How To Play Great Western Trail

Great Western Trail is an award-winning game for 1-4 players that takes you on a journey through America’s Old West. Players take on the role of a cattle driver, moving their herd across the Great Plains, placing buildings and hiring workers as they go. This isn’t a game you can whip out for a quick half an hour play- this is a game to enjoy over a few hours. If you’ve opened the box and feel a bit overwhelmed, saddle up because this how to play will get you moo-ving in no time!

The Setup

The setup is the longest part of the game, especially for new players. Here is my step-by-step guide to get you started.

Players choose their herder and dress them in a coloured hat. Each player then picks up their player board, wooden circular disks, certificate marker cube, train engine, building tiles and own deck of cattle cards in the corresponding colour. (The player cattle cards are marked with a star at the bottom and a dot of the players colour inside.)

Any orange simmental cattle cards are for a variant of the game and can be put to one side. Shuffle the remaining blue, red, white, brown and purple cow cards together to form the cattle market deck.

Depending on your player count, draw cattle cards and put them at the bottom of the board:

• In a 2-player game: Draw 7 cards.
• In a 3-player game: Draw 10 cards.
• In a 4-player game: Draw 13 cards.

Place the beige objective cards at the side of the board and place 4 face up.

Next, set up the main board. In the grey squares with the building logo, place 7 neutral buildings with a grey border. The first time you play, use the letters to tell you where to place each building.

Fill the three numbered bags with the worker and hazard tokens, by matching the numbers on the bag to the back of the tiles.

Choose 7 tokens from bag 1 and place these on the board. Outlaw tiles go in the spaces at the centre of the board in ascending numerical order. Hazard tiles are placed on the board in their matching section.

Place workers into the job market section. To do this, place the round job market token into the designated space on the second row, and then place random workers from bag 2. Fill the number of columns to match the number of players. Start at the top row and fill from left to right until you reach the last space before the job market token.

Nearly there now (I did say it was a long setup!). Next, you need to put 5 blue rectangular station tiles into the spaces below the train track, at the top of the board. Place the players trains at the start of the track.

Individual players then set up their own board by covering the rectangle at the top with a player count tile which adapts the gameplay to the number of players.

Each player then puts their certificate marker into the square hole on the certificate track next to 0. Then fill all the circular holes with round disks.

Each player takes one grey backed objective card at random and one exchange token. Then, take coins and draw a hand of cards from their own deck of cattle cards:

• 1st player: 6 dollars, 4 cards
• 2nd player: 7 dollars, 5 cards
• 3rd player: 8 dollars, 6 cards
• 4th player: 9 dollars, 7 cards

Finally, place the remaining coins and exchange tokens in the centre.

Gameplay & Basic Actions

The main aim of Great Western Trail is to score as many points as possible. These are indicated on cards and tokens by a yellow shield with a number inside. Each player moves from the blue starting tile in the bottom right corner, along the path to Kansas City cattle market. Thankfully, a turn is more straightforward than setup. Players simply move up to three spaces, stop, and complete the action shown on the building. One ‘space’ is counted as a jump from one building to the next. Landing on a space with a green or brown hand will mean you have to pay a fine, either to another player if they own the building, or to the bank. The cost of the fine is at the top of the player boards.

Each building has a number of possible actions. The easiest way to learn these is by using the appendix booklet to look them up as you go. It explains what every building does and is much simpler than trying to remember every symbol before you start.

The most challenging part of the game is that you cannot do everything which means you need to make some difficult decisions! You need cows to get money, you need money to get workers and you need money and workers to get cows. Choosing one action means you have to miss another and your choices will alter the game every time you play! Here are some of the main actions you can take on your go.

The main actions you can take are: moving your train along the track; changing your hand; picking up coins; buying new cattle; placing buildings or hiring workers. You can also pick up bonus cards throughout the game which add new objectives to help you score points. Be warned though, these can also lose you points if you do not meet the criteria by the end of the game.

Moving your train: There are 2 actions you can take to move your train. You can pay to move your train or you can move your train as many spaces as you have train workers. Moving your train can help you score points in several ways. Your train can move into one of the sub stations and you can pay to upgrade it. If you do this, you can move one disk from your player board and put it on the station marker. Not only will this free up an action on your board but you will also gain the station bonus shown. You can also put one of your workers into the station which will award you with the station master tile. This tile will have a permanent bonus which will help with end of game scoring. Lastly, the further your train is, the further you can deliver cows when you get to Kansas. But more on this later.

Moving the certificate marker: The certificate system acts as a cash bonus when you sell cows at the market. For each certificate you have, you can add one coin of profit when selling. To gain this bonus, you have to move the certificate marker on your individual board one space forward. This action is beneficial to take when you have low scoring cows in your hand as you can up their price. However, once you have cashed your cows in, you’ll need to reduce your certificate marker back to 0. You can gain permanent certificates, but these are bought through station upgrades.

Changing your hand: This is useful as you earn money for each unique cow in your hand when you reach Kansas City. Duplicate cows don’t earn points, so you want as many different cows as possible. Some tiles also give you money in exchange for discarding certain colour cows. This means you will want to change your hand often as you traverse up the board.

Coins: You can earn money throughout the game by picking up coins from various tiles you land on. Coins will be used to buy workers, buildings, and cows. All these things will give you points at the end of the game.

Removing Hazards/Outlaws: Some buildings will also let you remove hazards and outlaws. Removing outlaws from the board can give you instant rewards and hazards can earn you money. Furthermore, objective cards will ask you to collect both tokens if you want to fulfil them. Removing them is also beneficial as it will clear paths on the board so you can avoid taxes or gain unique building rewards.

Buying Cattle: Along with your basic deck, you can also add cow cards to your discard pile using the cattle market. These will be shuffled into your hand throughout the game. To buy cows you need lots of money or cowboys to get juicy discounts. Throughout the game you will have to replenish the cattle market by spending cowboys.

Placing Buildings: Some of the tiles allow you to place buildings. The number of craftsman workers you have dictates the buildings you can place. More buildings mean more actions you can take. They can also earn you money from other players if they have the green or brown hand stop symbols on! Be warned, to build the more expensive builds, you will have to build on top of previous buildings.

Hiring Workers: To build, buy cows or move your train you will need workers. The more workers you have the more you can do. But workers cost money to hire from the job market. As the game goes on, workers get more expensive. This means you need to choose the workers for your play style as you won’t be able to buy all of them.

Auxiliary: You can also use the cog symbol to take an action from your individual player board if you don’t like the action listed on the building. This action will be gaining a coin, moving the train, moving your certificate marker, or exchanging a card. These actions unlock as you move disks from your player board onto the main board.

Now we know the goal and the actions, why do we want to get to Kansas City?