LogFAQs > #932447850

113. Colt Express (2014)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Programming, player combat, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 40 to 60 minutes
Experience: 2-3 plays over 2-3 sessions (2017-2018) with 4-5 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 72/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player is an outlaw in the Wild West, trying to rob trains. The game takes place over a series of five heists, where first everyone takes turns laying (face-down) an action card in their hand for a round, and then all of those actions are resolved sequentially - characters will move train cars, go up and down levels, pick up jewels, and punch one another into the next room (and cause them to drop their jewels).

Design - One of the neatest parts of CX is the components. You actually construct a standing cardboard train with open spaces to place your player meeples. It has fantastic table presence. CX is also the only game on this list that has the Programming mechanic, which is quite distinctive: While your actions may affect or be affected by others, you have to decide on them simultaneously without knowing the order in which they will resolve. It's distinct from simultaneous action selection because action resolution is sequential and not simultaneous. Chaos often ensues from plans going awry.

Yet somehow, that chaos is only a light "ah fuck, now my entire turn's fucked, and nothing really else funny is coming of it." Punching players is by far the most disruptive action that can happen, but CX also has this hand management mechanism in which as you take wounds from guns or whatever, you get more and more wound cards, which prevent you from moving as freely around the train as you'd like. That... sucks. Why would you want less agency as the game goes on? It keeps the game in the "silly" category, and that isn't necessarily a problem, per se, but the chaos is very confined in scope and can often reduce laughs instead of increasing them. (Compare CX's programming to the cooperative/real-time Space Alert, which I don't rank because I've only played it once, but where the negative effects hit everyone, resulting in more shared laughter.)

Experience - Which is all to say, I largely enjoyed setting up the train and derived some satisfaction from inflicting wounds on my opponents, but winning a game wasn't super-satisfying, while losing felt frustrating and kinda bad.

Future - Despite these, CX gets a lot of points for the ideas it tries out and its relative uniqueness. I'd play it above sitting out games for sure and wonder if all that's needed for more raucousness is lightning-fast play and the agreement that the scoring really doesn't matter.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness