Cactus Town Review

0:00 foreign hey everybody Tyler with meeple mountain here bringing you another board game review this time from our friends at second gategames who've given us a copy of their title Cactus Town Cactus town is a programming game for two to four players in which you'll take on a specific role in a wild West Town that's laid out with cards for the whole town that you're set in you could be the lawful sheriffs or the Outlaws perhaps the bounty hunters or even the Can-Can dancer trying to set a new name for yourself and set out on a new course in your life each player that you'll take the role of or faction that you'll take the role of has a unique set of objectives and goals and cards that they're going to use as they program their way around the city to accomplish their goals if you're a fan of programming in the hijinks and hilarity that can come up with that type of a game then you're not going to want to miss out on Cactus town and all the excitement that is packed into this very tiny little box so join me at the table and let's jump in and learn how to play practice down welcome to Cactus town a small town set in the wild west where there is a lot of chaos and hijinks afoot in this setup we have four players set up as the Can-Can dancer sheriffs Outlaws and bounty hunters from left to right on your screen all set up around an asymmetric and uniquely placed board each of these factions have their own goals and objectives that they are looking to accomplish throughout the course of the

1:30 game and they will be doing so by moving around the town of cactus Town looking for specific buildings to activate abilities find certain objectives and complete their goals before their opponents they'll also be getting into tiffs with their opponents through duels lockdowns breakouts and all kinds of other things based on their faction Cactus town is a programming game so players have in their hand four unique cards with abilities values and certain actions that you can take every round of cactus town is played over a series of turns with players choosing three of those four cards to set face down in front of them to be their turns from left to right being turns one two and three players will then proceed to each flip over one of their cards their leftmost card first proceeding to the middle and then the right card to take actions that they've programmed out and again attempts to accomplish their goals by moving around the town flipping over cards and seeing what buildings they can discover of course your well-way plans can be messed up by your opponents repositioning you stunning you or even sending you to jail so you have to be prepared and be flexible as you go about your business in Cactus Town there's a lot to uncover and unpack in this game so let's go ahead and zoom in and take a look at this particular player faction area and then begin to gain an understanding of what the player bore these cards really do and how they function you'll notice here there are actually a few modules in Cactus town that are included that you can add or not add to your game to increase or decrease the depth of the game based on

3:02 your preferences we have these tokens on the left hand side of the board that allow you to have additional options and strategy as you duel and perform other actions in the game and we also have advanced buildings in the red that allow you to change the buildings out and even add additional strategic plans based on how you move around Cactus town so we have all that set up and we'll discover and discuss all that in due time but first let's take a look at a player area and understand what all you you can do in Cactus town now as mentioned before there are four unique factions in the game of cactus town there is the Can-Can dancer feature here the sheriffs and deputies The Outlaws and then the bounty hunters each with unique objectives and goals throughout the game and you'll see that each one has this really handy little handout card here that walks you through each of the symbology and and actions that that particular faction can take throughout the course of the game each player has their own little hidden screen to hide tokens behind you'll be gaining tokens depending on modules you'll play with that you can use throughout the game as well as any specific particular tokens that your character may have access to in this case the Can-Can dancer has access to their love letters and their little dual token tracker here as well every faction in the game has four cards they are a little bit unique but have a general same feel of what they can do we have the very fun art style here the symbology that dictates which uh character those cards belong to and then we have a bullet number and actions on the bottom and top of the card the bullet number is what's called your second shot value now in the course of each round of the game players are going

