Abilene (board game)

Abilene is a western themed board game designed by Roland Siegers, first published in 1984 by Hexagames and reprinted in 1993 by Schmidt Spiele. It is built for three to six players, runs about forty five minutes, and is aimed at players aged eight and up. The game is set around Abilene, Texas in 1870, when the town served as the main shipping point where Texan cattle barons brought their herds to be sold and transported east. Each player takes the role of a rancher driving a herd of cattle toward Abilene while also trying to intercept and capture cattle belonging to rival players along the way. A key mechanic keeps each player's own herd partly hidden, since some of their cattle may secretly be diseased, and rivals must decide how much to trust a player's claims about a herd's health before buying or trading. Combat between cowboys who meet on the open range is resolved through dice duels rather than any deeper conflict system. The game ends once twenty one herds in total have reached Abilene, at which point the player who has accumulated the greatest wealth from successful, honest cattle sales is declared the winner.