Theme: The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed Americans to claim undeveloped land by living on and farming it for five years. Also in the 1860s, the Transcontintal Railroad was built across North America, linking rail networks between the East and West coasts. The developmenr of the railraods accelerated the spread of homestaeders colonizing the West and led to the rapid cultivation of new land.

Gameplay: Homesteaders is an Auction and Resource Management game in which players bid on the opportunity to build certain types of buildings, then spend resource cubes to build one of several buildings of that type. The buildings confer abilities, income, and points; some automatically and some requiring a Worker.

The game lasts 10 rounds, with each round consisting of an Auction phase followed by a Building phase. After the last round, players get 1 final income phase and one last chance to buy and sell goods and use their building abilities before scores are tallied.

Players score for their buildings, bonuses conferred by buildings, and points earned throughout the game from selling resource cubes. The player who builds the best combination of buildings and best manages the 9 different resources in the game will score the most points and win, as long as they don't take on too much debt!