Saddle up and guide your wagon train along the perilous Oregon Trail! Build a team of hardy folk and gather resources and equipment with a unique dice drafting system. But dangers await in the dice you don't choose! You can hire townsfolk, buy wagons, pan for gold, and take on cattle — all the while preparing for inevitable raids, storms and famine. Who will best face the perils of the wild frontier and lead their wagon train to victory?
Pioneer Days is a dice-drafting game reminiscent of The Oregon Trail. While you pursue your strategy, you must be prepared for impending disasters such as storms, disease, raids, and famine.
Round by round, players draw dice out of the bag, roll them, then take turns drafting one to either collect silver, hire a townsfolk, or take an action based on the die value. Townsfolk confer immediate or constant benefits as well as end game scoring bonuses, while actions help you collect wood, medicine, cattle, equipment, and gold nuggets. The unchosen die each round advances one of the disaster tracks based on its color, and when a disaster gets to the end of its track, all players must deal with its effects:
During a raid, you lose half of your silver.
During a famine, you need to spend 1 silver per cattle or lose the cattle.
During a disease, you need 1 medicine per townsfolk or lose the townsfolk.
During a storm, you need 1 wood per wagon or suffer damage to your wagons.
At the end of each round, you can satisfy the current town's favor conditions in order to earn their favor. Prepare for the disasters while you pursue your strategy, and earn the most points to win the game!
- Coming back with expansion
- Appreciated by French publisher
- Pioneer expansion and settlement
- Historical/frontier settlement
- Engine-building strategy
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- engine building — Players build economic engines through resource management
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I went outside like for a whole two hours.
- Well, you're not the only one.
- You signed my game, but I didn't like it.
- That's a funny you signed my game, but I didn't like it.
- You get the one that's signed
- It's like you got the worst the worst component from my least popular game
- I think that's a much better fantasy to have that you fight dragons rather than you're a dentist
- Dragons? Surely that's what my uncle Adam does. Dragons, doesn't he's not a dentist.
- No, you can't make a Euro game set in space.
- It's interesting how that group think sort of works
- I think maybe it's a bit of group think in the industry
- One in 10 maybe
- Stack the deck
- That advice is right
- We probably got to check check our privilege here a little bit
- Very very fortunate to be in that position, aren't we?
- It's a practical problem, really
References (from this video)
- Solid mechanics
- Good underrated game by TMG
- Simple ruleset
- Good synergy building
- Teaching iconography is complex
- Publisher TMG no longer in business
- Frontier settlement
- Western town building
- Old West Empresario
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Asymmetrical cities — Build unique cities with different dice synergies
- Dice draft — Draft dice to take city tiles or activate city
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- it's just like falling off it's just literally there are 100 better games in it
- Small Islands uh this is the one that i've been saying is a replacement for carcassonne
- way too complicated for its own good
- it is one of the most beautiful games in existence
- i still think five tribes is better than yamatai
- nations is still my preference to fruity ages in terms of playing a physical game
- really good negotiation game
- great teamwork cooperative very cool
- this is a really good solo
- the deductions are really hard it's a really tough one to do
- it's oh it's a mind bender gorgeous looking
- reef is still a really cool game
- azul is only that good at two player
- near and far still really good
- there's no reason to play that one if you have near and far
References (from this video)
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- dice drafting + one-shot abilities — players draft dice and gain first-use or one-shot abilities on the tableau.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- tableau builders feature a wide and diverse range of markets and currencies
- the beauty of this mechanism is the chain reactions that it creates when you take your turn
- it's a really nice feedback loop
- the world feels bigger than your own little player area
- tableau building is a core, solid mechanic that many designers build around
References (from this video)
- flexible use of dice to drive multiple actions
- versatile and thematic in a euro-style frame
- reliance on dice outcomes can reduce predictability
- Grand Austria Hotel
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- dice-driven action system — dice are used in multiple clever ways to power various actions and handle perils or incomes
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- it's really satisfying because everybody's involved in every turn of the game
- i really like games where i get income throughout the game
- a puzzle is laid out by laying out a series of cards and then we race to fit those different dice into that different orientation shown on the puzzle