Way Out West

In this western themed game, players are looking to drive cattle across the west, establishing towns. If you don't like the way something is going, you can fight other players for control with your cowboys. You can rob the bank, rustle cattle, and shoot those pesky farmers!

Gameplay: To Start each player receives a set of colored player counters, matching turn order token, and two black action tokens and either $20 or $25 depending on number of players. The dice are rolled to determine the start player. Each player in turn order will place one of their cowboy counters in a town box of any of the 5 towns on the map until each player has placed 3 cowboys.

Each turn the players will bid for turn order, take actions and move the turn marker one space. To bid for turn order each player places an amount of money under their turn order token in current player order. Players may either raise or drop out. If a player drops out all money bid so far is paid to the bank and their turn order token is placed in the furthest available spot from start player space on the turn order track. This continues until one player remains and becomes the start player for the round.

During the action phase each player will take 1 action in turn order. After everyone has taken a turn they repeat the procedure. The actions available are limited in number so turn order is important in doing what a player wishes to do. Actions available are: Buy Cattle in a town containing their cowboy(s), Purchase more Cowboys, Move Cowboys to different towns, Move Cattle from one town to another, Purchase Buildings or Transport counters in a town, Take a Farmer(reduces income and victory points from Cattle in the town they are placed), or Gunfight.

There are six different building and transport counters: StageCoach (these earn $1 per cowboy when cowboys are placed in or moved from the town containing the player's StageCoach), Train (this doubles the income gained from all players Cattle in the same town and doubles victory points gained from Cattle at game end), Bank (earns its owner $2 for each building or transport counter in the same town), Store (earns the owner $1 for each Cattle counter belonging to other players in the town and $2 per Farmer counter in town), Hotel (earns $1 for each cowboy belonging to other players in same town), Jail (the sheriff in the Jail acts as an extra cowboy controlled by owner that can be added to Gunfights). Cattle and Farmers also earn money for players during an income round. Each Cattle counter earns its owner $2 UNLESS the town also contains a Farmer (it only earns $1 if this is the case). Oh, the Farmer and Cowmen can't be friends.