Trailblazers Review

Trailblazers is a simple concept. Play cards from your hand to complete trails that loop back to their respective camps. Each round, you must put out a campsite. Then, play 2 cards from your hand and pass it along to the next player. They'll be doing the same and giving their cards to you. The cards must be placed adjacent to each other or over top of each other. There are 3 different trail types. This happens until there's 2 cards left in your hand and they'll be discarded. This continues for 4 rounds. You'll score points for each landmark in the completed loops and for any completed objectives.

The game also comes with two expansions. The Animals expansion which lets players put down an animal on a path and loops will score for each different animal on it. There's also the Adventure expansion where a meeple is placed in a camp and they must move along the loops while stopping to take photos of animals, placing campfires, and returning to camp to score.

The Good: For such a simple idea, this game is tough! It's a quick game that when you finish you almost immediately want to start over and play it again. The built in expansions and the solo mode gives a ton of different ways to play the game and it's never the same game. You need to be brave to venture far away from a camp to score big points but it's risky since you may also score nothing if you can't complete the loop. This is a great travel game to the point that they actually made a travel case and I'm here for it. It's been in my bag every single time I've been away.

The Okay: It can be extremely difficult to complete the objectives. With limited cards (24) played each game, you need to put a lot of focus on those or your loops. It's hard to do both. In the solo game, you need to do both and it can be tough to even unlock the final round. While not impossible, you must be efficient and limit mistakes.

The Not So Good: I didn't love the Adventure expansion. It felt like it added some unnecessary elements to the game. Thankfully, it's not a necessity to play with. You can play as many or few expansions as you like.

Final Thoughts: Ryan Courtney has mastered the art of loops. I don't think I've ever actually scored well but I think that this has been my most played game of the year. Something about it is so addictive. Maybe it's the need to improve or I just love the puzzle itself but I cannot stop playing it. Trailblazers is a game that I cannot get enough of. There's even another expansion currently on Kickstarter (at the time of writing this) that adds even more elements to the game. I loved Trailblazers and highly recommend this if you love a challenging puzzle.

Thanks to Bitewing Games for providing a review copy.