More about GWT Argentina

If you know the original Great Western Trail, then the new version ‘Argentina’ should be quite familiar as well. The core gameplay loop remains the same: on your turn you move a few spaces, do the actions according to where you stopped, then draw cards up to your hand size. You go along your path until you reach Buenos Aires, where you can ship off cattle and gain income depending on your cards, then get put back to the beginning of the path. Keep repeating this loop until the game ends, with the aim of getting more points at the end than your opponents.

There are several interesting changes though - and not just replaced elements, but also completely new additional mechanics too! 🥰 Hmm, where to start.. 🤔

Farmers are a new worker type. You don’t get them from the job market like Cowboys, Carpenters and Engineers though. Instead of natives and hazards, farmer tiles get placed on the board, and you can help them with some actions. This introduces a new mechanic! Certain workers and your cattle cards have a strength value, which you use when helping farmers - this way cattle cards become multi-use! 🥳 Having farmers is important so you can produce grain 🌾, which you use to feed your cattle on their journey to Europe. 🐄

This brings us to another change: you don’t use your train to transport cattle, instead there are ship tiles waiting next to the game board. According to the value of your cards in Buenos Aires you can ship off cattle towards Europe. The better the ship, the more grain you will have to pay though. After certain intervals some ships will also head off, so you have to hurry - if you have discs on those ships, they are transferred to a city board, where you can claim useful bonuses with them. Spaces are quite limited though!

You might ask, what are trains used for then? Well, in Argentina you use them to shorten your path to Buenos Aires. You can unlock some shortcuts and hop on your train to finish a lap faster. You can still upgrade stations and claim station master tiles as in the original, so engineers remain useful.