Pan Am

6th October 2020

It's Tuesday evening at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking and it's time for a boardgame.

The main game this evening was 'Pan Am', a game about building up airline companies over the years and then watching as they bought out by Pan Am in exchange for shares!

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What's in a game?
​This game is set in 'The Golden Age of Air Travel', which I guess covers from the 'inter-war years' to the late 1960's.
This is reflected in the games look and art, which has a cool retro look to it.

• Board; Pan Am's board is a very distinctive looking map. It may seem strange, but it's a map depicting the globe - just displayed from an unusual angle! The board displays a lot of important information. It displays spaces and tracks for workers and share values. It also displays all the available air routes, 4 'lines' of these routes are marked with special symbols
• Hangars; these 4 trays are used to hold the 4 different classes of aeroplanes available.
• Aeroplanes; there are 4 classes of aeroplane, only the first 2 classes are available at the game start. The other classes become available during the course of play. The models used to depict the aeroplanes are quite nicely made. They start with the class 1 aeroplanes which look a bit like a DC10, up to the class 4 model that looks like an early jumbo jet.
• Meeples; each player will have a number of meeples to represent airports and engineers (Engineers are your workers.).
• Destination cards; these cards depict different cities throughout the world that form the game's routes. Cards also belong to a region such as Europe or America. The art on all of these is great, having the look of classic airline posters from the era.
• Directive cards; these cards usually give the player some sort of special action or bonus, sometimes these are dependant on an in game criteria, which sort of gives the player an objective to work for. Even though these cards only have text, they are printed in a typewriter font, which is a nice touch
• Event cards; Pan Am is played over 7 rounds, at the start of each round an event card is drawn, there 4 for each round and the art on them is very good. Event cards look like newspaper front pages from those times. The art is thematically appropriate.
• Player boards: These are simple card boards, they show a brake down of how a round works and give players a spot to place the unused aeroplanes in their air fleet. Most importantly, player boards display the player's income track.
• Pan Am die; this is used to determine the actions taken by Pan Am at the end of each round.
• Pan Am tokens; as Pan Am spreads throughout the map, it will take over any route that it reaches, these tokens are used to track that expansion.
• Money & shares; currency is represented by thick card tokens and shares are bit like paper money.

Of course they are some other components, but they are fairly minor.
The game's components are all good and the game's art direction and quality are worth noting. This shows the game's attention to detail.

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A map of the world, but not as you know it.

Aeroplanes in 'hangars'.

Starting resources.

Destination cards.

Event card.

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How's it play?
Setup
The set up for Pan Am is pretty straight forward.

• Shuffle the destination cards and deal 2 to each player, these are placed face up in each player's area. Deal 4 face up on to the appropriate spots on the board. The remaining cards form a draw deck on the board
• Shuffle the directive cards and deal 1 to each player, the remainder become a draw deck.
• Prepare the event deck, there are 4 cards for each of the game's 7 rounds. Randomly draw 1 card from each of the sets to form a 7 card deck, with the round 1 card on top.
• Give a player board to each player along with their starting aeroplanes, engineers and starting money.
• All airport meeples are placed next to the airport worker track on the board.
• Determine the first player (Last player to fly on a aeroplane.) and we're ready to go.

​Event card
Every round begins by turning over that round's event card. This determines some actions that will occur in the game.

• Event; each card will have a specific event that occurs, this can be quite different from card to card.
• Stock price; the event card may raise or lower the value of shares. An event card may even reset the stock value to a new value.
• Pan Am activity; this is how many times the Pan Am die is rolled at the end of a round for their expansion.

Worker placement
This is where the majority of the game occurs;
Usually placing workers starts with the 1st player, but there is something called priority. This is explained in detail below, but basically any workers that were placed into the directive spaces in the previous round go first in placement order.

There are 2 types of spaces a worker can be placed into. 

• Auction track; These are vertical tracks. All spaces on an auction track have a cost associated with them. The first player putting a worker on to an auction track, it can choose to place it anywhere. Subsequent players must place their worker above any worker already there (Thus outbidding them.), the worker in the lower space must be removed. This means that only one player can benefit from a particular auction track. Additionally, if a worker is placed into the topmost spot in an auction track, no one can outbid them.
• Placement order track; these are horizontal tracks. All workers placed here are put into the leftmost empty space. When they are resolved later on, it is done in order of placement, which is potentially very important.

So we go on to the five different types of worker action available to players. Players can obviously place down their workers in any other, but below is the order in which they are resolved

