PanAm – First Thoughts
One of the saddest stories we have covered on Brainwaves was the selling of the Prospero Hall Games studio to Goliath. This studio had an amazing track record of film inspired hits. Games based on Jaws and Top Gun shocked the community by actually being good. Disney Villainous spawned numerous expansions. Now that talent is gone.
Pan Am is a Prospero Hall design for Funko, the idiotic company that got rid of this wealth of talent so they could sell you more plastic tat. The game models the massive expansion of this iconic airline in its heyday.
First Thoughts pieces represent my impressions after an initial play of the game. I will highlight what I enjoyed and any pitfalls to be avoided. It is not to be take as a full review. I believe this perspective is useful as many of us encounter many games only once.
The first thing I did when cracking this game open was do a double take of the board. It’s a map of the world but unlike any I’ve ever seen. It effectively looks at the globe from the north pole giving you a slightly weird perspective on our planet.
That aside, the game has a great aesthetic. Cards are easy to read with clear symbols. The plastic planes you use to claim routes all look different enough to be easy to tell apart on the board.
There are 7 rounds in the game and each is preceded by an event card. This tells you how much the stock price is going to change, how much Pan Am will expand, and gives you some sort of rule changing effect to deal with/benefit from.
Each round you are going to take some workers and deploy them on the various actions available to you. Maybe you will build an airport, giving you permanent landing rights, or a plane, allowing you to take a route. Claiming cards gives you landing rights to build routes. Of course you have to take the time to build those routes.
The core of the game is claiming routes. Landing right cards, and airports, give you access to the variations destinations on the board. If you have the destinations at either end of a route you can claim it, or discard cards in various ways to do so. Landing right cards remain face-up throughout the game, allowing you to know what folk are plotting. Claiming routes might be the core, but what gets you towards points is selling them to Pan Am.
At the end of a round Pan Am expands a number of times based on the event card you pulled at the start of the round. Pan Am expands on a dice roll, buying up routes as it pushes out from its Miami base. The longer the route they buy, the more money you get. Some routes on the board were not part of Pan Am history. How do they get bought? Well one of the dice choices is a wild, allowing each player to sell a route of their choice. High risk, but potentially high reward.
When Pan Am buys your route you get cash based on the length. Money doesn’t actually matter though, only your stocks in Pan Am. Post expansion each player can buy as much stock as they want at the current market price. Most stock wins the game.
The game is short, making every decision feel weighty. The individual choices are simple, but how to use them is not. Balancing when to buy stock, and when to keep money for the next round is a fun tightrope to walk.
Pan Am has the feel of a heavy stocks based economic game, but in a tight, light package. I was impressed at how interesting and engaging each turn was. It was quick to pick up, easy to play, and I had a blast. I look forward to getting on board again.
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