Great Western Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Preparation
• Playing the Game
• End of the Game

Components

• 26 playing pieces per player color
• 12 black playing pieces (the rest are not needed for this game)
• 3 dice (not included)
• 1 first player marker (stand-up spielbox logo)
• 1 gameboard (centerfold of magazine)
• Money (for scoring)

Preparation

1. Each player: a. Select a set of playing pieces. b. Set one piece on London on the map. c. Set one piece in the leftmost column of the Income Track at the right of the board, on the "1" row. (Everyone starts connected to 1 city: London.) d. Separate your remaining pieces into two pools: i. Your personal supply, which starts with 10 pieces in it. ii. Your unavailable stock, which is the remaining 14 pieces.
2. Place the black pieces and the money near the board.
3. Randomly determine a first player, and give him the first player marker.

Playing the Game

The turn sequence is as follows:

1. Load the trains

   Starting with the top train on the board, only use a number of trains equal to the number of players. For each train, roll three dice. For each die rolled, place a black piece on the coach/wagon in that column. A 1 on a die means that you don't place a piece. (Thus each train will have 0-3 black pieces on it.)

2. Auctioning off the trains

   In clockwise order, starting with the first player, each player bids on a train by placing pieces from his personal supply in the box to the left of a train. No one is allowed to bid on more than one train, and the minimum bid is one piece. By placing a higher bid than someone who has already bid on that train, you force that player to retract his bid to his personal supply. This is the only way a bid can be retracted, and the only way you can change for which train you are bidding. Continue until each player has successfully bid on one train.

   Now each player replaces his train's black pieces with pieces from his unavailable stock. Set the black pieces beside the board for next turn. Finally, the pieces you used for bidding go into your unavailable stock.

3. Build the rail network

   For this phase, play order is determined by whoever has pieces closest to the front of his train. If there's a tie, check the next piece, and so on. (e.g. If I have two on my 6 car, and you have one on your 6, then I'll go before you.) If trains are perfectly tied, they go top-to-bottom. (i.e. In a perfect tie, the tied train with the most coach cars goes before the others.)

   In this order, each player extends his network from cities where he already has pieces* to empty cities, by placing pieces in connected cities. Each city may only contain one piece!

   * You may also form connections from another player's piece, but the link cost increases by one for each occupied city where you don't have a piece. You can never jump over empty cities.

   The cost to do this is the sum of the Link cost plus the City cost:

   I. Link cost = the number in a square on the rail link between the cities. You pay this with pieces from your personal supply and/or pieces from your train.

End of the Game

The game ends when every city has a playing piece. You take money according to the values in gold circles beside cities with your pieces in them. The player with the most money is the winner. If there's a tie, then the tied player with the most pieces not on the board is the winner.