Great Western Trail: El Paso
Great Western Trail: El Paso Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
- Components
- Object of the Game
- Game Board Setup
- Player Setup
- Gameplay
- Actions
- El Paso
- End of the Game
- Solo Variant
- Credits
Components
- 1 game board (playmat) and 1 El Paso tile, placed on the El Paso space.
- 20 objective tiles and 20 bonus tiles, each with a common back design.
- 6 neutral building tiles, each marked with a capital letter (B to G).
- 12 common building tiles, each marked with a lowercase letter (a or b) depending on its side: 1a/1b, 2a/2b, 3a/3b, 4a/4b, 5a/5b, 6a/6b. Use any number of b-sides once you are familiar with the game.
- 4 player boards (1 per player), 4 train cards, 4 herders, 8 property markers (2 per player), 4 certificate markers (1 per player), 28 player discs (7 per player), 16 exchange tokens.
- 1 cattle board and 1 building board.
- 1 scoring pad.
- 55 coins: 30 gold coins worth 1 Dollar and 25 bronze coins worth 5 Dollars.
- 91 cattle cards: 40 player cattle cards (10 per player: 4 gray Criollo, 2 black Pineywoods, 2 white Galloway, and 2 green Santa Gertrudis), 32 market cattle cards (8 Black Angus, 10 Corriente, 8 Shorthorn, 6 Hereford), and 19 Simmental cattle cards.
- 48 worker cards: 12 cowboys, 12 engineers, 12 builders, 12 wild workers.
- 11 bot cards, for the solo mode.
Object of the Game
On your turn, you move your herder along a circular trail that keeps bringing you back to El Paso. Along your path, you perform actions that provide you with various ways to earn victory points; for example: placing common building tiles, buying cattle from the cattle market, hiring workers, and more.
Each time your herder reaches El Paso, you must deliver your cattle to a trading post. Afterwards, your herder continues its movement again from there.
At the end of the game, add up the victory points in your display. The player with the most victory points wins the game.
Game Board Setup
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Place the game board in the middle of the table.
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Take the El Paso tile and place it on the El Paso space on the game board. Then, place the 6 neutral building tiles on the 6 neutral building spaces on the game board:
- If this is your first game, place the tiles on the corresponding spaces on the game board (B to G).
- In subsequent games, shuffle the tiles and distribute them at random on those spaces (B to G).
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Turn all train cards (consisting of 1 locomotive and 3 wagons) to their front side and place them below the game board, in ascending order of engineers (1-4). When you are familiar with the game, you may turn some (or all) to the reverse side.
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Shuffle all 20 objective and 20 bonus tiles face down and form separate piles near the train. This is called the train supply.
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Draw 3 tiles from each pile in the train supply and place them face up next to their respective pile.
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Place the coins and exchange tokens within reach of all players. This supply is called the bank.
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Place the cattle board near the game board. Then take all 32 market cattle cards, sort them by cattle breed (color) and place them face up around the cattle board, next to the corresponding spaces.
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Place the building board near the game board. Then turn all common building tiles to their a-side. Stack and sort them by their respective worker cost (in the top left corner), and place them around the building board, next to the corresponding spaces. When you are familiar with the game, turn any number of stacks to the b-side.
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Take all 48 worker cards, stack and sort them by type and place the stacks face up near the game board. These four piles are called the worker supply.
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Place a number of Simmental cattle cards face up on the designated space on the game board:
- In a 2-player game: 9 cards
- In a 3-player game: 14 cards
- In a 4-player game: 19 cards
Return any unused Simmental cattle cards to the box.
Player Setup
- Take a player board and place it in front of you. Take 4 worker cards, 1 of each of the three types and 1 wild worker, and place them below your player board, in your so-called worker area.
Choose a color and take the components of that color:
- 7 discs — which you place onto your player board to cover each of the marked disc spaces. (Only the 2 cog symbols on the left remain empty.)
- 2 property markers — which you place next to your player board.
