Great Western Trail 2nd Edition - Overview & Our Thoughts

hi everyone my name is moni and i'm naveen from before you play and today we're going to be discussing the new second edition of great western trail this one's designed by alexander fister and published by edgardspiel and plan b games and monique and i have actually covered this game in the past it is a pretty heavy euro game in which we are going to be transporting cattle and cows from kansas city to different parts of the united states uh if you are interested in seeing how that game is played we did do a full two player play through which we'll leave a link in the top corner here yes it was a part of our alexander fister series that we recently did a few months back and so this is a game that has been notoriously kind of in and out of print in the past yep and so now we have a new second edition that is coming to retail this uh version of the game is going to be available i guess in a very limited release at gen con they're probably bringing a few copies with them sure and then after that it will experience a more a wider retail release this is also the first in a trilogy of games that they're going to be releasing that uh has never been seen before really yeah and so in general this version of the game primarily has a lot of new uh design upgrades so graphic design upgrades component upgrades a lot of that kind of stuff but there are also some new components that are available in this edition of the game that were not in the original version such as a new variant gameplay variant as well as a solo mode and so today is gonna be a lot more of a comparison contrast video so that you can see whether or not it's right for you but before we get started if you do like to see more videos like this in the future please consider subscribing and with that i think we're ready to begin right so if you please direct your attention to this end of the table we have here the new second edition of the great western trail board yes um as you can see it is a lot more uh i guess colorful vibrant it's more vibrant it's definitely the same um you know layout of the board yeah but uh the colors pop a little bit more the trail itself does not though that is the the one thing that we noticed when we first kind of pulled this out yeah uh it is more of a kind of like a watercolor painting look to it uh compared to the original the predecessor but um yeah it is easy to get kind of kind of lost in these trails but as you start to build up buildings things kind of become more clear yeah it's really not that bad honestly um the first thing that we kind of noticed when we pulled out this board is we're no longer going to san francisco yeah we have new york here so i guess they wanted to make it a little bit more uh geographically accurate i guess because we are going eastward here right other than that there are only a couple of other design changes specifically to the board one of which are some of these uh kind of like more advanced building spaces have different benefits specifically this one and one thing that people may actually really care about is kansas city no longer gives you six coins they've decreased that value to four yeah so a lot of people you know when you play the game one of the strategies is you know your first delivery to just deliver to kansas city we'll just take the hit at the end of the game get some cash early yeah and you get some cash early and that kind of helps set you up for the rest of the game well it's not as lucrative anymore i think they probably looked at it and said okay people are abusing that a little bit too much so how do we balance it so now you get four coins instead of six yes on the opposite hand though there are some areas that are less punishing namely in the the outlaw section this is now called the outlaw section because we have some uh component changes which we'll talk about in a second but uh previously the first three spots here uh if you were to take a tp off the board which is that's what it was in the first edition you would have to pay money right now none of these spots cost you money they're all going to be lucrative right you may notice the very first spot here also gets you this new type of token which is specific to the second edition these are these are called exchange tokens but we'll talk about that uh later when we talk about the new components and you also see that special benefit up here so that you can uh earn it for being in both of these two cities that no longer uh makes you lose yeah right now speaking of the outlaw section in the previous version this was where the native tps were so anytime you'd go there you'd be removing those teepees they've actually upgraded it or changed it to outlaws because uh that was kind of an issue in the past oh yeah yeah so uh so that's definitely an area of improvement in addition to the new outlaws we also have new workers and so this new second edition features a more diverse cast of workers we have the cowboy builder and the engineer and so it's really nice to see those design changes as well so in the previous game uh purple was the engineer it is now the builder which acts as the craftsman from the previous one right exactly now we also have new player boards and this is probably my favorite uh one of my favorite design upgrades right this is something that uh we definitely needed in the original game right and i know there's a lot of people that kind of did their diy for this the workers fit nicely right in there and it's just a nice clean look uh to the player board so very very functional for us we're very practical gamers so this is one of our definitely one of our favorite aspects of this edition totally the game now also comes with these new bags and so these are very convenient very welcome addition to this game yeah the tiles and stacks yeah if you did not have an organizer and even if you did have an organizer to shuffle these to get the game set up was kind of a pain honestly and so to be able to just draw from the bag of the appropriate um number right makes it a lot easier for you and if you don't remember contextually where this