Herding sheep in New Zealand
I am by no means a Great Western Trail expert, but having played New Zealand now, I can shine some light on the differences to previous entries of the series! And why not start with the most evident change? Sheep! 🐑😅
Even though sheep cards work mostly the same as cow cards did in previous GWTs, it is not just an art-swap. ☝️ Sheep bring with them a new 4th worker type, shearers ✂️, plus they have an additional ‘wool-value’ 🧶 as well. This makes them more complex: there are sheep that are worth less at the end of the trail, but have a better wool value, so depending on your strategy they could be better or worse for you. The shearing action is another way to get money, discard cards and place down disks.
Instead of a train 🚂 you have a boat ⛵ now, and moving it is not linear anymore. I like this change as there is more than one path, and there are different types of ports where you may place down your discs or storehouses. Depending on the port this could be a new place where you can ship your sheep to, gain a harbormaster tile or get new cards. Which leads us to the next paragraph. 😉
Not just sheep cards are new but there are a bunch of bonus cards in the game! 🃏 These make deck-building more pronounced in GWT: New Zealand. You might think adding more cards to your deck is bad, because you won’t draw your valuable sheep - however, you get to immediately draw a new card after playing a bonus card. so they are just welcome free actions to help your game. 🙃
Buildings 🏠 work the same as before, but of course you have some of the new effects on them as actions. A thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the Pathfinder 🐦 track, that you can advance on during the game, unlocking bonuses, or getting access to new locations to place down buildings.
💭All-in-all I really enjoy this rendition of GWT, and it’s probably my favorite now. 😊 (Although I think Argentina is splendid too.) The decision space got wider and I feel there are more things you can choose to do. The fiddly part with the worker/hazard tiles got a bit more streamlined too. Such quality of life changes are always welcome!
