Ranch Hand

Welcome to Ranch Hand, the game that puts the ranch in your hand (figuratively).

You have decided to try your hand at ranching. You have found some land and a few animals to get started. Can you turn your little start-up into a bona fide ranch?

The game consists of 2 phases, the Auction Phase and the Disaster Phase.

Your goal is to meet the objective on your objective card by collecting the indicated animals on your ranch. To win you must establish 3 Ranches this way. To meet your objective, all cards must be the same breed of the animal indicated. You may change which breeds you are collecting as the game progresses. Your ranch also has a max capacity that cannot be exceeded.

During each auction round players have a chance to take 2 cards from an open draft style auction to add to their ranch. They may not exceed their ranch capacity and must discard any cards that take them over the limit.

The end of the auction triggers the disaster phase. The active player turns over the top card from the Disasters deck reads the card out loud. Every player follows the directions on the Disaster card, not just the active player. Players have the option of avoiding disasters with a dice roll indicated on some cards. Certain cards also allow players to avoid disasters. You must survive the disaster round to consider you objective completed. Once an objective is completed players draw a new objective and start over carrying over only a few cards from the previous objective. The first player to complete 3 objectives wins.

—description from the publisher