How the West Was Won társasjáték

Angol leírás

The complex and rich history of the American West is often explored by writers and filmmakers. From the dime novel Westerns to the latest Spur Award winners, from the silent black-and-white one-reels to the recent mini-series sagas, there seems to be no end to stories set in the West. And that’s just how it’s depicted in fiction. The reason Western stories have always flourished is because the actual history provides such fertile ground from which fictional stories can grow. The West invited people from all over the world to come and reach for the stars, and it rewarded anyone who succeeded on that path.

How the West Was Won puts players into several businesses that were typically present in the American West during the years 1845-1890. You are all young entrepreneurs competing in an economy created to exploit seven different markets. Your goal is to become the richest person in town, and you accomplish this by competing with other players for the local resources and by hiring workers to perform actions that hinder competitors or contribute toward your own wealth. The game’s theme makes it easy to recruit new players, and the short set of rules makes it quick to learn and teach.

Gameplay involves a mix of worker placement and card-driven action. Each player starts with a boss and several workers. You place your workers into jobs of your choosing that are spread across seven separate “markets”: agriculture, freight, gold, wildlife, tribes, whiskey, and law. Each market has two job types, and those job types compete for the same market cards. For example, saloon keepers and temperance leaders compete for the whiskey cards, and farmers and ranchers compete for the agriculture cards. Within each of the 14 job types, workers line up in a queue, with the first worker in line getting activated before the next worker in line.

Every player also receives a hand of market cards each game turn. The market cards activate the workers, one card-play at a time. Everyone’s cards must be played, but there are fewer cards in hand than there are workers in jobs, so not every worker will be activated. The person who plays a card decides which side of the market to activate (for example, farming or ranching). Jockeying for a better position in a job queue increases a worker’s chance of activation when that side of the market is chosen. Furthermore, the cards in your hand may or may not include the markets where you have workers, so you must depend on cards other players play—and when—just as they may benefit from cards you must play.

The sequence of card plays combined with the arrangement of workers in each job line determines who gathers resources or earns money. There are five types of goods in the economy: food, horses, hides, tools, and wood. The more items you gather of a given commodity, the higher price-per-item you get when you sell that good. But diversifying your business across multiple job types improves your end game score. Furthermore, you might use some goods as capital investment when you hire new workers, else you must pay the maximum cost for that investment.

Components:
One Game Board

52-Card Market Deck
7 Character Cards (5.5” x 8.5”)

60 Worker Meeples
One Resource Countersheet

One Rulebook
One 6-sided Die

-description from publisher's website