• A: Airports; this uses an auction track. When a player acquires an airport, they can place on any open city space and it grants them permanent landing rights at that city, it also prevents any other player from placing an airport on that space. Finally an airport increases a player's income by 1.
• B: Destination cards; destination cards use auction tracks. There always 4 different destination cards that can be bid on. Destination cards give players permanent landing rights in the relevant city. They can also be discarded to gain temporary landing rights in other cities (More on this below.). All destination cards are displayed face-up in the player's area.
• C: Aeroplanes; aeroplanes also use auction tracks. Winning an auction for a aeroplane grants the player an aeroplane of that class. Aeroplanes are not unlimited, as the class increases, the amount of aeroplanes available to each player decreases. At the start of the game only class 1 & 2 aeroplanes are available, class 3 aeroplanes unlock on the 3rd round and class 4 on the 6th. Each class of aeroplane has its own auction track. Better aeroplanes are needed for longer flight routes.
• D: Routes; uses the placement order track, this track determines the order in which players can claim routes. A player can claim one route per worker placed in routes. In order to claim a route a player needs 2 things; landing rights for 2 'linked' cities with a route between them and a aeroplane that can fly that route. Landing rights come from having airports or destination cards for relevant cities. Alternatively if a player has a destination card for the same region as one of the cities, then that card can be discarded for temporary landing rights. If a player has 2 destination cards from the same region, then both can be discarded to get landing rights in any city in any region. Finally, every route is rated for length from 1 to 4, the player must place a aeroplane with and equal or higher class on the route to claim it. The aeroplane stays there until the route is bought by Pan Am. When a route is claimed, the player increases their income by the route number. Since only one player may claim a route, going before another player can be very important.
• E: Directives; also uses a placement order track. In placement order, players draw a directive card. Unlike all the other tracks, workers are not removed when the action is resolved. Instead they stay there until the next turn. Then in placement order, they can be placed on the board before the first player begins. Thus if you really need to go first in the next turn, you can use the directives track to do it. Directive cards should be kept hidden from other players until they are used.

That's it for worker placement.

Expansion
Pan Am airlines starts the game in the Miami city space. The die is used to determine how and where Pan Am expands. The number of times the active player rolls it is dictated by the event card.
When the die is rolled, it will show one of two types of action.

• Pan Am symbol; when this symbol comes up, any player may sell any route they have claimed to Pan Am (See below for more info on selling routes.).
• Routes; the die can show a face which will have 2 symbols that match symbols on certain routes on the board. When this happens, Pan Am will travel along the lines with matching symbols. They will claim any routes they reach. If Pan Am reaches a route that a player has claimed, then the player is forced to sell it. They have no choice in this, Pan Am is just too big and powerful to refuse!

Selling routes
Selling (Or being forced to sell.) routes is not necessarily a bad thing, it can be vital to winning the game.
This is because Pan Am actually offers reasonably good money for a route.
A 1 point route will earn a player 1 per round, thus if a player has it for all 7 rounds it will earn a maximum of 7 throughout the game. Pan Am pays 5 for a 1 point route. So long term, keeping a route earns more, but it's a slow drip of money. Selling to Pan Am gives the player a lump sum that can immediately be re-invested into claiming more routes (Or buying shares.).
A 1 point route is worth 5.
A 2 point route is worth 9.
A 3 point route is worth 12.
A 4 point route is worth 14.
Obviously, there are diminishing returns here, but remember the class 4 aeroplanes will not appear until turn 6 (Unless an event card changes this.) and will only generate income for 2 turns.
When a route is sold to Pan Am, the player reduces their income track by the value of the route and the aeroplane on the route is replaced by a Pan Am token. The aeroplane is returned to the player which is actually very useful. The amount of aeroplanes a player can have is limited to the number of aeroplanes available. Each player only has 1 class 4 aeroplane, so being able to use it, sell the route it's on and then use it again is the way to go.
Players not only get the opportunity to sell routes during expansion, event cards and directive cards can also allow players to sell routes.

Income
Players earn an amount of money equal to their position along their income track.

Buy shares
Players can now buy shares, because this is the airline business, the only shares that matter are Pan Am shares.
Players may buy as much Pan Am stock as they can afford, the price of the shares is influenced by the event card played at the start of the round.
Since there is only ever 7 opportunities to buy shares, it's probably a good idea to try and buy them at every opportunity.

Once all players have bought all the shares they want, the round ends. The first player marker is moved left to the next player and new round begins.

Endgame
In this game, no one cares about the little routes that you create, they only care about Pan Am.
​After the end of the 7th round, players tally up the shares they have bought. Highest number of shares win. Remaining money counts as a tie breaker.

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Overall
Pam Am does a good job of blending accessibility, depth and player options.
Very rarely was there a meaningless choice in the game. Most of the time I felt that I could do with an extra worker or two.
Maximising your workers is very important, as is knowing when to bid for something or not. The destination card and class 1 aeroplane auction tracks have a minimum bid of 0. There's potential to get stuff for free when other players have minimal interest in it.

The key to the game I think, is selling routes to Pan Am at the right time, the prices are set a sweet spot of being good but not too good. Generally it's prudent to sell routes to Pan Am, but it's never a no-brainer - and that's a good thing.
Ideally players will want to try and build routes close to Pam Am, hoping to get bought  out. It's almost a counter-intuitive way to play.

Since the game is ultimately all about Pan Am shares, you obviously need to buy as many as possible and the game only gives players 7 opportunities to do this.

Stock prices generally start low in the game and rise continually throughout the game, this can put players in a quandary.
Do you buy shares in earlier rounds when they are much cheaper and run the risk of lacking funds to compete in bidding?
Or do you buy them later, hoping that your early investments pay off and give you more money to buy the invariably more expensive shares.

Finally, it's quite interesting watching as Pan Am unfailingly spreads across the board, consuming everything in its way.

I have the urge to play Pan Am again, that's always a solid indicator of a  good game in my opinion. It's definitely worth trying.