Planes Board Game First Impressions

Planes has you trying to get your passengers in their seats.

They’ll have you going in circles.

Planes puts you in the role of a group attempting to push your way through a crowded airport to reach your plane before takeoff. Other players’ families or groups, as well as neutral travellers, will cause all sorts of congestion in the terminal and may keep you from boarding.

Planes Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

Players have a few cards in hand and some cubes representing their passengers on board.

On a player’s turn, they may play a card to use the action on its top half for an ability which will allow them to to take an ability or manipulate the rules.

Then they must pick one space on the board containing at least one of their passengers, pick up all the cubes and drop one off one space at a time in the direction of the board. They can drop all of the cubes left in hand on the final space.

If they happen to drop a cube of their colour onto their plane, they sit it on a seat but it has to be the last cube in hand. Neutral cubes can be dropped off on neutral planes to draw cards.

Finally, a player can play the goal on the bottom half of one of their cards to score points if the condition on the card has been met.

How do you win?

When a number of passengers have made it onto planes, the game ends.

Players score for passengers on planes and goals they have completed and the player with the most points wins.

Main Mechanisms

Mancala, this is how you move the cubes around the board.

USP

Nothing new here really. It came out the same year as Five Tribes which also uses a Mancala mechanism to run the game. I guess getting passengers into a plane is unique but I never really count obscure theme ideas as a USP unless it means something to the mechanisms.

Theme

Well, can’t say this is a boring theme done to death, can you? 🙂 It’s a fun and unique theme,

Setup

Put the board down, put planes in their spaces and add cubes. Shuffle your cards and draw 3. I think that’s it.

Components & Artwork

Everything is pretty standard and the artwork is minimal. The iconography mostly makes sense but the goals as shown on the card don’t always reflect how they act according to the rulebook.

Ease of Teaching

This is very easy to teach with only a hidden hand of cards to worry about. However, everyone has identical decks so questions can be asked. the rulebook does have a good summary page for people to flick through if they need to.

Similar Games

I’ve already mentioned Five Tribes due to the mancala mechanism.

This is a part of a series of games that uses cubes with Trains which uses deck building to place cubes to build tracks to stations over a map. The other in the series is Automobiles which also uses deck building to place cubes on a track to race a car.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles, get it?

Planes Review

Positives

Fun and simple gameplay.

The only way to draw cards is to deliver passengers so you can’t just play them for their action, as tempting as it is.

Also, playing cards as actions means you can’t score their goal which gives you even more to think about.

There are plenty of weird and wacky boards available so the map isn’t just in a circle as it is in my image.

While trying to score yourself you can also try and manipulate the board to deny your opponents…

Negatives

…which is a bit mean and not something I like, especially when it’s done on purpose.

I’m not totally sold on long-term replayability.

Summary

In 2014 this would have been lost in shuffle due to the amount of games I bought back then (with an insanely high turnover). But in 2024, I see it as a game I’d like to play to try and figure out and try the different boards.

Jesta ThaRogue