Great Western Trail: Second Edition rules refresher

Read the refresher

You are trying to score the most victory points, counted only at the very end. You do that by driving your herd along the trail to Kansas City again and again, improving your deck of cattle, your workers, your buildings and your train, and delivering to ever more distant cities.

For setup, remember the fiddly bits. Shuffle the nine station master tiles and place five at random face up on the station master spaces, returning the rest to the box. Put the seven neutral building tiles on the neutral spaces, matching letters for a first game or shuffled at random otherwise. The job market token starts on the top dashed round space. Sort all worker, hazard and outlaw tiles face down into three bags by the number on their back. That is the Kansas City supply. Draw seven tiles from bag one onto the board: outlaws fill the outlaw section from the lowest empty number, hazards fill their own flood, drought or rockfall section from the lowest empty number, and if a section is full, return the tile and draw again. Then fill the job market from bag two, starting each row beneath your player count sign and filling rightwards, ending on the job market token's space, so three, five or seven workers depending on player count. Fill the six foresight spaces with two tiles from each bag onto the matching numbered spaces. Shuffle the 36 market cattle cards and reveal 7, 10 or 13 into the cattle market for 2, 3 or 4 players, sorted by color. Shuffle the objective cards and reveal four as the general objective display. Each player takes a board, covering Phase A with the player count tile at 2 or 3 players, twelve private buildings displayed in ascending builder order with all players using the same sides, 14 discs covering the colored disc spaces with only the two gray ones left open, an engine on the red starting space, a certificate marker at zero, a herder, and a shuffled deck of the fourteen cattle cards with your star. Deal each player one of the four starting objective cards face up. Starting money, cards and one exchange token go in turn order: six dollars and four cards, seven and five, eight and six, nine and seven. On your very first turn you discard down to four cards, place your herder on any neutral building tile, and go straight to Phase B.

Turns go clockwise, and every turn has three phases in order. Phase A, move your herder forward along the trail. Phase B, use the location you stopped on. Phase C, draw back up to your hand limit. Then the next player goes.

In Phase A you must move at least one step and no more than your step limit, which starts at three or four depending on player count. Only tiles count as locations and cost a step. Empty trail spaces are free. Follow the arrows, choose a path at forks, and never pass Kansas City. Other herders do not block you. If you move to or pass over a green or black hand, pay at once: to the bank for hazard and outlaw tiles, to the owner for another player's building. At two players both hands cost two dollars. At three players green costs two and black costs one. At four players green costs one and black costs two. If you cannot pay a hand, pay what you can and keep moving, and you never pay it later. Every other cost in the game must be paid in full.

In Phase B, if you stopped on a neutral building or your own building, you may perform each of its local actions once in any order, including any risk action printed on that trail space. Where two actions are split by a white slash, you pick one. If you perform none of them, then and only then may you take one single auxiliary action instead. If you stopped on another player's building, a hazard or an outlaw, one single auxiliary action is all you get.

Your auxiliary actions are the five on the left of your board. Each is locked while both of its disc spaces are covered, single once one disc is gone, and double when both are gone, which doubles both cost and reward. But an auxiliary action taken because you gave up a location's local actions is never doubled.

The common local actions are these. Hire one worker: take a tile from the job market, but never from the row holding the job market token, pay the cost shown at the right of its row as modified by the action icon, and place it on the leftmost free space of its row, taking or forfeiting any immediate action there. A full row cannot be hired into. Buy cattle: your cowboys and your money set what you can take, from one cowboy buying a value three card for six dollars up to large combinations with many cowboys, and any cowboy you do not spend on a purchase may instead add two cards from the market stack to the cattle market. Bought cards go face up on your discard pile. Move your engine forward up to the number of engineers you have, ignoring spaces occupied by another engine, counting turnout spaces as an extra space, and forfeiting leftover movement once you stop.

If you stop on a turnout space you decide immediately whether to upgrade that station. Pay the cost, place a disc on the station space respecting white and dark corners, and you cannot upgrade a station you already have a disc on. Then, and only then, you may claim the neighboring station master tile by removing one of your workers from the rightmost space of its row and putting it in the tile's place. The top half is an immediate action or a permanent certificate, the bottom half is an end game scoring task. If your engine reaches the last space, 39, it stops, you may upgrade there, then you must move it back at least one space to any free space and gain three dollars.

