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Old West Empresario is the follow up to the excellent Pioneer Days. It is published by the same company, Tasty Minstrel Games, but the design team is different. This time the designer is Stanislav Kordonskiy (Dice Hospital, Lockup) but in a smart move they chose the same artist, Sergi Marcet, so the game looks like a true sequel.
Arriving In The Old West
You battled storms, disease, famine and raids to cross America in Pioneer Days and now you have arrived far out West. You decide to build a town but you have competition. This game lets two to four players take on the role of Empresario trying to build the best town and attract the most settlers by using some great gaming mechanisms of Dice Drafting, City Building, Tile Placement and Engine Building.
Lets Start Building A New Town
Before you can start building your Old West Empresario town, you will need to sort all of the lovely components. First place all of the town buildings in a pile, then place the six die tiles in a row in ascending order, randomly choose three gold wanted cards and find the same cards but in silver, place the required amount of dice and settlers (population) in the centre of the table according to the player count, place all of the money (special mention of the excellent $5 notes), place two town buildings beneath each of the die tiles, give each player two Empresario cards, a town hall, $3 dollars and 3 town buildings.
Everyone now chooses which Empresario player power they want but I would recommend for your first few games that everyone just goes for the basic power on the reverse of the card. This will keep the first few games simpler and stop the accusations that other people have better player powers. The player powers are explained in the back of the rules but I felt they could have done with more clarification and I am still not sure they are balanced well enough. Finally choose which of the three buildings you want to have in your town. This is placed next to your town hall face down as it is under construction.
Draft Those Dice
Every round of Old West Empresario you will draft two dice and with each draft you can either claim a tile from the column you drafted from, discard a tile from that column to gain $3, or use the die to activate your town. Once all players have drafted their two dice everyone will use the remaining die to activate one further building in their town. The game will continue like this until someone builds their 15th building or the population tokens run out (it could also be that the town buildings run out as well but is much less likely).
Before drafting a die you can alter the number once by paying $1. This will allow you to change the die face by 1 either up or down and you can even change a 6 to a 1.
Claiming a tile – Take one of the two town buildings and place it in your town (face down) next to a previously built building, then replace that tile from the supply
Discarding – You still take a town building and replace it from the supply but you discard this drafted tile and take $3 instead
Activating – In this instance you do not take a town building and instead use the drafted die to activate buildings in your town which have been constructed and that have the same number as the die.
What Am I Building
Where this game starts to shine is the various buildings that are available to you throughout the game. There are nine different types as follows:-
- Natives – already built and provide an immediate bonus but no ongoing bonuses
- Mines – Provide income when activated and like to be next to Inns and Distilleries
- Distillery – Provide population when activated and like to be next to Saloons
- Saloon – Provide income when activated and like to be next to Distilleries
- Inns – Allows you to draft more town buildings when activated and like to be next to Natives
- Undertakers – Provide settlers (population) when activated and make opponents lose dollars. They also cost you points for each building they are next to
- Carpenter – Construct your buildings when activated and like to be surrounded and next to churches
- Churches – Activate other numbered buildings in your town when they are activated. Like to either have empty spaces next to them or Carpenters
- Civic – No immediate bonus but provides various different end game scoring opportunities
Your town hall can be activated with any number and can either gain you $1 dollar or allow you to build one building for $1.
As you can see from the list of possible buildings in Old West Empresario, there are numerous ways of scoring and it does feel like a ‘point salad’ game. Every type of town building has it merits and detriments and you can flounder whilst trying to score for every type of building. It may be better to try to concentrate on one or two numbers and a small selection of building types. This would lead to better combo and scoring opportunities but could lead to other players ‘hate drafting’ the dice or buildings they can see you need.
The wanted cards provide another scoring opportunity and reward the first and second player who achieve three different tasks. This helps focus your game towards the goals but you can just ignore them and win with a better strategy to your opponents.
Final Thoughts
Is this game as good as Pioneer Days, no, but should you own both and play them in order, absolutely. It really does feel like a sequel to your favourite movie that is not quite as good as the original but you enjoy it all the same. I really like the engine building and activating lots of buildings in your town in one go. I think the artwork and components are brilliant and the scoring is relatively easy. It is a ‘point salad’ but that is okay as there are many different strategies to wining the game.
The game can become very competitive with hate drafting especially prevalent towards the end of the game. Once again the rule book does not go into quite enough detail regarding the player powers which do feel a little unbalanced.
I would recommend this game to fans of the Old West theme or anyone who likes city builders but keep in mind it is a dice drafting game which sometimes means you will not get the number you want, luckily in Old West Empresario there is always another choice for you to take.
