Fantasy Flight Games has announced the upcoming release of Deadwood, a wild and wooly worker placement board game designed by Loic Lamy and set in the Wild West.  Each player in this dry gulching Dust Games release has a ranch and a gang of cowboys of 3 different classes (green-orns, gunslingers, trail bosses) and has to figure out how best to use them in order take control of Deadwood’s businesses and collect as much money as possible.

 

Deadwood is a minimally-developed shanty town at the beginning of the game, but up 26 buildings including a dance hall and casino can be constructed, which gives players plenty of possible winning strategies and provides endless variety for the game. 

 

Whenever a cowboy “annexes” the Town Hall, a new building is constructed, but controlling a building by placing a cowboy on the appropriate tile and “annexing” it inevitably leads to shootouts.  And there is a penalty for instigating a shootout. Players who do so receive a Wanted Poster token, and the more Wanted Posters a player accumulates, the higher the fine that must be paid at the end of the game.

 

The game ends when there are no more Wanted Posters in the crime pool, or when one of the players has lost all his cowboys, or when the train station is built bringing law and order to Deadwood. The player who ends up with the most cash is the winner.