OUR REVIEW

Wild West along the Railtrack

Colt Express

Raiding a train

Robo Rally and Colt Express - What do they have in common? Nothing, at least at first glance, but that is far off the mark, because the movement mechanisms of both games are quite similar. But, first, let’s take a step back. After opening the box and some thirty minutes of assembling the very pretty three-dimensional trains and the engine we have a 100% pure Wild West game that features a train robbery. Each of the two to six players (I would recommend a minimum of four players, though) chooses one bandit character - each of them has his own individual special abilities, takes 10 action cards of the corresponding color, six cartridge cards and - already - one booty tile, worth 250 $. Each player places his bandit figurine onto the train. The engine and a number of cars equal to the number of players are provided with the booty tiles depicted on them (money bags from 250 to 500 $ and a few gems of value 500 $). The Marshal is placed, together with a cash box worth 1000$, into the engine. One of the three Station Cards (for the last round) and four out of seven Rounds Cards are randomly drawn and readied, which results in a game of five rounds.

One round in the game: Each player draws six cards from his face-down stack of ten action cards. Those cards among other things - give him the movement and action options for his bandit for the current round. The goal of the bandits if of course to collect as many booty tiles of the highest possible value as they can and, in addition, to shoot at the other players to restrict them in their options to act und move. The cards offer several different options to move on the train, for instance in the train one step forward or backwards, on the roof the train one can even move over up to three cars. You can climb from inside the train up onto the roof and the other way round. With the Hit Card you can land a punch on a bandit on the same case so that he is moved one car forward and also drops a booty tile at the spot where he was punched. With the Fire Card (shot with a pistol) you fire at shot at the bandit nearest to you, in the train with a range of one car, on the roof at any range. The bandit you targeted immediately receives a cartridge card for his decks, which can restrict his options in the following turns as is is completely useless. By the way, the player who did fire most shots will receive an additional bonus of 1000 $ at the end of the game. I do most emphatically recommend to reduce this bonus via an in-house rule to 500 $, as otherwise all will idiotically keep firing off their pistols quite randomly.

With the Robbery Card you can pick up one of the coveted booty tiles, albeit only if available, from the location where you are situated. With the Marshal Card the Marshal figurine moves either one step forward or backwards, at the discretion of the player who used the card, and thus relinquishes the valuable money box (obviously back then Marshals were not the brightest kids on the block if the moved away from what they should have protected, but it might be mainly the fault of the game mechanism. Should your bandit, by any chance, move into the location of the Marshal or the Marshal move onto a location with bandits, all bandits instantly take flight onto the train roof and are handed a neutral cartridge card. This cartridge card has the same effects as a cartridge card of another player.

Contrary to Robo Rally that I mentioned at the beginning you do not play all of the three to five actions of a round secretly, that is face down, but usually only one or two, marked by a tunnel symbol on the Rounds Card. All cards are placed in turn either face-up or face-down on one common stack. This stack is turned over at the end of the round and resolved card by card. If you played a move forward/ move backwards card you decide at this point in which direction your bandit moves and how far. Which means, that actions of other players are only partially calculable and you cannot always count on the fact that, for instance, in case of only one booty tile at a location it does not make much sense to play the Robbery Card if you are second on this location. It might be better to use a Hit Card against the bandit and then to pick up the dropped booty with the Robbery Card.

Oh yes, in Colt Express that rather overworked silly saying of “first of all, things will turn out different from, secondly, how you think they will work out” proves to be rather true, after all. The more players are involved the more chaotic it all gets, because more actions are played and the memorizing of the openly played cards gets more and more difficult.

If you managed, after five rounds, to collect most money from booty tiles, bonus for most fired-off cartridges and maybe other bonuses, you win.

Finally, I want to mention that you can, instead of playing an action card, draw up to three cards from your stack. This is a favorite option when there many useless cartridge cards in your hand or one of the actions you urgently need, for instance Robbery or Marshal” stubbornly refuses to turn up in your randomly drawn cards.

The six bandit character cards all command various different abilities, but are, at least partially, a bit patchy and unbalanced: Especially Cheyenne who, after a successful punch at an opponent, catches the booty dropped by him immediately, is far too strong, in my opinion. The different Station and Rounds Cards offer enough variety to keep the fun going even after quite a few games.

So, all in all, a game with very nice components and design, set in the Wild West, especially geared to somewhat larger groups of 4-6 friends, featuring a very good turn planning mechanism with randomly drawn action cards.

Gert Stöckl

Players: 2-6

Age: 10+

Time: 40+

Designer: Christophe Raimbault

Artist: Jordi Valbuena

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Ludonaute 2014

Web: www.ludonaute.fr

Genre: Wild West, railways

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en fr + jp

In-game text:

Comments:

Attractive design and Components

Lots of chance, therefore not really projectable

Best for 4 or more players

Compares to:

Robo Rally for movement mechanism

Other editions:

Hobby Japan, Kaissa, Rebel.pl (announced)

My rating: 5

Gert Stöckl:

A very prettily designed game with a 3D train engine and train cars, well suited for friends or families as well as experienced players.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0