Gold West Boardgame Review

In Gold West, you and your fellow players are competing gold prospectors circa 1849. You'll extract resources from the land, build camps, claim stakes, and ship out your precious metals - or use them to complete contracts. Resources are controlled via a Mancala-style track where more points are awarded for down-track placement but those resources take longer to become available. At the end of the game, points are awarded for each building in a player's largest contiguous grouping and for controlling the most (and 2nd most) of each of the four terrain types.
The actions a player takes during Gold West - building camps, claiming tiles, and spending precious metals - all revolve around and are subject to the Mancala resource track system which determines what resources are available and when. Understanding the resource system and how to best plan and take advantage is the key to victory. Players want to strike a balance between making sure that building materials are available every turn and that metals arrive in large groups in order to score big points. Sure, players need to pay attention to and strive for area control, but that's all moot if the resources aren't available at the right times.
Gold West is an easy-to-learn game with an interesting depth of strategy that requires attentive planning while keeping an eye on opponents' goals. Landing somewhere on the complexity spectrum between Ticket to Ride and Catan, people of all skill levels can enjoy and excel at Gold West - which makes it a good introductory-level game that players will want to keep in regular rotation. But don't take my word for it; check it out at your local board game library.