- 1 certificate marker — which you place on space 0 of your certificate track.
- 1 herder — which you place next to your player board for now.
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Take a set of 10 player cattle cards comprising 4 gray Criollo, 2 black Pineywoods, 2 white Galloway, and 2 green Santa Gertrudis cards. These 10 cards make up your herd deck. Shuffle your herd deck and place it face down as your personal draw stack to the left of your player board; then draw 4 cards from it into your hand.
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Determine a start player, who chooses one of the face-up objective tiles, immediately replacing it with the next tile from the objective tile pile. Repeat this for the other players in clockwise order.
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Finally, receive your starting capital from the bank.
- 1st player: 4 Dollars and 1 exchange token
- 2nd player: 5 Dollars and 1 exchange token
- 3rd player: 4 Dollars and 2 exchange tokens
- 4th player: 5 Dollars and 2 exchange tokens
You are now ready to start the game.
Gameplay
Beginning with the start player, players take turns in clockwise order. On your turn, you must carry out all of the following phases in this order: Move Phase, Action Phase, Draw Phase.
At any point during your turn, you may use an exchange token (see Actions) or discard one of your workers for their worker bonus (see Actions).
Move Phase — Move your herder to another location along the trail
On your first turn of the game only: place your herder on any neutral location, except El Paso, and immediately proceed with the Action Phase. You may choose the same building tile as other players before you.
What is considered a location? El Paso as well as any building tile that is placed on a space of the trail is considered a location. Spaces without a tile are not considered locations and therefore ignored during movement.
In this phase, you must move your herder along the trail:
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Your herder's movement is measured in steps. Each location along your path takes 1 step (ignore spaces without a building tile).
Example: Mary moves 2 steps, passing the red player's building.
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Move your herder forward clockwise along the trail. If the trail forks, choose one of the available paths to follow.
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You must move your herder at least 1 step and at most as many steps as your current step limit on your player board indicates. This limit starts at 3 and may be increased to 4 permanently; by spending Cowboys, you can increase it temporarily (see Actions).
Example: In this case, you have a step limit of 4.
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You are not allowed to pass over El Paso. So, when your herder reaches El Paso, it must end its movement there and perform all depicted actions on the El Paso tile.
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The herders of the other players do not interfere in any way with your own herder. Several herders can be on the same location.
Action Phase — Take the action of the location you reached
Use the location on which your herder ends up; there are three possible cases:
1) A neutral building or a common building with your property marker
On a neutral building or your own building (a common building tile with your property marker), either carry out the depicted actions OR use one auxiliary action (see Actions).
2) A common building with another player's property marker
On a common building with another player's property marker, you have only one option: use one auxiliary action (see Actions).
Example: If Mary ends her herder's movement on one of these tiles, she may only take one auxiliary action.
3) El Paso
Whenever you reach El Paso, your herder must end its movement there and carry out all depicted actions. (See the El Paso section for details.)
Draw Phase — Replenish your hand
Each player starts with a hand size of 4, which can be increased to 5. If, at the end of your turn, you have fewer cards in hand than your hand size, replenish your hand by drawing any missing cards from your draw stack. Whenever your draw stack runs out when you have to draw another card, shuffle your discard pile to form a new draw stack.
Important: When you draw a worker card from your draw stack, immediately place it in the worker area below your player board. A worker card is never added to your hand! Then continue to draw cards, not counting any drawn workers against your hand size.
Example: Mary has a hand size of 4 cards. During the action phase, she spent 2 cards from her hand. She must now draw 2 cards to bring her hand back up to 4. As she has 2 cards left in her personal draw stack, she draws those 2 cards. Even though her draw stack is empty, she does not yet create a new draw stack. She will do that right when she has to draw the next card.
Then it is the next player's turn.
Actions
Buildings show multiple actions on their bottom half, separated by a full-length divider. All actions are explained below.
- You may carry out each action on the tile only once, in any order.
