This is a copy we got early to share our thoughts. No money was paid for this review. Some of the pictures, rules, or pieces might change before the game is finished.
PDX comes from the same person who made Alpenglow, a game about building routes for skiing. I’m really looking forward to trying that one. Now, the designer, Sean Wittmeyer, has created a game all about managing an airline. PDX is set at Portland International Airport and mixes together building up your airline’s abilities, placing workers to take actions, and collecting sets of things, all while trying to finish contracts.
These are some of my favorite ways to play games, and the idea of running an airline seemed pretty interesting too. The game is planning to launch on a crowdfunding site soon. This is just a test version of the game. You can find out more about PDX here.
In the game, players act as competing airlines, trying to complete as many flight routes as possible. At the same time, you’ll be building new offices and finishing advertising deals. The game plays very smoothly and feels well put together. It’s all about planning your turns using a clever system where you place workers.
Players take turns placing one worker to do things like get resources, get destination tickets or planes, build new office buildings, set up hangars, or complete advertising contracts. The game flows nicely, and you need to build the best system to make the most of your turns. If you like games like Brass Birmingham, you’ll notice some similarities, though PDX is simpler. Still, the core ideas are there.
Besides placing your main worker, some spots on the board, including places where you build buildings, let you use one of your two suitcases for extra benefits. These suitcases act like extra workers, but you can’t use them until the next turn. It’s all about thinking ahead, figuring out what you’ll need later, and finding the best ways to use these suitcases as much as possible. This can turn one worker action into as many as three actions.
Early in the game, when you’re busy building and getting resources, this will be very useful and happen often. Later in the game, it might slow down a bit on some turns as you get better at being efficient, but that’s fine. Your focus will shift from getting buildings and resources to using them to plan and carry out flights!
After you get a destination tile from the main area and add it to your player board, you can spend the matching resources shown on the tile to put it in one of your three starting hangars. You need to make sure you can meet what the destination requires. There are short, medium, and long flights. You start with three gates that can only handle short flights. However, you can use the ‘build’ action to make them bigger so they can reach further destinations. Then, by using the ‘lease’ action, you can get a plane from the front of the runway and add it to your hangar. Planes can be small, medium, or large. Big planes can fly anywhere, but small planes can only do short flights, and medium planes can do short and medium flights. At any time, you can move a destination tile you already have from your board to one of your three gates. Then, at the end of your turn, you can set up a flight by moving a plane from your hangar to one of your gates.
At the start of your next turn, you can land a plane by moving each plane at a gate to the next destination tile. You can then collect one of the re
Completing flights like this is the main way to get points in the game. Each tile shows points in the top right corner, and at the end of the game, you’ll add up all your completed flights and add them to your score. You also get points for each advertising campaign you finish, which usually gives you one to three points. You get these by collecting the tokens needed for each ad campaign by finishing flights. For example, you might get a palm tree re
There are always a few of these advertising cards showing, and once you have the right resources collected from finished flights, you can send a worker to the right spot to trade the tokens for the card and earn a lot of points at the end of the game.
The last and most interesting way to get points is by building buildings. When you choose the building action, you can improve your gates, add a fourth gate with more spots for resources, or build a building. When you choose to build, you can put it in the main airport area to get a wild resource, or you can put it in one of the three spots you have on your own player board above your concourse. These are extra spots for you or any player’s worker to go to get more resources and use a suitcase action. But also, the pictures shown here will act as multipliers at the end of the game.
For example, if the red player below finishes their flight to Heathrow, they will get three points from their office buildings. This is because the blue symbol chosen on the buildings is also shown on the Heathrow flight, along with the purple symbol that appears on one of their offices. As you start to finish many flights, which you will do in this game, these multipliers can really add up!
So, when you’re getting new destinations to fly to, you need to think about six things. What resources does it cost to put it in one of your gates? What resources do you have or can you easily get? What kind of flight is it, and what size gates do you have? What kind of plane will be needed to fly there, and which planes do you have or can you easily get? What resources will this destination give you, both for getting more destinations and for finishing advertising deals? And finally, most importantly, do the pictures on this destination match the office buildings you have for important end-game points?
PDX has that rare feeling where everything works together perfectly. The theme really helps the game, instead of just being decoration. You are rival airlines at Portland International, trying to run the smartest operation: pick up destinations, sort your resources, lease planes, upgrade gates, build offices, and get points from advertising along the way. The game’s main feature is the single-worker placement system, which makes you think in smart steps instead of long, drawn-out turns. But then you have the chance to use your suitcases to turn this into three actions. You’re rarely going to be doing ten things at once, but you are always setting up the next turn so it feels like you might!
The suitcase mechanic is the little spark that makes the whole system run smoothly. Some spots and buildings let you drop off one of your suitcases for extra benefits, but you don’t get to use those suitcases until the next turn, so you are always planning ahead and building momentum. Fans of games where you build routes and games where you “build it, then profit from it” will likely see why people compare it to Brass Birmingham, even though PDX is simpler and more straightforward. It’s much easier and quicker to learn and teach, but you’ll feel similar vibes!
That being said, this probably isn’t for people who want easy, obvious choices. Picking destinations is a big decision: what it costs, what it pays you, whether your gates and planes can handle it, how it helps with contracts, and whether the pictures match your office buildings for those great end-game points. That’s the fun part if you like a game that rewards long-term planning, but it could feel like a lot if you prefer quick turns and simple goals. Also, I can imagine later turns taking a bit longer if players try to get every last bit out of timing their suitcases and planning their routes perfectly.
