Herd Your Horses

Summary
A beautifully illustrated board game with multiple ways to play, either as a wild mustang leading their herd, or as the ranchers trying to capture them.

Game Design
The game board consists of a map that you move across by rolling a die, with some spaces prompting you to draw one of two kinds of Adventure Cards, or to collect a new horse. Along with the four lead stallion playing pieces, there are also 55 different horse cards, including 23 Mustangs and 32 Ranch Horses.

Mustang Escape
Players select from four lead stallions (Black Bart, Rio Rojo, Gold Dust and Stormcloud) and draw five cards from the Ranch Horse deck, forming the start of their herd as they escape from the Ranch. The goal of each player is to be the first to reach Green River Valley with at least 9 mares and foals in their herd. Along the way, they can collect horses on Horse Spots, uncover events from the Mustang Adventure Deck, brave perilous conditions in Danger Zones, and steal horses away from the herds of other players if they land on the same space.

Rancher's Round-Up
The game's perspective is swapped around in this mode, as each player chooses a ranch (Double Cross, Rocking R, Bar BQ, or Lazy B) and must set out to recapture the missing ranch horses that broke free in Mustang Escape. Only the Ranch Horse cards belonging to the ranches chosen by players are put into play. To win, you must be the first to reach Green River Valley with at least one horse in each of the 8 available breed categories: Hot Blood/High School, Cold Blood, Warmblood, Harness, Pony, Exotic/Non-Horse, Gaited, and American Sporting. Along the way, players can capture horses on Horse Spots, uncover events from the Ranch Adventure Deck, and reclaim their horses from opponents if they land on the same space as another player who has captured a horse from their ranch.

Rancher's Revenge
Gameplay is very similar to Rancher's Round-Up, but instead of collecting horses from the 8 breed categories, players are tasked with reaching the valley with three matched pairs of horses, either in the same color family (two roans, two black horses, etc.) or with matching markings (two horses with blazes, two with stockings, etc.)

A Herd in Danger
A single player variation of Mustang Escape, where the player takes the role of the lead mare of a small herd. Cut off from the herd's usual grazing lands and pursued by ranchers trying to capture them all, the mare's goal is to lead a herd of at least 9 horses to the Green River Valley in 22 turns or less.

Horse Doubles / Corrals
The game also includes instructions for two simple games using only the horse cards: Horse Doubles involves matching pairs of horses with the same markings, and Corrals tasks you with moving the Ranch Horses into different categories based on breed and home ranch using a set of specific card movement rules.

Differences between Releases
The 1993 first release was sold in a long box with a blue rectangular border, for the 1997 release the box art border was changed to an asymmetric hexagon in purple. The game was later released in a square box as well, with the board folding out in quarters instead of folding in half as it did in previous releases.

In most versions, the lead stallion pieces are different colors of plastic, with stickers of the horse artwork on either side, but some copies of the game have had cardboard horse portraits that fit into black plastic stands.

Additional Media
A 'Herd Your Horses' edition of the game Tic Tac Twice also exists, re-using artwork from the game.