- You may decide to skip any number of the depicted actions (except El Paso, see the El Paso section).
- If an action shows a cost (indicated by a red-numbered coin symbol), you have to pay that cost to take the action.
Discarding Cattle for Money
You may place the depicted card from your hand face up in your discard pile. If you do, gain the indicated amount of money. If you do not discard a card, you do not gain any money.
Even if you could discard more than one card of the indicated type, you may carry out this action only once. Specific cards are represented by their color and breeding value; an asterisk means any cattle card.
Special cases:
- Discard any cattle card with a breeding value of 2 to gain 5 Dollars.
- Discard any cattle card to gain an amount of money equal to double its breeding value.
Gaining Money
Take the indicated amount of Dollars from the bank.
Gaining Certificates
Move your certificate marker down on your certificate track, up to one space per certificate symbol shown. You cannot move past space 4.
Example: Move your certificate marker up to 3 spaces.
Gaining an Exchange Token
Gain one exchange token from the bank and place it in front of you. Exchange tokens can be used at any point during your turn.
To use an exchange token, return it to the bank. Then draw 1 card from your draw stack and, afterward, immediately discard 1 card from your hand. You may not combine exchange tokens to draw multiple cards at the same time.
Some buildings let you pay 1 Dollar to gain an exchange token. If you do not pay, you do not get the token.
Hiring a Worker
Choose exactly one worker card from the worker supply. Pay the cost, if any, and immediately place that worker in the worker area below your player board.
Important: Hiring a wild worker always costs an additional 4 Dollars!
Buildings may offer, for example: hire a specific worker for 0 Dollars or a wild worker for 4 Dollars; hire a specific worker for 5 Dollars or a wild worker for 9 Dollars; or hire one worker for 5 Dollars, or two different workers for 13 Dollars total (if one of them is wild, pay an additional 4 Dollars).
Example: Mary has 15 Dollars to spend when using neutral building B. With the first hiring action, she hires a wild worker. In addition to the 5 Dollars that the first hiring action costs, she must pay an additional 4 Dollars for a total of 9 Dollars. She then places the wild worker in her worker area. Unfortunately, she is missing 2 Dollars to hire another worker and she does not have a white cattle card in hand. So she immediately discards the wild worker she just hired to gain 2 Dollars (worker bonus, see below). Now she has enough money to hire a second worker. Even if she had more money, she could not hire a second wild worker that turn.
Worker Bonus
You may discard workers from your worker area anytime (during your turn) to gain their worker bonus.
- Wild worker: Gain 2 Dollars. (It cannot copy the worker bonus of another worker.)
- Builder: Pay 2 Dollars to move your certificate marker 1 space down.
- Engineer: Gain 1 Dollar.
- Cowboy: When moving your herder, you may spend 1 additional step per Cowboy discarded. This bonus increases your step limit temporarily, during the Move phase or an action that allows you to move your herder. You cannot use Cowboys to gain an additional action; you still only get to use the one building on which your herder ends its movement. You cannot use Cowboys to move past El Paso.
Buying Cattle from the Cattle Market
Choose one cattle card in the cattle market: discard the required number of cowboys (and/or wild workers) from your worker area and pay the corresponding amount of money (2 Dollars per worker); then place the cattle card in your discard pile. You may buy only one cattle card per action.
Example: Mary discards three cowboys and pays 6 Dollars. She gets exactly one Shorthorn cattle card.
Using the Train
Choose one train card: discard the required number of engineers (and/or wild workers) from your worker area and pay the corresponding amount of money (2 Dollars per worker); then carry out the actions of that card in any order. You may use only one train card per action.
Example: Mary discards three engineers and one wild worker and pays 8 Dollars. She then gains 3 certificates, a train tile of her choice, and she can move her herder 2 steps.
Gaining an Objective or Bonus Tile
Choose a corresponding tile from the display and replenish the empty spot. You may instead choose to take a face-down tile from the respective stack.
