Western Legends

Our 16^th game was Western Legends, a sandbox game that took Kage, Hector and I to the wild west. This game brought to you by my earlier riding lesson today.

You start by picking one of a multitude of famous western legends, including such as Annie Oakley and Doc Holliday, our particular characters of choice for today. The game starts with general setup. Your character card shows where your character starts as well as any equipment etc. your character begins with (Doc, for instance, starts with a wound). The main goal is to have the most legend points at the end of the game. We decided to play to 15, however, you can play to 30 if you so desire.

In order to gain points there are a multitude of things you can do across the board. You can fight bandits, fight other players, mine for gold (then you have to return gold nuggets to the bank without being robbed), play poker, attend revelries, or drive cattle. You can also play cards that allow you to take martial points, which are a separate track entirely. If you do bad things you can also become wanted, which gives you a negative score in the end.

This game is pretty straight forward and simple, with each person starting by choosing to either take $20, $10 and a poker card, or two poker cards. The poker cards are both numbered cards for playing poker on the board, but they also have actions you can use them for. While the poker cards are used for playing poker, they are also your fighting hand when dueling or going after bandits, so it pays to keep several in hand, just in case. After that you get to choose up to three actions: moving (two spaces unless you have a mount. We both upgraded some Mustangs), mining, doctor, revelries, etc.

Components in this game are well designed, with really nice detailed miniatures that easily change from colour to colour depending on which game board you’re using, and if they’re going to be a main player, sheriff, or bandit. The gold pieces are pretty, the dice are thick and well designed with easy to read and understand symbology. The individual game boards themselves really set the mood and feel of it being a western, and although I love having money in my wallet, I love the look of the board when there’s nothing on it as well. The cards themselves are durable and well designed, the artwork catchy and theme fitting. Next time we just need to remember to put on some Big Iron on the record player while we play and find some sarsaparilla.

Every time this hits the table it’s like a completely different game, and that’s partially due to the various characters and their abilities and partially up to whatever the player feels like doing to try to win the most points in a game. In a game usually I’ve found you end up trying to focus on doing three different tasks in various odd amounts to try to gain enough legendary points. In this particular game my strategy was thwarted when I was challenged to duel. While it might not seem that bad, you do lose card size the more wounds you have (unless your character has a special ability otherwise), which can really put a kibosh on continuously playing poker.

I quite enjoy this game, and I believe while it is a heavier game, it was designed really well and flows really nicely. The turns are seamless, and it doesn’t feel like it takes much time at all to play through. I believe we’ll keep this one for years to come.

Kage’s Notes: I find that Western Legends is one of the very few “sandbox” games that I enjoy. While I do like games that give you a lot of options, I generally prefer at least some direction in which way to go. However because of all the many paths being viable and relatively balanced, Western legends works out well. That being said the players do need to regulate the other players, allowing a player to freely mine, play poker, rob banks or otherwise have their way can result in them running away with the game.

The theme really shines through with this one, allowing players to essentially live whatever classic western trope they choose, which is another reason I enjoy it over most sandbox games. The rules really do advance the theme, and vice versa. One thing I will say is I don’t particularly care for the “man in black” automa. A lot of the joy of this game comes from player interactions, and he really adds nothing to the game, Amanda and I generally play without him even when playing two player. Although the game does seat up to 6, 2-4 is really the sweet spot, as with 6 players, there is a lot of downtime between turns, even with players taking on the role of rival NPCs for fights. Lastly I’ll note there are a bunch of expansions for this game, but for our review we used the only one I own (the rest are kickstarted but not yet arrived), we only played with “The good, The bad and the Handsome”

The Teal Dear

Game: Western Legends
Designer: Hervé Lemaître
Price: $60
Players: 2-4
2 player Scaling: Good, but plays best with 4
Playtime: 60-150 minutes, has variable game length options
Estimated Lifespan: As long as Amanda likes horses (so probably forever)
Average Play Frequency: Quarterly
Complexity: 2.5
Components: 4.5
Bang for Buck: 5
Value for Time: 4
Fun Factor: 4.5
Overall: 4.5