4:33 to choose three of these cards to turn face down in front of them and one to put face down on its side and that's going to be your second shot you'll be programming these in order from left to right so this would be my first turn second turn and third turn of each round of the game so I would select this in new of course every round but let's just say this is my setup on any given turn then I'll reveal my first card to take my action which is dictated by the symbology on the bottom don't worry if you have questions you can use your little handout to tell you exactly what that ability does and we'll look at how that functions in plays on the map in just a moment so you'll go through taking your turn doing your actions but in the course of the game you may find yourself in a duel if you share space with an opponent one of the ways that you can get around them because you're stuck with them is either sneak away or duel them to try and stun them and push them away so if you get into a duel duels are very simple in this game you will roll your D6 to see what value you get and then you can choose to add your second shot card if you want as well which adds the bullet value so 0 three or two in this case in this case two to your total value players compare their value and if they added their second shot or not the highest value wins The Duel and gets uh the victory the opponent is stunned and gets pushed several spaces away based on where the winner wants them to go so it can really mess up your programming if you lose a duel and get repositioned in that way now once you use your second shot bullet it is tapped and can't be used in future Duels for the rest of the round so make sure you plan wisely on when you really want that extra umph to make sure you win your duel but again play will continue like this until a player accomplishes all of their particular

6:04 goals and objectives uh set for them again we have the Can-Can dancer General overview Can-Can dancer wants to win duels and get around town she's trying to start a new life so she's got to kind of check a few things off her to-do list get to certain places building locations and then she has to win a set amount of duels if she does that she wins the game the bounty hunters want to capture an outlaw and take him with them and rustle some horses on their way out of town so they have to go to specific places and flip over over horse tokens to rustle up their their horses that they need the Outlaws are trying to find specific loot that they've hidden in the town they have to go to specific buildings that are laid out for them at the start of the game find their loot plunder their Loot and then get out of town the sheriffs and deputies of course are trying to catch the Outlaws they want to grab the Outlaws stun them by winning a duel and then drag them back to jail put them in jail and keep them there and make sure the bounty hunters don't break them out and take them so that's what every goal and kind of player is trying to accomplish throughout the game let's go ahead and take a look now at the overall map of cactus town and talk about how movement and interactions work with players Cactus town this is a setup and what it would look like for a four player game as you jump into Cactus Town each player has a setup as dictated by a card and they're kind of set up at the corners and outskirts of town except for the sheriffs and deputies and you're going to randomly Shuffle and deal out the 5x5 grid of town cards you can use the basic cards that we have here or the advanced buildings which we'll talk about in just a second is one of the modules you can plug in and to increase the Strategic depth of the game the base cards all are going to just be named

7:35 locations like the veterinarian the courthouse the dentist all kinds of different places within Town these named locations are important because certain places and certain characters need to go to certain places to accomplish their goals for instance the Outlaws need to go to specifically name places at the start of the game to recover their treasure that they've left their money from their bank heisting to get it and get out of town the Can-Can dancer needs to check certain things off her to-do list before she leaves town so she needs to go to specific places so some characters are moving around and trying to open the map up to find these specific named locations movement is very simple in the game of cactus town as you program your actions you can either sneak or run normally all players have access to that sneaking will let you move one space and you will not reveal the card that you go on to running would let you move up to multiple spaces and reveal the card that you land on on even if you jump over other cards you only reveal the one that you land on so movement's very clean it's always orthogonal for all players with the exception of the Can-Can dancer who with one particular card of hers can move diagonally as well so movement is very clean and quick as you move around one thing that's very fun that brings the tension to Cactus town is if you're ever in the same space with an opponent you're in what's called a deadlock and the only way that you can get away normally is to sneak or have a duel if you duel that opponent and beat them in the duel the loser is going to get pushed up to three spaces Away by the winner so say the Bounty Hunter here

9:05 defeats This Outlaw they can choose to push this outlaw up to three spaces orthogonally in any kind of Direction they want to go this of course could mess up the Outlaws plans and what they have programmed and set up to do and also gets them away and could push them into someone else to mess up their plan so there's lots of hijinks in chaos as you play throughout the game again players will be moving around categorically trying to find these specific locations that are key to their objectives as they go but in the base cards all these are are named locations let's kind of talk about the modules though that you can add in to increase the depth the first is my favorite which is the advanced buildings all of these Advanced buildings which are still named have specific abilities and actions that activate on them when you flip over to them and so what those will do will actually play into some of the other modules and expansions and give you a lot more depth and strategy about where you go and how you want to interact with the town as you go through these places so let's first talk about this Cactus symbol that is going to play into the cactus token the cactus token can actually sit on buildings and will prevent people from moving through or into that space and every time you get this symbol and reveal a cactus token you can actually move this to any other unoccupied space on the map this again can be a great buffer to protect you from other people trying to attack you or a way to mess with opponents and prevent them from getting where they might want to get to as quickly also there are these dual tokens there's four dual tokens that you can incorporate in the game these are kept secret and hidden behind your little screen that

