American West

User review: Players make money by building a network of railroads to deliver freight and passengers. They may also speculate on the price of precious metals by claiming mines and mills.

To play: Each player chooses a color and takes possession of all the surveyors and prospectors of that color. How much money they begin with, in which city the players start, the number of surveyors and prospectors they begin with depends on the turn order and the number of players in the game.

A game turn is divided into seven phases:
First phase - The turn order cards are shuffled and dealt to the players.
Second phase - Players may place prospectors and surveyors on the game board in turn order.
Third phase - Disputes are resolved between players who placed surveyors in the same box on the game board.
Fourth phase - Players pay for construction and claims made by their prospectors in turn order. Players can collect revenue for passenger cards and deliver and sell freight for up to two claims.
Fifth phase - The dice are rolled to determine price changes for each mine.
Sixth phase - Claims and passenger cards taken by the players are replaced.

At the end of the sixth phase, it is determined whether anyone met the victory condition for the scenario chosen.

Availability : The original Two Wolf version is long-since out of print, but the newer-released Mayfair has a wider distribution. The New Mexico expansion is available for the Two Wolf game, but the Mayfair version has the expansion included with the base game.

Expanded by:

Silverton New Mexico Expansion (Two Wolf version only, Mayfair version includes the expansion)

Walnut Grove is a cross between jigsaw puzzles and worker placement, with the players as farmers who find their plots merging into a single landscape as time passes and their holdings grow. Come fall they must head to the city with their goods as winter will soon return.

Walnut Grove could be described as a light mashup between Carcassonne and Agricola. The goal of the game is to develop your own ranch. The better the ranch, the more points you will score at the end of the game. Players can improve their ranch during the game by adding new land tiles to it, hiring more workers, building improvements, etc

The game play is divided into eight years, and each year is divided into Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter phases. During Spring, players add land tiles to their ranch. During Summer, players place their workers to gather resources from the fields. When Autumn comes, all players get to visit the city. Finally, during the Winter phase, players need to feed their workers and heat their homes.

In the city you can hire workers, trade goods to coins, build improvements, and so on. Each player may do only one action in the city though. The city is a kind of rondel that is divided into halves; each time you cross the midline you have to pay a coin. Therefore it is wise to move as slowly as possible on the rondel, but then again, you have consider what actions you want to take!

The land areas will produce resources when you place the workers there. Also, the tiles do not need to match, but you want them to, as larger areas of the same type will give you greater production.

Spring, Summer and Winter phases can be done simultaneously, providing fast game play. The game also works as a solo game.

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.

Gunfights can be started to take over another players Building or Tranport counter, rustle Cattle, rob a Bank or remove a Farmer or Jail. The player choosing the Gunfight selects the target of the attack. All Cowboys belonging to each player in the town will be involved. The remaining player's Cowboys in the town are not involved. However; the owner of the Jail can choose to help themselves, if they are attacking, or they can add the Sheriff to the defender if wished. Farmers that are attacked defend as a single cowboy. Banks and Trains both have an intrinsic 1 Cowboy defense in addition to those in town of owner's color. The player with the fewest Cowboys fires first and immediately removes casualties. Each 5 or 6 rolled kills a Cowboy. If the number of Cowboys is tied then firing is simultaneous. A player may retreat instead of firing by moving each cowboy involved to a different town (only 1 per town) and loses the engagement. If the attacker wins they take control of the target of the attack and may replace the counter (up to 2 counters if rustling Cattle) with one of their color (except for Banks, Farmers and Jails). A Jail or Farmer is removed from play and a Bank is robbed. The successful robber rolls 3 die 6 and takes that amount of money from the owner of the Bank (the Bank remains under owner's control). If the owner of the Bank cannot pay the full amount (then pays all they have to the robber and the Bank is removed). Each time a player wins a Gunfight they take a Wanted Counter. If none remain they take it from another player their of choice.

Victory: After taking turns 3,6,9 and 12 income is paid to players as delineated above. The game ends after round 12. Victory points are awarded for each Building or Transport counter (1 point per size of town). So a building in a Town with 4 Building or Transport Counters including itself is worth 4 points to the owning player. Each Cattle Counter is worth one victory point for the owner. If a train is in the town each Cattle Counter is worth 2 points. If a Farmer is in the town Cattle are worth 1 victory point less. To illustrate, if a Farmer is in same town Cattle counters are worthless unless a Train is also present in the town. In this case, they would be worth 1 point each. The player with the most Building/Transport counters and Cattle in a town is considered to control the town and scores bonus points equal to the size of the town (Cattle do not affect town size but do affect control). The Player with most money gains 5 victory points (2 each in case of a tie). The Player with the most Wanted counters scores 4 victory points. The player with most Points wins.

The classic collectible card game Deadlands: Doomtown returns as an Expandable Card Game in Doomtown: Reloaded. Featuring four factions fighting for control of Gomorra, California. Doomtown: Reloaded allows you to build your own deck from a fixed set of cards in the box. Play your dudes to control deeds in the town, and use actions, hexes, and more to thwart your opponents.

Shootouts are resolved via a poker mechanism as every card has a suit and value. Preparing for the hands you want to draw is as much a part of deck building as choosing the actions and dudes you'll want to play. Your deck is built around an Outfit, one of the four main groups attempting to control Gomorra, California, and these outfits are:

The Law Dogs: The Sheriff and his deputies, tasked with enforcing law and order in an extremely chaotic town.

The Sloane Gang: The main cause of a lot of the chaos, the Sloane Gang takes what they want, no matter who it costs.

The Morgan Cattle Company: Progress and investment, Morgan Cattle has moved into the surrounding ranch lands and uses its deep pockets to influence the town.

The Fourth Ring: It's that circus that's been here for months, but I swear it just arrived...

The base set of Doomtown: Reloaded will be followed by Saddlebag expansions, in-store OP events, and the Badge Series of tournaments.

Game description from the publisher:

Scofflaws are brawling in the streets of Deadwood. The railroad is being built, and to you and the other gangs in the badlands of South Dakota, this means one thing: cold, hard cash. As a cowboy on the wrong side of the law you know just how to take control of this shanty-town: threaten, fight, and kill off your rivals.

Deadwood is a wild-and-wooly board game with a quick and deadly twist on classic worker placement games. Your gang consists of three different classes of cowboys with different strengths: greenhorns, gunslingers, and trail bosses. Cowboys ride into town to gain control of (annex) buildings and fight other gangs' cowboys in shootouts.

At the beginning of the game, the town of Deadwood consists of the Town Hall, the Church, the Sheriff's Office, the Saloon, and four other randomly drawn buildings. Additional buildings are constructed whenever a cowboy annexes the Town Hall. Each building has at least one unique ability that is used immediately, with some buildings offering more long-term advantages.

A cowboy accesses these advantages by controlling the building. To gain control a player simply places one of his gang on a building tile, "annexing" it. Other gang leaders can try to gain control of your buildings through shootouts. The player that instigates the shootout receives a Wanted Poster token; the more cowboys you try to kill off, the more Wanted Poster tokens you collect, and the higher the fine you must pay at the end of the game.

Deadwood can end one of three ways: the Train Station is placed on the board once the railroad is built and completed, there are no more Wanted Poster tokens in the Crime Pool, or any player has no more cowboys alive. The player with the most cash at the end of the game is the winner!