You have been given the opportunity to design the trail system for a new national forest in the Rocky Mountains. You will build paths that wander through varied terrain and pass by waterfalls. You’ll develop campsites and leave other areas as pristine habitats for alpine wildlife.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided the prototype copy of Alpine Trails. The opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.

Disclaimer: Anytime you see a link to Amazon on our site, it is another way to get your product there for the normally listed price as well as a way to support Everything Board Games and everything we’re doing here, without paying any extra. We appreciate the support!

Setup of Alpine trails is very straightforward and simple. At the beginning of the game, you will place the corresponding number of trail tiles into the draw bag. In the center of the table, you will place the animal card, and the animal meeples of their corresponding habitat. You will put one meeple of each type per player on the card. On the side of the animal card setup a supply of tent meeples and signpost meeples. Each player will be given a base camp tile randomly and one bonus card. You are now ready to start the game.

The rulebook mentions that the first step of a turn should be done simultaneously. However, it is impossible to have all players drawing tiles at the same time. S0, starting with the first player, draw two tiles out of the draw bag then pass the bag to your left so the next player can draw. You will take your two tiles and play them in your park paying attention to the placement rules. You can also decide to discard a tile to get a campsite, which will gain you a campsite tile and a tent meeple, these will be worth 8 victory points at endgame. If you draw a tile with a T intersection and play that in your park all other players will gain the animal meeples that corresponds with its habitat, you do not get that animal unless another player plays a T intersection for that animal. Each animal is worth two points if the player can play it in their park, by having its habitat in the park without a trail on it. You have now given all your opponents points and your reward is to have a branching trail that may or may not be worth more points. When you play a T intersection collect a signpost meeple and place it on the intersection, there is no reward for this merely cosmetic. If you are able to get your trail to loop back to its starting campsite, this will gain you a waterfall tile that you can place in your park, these score by the number of tiles that surround the waterfall. Players will continue this process until all tiles have been played out of the draw bag, initiating the end game and final scoring. At the end of the game, you will look at your park if you have any trails that do not end at a campsite or waterfall, you will gain a lake tile to place at the end of the trail, given two points per lake. This makes for an interesting strategy when the game closes to an end, does a player finish the loop for a waterfall or make a bunch of dead-end trails to get lakes.

Alpine Trail is a nature themed game, focusing on the Rocky Mountain area of the United States of America. Within the nature theme, you have been hired to develop a national park in the Rocky Mountains complete with trails, campsites and areas for animals to live in untouched natural habitats. The theming is not particularly a new theme. However, I do appreciate the need to keep certain areas untouched for the animals to live. This lends itself to conservation and not just the desire to create recreational areas for humans. The theming will remind many gamers of such titles as Cascadia and Trailblazers, Cascadia for the need to develop habitat and Trailblazers for the trail build aspect. 

Mechanically Alpine Trails is a tile drafting and placement game. There are small elements of strategy, but the main mechanics of the game lend themselves to randomness. On your turn you will draw two tiles blindly from a draw bag. On one side of the tile, you will have a trail and on the other side there is untouched habitat. You will decide which side of the tile you will place in your park. Like most tile laying games there are a few placement rules: example trails must branch off of other trails and habitats cannot be at the end of any trail placed more to the side of trails. This gives players a little bit of agency in deciding the way the trail will go or how much habitat. The issue comes in that you do not know what habitat you will draw. There is a rule where you can discard a tile before placing it to get a campsite to put it in your park, but this will essentially end the trail you were working on. The inability to see what tile you are selecting I think takes away from the overall enjoyment of the game, I will discuss this more in my final conclusions.

132 Trail tiles

36 Campsite/Lake tiles

36 waterfall/Lake tiles

8 Base Camp Tiles

20 Personal Goal cards

25 Tent Meeples

12 Signpost Meeples

5 Mountain Goat meeples

5 Moose meeples

5 Bear meeples

5 Wolve meeples

Score Pad

Rulebook

The artwork is simple but effective in portraying the theme in the game. When looking at the game you can get a sense of where and what the game is trying to get across. The icons are easily readable on the tiles. I love that the publisher of the game did not overcomplicate the look of the game or try to be overly realistic. The simple cartoon graphics and layout make the game easy to play and to teach. My one complaint I have about the artwork is that the forest and marsh tiles look very similar and on several occasions I or someone else at the table played the wrong tile and didn’t realize until final scoring. The publisher attempted to alleviate this by placing icons on all the tiles representing what the habitat is, but during gameplay if you just quickly look at the tile you can easily mix up the two habitats.