Placing a private building needs builders equal to the number in its corner, and costs two dollars per builder needed. Put it on any empty building space, or replace one of your own buildings on the trail with a higher one, paying only the difference in builders and money, with the old tile removed from the game. Gaining an objective card takes one from the display or the top of the stack onto your discard pile. Later, from your hand, you may play objective cards before Phase A, or before or after any single action in Phase B, putting them in your objective area and taking their immediate action. Removing a hazard takes any hazard tile in front of you, paying any cost shown. Collecting bounty takes any outlaw tile from the outlaw section plus its money or exchange token bonus. An exchange token may be spent at any moment, even off turn, to draw up to two cards and immediately discard as many as you drew.

Reaching Kansas City means five subphases in order. Foresight one, two and three: from each numbered pair choose one tile and move it to its section. Outlaws and hazards go to the lowest empty numbered space or to the box if full. Workers fill the job market row that holds the token, left to right, and when a worker lands on the token's space the token slides to the next row. A yellow arrow refills the cattle market to 7, 10 or 13. The green arrow off the bottom row triggers the end of the game. Then income: reveal your whole hand and add the breeding value of each different type of cattle once, add permanent certificates, and spend any temporary certificates by moving your marker back. Take that many dollars and discard your hand. Then delivery: pick a city whose value is equal to or lower than that total, never one you already have a disc on except Kansas City and New York. Place a disc, respecting the white and dark corner rule, and pay one dollar per cross between your engine's nose and that city value if your engine is behind it. A green arrow between two cities only gives its action or its points once you have discs on both adjacent cities. A disc on Kansas City gains four dollars now and loses six points at the end. Clearing disc spaces unlocks step limit, hand limit, certificate limit and auxiliary actions, and some carry conditions, for instance a hand limit space costs five dollars immediately. Finally move your herder back to the horseman space in the lower right and refill the three empty foresight spaces with matching numbered tiles.

The end triggers when a worker fills the last space of the job market during foresight two or three, sending the token out along the green arrow. Take the job market token in front of you and finish your turn, though you may not pick further worker tiles from the foresights. Every other player then takes one final turn under the same restriction. Scoring runs through eleven categories: one point per five dollars, the points on your buildings on the board, the city crest points you unlocked including negatives, the points beside each train station with your disc, your hazard tiles, victory points printed on cattle cards anywhere in your deck, your objective cards where fulfilled cards score their positive value and unfulfilled ones subtract their negative, with cards still in your deck either discarded or added to your objective area first, your station master tile tasks, four points per worker on the fifth or sixth space of a row, three points for clearing the marked disc space, and two points for the job market token. Most points wins, and a tie is a shared victory.

A turn, played out

It is a three player game. Your step limit starts at 3 or 4, depending on player count. You hold 5 dollars, 4 cards in hand, and your certificate marker sits on 2. Between your herder and Kansas City lie three tiles: a flood hazard with a green hand, a building of the red player with a black hand, and Kansas City itself. The empty trail spaces between them cost nothing, so this is 3 steps, inside your limit. Passing the flood costs 2 dollars to the bank, because at three players green costs 2. Passing red's building costs 1 dollar, paid to red, since black costs 1. You arrive with 2 dollars. Now foresight 1. The pair shows an outlaw and a worker. You move the outlaw, and it fills the lowest empty space in the outlaw section. Foresight 2 offers two workers. The one you take fills the job market row holding the token, left to right, and lands on the token's space, so the token slides down to the next row. It is not the bottom row, so the game goes on. Foresight 3: you send a hazard to the lowest empty rockfall space. Income comes next. You reveal your hand. Two cards are the same type with breeding value 3, and those count only once. The others are a type worth 4 and a type worth 5. That makes 12. Your station master tile adds a permanent certificate, so 13. You spend both temporary certificates, moving your marker back to 0, for 15. You take 15 dollars, reaching 17, and discard your hand. For delivery, the city worth 15 already carries your disc, so it is off limits. You pick one worth 14 instead. Your engine nose is behind it, with 2 crosses between, so you pay 2 dollars. You take the disc from a hand limit space, and that space costs 5 dollars immediately. You end on 10 dollars. A disc on Kansas City would have brought 4 dollars now, but cost 6 points at the end, so you passed. Your herder returns to the horseman space. You refill the three empty foresight spaces with matching numbered tiles. Then you draw up to your new, larger hand limit.