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Colt Super Express
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Description
Colt Super Express has the spirit of the original, award-wining Colt Express in the form of a fast-paced, survive-to-win format that players can take anywhere. A 15 minute, battle royale style version of Colt Express.
Players compete to be the last Colt Express rider standing because there can only be one when this train stops. Each round, players will place three of their four (or up to six if using the optional extensions included in the game) action cards face down in a pile to determine what they'll do when they are revealed, including moving, shooting, and more. At the end of the round, the last train car is removed...and so is anyone in it! Bandits are eliminated by being knocked from the train, or by being in the last car when it is removed. The last one remaining wins.
Batwings and Broomtails
The scene? The Union Pacific Railroad, deep in the dusty heart of the Wild West. The cast? Seven of the meanest, slipperiest bandits that North America has ever flinched at from a Wanted poster. The goal? Rob the living daylights out of the terrified passengers of a steam train and – through scheming, shooting and subterfuge – be the last outlaw standing on the speeding locomotive as it roars away into the sunset. Brigands and brig-ettes, fill up your shootin’ irons and prepare to jump aboard the Colt Super Express!
If you’ve already had the pleasure of playing 2014’s unique hand management/action programmer Colt Express, you’ll instantly be at home with both the thrilling high-speed heist scenario and the rogue gallery of characters playing it out. Tuco, Django, Ghost, Belle, Doc and Cheyenne all make their return here in Colt Super Express (along with new addition Mei) but don’t be fooled by over-familiarity. This compact resizing of the original game plays as a faster, more chaotic affair, owing to a new feature whereby the train driver ejects entire carriages at the end of every round in an attempt to get rid of you and your adversaries!
Clipped Horns and Curly Wolves
For those unfamiliar with its predecessor, Colt Super Express will quickly have you feeling like you’ve been playing with it your whole life. The combination of a simplified ruleset and zero required reading makes this game remarkably easy to pick up even for young children.
You’ll start by placing the train cards upon which Colt Super Express is played. That’s the front steam locomotive card followed by the carriage cards, the amount of which is the number of players plus one. Once your robbers are placed, the bandit bedlam can begin! Each player has four action cards which allow you to navigate your way around the hurtling train, three of which you’ll choose for the current round. You can:
– Flip: changing the direction that your bandit is facing
– Change Floor: allowing you to either ascend to the carriage roof or clamber back down inside
– Move: jumping you one train car forwards in whichever direction you’re currently facing
– Shoot: blasting one of your opponents backwards across the train and putting them flat on their backside, meaning that they’ll have to waste their next action standing up and recovering!
The tricky part comes in deciding which order to perform your actions in. You’ll take your three cards and arrange them in a stack before each of the players reveals one at a time in turn order, in a similar method to other fun predictive action programmers like River Dragons and Walk the Plank. Successfully predicting what your fellow bandits will do is key to victory in Colt Super Express.
Your carefully laid schemes can easily be disrupted by a stray bullet from the front carriage knocking you sideways, eliminating your following planned Flip and leaving you only a poorly judged Move action to send your meeple charging out of the rear train car to their doom! In this way, Colt Super Express is supremely satisfying when everything is going your way but hilarious enough when you completely misread the situation that you’ll be having too much fun to be too sore about it.
A Few Dollars More
As easy as the basic experience is to grasp, Colt Super Express bundles in two optional add-ons to gently increase the pandemonium and expand the game in a simple, accessible manner. The Reflex cards give you the chance to recover from a gunshot knockdown by instantly springing to your feet and returning fire in one swift action, while the Horse cards can rescue you from the jaws of defeat by having a galloping four-legged friend catch you as you fall from the train, returning you to the action in a flash.
Paint Your Wagon
Colt Super Express has unsurprisingly had to scale its contents down from its progenitor. The original Colt Express featured a fairly spectacular multi-carriage 3D train to play with, whereas this speedier incarnation settles for a series of scenic cards. However, this works well in practice; rounds in Colt Super Express are lightning fast and a quick push of your playing piece over a few centimeters to an adjacent card helps keep the action moving. The vibrant character-coloured meeples are still present but have been resculpted to aim on a 2D plane to suit the new Flip mechanic.
