This is a good quality light-medium game. It plays quickly, the rules are straightforward, and in our opinion is underrated as a gateway game – and certainly this game often finds it to our table as a gateway option. Comparisons with designer Alan R. Moon's better known 'Ticket to Ride' are inevitable – and valid, considering it shares the same card-drawing mechanism – and where it has benefits over TTR is that the game is invariably close to the end, with few mechanisms by which a player can rapidly escalate the number of points scored, as well as tense until the end, given the randomness and suddenness of the end game trigger.

A couple of tips we try to give when teaching the game are:

• The first scoring round always comes much more quickly than you expect it to, so be sure to get some share cards into your portfolio in your first few turns.
• Establishing excessive dominance in an airline early in the game locks down points, but may mean that nobody else will help you to build up that airline's value. The more points you can gain on airlines that other players have been investing in, the better off you'll be.
• Don't let one opponent get easy Air Abacus points by letting them claim first place in that airline without competition. If a player can get Abacus points cheaply, that alone is likely to be enough to win.

Get Airlines Europe here