Airlines Europe

[Gerald]

Before Ticket to Ride, before Santa Fe Rails, before Union Pacific – yet after Acquire – there was Airlines, one of the earliest published games from designer Alan R. Moon and publisher ABACUSSPIELE.

More than two decades after the publication of that game, Moon and ABACUSSPIELE present Airlines Europe, the design of which Moon began in 2007. According to the publisher, "He wanted to preserve the feel of the original game and its successor, Union Pacific, while confronting the player with even more exciting choices." The result of that redesign process is Airlines Europe, featuring a reduced playing time, a new point structure, a European setting, and 112 tiny detailed airplanes.

At its heart, Airlines Europe is a stock game, with players earning points for the stock they hold in particular airline companies when one of the randomly determined scorings takes place. On a player's turn, that player either expands an airline and claims a stock, plays stock onto the board and receives dividend, invests in a special airline called Air ABACUS or gets a certain amount of money from the bank. A player scores only for stock in play, but the value of an airline is determined by the value of the route licences that airline owns – thus, you're torn in terms of what to play when.

Try getting your pre-orders in early (either thru Gaming Library or other retailers if you prefer) as this upcoming game by Alan Moon is sure to be another smash hit!

[dyeyk2000]

Who's played this? Lots of hooplah dati. Inde lang ba lumilipad dito sa local community kasi advanced gamers na?

[yamizero]

Might be the rush of new stuff coming in as well. I mean SW: Master Set, then upcoming Dungeon Run. the list could go on... =P

BTW, can GameLib source the exp?

Airlines Europe: Flugverbot – a free expansion distributed at Spiel 2011 – provides players a blocking variant for Alan R. Moon's 2011 release Airlines Europe that, in the words of Abacusspiele's Matthias Wagner, "should make the board/routes slightly tighter".

[xtriker]

Might be the rush of new stuff coming in as well. I mean SW: Master Set, then upcoming Dungeon Run. the list could go on... =P

BTW, can GameLib source the exp?

Airlines Europe: Flugverbot – a free expansion distributed at Spiel 2011 – provides players a blocking variant for Alan R. Moon's 2011 release Airlines Europe that, in the words of Abacusspiele's Matthias Wagner, "should make the board/routes slightly tighter".

Yup!

I actually like the game better than Ticket to ride. The problem lang with this is that it got swamped over with all of the new stuff. Next year it will definitely see playing time =D

[Adrian (the other one)]

A lot of us played it na, if I recall.  I mean, I myself have played it three or four times.  All of which, except the last play, was with the wrong rules. )

I guess when you regularly show up at gaming meets, you'll more likely  encounter this game.

[Titus]

I just got a copy in the last math trade and have played it twice, once with 5 players and once with 2. I wanna play it some more before I write a review and post it here. But so far I really like it -- it's easy to teach and runs very smoothly. It's firmly in the middleweight category (I seem to favor games in this class lately).

Many good games get lost in the deluge of shiny new releases; it's a given in this hobby unfortunately. That's why I try to look out for titles that are getting positive reviews but are not that popular.

It's a good thing our community has a wide variety of tastes. Can you imagine if at the gaming meets all anyone ever played was Agricola, 7 Wonders, Dominion, and Ticket to Ride?  *Shudder*

[yamizero]

i wouldn't mind a 7 wonders marathon

@dyeyk - baka minsan matimingan mo na merong Airlines sa RR. Alternatively, kung matuloy man minsan ang sang meet down South we could play it sa RR den- Pamplona division. hehehe