1880: Badlands



I've never played through a Legacy Game, so I don't want to generalize, but in regards to "Legends of the West" I would like to make a general statement. Legends of the West is a base game with 8 different expansions. In our family, we like expansions.

Some expansions (such as Badlands) feels familiar. There are shares to collect (in a similar fashion to Ticket to Ride: Pennsylvania. 

Great Plains also establishes a familiar rule.  Players can claim company towns that other players must pay to use (present in Ticket to Ride: Old West)

Additionally the introduction of trackbeds is similar to Ticket to Ride: France.

The other expansions feel new to me. Florida has a thematic circus passports which is reliant on a sticker mechanism. But since the stickers might run out, it has a press-your-luck feel.

Haunted Wastes (opened today) is even more thematic. Tunnels are featured on other Ticket to Ride maps, but are used in a new way here (sort of similar to port cards in Ticket to Ride: Rails and Sails). And when we poured out the contents of Haunted Wastes, I was delighted to find a Ghost Train- a single car in a translucent.... wait, does it glow-in-the-dark? Confirmed, it does indeed glow in the dark. And... let me check... yes, a glow-in-the-dark dice as well.

Fortunately for our brains some rules seem to phase out as new ones are introduced. The circus mechanism only lasted a round and a half before we were not allowed to pull new stickers for our passports. The company town feature is more permanent, but it's been a while since new company town stickers have been added, so that might be a passing phase. The "shares" mechanism of the badlands will likely be with us for a while, but maybe not until the end of the campaign.

Over the past few sessions, Cathy and I have been fearlessly playing this map. Gone is the trepidation over "will I complete my routes". It seems to be pretty easy to stamp tickets. A lot of energy is instead spent hoarding resources until endgame, but since there is really know way of knowing which resources will turn out to be important in the long-run, there isn't really any stress happening. It just feels... well fun. Maybe that's how all games should feel. Low stakes.

I don't know how this game would play with 3, 4, or 5 players. Surely it was designed for more than 2. But I'm not regretting playing with 2 either. Even if the ticket deck is getting quite hefty and routes aren't getting retired as fast as they maybe should... It's still been an amazing adventure.

Next Time: Beware the Haunted Wastes




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