primer before introducing new players to the original game...
