The year is 1875…ten years before Doc Brown was thrown back into the past because of a stray bolt of lightning…but I digress. “ToughTimes” is a 2-4 player card game (30-60 minute average playing time) that will task players with achieving “Stability” by collecting certain cards and resources. There aren’t any DeLoreans around, but there does exist a powerful “Saloon Time Machine” card that can erase the present…no joke!
Special thanks to Travis Mullinix for sending me a copy for review purposes. Per FTC regulations I’m required to note that I was paid to cover this game, but any and all opinions are my own. As always, the only thing paid for here was my time.
Components
54 Lucky Draw cards, 39 Frontier Life cards, 4 Invest in Gold cards, 4 Job of the West cards, 7 General Store cards, 50 Gold Nuggets (valued @ 1 gold each), 15 Gold Bars (valued @ 5 gold each), and 1 Die.
Setup
Each player receives 5 Gold, an Invest in Gold card, and a random Job of the West card. Select a player to manage the bank and general store.
General Store cards are placed face-up. Shuffle the Lucky Draw cards and place the deck face down. Remove Blizzard, Drought, and Famine from the Frontier Life deck and shuffle the rest into a face down pile (they act like action cards). Once everyone has had their first turn, the abovementioned cards are shuffled back into the Frontier Life deck. All remaining Gold Nuggets and Bars are placed nearby.
Gameplay
Players will choose a starting player and play will proceed clockwise from there.
On a player’s turn, they will:
1. Pre-Roll (Optional) – Buy/Sell Goods/Protect cards from the General Store, Invest in Gold, and/or Pay 1 Gold to the Bank to exchange a Frontier Life card. The player may do as many of these actions as they wish, in any order.
2. Roll (If you have 4 or fewer Frontier Life cards in your hand) – Roll the die and draw that many cards from both the Lucky Draw & Frontier Life Decks (ex. Rolling a 1 means you draw 1 from EACH deck). Rolling a 3 allows the player to get a lost Job back, free a Captured card, or get free from a Marshal card.
Goods and Protect cards are played face-up in front of the player. Secret Stash and Frontier Life cards go into your hand.
3. Frontier Life – Play 1 Frontier Life card into the deck’s discard pile (ignored on first turn). Discard down to 5 Frontier Life cards at the end of your turn.
Play continues clockwise with the next player repeating the above steps. The “Last Stand” begins when a player manages to achieve Stability, which is a Job, Family, Shack, Horse, Wagon, and at least 10 Gold.
During the Last Stand, opponents of the player who achieved Stability can play cards from their Hidden Stash in an attempt to disrupt said player. These cards can be played by anyone, in any order. If the player with Stability continues to maintain it even after this phase, then they will win the game!
Note: The above doesn’t cover all of the rules found in the rulebook, but should give you a general idea as to how the game is played.
Review
I wouldn’t make it in the Wild West, that much is clear. I’d be too busy whining that I wasn’t getting any bars on my iHorse or something. Yet, there’s something about the Wild West that appeals to me. There’s a certain romance to the roughness and simplicity of it. The developer does a good job of capturing that feel here. The “target” icons on the cards, the tools and buildings listed on the cards, and the idea of a player’s secret stash (just to name a few examples) all point to an appropriately themed Wild West card game. The quality of the cards are great to boot.
RNG (a video game term that stands for random number generator) is present here making the game a bit more casual than I typically like. “Shootout”, for example, tasks players with rolling dice to determine who steals gold from the others. I typically look for ways that games mitigate dice rolls by letting you adjust their pip value. I didn’t see a lot of that here. I was hoping to see a “Revolver” (+1 to combat die rolls) or “Boiler Plate Armor” (+1 to Defensive Rolls), but alas no dice (pun intended). That being said, the game does contain cards that offset others…a Fur Coat can combat the Blizzard effect, for example. Packing Iron offsets Thief/Bandit cards while at the same time makes them more powerful. The card game “Mille Bornes” has similar mechanics.
My other concern is the amount of “take that” cards that are in the game. To be fair, it’s hard to avoid as the rules dictate that players race to be a clear winner. Still, any families or groups who always have “that person” that gets sour over losing or being ganged up on should know that feelings can and may be hurt in this game. Players can, at any time (and not just at the end of the game) use cards from their Secret Stash to mess with other players. Parents should supervise to make sure that a group of kids aren’t ganging up on one of their peers just because they can.
The game does include a job system that I wish was more fleshed out. In summary, players earn job cards that contain a profession and an amount…this amount can be earned or lost when Town News cards are played. It feels more like a type of stock market as I’ve never lost money when I worked at any job in real life, ever. I would have preferred a job system that always rewarded the player. “The Game of Life” does something to that effect where players have to invest in jobs that yield a more lucrative paying salary, but Paydays are still Paydays. The Invest in Gold cards does the same exact thing (invest to possibly win or lose gold when Gold News cards are played) so I would love to see the Jobs mechanic reworked.
I do like the fact that some items have a buy & sell value. Typically the buy value is higher so that you simply can’t flip real estate like shacks. Giving players the option to sell cards to swap them out for others is a good one. It helps to offset bad card draws and get rid of cards that you simply don’t need. For example, players are limited to 2 of each Protect cards (shacks, horse & wagons, etc.) each so it’s easy money to sell these things on future turns.
“ToughTimes” is certainly more of a casual card game than what I would call a Wild West simulator. There are a number of aspects of the game that I feel could be improved, but this would no doubt add more cards and increase the existing development costs. From what I’ve seen, this would serve as a good casual filler in between longer play sessions. The cards and art are well done and appropriately themed. The game introduces some good ideas that expand upon existing card games like the aforementioned “Mille Bornes”. The game has potential to grow, no doubt, but it functions as a simple and quick card game with some “take that” mechanics.
At the time of writing, the developer has not listed the game for sale on “The Game Crafter”. Thus, I do not know how much the MSRP will be. I would recommend the game at $20-25 which is standard in this industry, though I’ve seen games on “The Game Crafter” retail for much higher than they should due to lack of mass production discounts during manufacturing. My review scores typically take price into account, so the below review score reflects what I think of the game and gameplay only.
Final Verdict: 7/10 (Good)
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nice!