Great Western Trail: Argentina — How to Play

Objective of the Game

In Great Western Trail: Argentina, you play as the owner of a sprawling estancia in the Pampas. Your goal is to deliver cattle to Buenos Aires, ship them to Europe, and earn money and victory points along the way. The player who accumulates the most victory points at the end of the game wins.

Setup

1. Place the game board in the center of the table.
2. Shuffle the 8 station master tiles and place one face‑up on each of the five station master spaces. Return the remaining three tiles to the box.
3. Place the 8 neutral building tiles face‑up on the eight neutral spaces of the board. If it is the first game, match each tile to its letter (A‑H); otherwise shuffle them randomly.
4. Place the job market token on the top dashed round space of the job market.
5. Take the 57 worker tiles and 51 farmer tiles, turn them face‑down, sort them by the letter on their back (A, B, C), and put each set into its own bag. Place the bags next to the board as the Buenos Aires supply.
6. For each color area (green, blue, orange, yellow), place a farmer tile in the lowest numbered empty space of that area. If no space is available, return the tile to the box.
7. Draw all worker tiles with an “A” on their back from the supply and place them in the job market row by row, starting at the space beneath the player‑count sign and moving rightwards until the last space left of the token is filled. The number of tiles placed depends on the player count (5, 8, or 11).
8. Fill the six foresight spaces in Buenos Aires: draw two “A” tiles, two “B” tiles, and two “C” tiles, placing them face‑up on the corresponding spaces.
9. Shuffle the 36 market cattle cards and place them face‑down as the cattle market stack. Draw 9, 12, or 15 cards depending on the player count, sort them by color, and arrange them face‑up in the order orange, yellow, red, blue, brown, purple.
10. Place the 25 exhaustion cards face‑up to the right of the market stack.
11. Shuffle the 24 objective cards and place them face‑down to the left of the board. Reveal four cards and display them face‑up as the general objective display.
12. Draw five farmer tiles with an “A” on their back from the supply and place them face‑up on the board according to their color areas.
13. Place the coins and exchange tokens within reach of all players as the bank.
14. For each player: receive the player board of your chosen color, the player count tile, 14 cattle cards with your color’s sun, one exhaustion card, one worker tile of each type (gaucho, carpintero, maquinista, granjero), one engine placed on the starting gray building of the railroad track, one certificate marker on the top of the certificate track, one grain marker on the left of the grain track, and one estanciero placed on the horseman space in the lower left corner of the board.
15. Determine the starting player. The starting player receives 7 pesos, 4 cards, 1 exchange token, and draws cards from their personal draw stack to fill their hand to the limit indicated on their board. Subsequent players receive 8, 9, or 10 pesos and 5, 6, or 7 cards respectively.

Game Flow

Play proceeds clockwise, with