On the 11th June, 1899 the Union Pacific Express
left Folsom, New Mexico with passengers on board. After a few minutes, gunfire
and footsteps overhead can be heard. Heavily armed bandits have come to rob the
train….and so the Colt Express game begins.
First up thought this a 3d game and the Colt Express needs to
be built. The instructions are pictures and fairly straight forward but you do
have to concentrate while building as its not till the end that you’ve
discovered you’ve placed the wheels wrong at the start and need to rebuild it. There’s
one locomotive and 6 carriages to be built along with some scenery. They are all
built of paper on card so occasionally when building you have to be careful as
the wholes sometimes are a little small and need some wiggling with out bending
the bit. That being said we managed to build the set fairly quickly in ten
minutes- there was three of us and the box is built to take the carriages and
train without any further need to build each time you play.
The train is nicely illustrated. The Locomotive is always in
play and the number of carriages is down to the number of players. Each train
carriage has some loot to start the game – based on what’s on the floor and the
Marshal protecting the train and passengers with the strong box are in the
Locomotive. Your job is to be one of the Bandits robbing the train and
passengers and to win you have to be the richest outlaw of the all!
The game consists of five rounds and each round has two
phases. Phase 1 is Schemin and Phase 2 is Stealin!
The game is aimed at 10years plus, but we played this with
ages 8-41. If this is the first time playing you need to sit down and read the instructions
– a lot! It took us about 20 minutes to fully understand and digest the instructions.
That being said once you’ve got this and started playing the rest comes easy.
Your actions are based on your action cards and are great! You can climb on to
the roof of a train, you can shoot a passenger or bandit, rob and punch another
bandit! The person as well who has fired the most amount of shots at the end of
the game also gets a $1000 bonus!
The game is for 2-6 players from ages 10years above – our 8-year-old
ending up playing his dad. Each game last approximately 40 mins and was a great
deal of fun to play! The carriages one built hold together well and each game we’ve
played has been different. The more people who play the game the more it is!
The game requires some great play with strategic thinking, part remembering
what others in the game have done and a little bit of luck! It’s a superb game
to play and quickly became a favourite – especially among the teens in the
family.
Being Asmodee the game is top quality and surprisingly good
price at RRP£30 although you can get £6 off this buying it online! I think this
is a fab price for the quality of the product, great builds, no plastic and
superb game ability! All in all a top game that if you like board games or want
something a little different to play then I highly recommend.