is from this is for when you're refilling tiles when you get to kansas city and you have to choose tiles to put out onto the board you can now just pull from these bags you don't have to worry about any of that set up stuff just have the bags right there was definitely times in the game where it's like i'm shuffling it and i i because i was the one that shuffled it i kind of know where certain things are and it's like i don't mean to know that right right but from a bag it's always random eliminates that issue yeah player pieces the player pieces have also experienced an upgrade okay i will i will say this is probably my least favorite part about the new edition because they now have hats interchangeable hats by the way yes they're interchangeable they're the hats of the player colors um the actual meeples are not but you you take off the hats and you can kind of mix and match them uh you like them right uh they're growing on me but they're they're ridiculous i remember that when we uh when we unboxed it i was like what are these now you can i mean there are a lot of people who will think these are cool but i have more of a basic person when it comes to my meeples i guess sure but anyway they are good quality hats though they're fantastic quality hats and of course lastly we have uh new designs to the cow cards so all the cards have pretty much been renamed except for like one or two of them right they really have all been renamed renamed yeah and there's all new artwork there's really new all new artwork on every single bit of this edition but uh all of the numbers are the same right so balance wise um the distribution of the cards are exactly the same yeah mathematically the the they're still you know certain set of fives ones twos things like that yes uh there is a new variant which we are going to discuss in a second that does introduce new cow cards but if you completely eliminate that variant you can still play the same base game of great western trail with this distribution of cards the only exception of course is going to be the minor changes to the game board that's not going to be the same from the first edition and so those are a majority of the design changes that we've noticed um we may be missing some but that's just from what we've seen and so now on to the new additional components that are not a part of the uh the first edition the first thing is there are four new uh station master tiles the first edition of the game comes with five of them and so in this second edition we have now nine but you still only play with five exactly so you're gonna play you know with a different set of five every time you play the game just a little more variability we also have the addition of two new building tiles per player so the original game came with 10 10 now we have 12. yeah so we have um 11a and 11b which essentially allow you to take up to two hazards off the board for a price of two two bucks each 12a gives you a coin for every builder that you have employed and also lets you move additional space forward and then the opposite sides allow you to move your locomotive up depending on how many hazards you've already taken off the board and uh 12 b gives you two coins for every station that you're at and also gets you an exchange token which is another new component added to this edition each player will start with one of these the game comes with a total of 12 so there are other ways that you can acquire this throughout the game namely on the board here as well as if you were to place your markers out in between st louis and bloomington right or if you were to put out that that building building that gives them to you exactly and so the way that this works is at any time it doesn't have to be your turn it can be your opponent's turn you can spend this in order to essentially exchange up to two cards from your hand with your draw deck so it basically acts uh just like one of those auxiliary actions that allow you to draw a card and discard a card except you can do it for up to two cards so this is a little bit more of a forgiving mechanic i suppose that's that's introduced into this edition of the game and the last two new additions to this game are probably going to be uh two of the biggest selling points i guess and it's going to be the new uh gameplay variant as well as the solar mode so the gameplay variant introduces this new breed of cows called it i don't know how that's how it's pronounced i think it's mental that's what i'm thinking let us know in the comments down below if you know how to pronounce the name of that cow and this new breed comes in three different values we have two four and five and so at the start of the game the value two cows are going to be shuffled in with the rest of the cow stack that's going to be laid out i guess depending on player count in the cattle market right and so in a two-player game it's going to be nine cows now which is a two additional then in the first edition and any of the cemental cows that come out are placed in their own category over here and you have now this overlay tile that you need to use in order to play with this variant because essentially whenever you go to uh purchase cattle from the cattle market you can now with one cowboy spend eight coins to take one uh value two sim until cow or if you have two cowboys you can spend five coins to do this the levels four and five you never purchased from the cattle market the way that that works is when you get to kansas city if you have any of this breed of cow in your hand you can upgrade all of them to the next value so if you have a value two you can upgrade it to a value four and then your value two goes out of the game and uh if you have any value four you can upgrade that to value five right the catch though is this breed still acts as one breed so if i have a value two and a four in my hand by the time i get to kansas city i can only um i can only collect on one of those cards so naturally you would take the higher one yes so you're kind of taking a hit when you go there to upgrade your cards but it's kind of a nice way for you to get higher valued cows especially like in the past when i've been kind of shut out from aqua from hiring cowboys and it's for me i have a hard time purchasing cattle anyway because my brain doesn't really work that way and so this is kind of a nice way for you to to care about that that aspect of it less i guess and there are victory points on those higher level cows so that's also something there exactly but again this is a variant so if you just don't want to have to worry about this at all you don't have to play with it and lastly the solo mode now neither of us have tried the solo mode but we've read we've read the rulebook so that we know how it works and essentially with the solo mode you now have a second player like an ai named sam and so you're essentially simulating a two-player game you can dictate the difficulty level it says in the rulebook how you can do that and sam plays with their own deck of cards and so you basically draw a card from sam's deck and you do what it says sam's player piece is going to move a certain number of spaces across the board but they will take the actions that are dictated on their card and the thing that's neat about the solo mode is there is a specialization component to it because that is a big part of the game when you play the game you kind of pick a strategy and you try to go with it right like are you going to go cowboy heavy are you going to try to do the engineer strategy so sam is going to do something similar to that exactly sam is going to start the game with one additional worker and whoever they start the game with that is going to be their specialization and so anytime they take actions they're going to be leaning towards that strategy so if they have if they start the game with an engineer then they're going to try to do like an engineer-heavy strategy and if that dynamic were to change halfway through the game where they would have a majority maybe a cowboys then the specialization would flip to the cowboys and now they're going to go a cowboy heavy strategy so essentially they're not married to it but it at least gives them a focus exactly sam does not have any cattle they don't have any money they just pretty much score uh in in the other ways that you can score and whenever they acquire those objective cards all of them are considered for fulfilled by the end of the game and so that is as much as we know about the solo mode it's called the lonely or the brave yep so for all you solo gamers out there that might be a you know really nice reason to want to pick up this copy of the game because there is no solo mode in the first edition and there you have it that is everything that we know about to our knowledge as to what the differences are between the first and second edition now of course the question is do you need the second edition or uh you know what what our thoughts are on this new edition of the game we did not own the first edition of the russian trail we borrowed the copy of that game in order to make a video and so for us this is a no-brainer right like we didn't have a copy of the game it was hard to get and this is just to me a better version of it i actually really like the graphic design changes but that's all going to be subjective you know that's all going to be really up to you and what you prefer i really like the changes that they made to the workers and to the outlaws and i really like having that variant i don't know if i'm always going to play with it i don't know if i'm ever going to play with it honestly the extra cash but i really like having that as an option because maybe you know maybe we'll learn to love it yeah exactly um for me i like the graphic design changes of the board but for some reason i like the old-timey box art oh the box yeah the mount rushmore of angry angry men it i don't know why i like that one a lot i like the look of this one better but i know what you mean in that you know great western trail has become such a popular game that that is the image that is great western trail it's hard for my brain to be like okay it's no longer those three angry people right now this now this is gonna be this is the first of a trilogy and so the other two games that are gonna be gonna be released um and they're they're gonna be released like one after the other every other year yeah sequential years so the next one is in 2022 and then the one after that is year after year but they're all going to have the same kind of uh aesthetic aesthetic in the in terms of the box art so if you want to collect all three uh and you are one of those people who really don't want an outlier then you're going to want this edition of the game i think they're going to release a second edition of the expansion but i will say that this board is the exact same size as the original one and so if you have the expansion already i don't really see why you can't play with it now if you already have a copy of the first edition and you and especially if you also have the expansion it's going to be a hard call whether or not you want to upgrade to this one yeah i don't necessarily know if the design changes are going to be enough for you to get rid of that copy and then go with this version but you might really want to if you are a solo gamer yeah the solo game is is i think one of the biggest things for this yeah so anyway that is it for the new second edition of great western trail please let us know what your thoughts are on this new edition of the game if you have any questions please feel free to leave them in the comment section down below we know that there is limited information out there regarding this this copy of the game and we do have it in our possessions so we are more than happy to answer those questions for you if we can and like we said at the beginning of the video this game is going to be set to release at gen con this year uh and then following that there will be a true retail release after that i think there's only going to be limited copies at the con just so you know thank you all so much for watching the video we hope you enjoyed it if you see more videos like this in the future please consider subscribing thank you bye [Music] you

