Subhapriyo Banerjee

Airlines Europe is a game where players connect paths between cities to build powerful airline business empires. I enjoy it and I think most gamers will as well.

Airlines are grown by purchasing routes between cities and marking the routes with small plastic airplane tokens that match the color of the airline. Each airline begins in one home city and can spread out from there in any direction. Growth is limited by the number of tokens each airline has to spend and some airlines start with more than others. For those with limited growth potential, bonus points are awarded to the airline (not player) when a long chain of connections are made between two predefined cities.

Stock is available for each airline and can be collected to gain victory points during 3 scoring rounds. Anyone can grow an airline and anyone can collect stock in it, so the basic strategy is to build out airlines when you have more stock in it than other players.

The game is played on a colorful board with victory point scoring tables based on the size of airlines listed around the sides of the board. Components include cash for purchasing routes, stock certificates, victory point chits and airline tokens. Everything is well made and the game is quick to set up.

Play is quick with little downtime and player interaction, while not fierce, is definitely present when vying for majority of stock in the largest airlines and/or blocking an opponent from expanding their routes in their favorite airline.

I wouldn’t say it’s a TTR/Acquire amalgamation — though at first glance, one might assume so. You do connect paths between cities like TTR (but unlike TTR there are no private “destination” tasks) and there are stocks like Acquire, but you can’t merge airlines together and cash is more a means to an end rather than the end goal itself in Acquire.

This is a somewhat light game, fun, to be sure, and a nice next step for bringing someone towards the light after hooking them with a couple good gateway games. It’s probably has too much going on to make a good gateway itself but should appeal well to most gamers who are looking for an engaging filler.