A Game by a Designer You've Never Played Before - Colt Express (Christophe Raimbault)

Saturday was our Meet-Up Board Game Group's game day at the Carmichael Library. Mark and I broke out our brand new copy of Colt Express that we had picked up at DunDraCon for $20 because of a slightly dinged up box. Because we collect games to play them rather than to preserve them in pristine condition, the dent in the box didn't matter to us at all as long as the components inside the box were fine - which they were.


We sat down and played this game through with two groups of people and had a blast both times. In the first game one person had played the game before, but as a computer game. In the second game, it was just Mark and me who had played the game before by virtue of this being our second game of the day.


One the things that caught my attention about this game was that it does not use a board like other board games. Instead it uses a cardboard, three dimensional train that you must put together when you open the box for the first time. Once you have put it together, there are compartments in the box to store the assembled train cars and engine. Additionally, the theme of the game is continued because the wooden meeples are cut with cowboy hats and bowed legs.

In this game, the players are trying to rob a train in the Wild West. In each train car there are bags of money and gems that you pick up by playing cards. However, each of the moves your character makes have to be pre-programmed at the start of the round. This means that two players can interact either with each other or with the Marshall character and their pre-programming suddenly becomes skewed. If the Marshall gets moved by one character into a car where another character is, then that character must retreat up to the top of the train and may not get to grab any loot. It's also possible to shoot one another or get shot by the Marshall which has the effect of putting bullet cards in your planning deck. This means that they get in the way of your ability to plan your moves each round.

As we played this game there was lots of laughter and lots of plans thwarted as the game progressed. There were also times during the programming phase where all of a sudden people couldn't remember what they had put in for the last card and there was no way to go back and look at it once other people had placed their cards. That caused some laughter too.

Colt Express is a fun game that anyone could easily learn to play. I would call this a gateway game and a good family game. I can't wait to show this to my non-gamer friends and family.