Some buildings let you take any face-up tile from the train supply or draw one from a stack; others require you to pay 2 Dollars to gain a bonus tile — if you do not pay, you do not get the tile.
Placing a Building
Choose one common building in the building display: discard the required number of builders (and/or wild workers) and pay the corresponding amount of money (2 Dollars per worker). Then place the building on an empty building space and pay the cost printed on that space, if any. Also place one of your unused property markers on it. You may not flip the building to its other side.
Alternatively, you can use this action to replace one of your buildings (that has your property marker on it) with a common building tile from the display requiring more builders than the one you replace. If you do, you must discard the difference of builders between the two buildings and pay the Dollar difference. Then put the new common building tile in place of the old one and return that to its corresponding stack in the display.
You may place (or replace) only one building tile per action.
Examples: To place a certain tile on the trail, Mary needs to discard 2 builders from her worker area and pay 4 Dollars. To replace that building with a bigger one, she needs to discard 4 builders from her worker area and pay 8 Dollars.
Note: When discarding workers to buy cattle, use the train, or place a building, you do not get to use their worker bonus. Discarding these workers is part of the action cost. (You can, however, discard additional workers to use their worker bonus as normal.)
Using an Auxiliary Action
Choose one of your available auxiliary actions and carry it out.
The auxiliary action section (on the left side) of your player board shows different auxiliary actions. The first and third are available from the start and can be improved by clearing their associated disc space. The other auxiliary actions cannot be used until you clear their disc space. (For how to clear the disc space, see the El Paso section.) Once unlocked, the first auxiliary action provides 3 Dollars (instead of 1). Once unlocked, the other auxiliary action provides 2 exchange actions (instead of 1), which you must carry out one after the other. When using this auxiliary action, you may still opt to take only one exchange action.
Some buildings let you use two different auxiliary actions.
Moving Your Herder
Move your herder (again) to another location along the trail. You must spend at least 1 step and at most a number of steps equal to the number in the symbol. You may use cowboys to increase that number of steps. Then carry out the actions of the location on which your herder ends its movement. Note that you do not replenish your hand before moving the herder via this action.
Gaining Cattle
Take the indicated cattle card from the cattle market and place it in your discard pile. You do not need to discard any cowboys nor pay any money to do so.
Some buildings let you pay 2 Dollars to gain a Shorthorn cattle card instead. You do not need to discard any cowboys; if you do not pay, you do not get the card.
Getting Rid of Cattle
If you have the depicted cattle card in hand, you may remove it from play (by returning it to the game box). Some buildings let you remove one cattle card of any type in your hand from play.
El Paso
You cannot move past El Paso; your herder must stop there and carry out all 3 actions shown on the El Paso tile, one after the other:
- Take 5 Dollars from the bank.
- Take one Simmental cattle card (unless the stack is empty) and place it face up in your personal discard pile.
- Delivery: Reveal your entire hand to the other players and determine its total breeding value by totaling the breeding values of each different type of cattle that you have in hand. This means each type is counted only once, no matter how many cards of that type you have.
Example: Mary has 4 cards in her hand, of 3 different types: Santa Gertrudis (breeding value: 2), Corriente (breeding value: 3), and Black Angus (breeding value: 3). So her total breeding value is 8.
Some bonus tiles let you add exactly one duplicate cattle card to the total. In the example above, this would raise the total breeding value to 10.
Increase your total breeding value by one for each permanent certificate that you have, whether it is unlocked on the player board or depicted on a bonus tile.
You may spend certificates from your certificate track to increase the total even further (regardless of whether you have permanent certificates or not). If you do, move your certificate marker up accordingly. Certificates that you do not use now are kept for the next round.
Example (continued): Mary has one bonus tile with a permanent certificate, which brings her total to 9. She also has 3 certificates that she can spend from her certificate track. She decides to spend all 3 to raise her total breeding value to 12.
Next, place a disc from your player board on a trading post on the game board as follows. Each trading post space indicates a minimum breeding value. (If other players' discs are already there, just put yours on top).
