Kickstarter Loot 3 - Tiny Epic Western boardgame by Gamelyn Games

September was supposed to be a big month Kickstarter wise, but the inevitable delays are making it look like October is going to be the big month instead. However, Tiny Epic Western did arrive on time and I had a chance to un-box it and take a look. I have Tiny Epic Galaxy by them and I really enjoy that game so I'm looking forward to getting in some play time with TEW as well. Of course this is setting the gears in motion to get moving on Calamity as well, so maybe I'll be dusting off the workbench and get some buildings built after ReaperCon this month.

Tiny Epic Western (TEW) is a combination of poker and worker placement as you vie for control of the various buildings in town. As a Kickstarter backer I have a few extras that aren't going to be found in the commercial version of the game. For instance the standard game has 8 "Boss" cards and I received 12. There are 4 bullet dice in the Kickstarter edition and only 2 in the commercial edition. The influence tokens have designs printed on them and I don't believe the commercial versions will. In addition there is a plastic version of the wanted card with a clear window in it. Quite frankly I don't know what that is for yet, but I'm sure I'll figure it out after a couple of games.

I also ordered a full deck of the playing cards as an add on and a roll up game mat as well. The game mat arrived almost a month ago I think and I, of course, forgot to take a picture of it. Think poker mat with a town layout on it and you will be close though.

Right off the bat I can see the high quality of all the components. The box walls are very thick so its going to be very resistant to typical gaming damage. The top has printing on the inside and serves as the "dice corral" and the box bottom has basic FAQs printed on it for quick reference when you don't have time to lip through the 20 page rule booklet. I'm really excited to jump into this one!

A box packed full of game components. Note the interior printing on the inside of the box top.

These are the building mats that form the game board.

One of the 12 boss cards. The backside has basic game information on it for use as a quick reference.

The two card "decks" (eraser on the right not included)

The Building cards

The poker cards and the wanted card. This is not a full deck of playing cards there are only 20 of them. However you could order a full deck as an add on purchase which I did.

The game components. The twelve meeples in four colors will be replaced with some meeples from a supporting Kickstarter project that should be arriving in the next week or so.