Great Western Trail: El Paso Review
Advert: this game was gifted by Asmodee via Mason Williams PR, this has not affected our opinion.
If a board game is ever going to remind you of tacos and cheesy advertising jingles of Old El Paso, it is Great Western Trail: El Paso. Unlike some salsa-laden dinner, this game tastes of cardboard. But you’re not here to find out whether you can eat it! You are here to read a board game review of it… so let’s get rustling, I mean reviewing!
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Setup
Take the playmat out of the box and baulk at any creases that have emerged. Place the base building tiles as per the instructions or randomly once you know the game better. Give each player a player board and the components of their colour. Place discs on the relevant spaces of your player board. Plus a starting hand of cattle cards, one of each type of worker card and some money.
Create a market of building tiles and cattle cards in reach of all players. Place the relevant number of Simmental cards based on your player count on their space. Draw a starting hand of four cards and think about where you want to start. Decide on a first player and distribute coins accordingly, you are then good to go.
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Gameplay
You are going to win Great Western Trail: El Paso if you can gather the most points by the end of the game. You gain points from cattle cards, workers, trading post spaces, buildings, objectives and bonus tiles. It seems obvious therefore that you will be trying to get as many of those things as you can over the course of the game.
The board is basically a rondel that you go round, you can place additional buildings on too, that only you can use. All of them give benefits, or the ability to buy workers, cattle cards or buildings, or get income and bonuses, assuming you have the workers required to do so.
When you complete a circuit, you can deliver your hand of cow cards to the market and get to remove a disc from your player board, unlocking its ability and place it on a trading post space that equals or is less than your cattle value, gaining the immediate bonus, or end game scoring points accordingly. You will also get a Simmental cow card and $5 to start the rondel again with.
The game continues in this way until the last Simmental card gets drawn which triggers the end of the game. Play continues until the next player reaches El Paso, then all other players get one final turn. Scores are tallied and the winner can be declared.
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What it’s like
If it isn’t obvious this is a scaled down and streamlined version of Great Western Trail. Key elements carry over and so much of the game feels familiar with shared iconography and concepts that if you have played its bigger sibling, El Paso will be comprehendible quicker. Similarly if you went on to play Great Western Trail, the step up may not be so dramatic.
Just like other titles in the series, there are so many strategies to explore, and while you need to probably focus on one, you cannot ignore the others either. So while it cuts back on game time, it still delivers the strategy you’d hope for.
I think that workers being dual-use cards rather than tiles on your board is a really clever variation. It gives you even more reason to cycle through your deck, but also naturally prevents you honing in on one particular strategy too heavily. I really like this element of Great Western Trail: El Paso.
With regard to player count, it works perfectly fine at two players but there isn’t enough competition for the buildings, whereas with three or four players, the board can get really congested and limit your movement. I think the sweet spot is three players though as a fourth slows it down that little bit more.
I have played some rondel games which have felt like a plod, yes New York Zoo you should feel seen! However, Great Western Trail: El Paso keeps me enticed every step, as ultimately every decision matters.
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Table Presence
Great Western Trail has not been known for its aesthetics. The box art for the first edition actually put me off owning it, it was so vile it upset me. So I was delighted the second edition came out and was refreshed in that regard. Great Western Trail: El Paso certainly follows stylistically with the box art of the other new and refreshed version highlighting it is very much part of the same family of games.
However, that is about as excited I can get about the look of this one. Everything inside the box feels a little cheap and poorly thought out. I might as well let the moan commence!
Firstly fabric boards are not for me, I’ve said it before and I will say it again, ironing is a chore I do not want introduced into my board game hobby. I play board games to escape the mundanity of everyday life not to create more! The fact it comes folded instead of rolled adds insult to injury.
Using white lettering on the coin values on tiles and cards when you gain money was a foolish mistake by someone. It makes them impossible to see from anything but a few inches away, and that isn’t just my aging eyes, my 20:20 visioned son also said it was ridiculously difficult. The darker colour when you need to pay money is perfectly clear.
The player boards are flimsy. I’m not sure since when cubes are a poor component, but here they have been substituted by punchboard that imitates a 3d cube! The included token boxes seem like a nice ecological solution to baggies, and they would be, but you’ll struggle to fit the coins in their box and who would ever mix all player colours together in another box for ease of setting up in the future? These are poor design choices and they let the game down.
“Those cowboy components are nice and chunky though” I hear you cry! Yes, they are! So much so if you add more than one of them onto a tile they cover the tiles actions that you place them on, or obscure those around them.
The rulebook was good, but everything else should’ve been a bit less cheap.
The contrast of all this is that this game is part of Lookout Games’ new Greenline which is more eco friendly, I’m all for that! Less plastic and shrink-wrap is a great idea. The solution just needs to be better thought out. For example, the tuckboxes need to reflect how board game hobbyists actually store their games, with components stored by player colour and different values of coins in different boxes. Otherwise set up and tear down become more of a chore. The sad fact remains, I reached for my own baggies to solve the storage solution that the publishers hadn’t got right.
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Final thoughts on Great Western Trail: El Paso
Great Western Trail: El Paso does a brilliant job of streamlining the series and bringing the play time down to 45 minutes to an hour and a bit. Delivering Great Western Trail goodness in a quicker dose. It achieves this with quality gameplay that embodies enough of the original without watering it down too much.
What lets Great Western Trail: El Paso down is the cheap components to the point where it taints my enjoyment of the game. Now I know I am a box art tart so this won’t bother everyone, but you are here for my opinion and it bothers me!
Don’t get me wrong, with a choice between great gameplay and great aesthetics I would certainly favour the former. However, we are living in an era where us consumers can reasonably expect both. Sadly the aesthetics tips the balance to poor graphic design rather than just personal preference. Some will say the components keep the cost down, and if that is your stance then none of this will be an issue. For me, it’s a shame because I really like the gameplay and I feel so conflicted as a result! Maybe I will just reach for my second edition of Great Western Trail which will give me a few more hours to ponder it! Playing El Paso makes me want to get GWT back to the table as I miss it!
Key Facts
Number of players: 1 to 4
Board Game Review Recommended Age: 12+
Publisher’s Recommended Age: 12+
Playing Time: 60 minutes
Setting Up and Take Down Time: 2 minutes
Designers: Alexander Pfister, and Johannes Krenner
Publisher: Lookout Games
RRP: £28.99
Summary
A really good game with solid strategy, hindered quite a bit by poor design choices and cheap components.
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Artwork and Components
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Complexity
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Instructions
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Interaction
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Value for Money
Overall
Pros
- Streamlined Great Western Trail
- Quicker set up and game time
- Plenty of strategy
- Worker cards
Cons
- The fabric board
- Mediocre components
- Lack of interaction
- White font on yellow background
Need more games?
If you already own Great Western Trail and enjoy it, or are looking for other inspiration, you might also like these similar games:
- Great Western Trail, 2nd Edition
- Viscounts of the West Kingdom
- Iki
- Septima
Buy Great Western Trail: El Paso
If you want to buy El Paso after reading our review click on one of our affiliate links below (note there has been no affiliate links until this point)
Reviewer’s Note
For clarity: we don’t get paid for our reviews. However, we were kindly gifted this game by Mason Williams PR on behalf of Asmodee UK. We have tried not to let this affect our review in any way.
We may however earn a tincy wincy commission if you buy a game having clicked one of our affiliate links like the one above… this hopefully gives us a bit of pocket money towards hosting costs and new games to review!
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