Western Legends Showdown Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Wester Legends: Showdown, a two player micro game published by Kolossal Games. In Western Legends Showdown, players are playing cards to try and win locations.

Once upon a time, there was a game called Western Legends. It’s a sandbox thing. You can go anywhere. You can do anything. It’s enormous and takes a while to play and the variety of actions is, frankly, overwhelming. Once upon a slightly later time, I acquired Western Legends—and all of its expansions—and thoroughly enjoyed it. Even later still, I got rid of everything I had for it. It was too much. I loved all of it, but had to basically relearn every tiny rule and edge case every time I sat down to play. If only the game weren’t so big!

In a bizarre turn of events, there now exists—once upon a now time, if you will—a wallet-sized version of what is decidedly not a wallet-sized game. Western Legends Showdown is a tiny spinoff that borrows its artwork and theme from its big brother but almost nothing else.

This dueling card game is for two players only and takes about 20 minutes to play.

Western Legends Showdown is essentially the exact opposite of a sandbox game. In this game, players will play their vaguely poker-styled cards in one of three locations in the center of the play area. Each area has a condition by which it will be “won,” thereby letting the player who triggers this collect all of the cards currently stacked there. The game comes with seven location cards with different win conditions; of these, only three will be in play each game. The win conditions are varied, but mostly involve either a total card number or value threshold in regards to the cards played there. Once won, the location is cleared but stays in play.

Players have access to a hand of three cards at a time drawn from their nine-card deck. These cards are numbered 1 through 7 and each has a power associated with it. These are fairly basic (the 1, for instance, lets a player immediately play another 1), but the powers