Choose a trading post whose minimum value is equal to or lower than your total breeding value. You may not choose a trading post that already has one of your discs on it; the only exceptions are spaces 0, 12, and 16.
Discs from spaces on your player board with darkened corners can only be placed on trading posts that also have darkened corners — those with a breeding value of 10 or more.
Some of your discs show an amount of money beside them: if the amount is positive, gain that amount of Dollars from the bank; if it is negative, you must pay that amount to the bank. If you cannot pay that amount, you must choose a different disc.
By clearing a disc space, you unlock its ability or improve an auxiliary action.
- You start the game with 0 permanent certificates. Removing the disc from this space grants you 1 permanent certificate and 1 Dollar.
- This increases your hand size by one, but you must pay 4 Dollars.
- This increases your step limit by one and you gain 2 Dollars.
If you are supposed to place a disc but have none left, you do not place any.
Placing a disc on a trading post space may trigger an immediate action: e.g., gaining 2 Dollars; gaining an objective tile; hiring a worker. Each disc on a space with a minimum breeding value of 10 or more will also provide victory points at game end.
Finally, place all cards from your hand in your personal discard pile (and proceed with the Draw Phase).
Example (continued): With her total breeding value of 12, Mary places a disc on any of the spaces 0, 5, 10, or 12; not 7 and 9, because she already has a disc on them. She decides to go with space 12.
General notes and special cases
- Money and exchange tokens are considered to be unlimited. If the bank runs out, use something else as a substitute.
- If workers, cattle, buildings, objective, or bonus tiles run out, the respective spaces remain empty.
- You may look through the cards in your discard pile at any time. You are not allowed to look at the cards in your draw stack.
- You may check how many Simmental cattle cards or worker cards or buildings in the general supply are left.
End of the Game
The end of the game is triggered when you take the last Simmental cattle card from the game board (thus emptying the Simmental pile). When this happens, the game continues until the next player reaches El Paso. Instead of taking a Simmental cattle card, they place their herder on the empty Simmental space. After completing the El Paso actions, the game ends for that player.
Then, each other player gets one final turn. Players that move to El Paso during their final turn do not take a Simmental cattle card, nor do they place their herder on the Simmental space. Then the game ends and the final scoring takes place.
Final Scoring
Take the scoring pad and total your points in the following 7 categories.
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1 victory point for every 5 Dollars that you own.
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Victory points on buildings that you own.
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Victory points for each of your discs on a highlighted trading post space. (See the El Paso section for details.)
Sort all your cards (from your draw stack, hand cards, discard pile and worker area) into worker cards, cattle cards, and starting cards.
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Total the victory points of your workers.
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Total the victory points of your cattle cards; if your herder is on the Simmental space, add 2 victory points to that total (as printed on the space as a reminder).
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Victory points depicted on bonus tiles you own.
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Check the conditions of your objective tiles. Each item in the game may only contribute towards one objective; i.e., if two objectives require the same thing, you need two of that thing to satisfy both objectives. Total the points of all your completed objectives. (Partially or uncompleted objectives score nothing.)
Example: With only 1 Corriente card, you can only complete one of two objectives that both require a Corriente card.
The player with the highest total wins the game. In case of a tie, the player with more money left (after the conversion) wins, and if this is tied too, the victory is shared.
Solo Variant
Setup
Set up a 2-player game with the following changes:
- Choose a player color for your opponent, Sue, who gets only the discs and herder of that color; return any other components of that color to the game box.
- Sue does not use any player cattle cards; return them to the box. Instead, take 3 cards of each of the 4 worker types and 3 each of the yellow Black Angus and blue Corriente cattle cards. Shuffle these 18 cards together, face down, to form Sue's supply deck.
- Prepare the bot deck: from the 11 solo cards, take all A-cards and add 0-3 B-cards (each B-card increases the difficulty). Shuffle them and return unused B-cards to the box.
