Easy Breezy Travel Agency

tl;dr: It’s a great little card game for 2 players, 3& 4 player game feels like game is too short, variant makes it better, but still best at 2.

Do you ever get the feeling that you’re missing out on an adventure? Do you ever want to just pack your bags and take a trip to such exotic locations as the Windy City, The Big Apple, The Big Easy, or the Magic City? Heck, don’t we all? But you’re super busy and you need help booking the trip. Well fear no more, as the agents of the Easy Breezy Travel Agency are here to help. Just as soon as we stop infighting with one another at your expense.

Easy Breezy Travel Agency is a card game for 2-4 player from Dice Hate Me Games. Easy Breezy is part of Dice Hate Me Games’ “Rabbit” Line, these are light card games of only 54 cards with maybe some tokens. Though light each “Rabbit” game promises strategy and immersive game play. Having not played all of the games in this line I can’t speak for the rest but Easy Breezy is a delightfully little card game that offers a tense and rewarding experience.

Easy Breezy’s premise is simple enough; In the playing field there are trips you want to book, on the side there are travelers who want to go to certain cities, and finally there is a listed fair cost that will describe how much commission (VP) you receive. Wherever you draw a passenger card you immediately flip over the next from the top of the deck, should any passenger card list a fair increase of a city you immediately move that cities fair up. Player’s familiar with Ticket To Ride will easily grasp a turn. On a turn you can do one of three things; draw two passenger tickets, book a trip by discarding the correct number of passenger cards for a certain city, or reorganize you hand.

What’s this reorganizing you ask? Well it’s what makes this game a tense and deeper little card game than you’d expect. Players are given a very strict hand limit of only 4 cards. Should you ever draw more than 4 cards your 5th and beyond cards are put into whats called a Waiting Area by placing the cards face up in front of you. These cards are still considered in your “Queue” when you want to use them for the Book a Trip action, but these cards are vulnerable for from your opponent. As an additional option when taking a reorganize action you may exchange up to 2 of your passengers in your Waiting Area with up to 2 passengers in an opponents Waiting Area. This offers lots of chances to steal your opponents good cards and give them bum cards for tickets you know they are not necessarily going for.

When you finally take a book a trip action you will discard a number of cards equal to the number on the city card. You will then score a number of VPs equal to the number of passengers you discard multiplied by the fair cost of the city. Once a city card has been claimed it is replaced with a new one from the stack, once the stack is empty in any city the game is over. In a 3 and 4 player game it is recommended by the designer to have a mid game scoring and shuffle all the city cards into a new stack and go again.

I found this game when on vacation with my girlfriend in Copenhagen and we played it every night that week. The game offers a tense and light strategic experience that never outstays its welcome. I really want to call this the Ticket to Ride Two Player Card Game because this game hits on all those notes for me. Set Collection, hand management, occasional blocking or screwing over of people, I had a blast. At 2 players.

Sadly the unfortunate reality of the situation is that out of the box this game simply does not offer a consistent experience with all its player counts. The 2 player game is a tense back and forth with a lot of decision making and planning. The 3 player game feels like utter chaos trying to claim anything you can. The 4 player game feels like you just started the game when its over.
I played a 4 player game when I got back from vacation because I was so excited by the game that I wanted to share it on a “couples” night with some fiends only to quickly regret it. The couple we played with are the definition of a casual player, they have played games but do not own any nor seek them out. By the time they understood the rules the game was over.

There are simply not enough cards to make this a 3 or 4 player game. I found a variant that the designer had posted online that tried to solve this dilemma by instituting a mid game scoring round where instead of ending the game players just record their scores and shuffle all the city cards again and essentially play a second game. This kinda solves the issue but I still don’t feel the game offers the same tense and strategic experience as it does with 2 players.

As it stands I love Easy Breezy Travel Agency as a great portable 2 player card game that offers more depth than it should. I know this will be in my pocket every time I go to the pub with my GF or a friend for the potential filler or game to have over a few beers, a fine spot along side Star Realms, Brew Crafters the Card Game, and Star Wars Rebellion vs Empire. I don’t see myself playing this often with 3 or 4, in fact I may just forget it can play that many and just enjoy it as a two player. Bon voyage,