In Pioneer Rails, you represent a railroad owner who has seen an opportunity to expand your empire across the new lands of the frontier. You’ll be competing with other railroad owners to plan your railway in the best way possible to connect establishments to the railroad and satisfy the demands of the locals. Pioneer Rails is a Flip & Write game where you’ll use poker cards to extend your railway tracks and build a poker hand at the same time. Each turn you’ll choose one of the revealed poker cards. The suit of the card helps you extend your railway, connecting you to new towns and surrounding features. When you connect to a town, you’ll gain the ability to do a one time bonus. When you surround a feature with your tracks, you’ll activate it for end game scoring. The value of the card is added to your poker hand, which you'll score additional points for at the end of the round. Each game you’ll also be competing over 3 goals, meaning every game you’ll be pulled in different directions. The mechanism of surrounding features to activate them gives Pioneer Rails a satisfying ‘puzzley’ feel to the game. The variable objectives and the poker cards give enough replayability so no two games are ever the same. —description from the publisher