- Take 3 non-wild workers, 1 of each type, shuffle them, and place them face up in a row — the order determines Sue's strategy.
- Place one of Sue's discs on trading post space 5 and her herder in El Paso. Sue does not get a starting objective tile.
- You take the first turn, so you start with 4 Dollars, 1 exchange token, and you draw 4 cards from your personal draw stack. Sue does not receive any money or exchange tokens; in fact, she never receives any money or exchange tokens.
Gameplay
You and Sue play your turns as normal, with a few differences: Sue is considered a player for all purposes. On Sue's turn, draw the top card of her bot deck (shuffle the discards if the deck runs out). The drawn card will instruct you to move Sue's herder by a certain number of steps and to carry out an action:
1. Movement: Sue's herder moves according to the normal movement rules. If there are multiple options for her herder, she will always take the shortest possible path. In case of a tie, she will take the inner path. Note: El Paso stops her movement.
Some bot cards move Sue's herder 1 step per worker of a given type.
2. Action: The location where Sue's herder ends its movement does not affect her action, except El Paso. At the end of Sue's turn, place the drawn card face up in her discard pile. If Sue's deck is empty at the beginning of her turn, shuffle her discard pile to form a new deck. During the game, Sue does not receive any money or exchange tokens and she does not have a herd deck. Whenever Sue receives any cattle cards, put them face up in a cattle stack.
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When Sue goes to the cattle market, she takes one cattle card based on her number of cowboys, placing it on her cattle stack: 1 = Black Angus, 2 = Corriente, 3 = Shorthorn, 4 or more = Hereford.
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Sue draws 1 or 2 cards from her supply deck. If she draws cattle, add it to her cattle stack. Cattle are just for points. If she draws a wild worker, add it to the worker type she currently has the most of. Ignore any worker type with 4 or more workers. In case of a tie, put it to the leftmost worker. The wild worker counts as this worker for the remainder of the game.
Example: Sue has 2 Cowboys, 4 Engineers, and 2 Builders. As she ignores worker types with 4 or more workers, the wild worker cannot be an Engineer. As there is a tie between Cowboys and Builders, she adds the wild worker to the leftmost of those 2 workers, the Cowboys. Now she has 3 Cowboys.
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Sue chooses a train card based on her number of Engineers. She only takes the following actions, any other actions on the train card are ignored: she takes the objective/bonus tile with the most VPs (tie: leftmost); instead of hiring a worker, Sue draws a card from her supply stack; she takes a Corriente cattle card from the market and adds it to her cattle stack.
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Carry out the first possible action:
- If Sue has not built 2 buildings yet: take a building using as many builders as possible. Place it on the most expensive empty building spot. Tie: the closest to Sue's herder (in clockwise direction).
- If she owns two buildings, upgrade one using as many builders as possible. Tie: the closest to Sue's herder (in clockwise direction).
- If both buildings are maxed out, she adds a Hereford cattle card to her cattle stack.
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Sue chooses one of those 3 actions, for which she has the most workers (tie: leftmost).
El Paso: As usual, El Paso ends the movement. First, carry out the action on the bot card, then the delivery action: take a Simmental cattle card and add it to Sue's cattle stack. Sue will deliver to space 7 first and subsequent deliveries will generally proceed to the next highest trading post. Place a disc from her supply on the trading post space. If the reward of a delivery is an objective tile, she takes the one with the most VPs (tie: leftmost). If the reward is a worker, Sue will draw a card from her supply stack.
Scoring: Sue's score is tallied as normal. Sue does not score points for Dollars and her objective tiles are all considered completed.
Credits
Designers: Alexander Pfister, Johannes Krenner Illustrations: Chris Quilliams R & D: André Bierth, Grzegorz Kobiela, Maren Holderbaum Art direction: Plan B Games & Ricarda Kleine Graphic design & layout: Plan B Games & atelier198
Many thanks to all of our playtesters and to Daniela Fessl in particular.
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