In the not-too-distant future, the game of Texas Hold’em poker has evolved. This enhanced format of the game, named after the secret location of the largest annual tournament, is known as Western Tropic. Each year, the world’s most elite players gather on a tropical island somewhere in the Pacific. The eccentric billionaire who organizes this tournament has quite a fondness for the “Old West” and has gone to great lengths to transform the center of the island into an authentic western town, and he encourages participants to dress accordingly... As one of the players invited to compete in Western Tropic, your goal is to be the first player to reach 60 points and claim victory, fortune, and fame. Western Tropic uses a 5x5 grid that acts as a communal, but ever-changing set of cards that players use to create the best possible poker hand. Much like Texas Hold'em, each player has hole cards that are unique to them. But, the game uses an extra (third) hole card each round that can be traded in, to grant various actions such as moving your character around the grid, or changing the grid, altogether. Each suit gives you different abilities, and those can be used in unique ways to either improve your hand or obstruct others. There are also 8 jokers that can provide additional chaos. Western Tropic takes the language of poker, and combines it with popular game mechanisms like deck-building and area control. —description from the designer