designed by brien miller and briars knipple
published by avalanche press
220 cards, range map, and scorepad
$37.95

Not collectible! There, with that out of the way, let's talk about Airlines. In Airlines, each player takes on the role of an airline company competing with the others to move the most passengers out of each airport. Since this is a card game we'll begin with the cards. Airlines focuses on the 18 airport cards depicting the actual airport they represent, including it's FAA traffic rating, gate capacity, and point rankings for seats. The remaining cards represent the planes, gates, and events. The key to victory is the collection of Seats, the basic monetary unit of the game. Each airport has four ranks of maximum Seat collection, and each plane is ranked by how many Seats it can move out of that airport.

The game begins with one airport in play for each player (chosen or random) plus one. Each player then selects, in turn, from those in play, an airport as their Hub. On each turn, players may play as as many cards as they can - this is their turn. At the end of each turn, Seats are collected from each airport where a player had planes at their Gates. After twelve turns of play, one for each month in the calender year, Maintenance Costs are paid out of the players accumulated Seat score. The highest remaining score wins. Sound easy? Well actually it is. A

The Events cards take into account weather patterns during particular times of the year, Pilot Strikes, baggage claim machines eating luggage, etc. Some of them can be played against other players for noisy aircraft, low cost ICN carriers moving into the area, etc. The key to careful card play comes in where a player places their airplane, and gates. Certain airports cost more to hold a gate, can't have large aircraft landing there, lack sophisticated weather tracking systems, etc. Players need to be careful about placing too many high maintenance cost aircraft at an airport that nets them too few points. The game includes variations for one, two, and three year games.

The most intriguing feature of Airlines how well the game's mechanics reflect day to day occurrences at busy airports. The game includes Ontario International Airport (some 10 minutes from our office). The 220 cards are full size playing cards of standard playing card quality, and shuffle well. The graphics on each of them are the standard high quality to be expected from the designers at Avalanche. The rules are easy to understand, and made even easier by the icons used on the cards, and the redundancy of their use throughout the game.

Airlines makes reference to other Major Airport cards that are not included in this set, and I'm anxious to see more expansions for this game.

The designers at Avalanche have done it again. Their cross over into the family games is coming along nicely, and Airlines is a splendid follow up to Survival Of The Witless. I love the intrigue of being able to jerk over my friends fictitious airline companies the way the airline companies jerk us around in real life.

Part altitude, all attitude.

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