Western Legends - First Play!

23rd March 2022

It's a Wednesday night and we're round Simon's for an evening of gaming.

'You see, in this world, there’s two kinds of people, my friend – those who write dodgy blogs about board games, and those who read dodgy blogs about board games. You read dodgy blogs about board games!'

Western Legends is a western themed open-world sandbox board game where players are free to pursue several differing roads to success.

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What's in a game?

• Board: The board displays a map of fairly nondescript desert landscape which is populated with various western features such as Red Fall town or Cliff junction. The entire map is divided up into irregular spaces. Many of these spaces also contain icons which represent different businesses or areas of interest, including general store, sheriff's office, bandit hideouts, prospecting sites and more.
  There are also spaces for various decks of cards and money and across the bottom is a scoring track for VPs (Unsurprisingly called Legendary Points.).
  Along the left edge are tracks for 'Marshal' and 'Wanted' points. These respectively track the fame and notoriety for lawmen and outlaws, a player cannot have a score in both of these tracks at the same time.
• Player boards: These themed boards track weapons, horses, cash and items for each player's character, as well as damage they've taken.
  The player boards are double-sided but the only difference is the spaces for legendary tokens if you playing with that optional rule.
• Cards: Western Legends uses quite a wide variety of cards.
  Character cards: There are 12 different character cards in Western Legends, each one based on a historical figure. They are double-sided and the front has a portrait and information on that character's unique ability while the reverse gives a brief biography of the individual plus lists starting location/items.
  Each character also has a set of personal objectives displayed across 4 cards which are used in the optional rules.
  Story cards: These cards are also double-sided. On one side a story card displays a in-game objective and some spaces to place player discs. The flip side of a story card is an action that will be triggered when that card is completed.
  Fight cards: These are used when a player fights an NPC. They each contain a special move and despite there only being 13 of them, each also has a rank from a normal deck of cards such as 'queen of clubs', these ranks tend to be quite high so as to challenge players.
  Poker deck: This is a typical deck of 52 cards, as well as having the usual suits, each one also has a special action that can be triggered. This deck is used both for the special actions and combat.
  Money cards: Western Legends uses cards for dollars.
  Item deck: This deck of cards contains all the cowboy accessories that any player could want; weapons, mounts, whiskey and especially hats! Each item has a cost and a number of these are double-sided and can be upgraded to the improved side.
• General Store: This is a card holder for the item deck.
• Tokens: Western Legends also makes use of a wide variety of tokens.
  Cubes: The traditional little wooden cubes that come in player colours and are used for the game's 3 scoring tracks.
  Discs: These wooden discs are used to track story objectives and also come in player colours.
  Wound tokens: These round tokens have an image of a blood drop and are used by players to track damage they have received.
  Gold nuggets: Little acrylic shapes in a gold colour.
  Sheriff's badge: The first player token.
• Poker chips: Strictly speaking these are just more tokens but they are actually look like poker chips.
  Cattle tokens: There are 2 types of cattle token, used to represent the 2 ranches in the game. These are also double-sided, listing a reward on the reverse (More on rewards below.).
  Legendary tokens: These poker chips are used in conjunction with personal character goals.
• Dice: There are 2 six-siders in the game, they are not the usual numbered dice though and have a bunch of specific icons that refer to gold and cash instead.
• Minis: There are 13 plastic miniatures that come with the game, each has it's own look and pose.
• Plastic rings: There plastic rings in each player colour as well a brown ring (Sic.) for the sheriff and grey ones for bandits. These rings clip on to the base of any miniature.
  It means that any miniature can be used for any character.

The quality of the components in Western Legends is high, the cards, boards and tokens are all well made, the dice are plastic but nicely rounded and finished in a cool looking black and gold colour scheme. I like the gold nuggets and always appreciate the usage of wooden components. The plastic miniatures are unpainted but have a reasonable amount of detail.
While essentially unnecessary, the general store tray is eye-catching and looks great on the table.

The use of art is solid throughout the game and fits the western theme very well, illustrations feature on all the cards and are high quality, the character card portraits are the standout here. The board also looks good, with its map-like artwork.
All-in-all well presented.

Quite a few icons are used in Western Legends, most of it is clear and easily comprehended. Players will probably end up referring to the rulebook on several occasions, however, it's likely that this will be as much to get a handle on rules as to decipher the game's iconography.

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How's it play?
​Setup

• Players: Players should take all the components in their player colour.
  Character card: Randomly deal 2 character cards to each player, then all players should choose one and discard the other out of this game.
  Miniature: Each player should choose a miniature to represent their character and clip their plastic ring to it's base and put the miniature in its starting location as per the character card.
  ​Player board: Every player should take a player board and put their character card on to it's space, then follow the instructions for the character's starting items and position on the trackers.
• Board: Put out the board and put the money cards, cattle tokens, dice and gold nuggets on to their allotted spaces.
  Poker deck: Shuffle the poker cards into a face-down deck and put them on their allotted space.
  Fight cards: shuffle the fight cards into a face-down deck and put them on their spot.
  Story cards: Shuffle the story cards into 2 equal face-up decks and place them in their allotted spaces.
• General store: Put out the general store then put all the item cards in their spaces.
• Sheriff: Clip the brown ring on to one of the unused miniatures, this is now the game's sheriff and should be put in the sheriff's starting spot.
• Bandits: Clip all 6 of the grey rings on 6 unused miniatures, these will be the bandits and should be placed in the bandit starting spots.
• First player: Whoever's character is furthest along the wanted track becomes the fist player. In the likelihood of a tie, determine the first player by other method as seen fit by the players.

