Starting with the player who has the First Player Marker, players take turns assigning their Ranchers to different “action spaces“ on the Action Mats and performing actions.

On your turn, you must place a single Rancher (either Lead or regular), onto one empty action space. Then you immediately perform that action space’s action.

After that, the next clockwise player will place a Rancher, and so on, until all players have placed all of their Ranchers. If on a player’s turn they have no Ranchers left to place, they are skipped and the phase continues with the next clockwise player.

Occupied Action Spaces:

If an action space already has one or more opponents' Ranchers on it, you may take that action by placing 1 more Rancher than the player with the highest number of Ranchers on that space.

In the example to the right, at least 2 Ranchers are required for the blue player to use the action.

A Lead Rancher counts as 2 regular Ranchers both for placement and for ‘blocking’ opponents.

In the example to the left, to use this action space now, the blue player must place at least 3 Ranchers and does so, using a Lead and a regular Rancher.

You CANNOT place Ranchers onto an action space where you already have Ranchers.

Costs to Perform Actions:

Some action spaces are marked with a cost to perform the action, noted by a dark circle around the action space and the required resource(s) or Dinosaur(s) that must be paid.

When placing Rancher(s) onto an action space, you MUST immediately pay the necessary resources and then perform at least part of the action.

Gaining Items with Actions:

If an action has a plus symbol (+) next to an item, that means you gain whatever is listed.