10:36 you saw earlier in the video These can be used in duels if you choose secretly they will add one to your dice roll trap an opponent's movement allow to re-roll your dual dice or stop the Dual entirely and protect you from attack and these can be gained through going to various places and collecting those tokens these can be very helpful to kind of turn the tide and give you a little more strategic depth and strategy and trickery as you go throughout your jewels in a game of cactus town but play will continue like this with people moving around interacting with the buildings opening them up figuring out what the layout of cactus Town looks like and dueling each other until one of the four teams accomplishes their particular set of objectives foreign and that in a nutshell is everything you need to know to jump in and enjoy your time with cactus town the fun little programming game for two to four players that I was really pleased to get to and it was a lot of fun packed into this very tiny little box but what did I really think about it um as always I love to focus on the rule book I think that's really important this could be called more of a rule pamphlet uh than a book but it was great it was clean it was clear things were laid out very nicely illustrations were given and again it's a pretty quick read which is great for the size of the box I would have hated to have had to bust out my reading glasses for something of this size this is very clear the game itself is quite light at the base setting once you begin to add the advanced buildings and the tokens and the dice it becomes a nice light to maybe light medium weight game programming is always best in my

12:09 opinion if it's on the Lighter Side both in time and investment because there's a lot of chaos that can happen and if you have to suffer uh bad programming for hours it can be frustrating but in a nice limited window programming is a really fun mechanic that's great in this game and it works wonderful in Cactus town again you have these asymmetric factions so there's replayability there all trying to accomplish and do different things some of which is maybe arguably easier than others but it is a it's a fun mechanic and fun little little rivalry that you find yourself dropped into with Outlaws and sheriffs and bounty hunters kind of trying to do their little tug of war and then this Can-Can dancer just kind of jumping in doing their own thing almost like the Renegade from bang or other Western games if you're familiar with those and so a really fun little world that's been created the art is really great and the symbology on the cards is quite clear you know very quickly what to expect and again it's great that there's those little unique handouts for each faction so you know exactly what your symbology does and what it means and that way you don't have to have a lot of questions the teach on this game is very quick and clean even adding in all of the modules which again are always optional uh it adds a lot of depth uh and simplicity to the game which is great uh I love having the option to make the game deeper or lighter based on your tables preferences and I think that's a great a great formula that second gate has built out here again it's it's a really tiny little box I really enjoyed this one this was one that I got out with my family because it is light it's easier to teach and lighter on time so it worked out great but we had a lot of fun with it uh setup cards and everything

13:40 that's built into it make it very easy to put together and take down and teach so I had a really fun time with this title if you're looking for something new that you want to add to your collection that's kind of on that lighter time scale lighter strategy level that fits into that programming Niche and I would really encourage you to check out Cactus town it's a blast I had a lot of fun with it the theme was really great and I think you'll enjoy the hilarity that can come up with all of the different movements and interactions that you can have on the board with your friends and with your family and this is definitely one that is not going to be over anybody's head uh it's one that you could get the whole group into and have a blast just messing with each other sending each other to jail and doing all the fun that you can get packaged in this tiny box of cactus town so as always I want to thank you for checking out our video reviews I hope you find them informative and as fun to watch as we have fun making them we love sharing this content with you so please uh if you are so inclined be sure to like And subscribe and follow us for all the new content that we're putting out we're always putting out new stuff because we love board games and want to share what we love with you so again I hope you'll continue to come back to meeple Mountain for all of your board game related needs and as always happy gaming thanks for checking out this video I hope you enjoyed it check out these links to find some other games you might want to bring to the table this is Tyler Williams signing off