Airlines Europe Review: Invest in an Airline and Get Rich!

These factors all make the game more exciting, real, and immersive.

Now that we all know a bit about this game, let's see how a turn plays out. This is what you can do in a turn:

Let's go through each possible action you can make on each turn. After all, each player can only pick one of them, play their turn, and then pass to the next player.

The first option, option A, is buying 1 or 2 route licenses. This means adding 1 or 2 planes to an airline, paying for the route license, putting the planes in their spot, and then, after you pay, you'll add this same amount to the airline scoring track. Additionally, you can get a share card either from one of the 5 open cards in the stock market or from the share supply deck.

Option B is playing share cards from your hand to your portfolio. You can do this in two ways:

In addition, you'll get 2 million Euro as dividends for each share card you played from your hand into your portfolio.

The third option, option C, is acquiring Air ABACUS shares. There are two ways to do this:

Please note that, to play Air ABACUS shares in your portfolio, you'll have to, in the previous turn, play option B.

Lastly, option D is taking money from the bank - 8 million Euros, in fact.

Whenever someone draws a scoring card, the game stops and you'll count your points.

In this step, each player will get victory points from all airlines. Some will give out more points than others, depending on the game state and how much each player invested in them by buying route licenses. Whoever has more shares on a certain airline, gets more points. It's the stock market!

That's basically a turn in Airlines Europe!

The game ends immediately after the third scoring round. The player with the most victory points wins!

If there is a tie, the player who has more Air ABACUS shares wins! If there is still a tie, players share the victory.

In the very unlikely case that, after someone buys a route license, all airlines in the game are blocked, the game ends on the spot. You'll all count your final score, and the player with the most victory points wins!

Airlines Europe is inspired by the stock market, market speculation, airlines, and the "golden age of aviation". It is incredibly cool, but, as every game inspired by the stock market, you'll need a lot of focus to play it, as each route license anyone gets will change the game.

If you have experience with board games, here's a tip: check how many shares in a certain airline you still have, and how many are still available in the stock market. Obviously, you'll never be able to know how many are still left exactly, as some will be in the share supply deck and some will be in other players' hands, but you can get close to the real number.

Some small airlines, despite not having many planes, can be valuable. Four of them give you a bonus for connecting them to certain places, so don't ignore them. Your opponents might just forget about them, so take advantage of that!

Every once in a while, 2 or more players will dominate the shares in a certain airline and invest in their route licenses whenever they can, which will make the game more difficult for whoever has shares in other airlines. In this scenario, some route licenses will become unavailable very quickly.

Is this forbidden? No. Can it happen? Yes, and it usually does. What can we do about it? Not let 2 players buy all the route licenses of a certain airline - combine different shares in your portfolio, and, as a bonus, you'll always get some points from them, even if only a few.

To mitigate this issue, here are a few rules that you should always keep an eye on:

airport;

Another important tip: never hoard money. If you do that, make sure the bank is "healthy". If the bank goes bankrupt, you will go bankrupt too, so move that money!

Last, but not least, analyze the game state carefully and check which airlines can be blocked soon. To do this, just look at the map, see which license routes are available, and see if their airline can connect to them. If the route only has one license available, or no licenses available, and there are no other routes available, it will be blocked, and so the airline won't be able to expand anymore.

Check out this unboxing:

Learn the rules:

Watch some gameplay:

Airlines Europe is about money, buying and selling shares, keeping an eye on the market and how much other airlines are growing. The next step after mastering this game is actually investing in the stock market! To beat this game, you'll need to be great at math, create strategies as the game goes on, and have good spatial awareness.

On a lighter side, the plane miniatures are beautiful: they resemble the aircrafts from that time.

Airlines Europe will teach you how to manage your money, your share portfolio, the route licenses still available, your own hand of cards, and how many shares a certain airline still has. You'll also have to work on your math skills, but you won't even notice yourself doing this. You'll have a lot of fun with your friends and family, but also learn a lot while playing this game!

Airlines Europe is a great lesson for the entire family! I highly recommend it for your collection!