Great Western Trail: New Zealand

I am a committed Pfister admirer, so Great Western Trail: New Zealand arrived with a fairly high bar to clear. It clears it comfortably. This is not the old framework wearing a different costume; it has enough of its own character to sit beside the earlier Great Western Trail games, and may well be the weightiest of them.

Its real shift is towards deck-building. Argentina puts more of its weight on the map and workforce, while New Zealand asks you to build efficiency through the deck itself; the interesting decision is how far to commit to that engine.

That makes the game feel slightly odd on the first run, because the new mechanisms do not announce themselves as neatly as those in the earlier entries. Once the game settles, though, the decisions mesh properly and the pressure between players lives in the margins: who has built the cleaner system, and who has let a sheep go missing on the way round.

My first verdict placed it just behind Argentina, largely because that new emphasis felt less immediate. That was not a dismissal. It was already a top-tier design, entirely at home beside the other two in a collection.

Updated session

The later play changed my verdict. The deck-building no longer felt like an eccentric addition but the smart development that gives this entry its own identity, and a close game decided on small margins made the case rather well. The others still prefer Argentina; I now put New Zealand at the top of the series.