On to play
Before discussing how a turn plays out, some rules needed to be explained.

• Marshal/wanted tracks: These tracks are mutually exclusive and a player cannot have a score on both tracks. A player with a score on the marshal track is considered a marshal and a player on the wanted track is a outlaw.
  Marshal track: As a player progresses along the marshal track, they earn cash and will on occasion earn VPs. Finally at the game end, they will earn bonus VPs depending on their finishing position.
  If at any time a player with a score on the marshal track carries out an action that would increase their wanted score, they remove their marker from the marshal tracker and put it on to the start of the wanted track, they're now outlaws!
  Wanted track: Players on the wanted track cannot move up the marshal track.
  As a player moves along the wanted track they will occasionally acquire a poker card. More importantly, they will acquire VPs every round, the further along the track, the more they acquire!
• Sheriff: The sheriff can start the game 'inactive'. However, when any player moves on to the wanted track (Which could be right at the start of the game.), the sheriff become active.
  The sheriff can be moved around the board by playing certain cards and if he ends up on the same space as a outlaw character, well, then it's bad news for that outlaw, see below for more information on this.
• Story cards: Each story card has a criteria and 3 circles. When a player meets that criteria, they put one of their discs on an available space on the story card.
  When all the spaces on a story card are filled - as determined by player count, the card is flipped over, then at the end of the turn it is resolved. completed.
  This will provide some flavour text and a reward for all players who contributed (Put a disc on the card.) to its completion. It will also respawn a number of bandits if they've been captured.
  Finally, the player who filled in the last space and flipped the cards gets whatever bonus is listed on the card..
• Wounds: Characters have a poker hand size of 5, every wound they take decreases their hand size by 1. When a character has taken 3 wounds, their hand size is reduced to 2. Smaller hand sizes limit a players choices during actions and combat.

Actions
Beginning with the first player and progressing to the left, each player takes their turn. The bulk of active player's turn will consist of 3 actions, which can be taken in any order or multiple times. Most of the actions a player can take will be contextual to their location or proximity to other players or NPCs.
The turn order is a follows:

• Turn start: Any start of turn effects are triggered now. Then the active player may acquire $20 or 2 poker cards or $10 and 1 poker card. Finally the active player chooses which items to use for their turn.
• Move: The active player may spend an action to move 2 spaces across the board. alternatively, if they have a mount, they may use the mount's movement of 3-5 instead.
• Card action: The active player may spend an action to use the ability as described on any card they have in their possession.
  If the card used is a poker card, it's discarded once the action is completed. Character and item cards are not discarded after use.

Contextual actions
There a large number of contextual actions available in Western Legends obviously depending on the situation.

• PvP: If the active player is in the same space as another player, then they may enter into a fight with that other player. While there are 3 types of conflict here (Arrest, duel and rob.), they are broadly speaking all are resolved the same way. The active play must declare which type of conflict they are initiating.
  Resolving conflict: The active player must play a poker card from their hand face-down, then the targeted player chooses whether to play a poker card of their own face-down, if the targeted player does not play a card, they immediately lose the conflict.
  Players then reveal cards which might have special abilities that are triggered, after this, values are compared and the highest wins!
  There's also some rules for the start of combat and reactions once the fight has been resolved.
  Arrest: To arrest another character the active player must have a score on the marshal track and their target must have a score on the wanted track (Can't arrest someone who isn't wanted!).
  If the active player wins, the wanted player goes to jail and the active player's score on the marshal track increases.
  The wanted player gains a wound and a poker card, they are then sent to jail and lose their wanted score and any cattle tokens they had as well as half their money and gold.
  Duel: If the active player wins a duel, they immediately gain 2 VPs. The targeted player gains a wound and a poker card.
  Rob: If the active player wins a robbery, they increase their wanted score by 1 and can take half their victim's cash or gold as well as their cattle token if they have one.
  The targeted player gains a wound and a poker card.
  Losing: In all instances, regardless of what type of fight it was, if the active player loses a conflict, they gain a wound and a poker card.
• PvE: Any character may try and tackle a bandit and outlawed characters may try and deal with the sheriff. These conflicts are dealt with in a manner similar to PvP conflicts, except the NPC draws cards from the fight deck instead to generate their value during combat.
  Bandits: The active player may attack a bandit, when this happens, a fight occurs and the active player must play a poker card face-down as per a PvP fight. For this conflict, another non-active player draws 2 cards from the fight deck and chooses 1 to play face-down. The outcome is resolved as usual.
  If the active player beats the bandit, they can gain a marshal point or a VP unless they are an outlaw, in which case they must take a VP.
  If the active player loses, they gain a wound and a poker card.
  No matter if the bandit won or not, it is removed from play for the time being.
  Sheriff: If the sheriff moves on to a space with an outlaw or an outlaw moves into a space with the sheriff (Are you mad!), then a fight breaks out.
  Fighting the sheriff is like fighting a bandit except the sheriff player draws 4 fight cards!
  If the outlaw wins, the sheriff has been driven off and is relocated to the sheriff's office.
  If the outlaw loses, they gain a wound and a poker card, they are also arrested with consequences identical to being arrested during PvP.

