A Coach Comes to Town - Doomtown: Reloaded

Santa's coach is coming to town.

So this Christmas, I got a box of Doomtown Reloaded. Awhile ago in the 90s, there used to be a TCG called Doomtown, set in the Deadlands Weird West RPG setting. It was mildly popular, but then the game folded. Several years ago, with the rise of fixed expansion games, an attempt was made to bring Doomtown back from the dead. Rules were simplified for easier, more intuitive play, and a new game called Doomtown Reloaded was released. This year, that game also seems to have folded after the game rights were returned to the owner of the RPG. So some of the cards I am looking at had counterparts in the original card game, and this is one of them.

The main difference between the original and the new one is A Coach Comes to Town used to be an event. Event cards were a hold-over from the Legend of the Five Rings, which Doomtown has many similarities to, and they took effect immediately. Doomtown Reloaded ditched this card type, and any cards they used which were originally events were modified into action cards, giving players greater control over when they activated.

The effect has remained fairly similar and flavorful. A coach comes to town with a shipment of ghost rock. If the coach arrives safely, you get 4 ghost rock. If the coach is robbed, the opponent who robbed it gets the ghost rock instead. Slight tweaks include you are now the one pulling the job, while before it was any opponent who wanted to try to rob the coach was the one starting the job. Also, when the coach was robbed, you had to pay the opponent the ghost rock, which didn't make sense since the flavor of the card was you hadn't gotten the shipment yet.

The art is hit and miss for me. I like the angle of the shot, showing the entire stage coach with your posse surrounding it. I also like how the figure leading the job stands out, with sharp, contrasting blacks. While I do appreciate the more realistic art style, I don't like the gradient filter. It makes the scene look far too red and washed out.

Because of the rules overhaul, the new version has a little more text space, meaning we get an additional line of flavor text, as one of the characters compliments and complains about Lane Healey, the scoundrel and go-to guy of Morgan Cattle security.