Although a great deal of the card artwork is recycled from Colt Express, the components in Colt Super Express are no disappointment. After all, this isn’t really a true sequel but a quality re-imagining to open an already excellent game up to a younger, lighter weight and travelling audience, the latter of which being especially true. The small size of the box and compact playing pieces makes this an ideal companion for a coach or plane trip. Maybe even a train journey, providing you don’t start shouting too loudly about the rear carriages detaching.
Colt Super Express is the far cheaper, quicker, smaller box version of its big brother Colt Express. You all play as bandits and are trying to shoot the other players and knock them off the train, so you can keep all the booty yourself! This version uses cards to represent the train, rather than 3D train cars. The box also comes with two expansions, as standard. These shake up the gameplay but are not recommended until you are familiar with the base game. Which shouldn’t take too long, as the game is simple and plays quickly.
Colt Super Express is a game for 3 to 7 players and plays within 15 minutes. I think, therefore, it qualifies as a party game, although it isn’t your typical Scrawl, Just One, or Cranium. This is serious looting business, with guns and player elimination. The main mechanism in Colt Super Express is programmable movement. During the Schemin’ phase, players will decide which order they wish to play their actions. You choose three of your cards to play and place these down on the table in the order you wish to perform them. The four action choices are: turn around, move to the next train car, move up onto the roof, or back into the train car and shoot.
Get That Box Open
As I said earlier, the box is much smaller than I expected from the game description, but this certainly isn’t a bad thing. The components for this game are simple. There are the cards that make up the train. Then a deck of four action cards for each character, and the seven bandit meeples. No fluff.
Set up is really simple, lay out the train cars. Place the locomotive at the front, and then a carriage for each player plus one. The first player is at the back of the train in the penultimate carriage. Then, in turn order, you place the meeples into the next available carriage. They start facing in alternate directions to spice things up a little. Hand out the action card decks to each player and you’re all set. I’d say that the rules teach takes about 3 mins, and set up is about 30 secs. This is exactly what you want from a filler game that isn’t going to overstay its welcome.
Let’s Get Shooting
Each round of Colt Super Express consists of two phases. The first is Schemin’, where you decide what order you are going to play your three actions. You stack them up onto the table ready to flip when it is your turn. Once everyone has placed down their three action cards, then you move into the second phase – Shootin’. This is where you resolve the actions. Starting with the first player, flip the top card over and resolve the action. When you shoot a player, you shoot the next available bandit in the direction you are facing. So the direction you are facing is really key both for who you are shooting and which direction they get thrown by the bullet force. If someone shoots you, you move backwards one train car and lay down stunned. While stunned, regardless of what the action card you’ve played says, you will simply ignore it and stand up.
At the end of the round, once you have resolved all actions, then the last car on the train (and anyone on it) gets removed. The person closest to the back of the train gains that card. These have a monetary value that you can use in a tie break situation. You eliminate players shot off the train or who fall off with the last car, and then a new round begins with the first player marker moving to the left. The game continues until there is only one player left or only the locomotive remains. If there are multiple players left but no more train cars to remove, then you break the tie by scoring who claimed the most loot from the train cars during the game.
Expand this game?
There are two modular expansions that come with Colt Super Express. You can mix in both together or one at a time. They each add cards to your programmable action deck. Reflex is a single card expansion. These add a reflex card to each action deck. These cards trigger when someone shoots you. You then get up and shoot the bandit in your line of sight. But if you weren’t shot, then the card makes you fall down. There is a risk in playing this at the wrong time, but it also is powerful when executed well.
Horse is the second expansion. When you play the horse you go to the very front of the train, facing forward, but only if you get knocked off. So this again can be risky. You can get shot off the front of the train as you would need to turn around before you could shoot another bandit. It is a little of a hail mary move.
Zatu Score
You might like
- Fast, chaotic gameplay
- Easy to learn
- Excellent strategy gateway for younger players
- Great value
Might not like
- Being eliminated too early can be boring
- The simplification and unpredictability might not be for heavier purists