Wild West board game Western Legends’ final expansion announced as Blood Money
All in.
Wild West adventure game Western Legends is coming to a close in its last major expansion, Blood Money.
Released in 2018, Western Legends is a board game inspired by western movies in which players explore the open plains, scorching deserts and seedy towns of the Old West in search of fame and fortune. Taking on the roles of famous cowpokes and gunslingers, players travel to various locations on the board in order to gather victory points and build their legendary status. Gambling, fighting, robbing, prospecting and even driving cattle can help a player character to create a name for themselves as a moral lawkeeper or notorious bandit.
In the board game’s next expansion Blood Money, players face even greater dangers than those in the main game and previous expansion Ante Up, with bigger rewards on the line.
Blood Money introduces several new concepts into the core experience of Western Legends. Upping the stakes is a new risk die, which players can choose to roll during their turn in hopes of gaining additional rewards such as extra money, the chance to automatically move and the opportunity to draw a poker card, which enables the player to perform certain abilities. However, the consequences for rolling a negative outcome on the risk die are wounds, which can build up over time to have some nasty effects.
Blood Money also adds injuries, gained whenever a player character takes a certain amount of wounds. Injuries give negative effects that players will have to cope with for the rest of the game, making performing basic actions difficult and potentially affecting their final score.
Aside from new punishments for dangerous behaviour, Blood Money includes fresh opportunities for players to get their hands on new gear and rewards. The travelling trader is a merchant who has a stock of standard items and legendary gear that players can acquire, should they come across them on the board.
Players can now purchase the deeds to certain locations in the game, granting additional victory points and a unique ability. Blood Money replaces the previous story system found in Western Legends and Ante Up with a new ‘legendary’ story system, which introduces more interesting narratives, greater rewards and a storyboard that players can use to track their decisions and story points.
Western Legends was designed by Hervé Lemaître, who also created the game’s smaller expansion packs such as A Fistful of Extras and The Good, The Bad and The Handsome.
Blood Money is being released by Kolossal Games, which has previous published titles such as mythological card game Omen: Reign of War, deckbuilding game Terrors of London and beautiful butterfly board game Papillon.
The publisher confirmed that Blood Money would be “the final chapter in the Western Legends saga”, with no future releases planned.
The Kickstarter campaign for Western Legends: Blood Money is live until August 26th, with a pledge of $30 (£24) getting a copy of the expansion estimated to arrive in July 2021. You’ll need to have both Western Legends and the Up the Ante expansion to play Blood Money.