The components of Alpine Trails are top notch; the mini cards are a good thickness with very readable text and icons to describe what the cards are trying to relay. Tiles are sturdy and the artwork looks good on them with no apparent misprints, once again the forest and marsh tiles could benefit from a little tweaking of the color palette. Meeples are standard wood meeples, they are similar to other games that use animal meeples. One of my goat meeples had the legs broken off when it arrived. Other than that one issue they are of good quality. The Score pad is big with plenty of space to write down scores, the pad contains plenty of score sheets allowing for numerous play throughs. The rulebook is well laid out and easy to follow for learning the game

After playing Alpine Trails Solo, with 3 players and 5 players, I have a mix of feelings about the game. At the Solo count the game is a fun puzzle game that requires the player to make decisions and how to best lay out the tiles. The randomness of the draw bag still lacks a lot to be desired, but at the solo count is not as bad as higher counts, if the tiles were laid out it would make the solo game too easy to score high. However, the competitive modes from 2-5 players just feel like a bunch of people playing the solo mode together. There is no real interaction between players aside from the T intersections and playing those benefits opponents more than what the person who played it receives.  You can easily give other players up to 8 points and receive nothing back. Drawing the tiles seems like such a lazy method for drafting the tiles. If I need an elbow trail or a particular habitat, I am at the mercy of the draw bag to provide the tile for my strategy, leaving me frustrated when I don’t draw it, but the next player does. That’s not fun randomness like a dice roll, that is infuriating when you can go through several draws and not see the tile you need. The basic rules of the game left me and the players at my table bored as there wasn’t much strategy needed for a game that claims to be a strategic game. The personal goal cards are a nice touch but there was no real way to plan your park or trail to complete them. Based on this I came up with some fixes for the game,

For each round draw 2 tiles for each player plus 2 extra and place them in the center of the table, to create a draft pool. On your turn you will draft one tile and place it in your park. After all players have drafted the first tile, you will then draft a second and place it in your park. The tiles are refilled leaving the 2 left over. The first player moves to the left and the draft is done again. Same concept for campsites, you can discard a tile to gain a campsite. For T-intersections, if you play one and gain the signpost you get 3 points and everyone else gets the animal. This will encourage players to play the T intersection tiles and maybe try to get them all. This gives your opponents 8 points, but you can essentially gain more by playing T intersections. Also, I gave each player 2 personal goal cards, this gives players options on how to play instead of being steered by one card. After making these simple rule changes and playing again it was a unanimous agreement that the game was more enjoyable and more strategic, players stated they would play again. 

Alpine Trails as a game has a lot of potential to be a great little starter or filler game on most tables. In its current rules state, I feel it will suffer as it lacks true agency and strategy.  Getting lost in randomness and luck. Alpine Trails may suffer to find an audience, as family gamers will feel there isn’t enough interaction, hobby and euro gamers will find it is too luck driven. I feel with a rules update you can make the game a little more appealing to both audiences. The game looks good and is a simple light weight game that just suffers from a few issues that are easily fixed. If playing with the house rules provided, I whole heartily recommend. As a base game I cannot recommend at retail price.

After reading Steven Foster’s review, if this sounds like a game for you at the time of this posting Alpine Trails you can get on AMAZON for only $34.95. Check it out get yours HERE.

Disclaimer: Anytime you see a link to Amazon on our site, it is another way to get your product there for the normally listed price as well as a way to support Everything Board Games and everything we’re doing here, without paying any extra. We appreciate the support!

Do you find that you’re missing too many reviews as we drop them? Provide your name and email below and we’ll keep you in the know of what we reviewed that week as well as other hot news!!!!!