Channel: Before You Play

Views: 44,120

Keywords: Great Western Trail, New great western trail, Great western trail second, 2nd great western trail, Great western trail board game, Great western trail review, New great western trail board game, How to play great western trail, Great western trail expansion, Great western trail overview, great western trail how to play, Review, Great western trail second edition, Newest great western trail, Board games, Board game review

Id: -gNiiNjOmdI

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/DolphinOrDonkey]

I don't care for the new board or the cowboy meeples, but I like the nerf of Kansas city deliveries and more station tiles.

[u/Arigomi]

Some people thought it was too early for a second edition, but these changes clearly address well-known flaws in the game that even the expansion couldn't fix.

[u/chigatterun]

Subtle difference but they also moved neutral building D one space to the left so you arent forced to skip it if you build in the mountain hazard area. House ruled that change and then actually utilized that hazard trail for the first time ever.

[u/AdelinDumitru]

The new cows are the best part about this edition as far as I can tell. They seem to add A LOT of strategy. Really looking forward to trying it out though.

[u/G8kpr]

I liked this comparison better than the man vs Meeple video. Felt a bit more clear on some of the aspects.

Find it funny that Naveen likes the “three angry men” cover. But I suspect that’s more of a joke because that ugly cover has become so well known.

That old cover actually put me off of the game. It wasn’t until I tried it on TTS that I really liked it and considered buying it. This is on my short list right now.

[u/alittlelurkback]

I bought the original version I think less than a week before this one was announced… since then I’ve played exactly once. Alas, I would have waited…. At least I have the superior box art to be the thankful for

[u/jayceja]

This is a good and well thought out and explained comparison of the two editions. But I've never disagreed so much with Monique than I do about the cowboy hat meeples.

[u/quempe]

Here's a contestant for "silliest but also real concern of the year": The meeples will be weirdly awkward to grip with those hats poking out :)

[u/MurphMurp]

Am I the only one who is frustrated by the removal of the Native Americans / Indians?

I mean, we've got things like the Washington Redskins that need to go, and probably the Atlanta "Braves" that focus on the prejudice that our indigenous population was primarily violent before the white man "civilized" the continent. Those things need to be examined and go.

But you've also got the stories of the old Stanford Indians (pre "Cardinal") named due to the local active tribe, and when a bunch of white students got together and decided it was racist and changed the name, the local Chief who had never missed a game boycotted Stanford athletics for the rest of his life. He didn't appreciate being erased from local history.

You've got the Land O Lakes logo, where they erased the Native American woman a few years back, and the daughter of the Native American artist who had made the logo wept and protested. She too didn't appreciate erasure.

There are prejudices and stereotypes that need to be examined and dealt with - first and foremost that Native Americans were violent and/or uncivilized.

But GWT 1e did not do that. Native Americans lived on that land in that time. The game gives you an option to use their land, for a cost, or to trade with them, generally for a profit. And if you want to use the land regularly, you have to invest in your relationship with them. What in this is wrong, backward, or prejudiced?

I don't know the decision process, but this smacks (once again) of a bunch of white people unilaterally complaining and deciding what is right for Native Americans without seeking input or understanding. Which is literally replicating the mistakes America has made throughout its history.

Continuing to erase Native Americans from our heritage, even when not exploiting tropes or prejudices, is not a step forward.

I'd be really interested to hear the opinion of anyone who is in or engaged with the actual Native American community in how they felt about the original game and about their removal.