End of the Trail is a competitive card game for 1-4 prospectors and fortune seekers. Players manage a hand of cards to secure transportation, prospect land, and take a shot at winning a title to more land at the poker table. Cards have three uses, each corresponding to a particular phase of the game: to prospect land tiles and discover how much gold a claim will produce, to collect and play cards that build a good poker hand, and to purchase additional cards in auction to help with prospecting, poker, or both.
Prospecting land is a risky business. Players must choose their cards carefully, as they have limited chances to discover the most bountiful sources of gold. Each time they play a card and peek at a land tile, they must decide if they will stake a claim, placing their prospector’s tent, or if they will press their luck and try to find a better claim. But if a new land tile that they peek at produces less gold than their most previous inspected tile, the player’s luck has run out, and they are forced to accept the less bountiful claim.
In the California Gold Rush, fortunes were won and lost at the poker table. At the end of each round, players must select two of the cards they played for prospecting and add them to the stud poker hand in front of them on the table. At the end of the game, players reveal their poker hands. The player with the best poker hand wins another claim, placing their fourth and final prospector’s tent on a land tile.
At the end of the game, all hidden values are revealed and players add up the gold of their various claims. The player with the most gold wins.
—description from the publisher
- Light bluffing poker game
- Liked the poker hand element
- Tactful claim tiles
- Secretly building a hand is cool
- Games are always relatively close
- Theme-wise, there really isn't one
- People might not like poker forced into their game
- Prospecting
- Gold Rush
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area Control — Players place their people on tiles, and cards with different animals (mule, ox, horse) determine how far they can look at tiles.
- Hand Management — Players play cards that have suits and actions, and choose one card to add to their side hand for a poker hand at the end.
- player interaction — Cards allow players to move other players' meeples or camps to make tiles claimable or unclaimed.
- Set Collection (Poker Hands) — Players build a poker hand from cards played throughout the game, which provides bonus gold at the end.
- Tile Revelation — Players reveal face-down tiles to find gold, with a risk of busting if a revealed number is lower than the previous.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- This is basically Overwatch the card game, like almost to a T.
- The name is super generic. The cover is not the best looking.
- Overlords of Infamy is such a fantastic whimsical funny unique worker placement game.
- The best part of the whole the whole goddamn game is one of the villains one of the one of the overlords is a corgi named Waffles.
- I honestly think this game is fantastic and severely severely underrated.