Location actions
If the active player is on a space with an icon, they may trigger that action. There several types of location and some have multiple options.

• Bank: When the active player enters the bank space, they'll be presented with a couple of opportunities.
  Deposit: The active player may spend an action to sell gold nuggets they've acquired for both cash and VPs.
  Heist: The active player may rob the bank. This involves fighting the bank guard. Which is PvE combat as described above, with the guard drawing 3 fight cards.
  If the active player wins the fight, they gain a chunk of change and gain 3 points on the wanted track!
  If they lose, they still get 1 wanted point but also gain a wound and a poker card while fleeing empty handed.
• Cabaret: Players can spend an action and money here to straight-up buy VPs. that's some partyin' there!
• Doctor: A player may use an action and pay to remove all wounds, they also gain poker cards equal to the wounds removed.
• General Store: The active player may spend an action and cash to buy an item or upgrade an existing one.​
• Herding: If the active player is located at either of the 2 ranches, they may spend an action to acquire a cattle token. Then they need to deliver it onwards  to reap its reward. Where they deliver the cattle token will determine what reward they receive.
  Rustle: Delivering a cattle token to the other ranch will earn the player a wanted point and the reward on the flip side of the cattle token.
  Wrangle: Taking the cattle token to the rail station acquires the player a marshal point, as well as the reward on the flip side.
• Prospect: When at a prospecting site, the active player may spend an action to search for gold which is done by rolling dice. This will give the player gold nuggets, cash and sometimes nothing.
• Work: If the active player is at any site with an icon, they can spend an action to acquire some $10.

End of turn
When the active player has finished their 3 actions, the following events occur.

• Story cards: Story cards are resolved.
• Wanted track: VPs from being on the wanted track are acquired.
• Hand size: If the active player has more cards than there hand size, they must discard down to it.
• Legend points: Check to see if the endgame has been triggered.
• Next player: Play progresses to the player on the left.

Endgame
Play continues until someone reaches 15/20/25 Legendary Points (As decided by players for a short/average/long game.) which triggers the game end and all players get one final turn.
After this players tot up their final VP total (Legendary Points.) which comes from various sources.

• Legendary track: Players get VPs equal to their position on this track.
• Marshal track: Players on the marshal track gain their final VP bonus.
• Wanted track: The player who got furthest along the wanted track earns an additional 3 VPs, other wanted players get 1 VP each.
• Cash: Every $60 dollars accumulated earns a VP.
• Upgraded items: These will earn extra VPs.
• Wounds: Wounds actually deduct from a player's VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
It might seem from this fairly lengthy write up that Western Legends is complex but this isn't the case. There are lots of options and choices in this open world game that players can take but the implementation of this through the rules is actually quite straightforward.
Western Legends has enough flexibility to give players interesting choices to follow and provide a varied experience but doesn't bog them down with too many rules.

This wide variety of choices provides players with several differing approaches to accumulating VPs and one of the interesting aspects is how these elements interact with each other and nudge players into also doing so.
For example:
Prospecting can be a good way to go, mining and selling gold nuggets earns both VPs and cash (Which can be spent for even more VPs!), provided that the player can get to the bank.
Outlaws will want to steal that gold for themselves (Or engage in other dastardly behaviour.), which in turn increases their wanted rating. For bandits, this is a good thing, because their wanted rating has the ongoing effect of constantly increasing their VPs.
Consequently, it means that players on the marshal track will be motivated to hunt down and arrest outlaws to prevent this occurring.
Players will want to watch what others are doing and if necessary, adjust strategies to respond to other player actions.
Having said that, the open nature of the game means that players could also simply avoid each other and it becomes a race to get to the Legendary Point threshold.
These differing playstyles means it's hard to describe what a typical game would be like to play because there really isn't a typical game.

Western Legends is also a bit of a RPG-adjacent game but handles those elements fairly simply. There are no experience points or levelling-up here, but purchasing item cards serves the purpose of increasing characters' abilities and thus money is a bit of a stand-in for experience points.
Additionally; from story cards and character objectives to tales that arise from emergent game play, ​the game is full of appropriate narrative beats. As a result, the game's old-west theme feels strongly implemented.

If I had a criticism, it's perhaps that the playtime feels a little long, however, I never felt like there was too long spent in downtime between turns.

As far as sandbox games go, I definitely think that Western Legends is one of the better examples. The implementation of the western theme is fun and fits well. If sandbox game are what interests you and you like the old-west theme and presentation, it's worth a try.